When someone is in a conscious state, must they be aware of that state? The Buddhist philosopher Dignāga offers a brilliant route to answering this question by leveraging the role awareness might play as a constraint on memory. I begin by clarifying his strategy and what conclusions it might be used to establish. Here I examine different candidate directions of explanation between consciousness and inner awareness. I interpret the metaphor of consciousness as a lamp that lights itself, and use the metaphor to distinguish between his view and contemporary higher-order theories of consciousness. I then turn to explain why the memory argument fails. The first main problem is that, contrary to Dignāga’s contemporary defenders, there is no good way to use the argument to reach a conclusion about all conscious states. The second main problem is that the proposed awareness constraint on memory is highly problematic, in tension both with ancient objections as well as current psychology.
With responses from Lu Teng (NYU Shanghai)
We are pleased to announce that the 26th annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness will be held at New York University on June 22-25, 2023.
Submissions for talks and posters are now open with a deadline of February 15, 2023. Conference registration will open in early 2023.
Keynote speakers, symposia, tutorials, and housing have now been arranged, as specified below.
Please direct any inquiries to ASSC26@nyu.edu.
We hope to see you soon in New York!
Ned Block and David Chalmers, Conference Directors
Presented by the New York German Idealism Workshop
Perfection and Morality: Kant’s Critique of the Stoics. Stephen Engstrom. With response from Francey Russell. @Columbia 22 September
Hegel’s Theory of Absolute Spirit. Markus Grante. With response from Amelle Djemel. @New School 6 October
The Argument of Kant’s Groundwork. Pauline Kleingeld. With response by Patricia Kitcher. @Columbia 27 October
Nathan DuFord tbd. With response by Chris O’Kane. @New School 10 November
Anja Jauernig’s recently published The World According to Kant (Oxford, 2021) defends an interpretation of Kant’s critical idealism as an ontological position, according to which Kant can be considered a genuine idealist about empirical objects, empirical minds, and space time. Yet in contrast to other intentional objects, appearances genuinely exist, which is why Kant can also be considered a genuine realist about empirical objects, empirical minds, and space and time. This book spells out Kant’s case for critical idealism thus understood and clarifies Kant’s conception of appearances and things in themselves in relation to Kant’s Leibniz-Wolffian predecessors.
Anja Jauernig (NYU)
Bio:
Anja Jauernig is Professor of Philosophy at New York University. She obtained her Ph.D. from Princeton University, and held academic positions at the philosophy departments of the University of Notre Dame and the University of Pittsburgh before coming to NYU. Her research interests include Kant, Early Modern Philosophy, 19th and early 20th century German Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Animal Ethics.
Patricia Kitcher (Columbia)
Bio:
Patricia Kitcher is Roberta and William Campbell Professor Emerita of Humanities and Professor Emerita of Philosophy at Columbia. She has written two books on Kant’s theory of cognition and the self and is editor of the Oxford Philosophical Concepts volume on The Self.
Andrew Chignell (Princeton)
Bio:
Andrew Chignell is Laurence S. Rockefeller Professor in Religion, Philosophy, and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton. Prior to that he was a Professor of Philosophy at Penn and Associate and Assistant Professor in the Sage School of Philosophy at Cornell. His research interests are in early modern philosophy (especially Kant) and in philosophy of religion, moral psychology, epistemology, and food ethics. From 2020-2023 he served as President of the North American Kant Society.
Desmond Hogan (Princeton)
Bio:
Desmond Hogan is Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University. His research interests include metaphysics, philosophy of science, ethics, and aesthetics, with a focus on the modern period and nineteenth century.
Presented by the New York German Idealism Workshop
Perfection and Morality: Kant’s Critique of the Stoics. Stephen Engstrom. With response from Francey Russell. @Columbia 22 September
Hegel’s Theory of Absolute Spirit. Markus Grante. With response from Amelle Djemel. @New School 6 October
The Argument of Kant’s Groundwork. Pauline Kleingeld. With response by Patricia Kitcher. @Columbia 27 October
Nathan DuFord tbd. With response by Chris O’Kane. @New School 10 November
Samantha Matherne has written the first recent book in English on the philosophy of Cassirer, covering the full range of his thought. Her research also explores the reciprocal relationship between perception and aesthetics. She approaches these issues largely through a historical lens, as they are taken up by Kant and developed in Post-Kantian traditions in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially Phenomenology and Neo-Kantianism.
Presented by the New York German Idealism Workshop
Perfection and Morality: Kant’s Critique of the Stoics. Stephen Engstrom. With response from Francey Russell. @Columbia 22 September
Hegel’s Theory of Absolute Spirit. Markus Grante. With response from Amelle Djemel. @New School 6 October
The Argument of Kant’s Groundwork. Pauline Kleingeld. With response by Patricia Kitcher. @Columbia 27 October
Nathan DuFord tbd. With response by Chris O’Kane. @New School 10 November
Presented by the New York German Idealism Workshop
Perfection and Morality: Kant’s Critique of the Stoics. Stephen Engstrom. With response from Francey Russell. @Columbia 22 September
Hegel’s Theory of Absolute Spirit. Markus Grante. With response from Amelle Djemel. @New School 6 October
The Argument of Kant’s Groundwork. Pauline Kleingeld. With response by Patricia Kitcher. @Columbia 27 October
Nathan DuFord tbd. With response by Chris O’Kane. @New School 10 November