Calendar

Please join us on Tuesday, October 20th at 6pm, at The Cornelia Street Café, as we welcome world-renowned philosopher and logician Graham Priest, as he discusses the surprising connections among Buddhist and Marxist critiques of the very conditions that not only support our capitalist society but contribute significantly to the sort of suffering with which we have become all too familiar.

Priest, perhaps most well-known for his robust defense of the view that there are true contradictions, has long found fruitful ways of bringing his knowledge of Asian thought and practice to bear on questions that have defined philosophy’s European tradition. This collaboration of understanding continues in this talk.

The Cornelia Street Café is located at 29 Cornelia Street, New York, NY 10014 (near Sixth Avenue and West 4th St.). Admission is $9, which includes the price of one drink. Reservations are recommended (212. 989.9319).

This symposium is conceived and designed to explore Nietzsche’s ideas on science and technology. While critiquing modern science and its foundation in Greek thought, Nietzsche envisions a new way of ‘knowing’ and doing science, which can be found in such notions as ‘gay science.’ Notions such as the will to power and eternal recurrence have been developed partly in response to contemporary science. Some of the proposed topics to explore are: Socratic rationality, modern science and objectivity, Nietzsche’s study of sciences in his own times, intuitive thinking vs. abstract thinking, art vs. science, cognitive knowing vs. knowing in general (Erkennen vs. Wissen), Nietzsche on mostly scientific schools of philosophy such as atomism, materialism and positivism, Nietzsche’s influence on science and scientists, and gai saber as a new way of knowing.

Call for Papers: See details here (30 September deadline)

Abstract || Traditionally privacy is valued for protecting individual freedom and autonomy. Such concepts of privacy and the underlying idea of autonomy have drawn criticism from various quarters. Feminist thinkers and critical theorists have advanced such criticism on normative grounds. In the recent years, they have been joined by arguments on a pragmatic level, which show that such concepts of privacy no longer can orient life in a world permeated with new threats to privacy, in particular due to the development of information technology. In consequence, many theories have reconstructed concepts privacy in light of this criticism, often by invoking more relational concepts of autonomy.  The talk proposes a different approach. Using a more socially situated concept of the subject, which is derived from Hannah Arendt’s thought, it shows that privacy plays a more fundamental value for the constitution of subjectivity, beyond autonomy.

Presented by The New School for Social Research

Tobias Matzner works in political philosophy and philosophy of technology. He is a visiting scholar at the Department of Philosophy at The New School for Social Research, and a member of the International Centre for Ethics in the Sciences and Humanities in Tübingen, Germany.

New technologies increasingly mediate our interactions with each other and the institutions on which we depend. What special moral problems do these new technologies pose? Are existing moral categories and practices up to the task? For the April edition of Philosophy in the Library, three philosophers–Joanna Smolenski, Tony Doyle, and Samir Chopra–present short talks on the ethics of ongoing developments in genetic engineering, big data, and artificial intelligence, followed by a Q&A with the audience.

Part 1: Editing the Genome–How CRISPR/CAS9 is Changing the Game
Joanna Smolenski of CUNY Graduate Center discusses CRISPR technology, and how it can be used to modify both somatic cells and the germline (i.e., reproductive cells). Our talk will consider the pros and cons of such modification, as well as unique ethical challenges it could present. For instance, could we ever legitimately consent to the editing of our germlines? Ultimately, it would seem that our existing consent protocols are inadequate to ensure robust informed consent to germline editing, and so we should hold off on such interventions until we have a better understanding of their downstream impacts.

Part 2: Big Data & the Future of Privacy
Tony Doyle of Hunter College considers how big data, with its massive collection, thorough aggregation, predictive analysis, and lightning dissemination of personal information has produced previously unfathomable benefits and insights. Analysis is replacing intuition; the gut is yielding to algorithm. However, as our digital wake ripples out, big data is putting privacy on the run with unnerving inferences about our preferences, commitments, aspirations, and vulnerabilities. How we are sorted by big data’s analytics can determine the opportunities that come our way: a reasonable mortgage, a good job, or a decent apartment. Privacy matters because it promotes autonomy, that is, our ability to make choices, free of coercion or manipulation, in the light of our considered conception of the good life. But ultimately, is privacy doomed to be a lost cause?

Part 3: Artifacts & Agency
Samir Chopra of Brooklyn College considers how thinking about the agency–both moral and legal–of artifacts can be helpful in thinking about the puzzles that artificial intelligence creates for us. Thinking about agency lets us think about actions and powers and ends–the kinds of things we should be thinking of, in considering how to ‘fit’ AI into our world.

https://www.facebook.com/events/207736016496883/

There are numerous books about the philosophy of science, but relatively few focus on the philosophy of engineering. Why has the philosophy of engineering been undeveloped in contrast to science? While many engineers prefer to build new things rather than philosophize, a key explanation for the neglect of engineering is an unjustified misconception about the importance of abstract theoretical and scientific knowledge versus engineering knowledge.

The speaker will talk about his experiences in engineering and policy, to show how these philosophical ideas shape engineering, which in turn shapes the world around us. Philosophical claims about engineering date back to at least Socrates, who argued for the value of abstract, theoretical knowledge. The history of U.S. science policy based its post-World War II funding policies off of the linear model of innovation, where advances in engineering are assumed to be traceable to earlier advances in science. Historians and philosophers have shown many of these philosophical views are wrong-headed. In particular, Vincenti’s What Engineers Know and How They Know It illuminates the richness of engineering knowledge, showing that it is not merely applied science. After reviewing how these philosophical ideas manifest in the real world of engineering, the presentation will show how a better understanding of what engineers know also offers a way to better push engineering towards more ethical ends.

Zachary Pirtle recently co-chaired the 2018 Forum on Philosophy, Engineering and Technology. He has worked as an engineer to support exploration systems for human space flight, and was previously a Fulbright scholar to Mexico and a Mirzayan science and technology policy graduate fellow at the National Academy of Engineering.

Co-presented with Brooklyn Public Philosophers.

Movie snacks and post-film discussion hosted by Professor Zed Adams 

Questions? email: veronica@newschool.edu 

Friday, February 1st 2019 at 55 W 13 Street Room I 203 

6:00-9:00 PM 

This event is sponsored by the Philosophy Department at the New School for Social Research

In Philosophy in the Library, philosophers from around the world tackle the big questions. In February, we hear from Ethan Hallerman.

None of us today can avoid reflecting on the way our thoughts and habits relate to the tools we use, but interest in how technologies reshape us is both older and broader than contemporary concerns around privacy, distraction, addiction, and isolation. For the past hundred years, scholars have investigated the historical role of everyday technologies in making new forms of experience and senses of selfhood possible, from at least as early as the invention of writing. In recent years, philosophers have considered how our understanding of agency and mental states should be revised in light of the role that the technical environment plays in our basic activities. Here, we will look at how some models of the mind illuminate the results of the philosophy of technology to clarify the relationship between technology and the self.

Ethan Hallerman is a doctoral student in philosophy at Stony Brook University. He lives in New York where he prowls the sewers at night, looking for his father.

What do the worlds of global finance and nationalist populism have in common? How can we understand the rise of today’s ‘new fascisms’ through the prism of financialization? This one-day workshop brings together scholars from across disciplines to debate  these key questions for our understanding of contemporary capitalism. The workshop is part of Public Seminar’s Imaginal Politics initiative and is organised jointly with the Department of Social Science, University College London. The workshop will include three panel discussions and will close with a talk by Judith Butler on ‘Anti-gender ideology and the new fascism’.