Apr
12
Thu
A Lawyer, A Poet, and A Philosopher walk into a bar to talk about Money @ Las Tapas Bar and Restaurant
Apr 12 @ 8:00 pm – 9:00 pm

It makes the world go round. It is the root of all evil. It offers security. It enslaves. It will protect you. It will corrupt you. To have some is necessary, but no amount seems sufficient. It is reputedly unable to buy love, yet the lack of it can destroy relationships. What price would you pay to accumulate as much as you can? And can anyone actually afford to forsake it?

Join us as we try to measure the true cost of money.

Thursday, April 12, 2018 at 8p.m. At Las Tapas Bar and Restaurant, 808 W 187th Street, New York, NY 10033. (Take the A Train) Admission is $15, which includes one complimentary tapa and drink.  Reservations are recommended. (646.590.0142)

Leo Glickman is a partner in Stoll, Glickman & Bellina, LLP. He has devoted his professional life of over two decades to holding the powerful accountable and obtaining justice for the underserved. As a civil rights litigator, he has successfully represented hundreds of people whose rights have been abused by police and correction officers. He has also upheld the rights of protestors, successfully litigating settlements for high-profile Occupy Wall Street participants.

Jane LeCroy is a poet, performance artist and educator who fronts the band The Icebergs and was a part of Sister Spit, the famed west coast women’s poetry troupe. Since 1997 Jane has been publishing student work and teaching writing, literature and performance to all ages through artist-in-the-schools organizations such as Teachers & Writers Collaborative and DreamYard, and as adjunct faculty at the university level. Her poetry book, Names was published by Booklyn as part of the award winning ABC chapbook series, purchased by the Library of Congress along with her braid!  Signature Play, her multimedia book from Three Rooms Press, features a poem that was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Joseph S. Biehl, earned earned a B.A. in philosophy from St. John’s University and a Ph.D. from the Graduate School and University Center, CUNY.  He has written on ethics, meta-ethics, and politics. He has taught philosophy in New York and in Cork, Ireland, and is a member of the Governing Board and former co-director of the Felician Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs. He is the founder and executive director of the Gotham Philosophical Society and Young Philosophers of New York.

May
15
Tue
A Lawyer, A Poet, and A Philosopher walk into a bar to talk about American Misery @ Cornelia Street Cafe
May 15 @ 6:00 pm

Are you miserable? If you are, you certainly have company. Misery has been on the rise in our society for some time, and the suffering is widespread: we, the people, feel lonely, neglected, forgotten, increasingly poor in health, in habit, and in purchasing power. A sense of helplessness shrouds the land. The manifestations of this are grim. Some take the agony of their despair and direct it outward, destroying the lives of concert attendees, night club patrons, students, and those who have the temerity or misfortune to set foot on the wrong side of the street. Others take aim at themselves, opting to end their lives either swiftly by the gun or slowly by a prescription. From many more we see anger and resentment as they spew racism, sexism, religious prejudice, and generalized contempt for anyone who believes differently. Political anger and polarization swells to fill the void as hope retreats and the willingness to see ourselves in each other withers away. But why? How come? What is the source of this misery? And how might we go about relieving it? How might we heal? Join us – and help us – as we raise these questions and more.

Oh, and there will be singing!

This event will be held twice!

Tuesday, May 15, 2018 at 6pm. At Cornelia Street Café, This event is part of the Philosophy Series at The Cornelia Street Café, located at 29 Cornelia Street, New York, NY 10014 (near Sixth Avenue and West 4th St.). Admission is $10, which includes the price of one drink. Reservations are recommended (212.989.9319)

AND…

Thursday, May 24, 2018 at 8pm. At Las Tapas Bar and Restaurant, 808 W 187th Street, New York, NY 10033. (Take the A Train) Admission is $15, which includes one complimentary tapa and drink.  Reservations are recommended. (646.590.0142)

Leo Glickman is a partner in Stoll, Glickman & Bellina, LLP. He has devoted his professional life of over two decades to holding the powerful accountable and obtaining justice for the underserved. As a civil rights litigator, he has successfully represented hundreds of people whose rights have been abused by police and correction officers. He has also upheld the rights of protestors, successfully litigating settlements for high-profile Occupy Wall Street participants.

Jane LeCroy is a poet, performance artist and educator who fronts the band The Icebergs and was a part of Sister Spit, the famed west coast women’s poetry troupe. Since 1997 Jane has been publishing student work and teaching writing, literature and performance to all ages through artist-in-the-schools organizations such as Teachers & Writers Collaborative and DreamYard, and as adjunct faculty at the university level. Her poetry book, Names was published by Booklyn as part of the award winning ABC chapbook series, purchased by the Library of Congress along with her braid!  Signature Play, her multimedia book from Three Rooms Press, features a poem that was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Joseph S. Biehl, earned earned a B.A. in philosophy from St. John’s University and a Ph.D. from the Graduate School and University Center, CUNY.  He has written on ethics, meta-ethics, and politics. He has taught philosophy in New York and in Cork, Ireland, and is a member of the Governing Board and former co-director of the Felician Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs. He is the founder and executive director of the Gotham Philosophical Society and Young Philosophers of New York.

May
24
Thu
A Lawyer, A Poet, and A Philosopher walk into a bar to talk about American Misery @ Las Tapas Bar and Restaurant
May 24 @ 8:00 pm

Are you miserable? If you are, you certainly have company. Misery has been on the rise in our society for some time, and the suffering is widespread: we, the people, feel lonely, neglected, forgotten, increasingly poor in health, in habit, and in purchasing power. A sense of helplessness shrouds the land. The manifestations of this are grim. Some take the agony of their despair and direct it outward, destroying the lives of concert attendees, night club patrons, students, and those who have the temerity or misfortune to set foot on the wrong side of the street. Others take aim at themselves, opting to end their lives either swiftly by the gun or slowly by a prescription. From many more we see anger and resentment as they spew racism, sexism, religious prejudice, and generalized contempt for anyone who believes differently. Political anger and polarization swells to fill the void as hope retreats and the willingness to see ourselves in each other withers away. But why? How come? What is the source of this misery? And how might we go about relieving it? How might we heal? Join us – and help us – as we raise these questions and more.

Oh, and there will be singing!

This event will be held twice!

Tuesday, May 15, 2018 at 6pm. At Cornelia Street Café, This event is part of the Philosophy Series at The Cornelia Street Café, located at 29 Cornelia Street, New York, NY 10014 (near Sixth Avenue and West 4th St.). Admission is $10, which includes the price of one drink. Reservations are recommended (212.989.9319)

AND…

Thursday, May 24, 2018 at 8pm. At Las Tapas Bar and Restaurant, 808 W 187th Street, New York, NY 10033. (Take the A Train) Admission is $15, which includes one complimentary tapa and drink.  Reservations are recommended. (646.590.0142)

Leo Glickman is a partner in Stoll, Glickman & Bellina, LLP. He has devoted his professional life of over two decades to holding the powerful accountable and obtaining justice for the underserved. As a civil rights litigator, he has successfully represented hundreds of people whose rights have been abused by police and correction officers. He has also upheld the rights of protestors, successfully litigating settlements for high-profile Occupy Wall Street participants.

Jane LeCroy is a poet, performance artist and educator who fronts the band The Icebergs and was a part of Sister Spit, the famed west coast women’s poetry troupe. Since 1997 Jane has been publishing student work and teaching writing, literature and performance to all ages through artist-in-the-schools organizations such as Teachers & Writers Collaborative and DreamYard, and as adjunct faculty at the university level. Her poetry book, Names was published by Booklyn as part of the award winning ABC chapbook series, purchased by the Library of Congress along with her braid!  Signature Play, her multimedia book from Three Rooms Press, features a poem that was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Joseph S. Biehl, earned earned a B.A. in philosophy from St. John’s University and a Ph.D. from the Graduate School and University Center, CUNY.  He has written on ethics, meta-ethics, and politics. He has taught philosophy in New York and in Cork, Ireland, and is a member of the Governing Board and former co-director of the Felician Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs. He is the founder and executive director of the Gotham Philosophical Society and Young Philosophers of New York.

Dec
4
Tue
How (Not) to Think About Identity, Kwame Anthony Appiah @ Brooklyn Public Library
Dec 4 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

info soon

Dec
19
Wed
Rethinking Pregnancy: Two Philosophical Perspectives with Suki Finn and Jennifer Scuro @ Martin E. Segal Theater
Dec 19 @ 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm

Pregnancy is something that affects all of us: Many of us are, have been, or will be, pregnant; and each and every one of us is the result of a pregnancy. But there remain deep and important questions about pregnancy that are yet to be answered.

What is it to be pregnant?  How can we understand the complex relationship between the fetus and the mother?  What are the myths and assumptions that surround the phenomenon of pregnancy?  Should we challenge the medical and paternalistic interpretations of pregnancy?  Are our current dominant understandings of and cultural scripts about pregnancy harmful?  

Two philosophers discuss these issues regarding pregnancy through a phenomenological and metaphysical lens.

Suki Finn is a Doctor of Philosophy, working as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Philosophy Department at the University of Southampton in the UK, on the ERC funded project ‘Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy‘. Suki is currently embarking on a Visiting Research Scholarship at New York University to continue her work on the metaphysics of pregnancy, and she also researches in the areas of metametaphysics and the philosophy of logic. Suki’s research has been published in various academic journals, books, and the popular online magazine Aeon. Her publications can be viewed on Academia or PhilPeople. Suki is also on the Executive Committee for the Society for Women in Philosophy UK, and on the Council for the Royal Institute of Philosophy.

Jennifer Scuro, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the College of New Rochelle in New York and has been recently elected to the governing board of the Cultural Studies Association. She is the author of Addressing Ableism: Philosophical Questions via Disability Studies(Lexington Books, Oct 2017) and The Pregnancy ≠ Childbearing Project: A Phenomenology of Miscarriage, (Rowman & Littlefield International, Feb 2017) a (autobio)graphic novel and feminist phenomenological analysis of pregnant embodiment, miscarriage and the labor of grief. The original tracework art from her graphic novel on miscarriage has been exhibited in several cities with the award-winning arts organization, The ART of Infertility.

This event is co-sponsored by the Gotham Philosophical Society and the CUNY Academy for the Humanities and Sciences.  Admission is free and open to the public.

Wednesday, December 19, 2018 at 6:30pm, in the Martin E. Segal Theater

CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue (at 34th Street) New York, New York 10016 (212) 817-7944  cunyacademy@gc.cuny.edu

Mar
7
Thu
I, holobiont. Are you and your microbes a community or a single entity? – Derek Skillings @ Dweck Center, Brooklyn Public Library
Mar 7 @ 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

When we’re asked to give examples of philosophical questions, we’re likely to think of questions that are very, very old. Is the physical world all there is? How should I live? How do we know what we know? But some philosophical problems are quite new, made possible or urgent by new developments in science and culture. These are often the most exciting problems to think through.

On March 7th at 7:30 PM, Derek Skillings joins Brooklyn Public Philosophers to share his work on the philosophical consequences of the fact that we are holobionts – biological units composed of hosts and their associated swarms of microorganisms. If you’re interested in health, the problem of personal identity, the philosophy of biology in general, or the philosophical consequences of the fact that we’re made up of a bunch of little things which are themselves alive in particular, you’ll want to check this one out. Here’s the abstract:

“I, holobiont. Are you and your microbes a community or a single entity?”

You are a holobiont – a biological unit made up of a host and its associated microbiome (bacteria, protists, viruses and other microscopic entities). What consequences does this have for how we understand ourselves and other similar organisms? What are our spatial and temporal boundaries, and what does it mean to be a healthy holobiont? In this talk I will look at some alternatives for making sense of both holobiont individuality and “healthy holobiont/microbiome” talk. I will argue that existing accounts of human health are not appropriate for microbiomes, and that notions of ecosystem health face similar shortcomings. I will end by looking at some possibilities for understanding overall host health given the importance and ubiquity of microbiomes.

As usual, we meet at the Dweck Center at the Grand Army Plaza branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. Here’s the Facebook event! Tell everyone, please!

Jun
21
Fri
Public Philosophy and Theology in a Digital Context @ Public Square Larini Room
Jun 21 all-day

This conference will discuss the role of digital spaces such as social media in being a public philosopher or theologian. The conference will choose papers that explore different digital platforms, how these platforms can aid in being a public philosopher or theologian, as well as the specific challenges these spaces pose. Sessions will explore how digital spaces have become arenas for philosophers and theologians to discuss ideas with other scholars and with the public, and how the discussion of concepts in this format affects the delivery and reception of the ideas. We will solicit papers that specifically discuss how digital spaces can positively facilitate the goals of public philosophy. Internet spaces are an important tool for the contemporary public philosopher and the full implications of their usage has not yet been fully explored.

Main speakers: Barry Lam, Vassar College

Contact Information

Katherine G. Schmidt, Ph.D.
Theology and Religious Studies
1000 Hempstead Avenue
Rockville Centre, NY 11571-5002
516.323.3362
Kimberly S. Engles, Ph.D.
Theology and Religious Studies
1000 Hempstead Avenue
Rockville Centre, NY 11571-5002
516.323.3341

http://connect.molloy.edu/s/869/alumni/index.aspx?sid=869&pgid=2173&gid=1&cid=3727&ecid=3727&post_id=0

Nov
1
Fri
The Network Self: Relation, Process, and Personal Identity @ Philosophy dept., Hofstra 145 Mack Student Center
Nov 1 @ 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm

This one-day symposium looks at Hofstra Professor Kathleen Wallace’s new book, The Network Self: Relation, Process, and Personal Identity (Routledge, 2019). The book offers a systematic treatment of the notion of the self as constituted by social, cultural, political, and biological relations. The event will feature Diana Meyers, University of Connecticut; Vincent Colapietro, University of Rhode Island; and Amy Shuster, Dennison University, with a response from Professor Wallace.

Mar
22
Tue
Jonardon Ganeri (Toronto) Can theater teach us about what it’s like to be someone else? @ Zoom
Mar 22 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

How can we know what it’s like to be someone else? Classical Indian philosophers found the answer in theater, arguing that it’s not just a form of entertainment, but a source of knowledge of other minds. In this talk, I’ll explore how this theme is developed in Śrī Śaṅkuka (c. 850 CE) and examine the reasons his views were rejected in the later tradition. I’ll argue that those reasons are unsound, and that we can see why by turning to contemporary studies of the relationship between knowledge and luck.

Jonardon Ganeri is the Bimal. K. Matilal Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is a philosopher whose work draws on a variety of philosophical traditions to construct new positions in the philosophy of mind, metaphysics and epistemology. His books include Attention, Not Self (2017), a study of early Buddhist theories of attention; The Concealed Art of the Soul (2012), an analysis of the idea of a search for one’s true self; Virtual Subjects, Fugitive Selves (2020), an analysis of Fernando Pessoa’s philosophy of self; and Inwardness: An Outsiders’ Guide (2021), a review of the concept of inwardness in literature, film, poetry, and philosophy across cultures. He joined the Fellowship of the British Academy in 2015, and won the Infosys Prize in the Humanities the same year, the only philosopher to do so.

This series is curated and co-presented by Brooklyn Public Philosophers, aka Ian Olasov.

Jan
17
Tue
Fathoming the Mind: A Closer Look at the Formation of Self @ New York Academy of Medicine
Jan 17 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm

Recent research in animal behavior and culture shows that the mental capacities of animals have been largely undervalued. And yet it is hard to resist the impression of a gap—a difference in nature rather than degree—between humans and non-humans when it comes to certain tasks involving abstraction, planning, sustained attention, or the transmission of culture over generations. How different is the human mind from the minds of non-human animals? The key to these issues may lie in the capacity of the mind to relate to itself as a “self” that bears desires and intentions, along with agency and purpose. But how is this compatible with the recognition that much of our mental activity occurs at an unconscious or subconscious level, below the threshold of awareness and reflection? Is our perceived unity of self or mind an illusion we entertain for practical purposes?

Psychologist and philosopher Alison Gopnik, ecologist Carl Safina, and biologist Kenneth R. Miller explore what separates humans from other animals in relation to the construct of “self.”

Reception to follow.