The New York Society for Women in Philosophy invites you to a Sue Weinberg Lecture:
Eva Kittay (Stony Brook University), ”The Completion of Care: A Normative Theory of Care.”
Gina Campelia (CUNY Graduate Center), Commentator
April 17, 2015, 4:30 – 6:30pm
CUNY Graduate Center, Room 6496
Kenneth Courtney, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Monday, April 20th, 2015
Time: 4:00pm
Location: Room 5109
Please see the abstract for the talk below.
Normativity in Political Representation: A Defense of Representational Obligations
Disputes have continued since Pitkin’s seminal work on representation regarding the representative’s obligations to enact the popular mandate and, when appropriate, to act as an independent maker of decisions. While much has since been written regarding the forms through which popular mandates might be best realized, and—though considerably less—about those occasions on which a representative is empowered to act independently of such mandates, surprisingly little has been said about the normative grounding of these obligations. More recent work in political science has even proffered an account of political representation purged of normativity altogether—hence without invoking obligations—suggesting that if a relevant audience in the right circumstances recognizes an individual to be a representative, he or she should be understood as a representative. Such an approach undervalues normative dimensions that I will argue are central to our best understanding of political representation. Although an account that identifies representation with democratic legitimacy would indeed be too narrow, an account that says nothing about obligations held by representatives both with regard to those they represent and with regard to the frameworks within which representation occurs remains inadequate. Considerations invoked in a non-normative “general account” regarding what constitutes representation—determining the relevant audience, specifying appropriate circumstances, and providing criteria for the selection of representatives— end up requiring judgments that are best seen as irreducibly normative after all. Such an account further threatens to completely sever the activity of a representative from the interests of a constituency. We can better begin to discern normative features of political representation by considering the role of representative and the practice of representation more carefully.
– CALL FOR PAPERS –
“Normativity and the Human Sciences”
April 24th and 25th, 2015
The 18th Annual CUNY Graduate Student Philosophy Conference
Department of Philosophy, The Graduate Center, CUNY (New York, NY)
Keynote Speakers: Tyler Burge (UCLA) and S. Matthew Liao (NYU)
Deadline for Submissions: January 15th, 2015
Responses to submissions will be sent by March 15th, 2015.
The human sciences (e.g. psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, economics, political science, history, anthropology, sociology, medicine, etc.) collectively aim to investigate our species. Projects undertaken within these sciences seek to describe and thereby explain how we think, feel, perceive, make judgments, interact with one another, use language, and much more.
Interestingly, the targets of many of these projects often involve normativity (e.g., thoughts or practices, regarding how things ought to be). We regularly judge actions to be right or wrong, artworks to be good or bad, linguistic utterances to be correct or incorrect, perceptual states to be veridical or illusory, and so on. However, it is unclear whether the sorts of largely descriptive methods available to the human sciences can fully capture or explain these facets of human life. Accordingly, one might wonder how such normatively-loaded thoughts and practices impact the human sciences.
Whatever the relationship between normativity and the human sciences, it is certainly bidirectional. While normativity may create unique problems for or influence investigations in the human sciences, those investigations also tend to provide grounding for normative projects. Economic systems, health care services, political projects, and many other human institutions are often informed by the results of research in the human sciences. One might also wonder how exactly the results of various human science research projects can or should impact our normative thoughts and practices.
At this interdisciplinary conference, we are hoping to explore the complicated relationship between the human sciences and normativity.
We welcome submissions that engage this topic from any area of philosophy, as well as from any of the human sciences or humanities, giving preference to work that engages that of our keynote speakers.
To submit, please send the following to cunyphilgradcon2015@gmail.com in two separate documents, in either .doc or .pdf format:
- A cover sheet including the author’s name, university affiliation, contact information, title of paper, topic area, word count, and an abstract of no more than 250 words.
- A paper prepared for blind review. Submissions should not exceed 4,000 words and should be suitable for a 40-minute presentation.
For more information, please visit our website: philgradcon.commons.gc.cuny.edu.
Conference Organizers: Lauren R. Alpert, Joseph Bendaña, Phoebe Friesen, Nicolas Porot, & Joanna Smolenski. Contact us at cunyphilgradcon2015@gmail.com.
Philosophy of the City Talks: a series of talks by philosophers about the city and urban issues
April 30, 2015, 6:00pm – 8:30pm
CUNY Graduate Center for Worker Education
Room 700
25 Broadway (near Battery Park)
New York 10004
United States
Details
Shane Epting (University of North Texas) “Philosophy of the City: Disciplinary and Intra-disciplinary Directions”
Adeola Enigbokan (CUNY Graduate Center) “Enstranging the City”
Michael Menser, (Brooklyn College) “Marsh Thought: Wild Urban Region@Jamaica Bay”
Achille Varzi (Columbia University) “What is a City?”
RSVP required–limited seating; email Michael Menser at morphospace@gmail.com.
The Philosophy of Statistics: Bayesianism, Frequentism and the Nature of Inference,
2015 APS Annual Convention
Saturday, May 23 2:00 PM- 3:50 PM in Wilder
(Marriott Marquis 1535 B’way)
Presenters:
Andrew Gelman, Professor of Statistics & Political Science, Columbia University
Stephen Senn, Head of Competence Center for Methodology and Statistics (CCMS) Luxembourg Institute of Health
D.G. Mayo, Professor of Philosophy, Virginia Tech
Richard Morey, Session Chair & Discussant, Senior Lecturer School of Psychology, Cardiff University
Metro Area Philosophy of Science Presents:
Elizabeth Miller (Yale),
Title: TBA.
Jonathan Bain (NYU)
What Explains the Spin-Statistics Connection?
The spin-statistics connection plays an essential role in explanations of non-relativistic phenomena associated with both field-theoretic and non-field-theoretic systems (for instance, it explains the electronic structure of solids and the behavior of Einstein-Bose condensates and superconductors). However, it is only derivable within the context of relativistic quantum field theory (RQFT) in the form of the Spin-Statistics Theorem; and moreover, there are multiple, mutually incompatible ways of deriving it. This essay attempts to determine the sense in which the spin-statistics connection can be said to be an essential property in RQFT, and how it is that an essential property of one type of theory can figure into fundamental explanations offered by other, inherently distinct theories.
Todd May is Class of 1941 Memorial Professor of the Humanities at Clemson University. He is the author of fourteen books of philosophy, most recently A Fragile Life and A Significant Life, both from University of Chicago Press.
Abstract:
Ineffability is in the air these days, and has been for some time. In many areas of Continental philosophy, it is the very ethos in which thought is conducted. I argue that the realm of the normative, at least, is deeply linguistic. In contrast to the attempt of some thinkers to remove the normative from the conceptual or the linguistic, I try to show that it is central to normativity to have a linguistic reference, a reference rooted precisely in the sense of conceptual categories that so concern thinkers of the ineffable.
Presented by The New School for Social Research (NSSR) Philosophy Department.
Keynote speakers:
The Speculative Ethics Forum is a one day workshop-style event in which we’ll consider the most challenging matters of ethics. Ethical approaches of all sorts are welcomed–analytic, continental, ancient, medieval, Asian, and so on. Most papers are invited. However, there are two slots open for submissions. Any paper in ethical theory will be considered for acceptance. Bold and speculative inquiries are preferred to papers that primarily defend ground already gained or papers that are primarily scholarly. Our aim, in short, is to have a single day concentrated on expanding the horizons of ethics.
Our Invited Speakers Are:
Katja Vogt (Columbia University)
James Dodd (New School for Social Research)
Leo Zaibert (Union College)
Justin Clarke-Doane (Columbia University)
Organisers:
Register
November 17, 2017, 11:45pm EST
speculative.ethics.forum [at the host] gmail.com
You probably know the Lucas Brothers from their Netflix comedy special On Drugs or their appearances in TV shows and movies like Lady Dynamite and 22 Jump Street. You might not know that they are serious students of philosophy. Join us on Wednesday, November 28th at 7:30 PM in the Strand Bookstore’s 2nd Floor Art Department as Kenny and Keith Lucas join Michael Brownstein (Associate Professor of Philosophy at John Jay College and author of The Implicit Mind) to discuss how philosophy shapes their comedy, how comedy works, the weirdly popular idea that comedians are today’s philosophers, and more.
The price of admission is a $5 gift certificate to the Strand. (You were probably going to spend $5 at the Strand some time soon, anyway.) Please purchase tickets here and share the Facebook event. I will take all the help I can get in spreading the word.
Stay tuned for more info about Kwame Anthony Appiah’s December 4th talk about identity at Philosophy in the Library!