Nietzsche Circle Presents:
Nietzsche Today: A Symposium in Nietzsche History
Speakers Include:
Nicholas Birns
David Kilpatrick
Michael Steinmann
Luke Trusso
Yunus Tuncel
|
Time
|
March 28th, 2015, Saturday |
|
When
|
From 4:00 pm to 8:00 pm |
|
Where
|
At Mercy College, 66 W. 35th St (close to the corner of 6th Ave), Room 704, New York City (Admissions: General: $10, Students: $5) |
|
RSVP
|
Registration and further info: RSVP by March 21st, 2015 by sending an email to Luke Trusso at trussol@nietzschecircle.com |
Theorizing the Web 2015
April 15–16 in New York City
Venue: the Museum of the Moving Image, in Queens
Abstract submission deadline: 11:59 pm (EST), January 24, 2016
Theorizing the Web is an annual event featuring critical, conceptual discussions about technology and society. We began in 2011 to advance a different kind of conversation about the Web, one which recognizes that to theorize technology is also to theorize the self and the social world. Given that technology is inseparable from society, the ideas and approaches that have historically been used to describe social reality must not be abandoned. Instead, these historical approaches must be applied, reworked, and reassessed in light of the developing digitization of social life.
We are now seeking presentations for our sixth annual event, which will take place on April 15 and 16 at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York City. We invite submissions that engage with issues of social power, inequality, vulnerability, and justice from a diverse range of perspectives. Theorizing the Web is not an event just for academics or “tech” thinkers: activists, journalists, technologists, writers, artists, and folks who don’t identify as any of the above are all encouraged to submit a presentation abstract.
We are looking for abstracts that feature clear conceptual arguments and that avoid jargon in favor of more broadly accessible critical insight. Submissions on any topic are welcome, but some specific topics we’d like to address this year include:
- moving images, gifs, video, live streaming, copcams
- social photography, filters, selfies, posing
- race, racism, race posturing, ethnicity, #BlackLivesMatter
- sex, gender, feminism, queer and trans* politics
- sexuality, sexting, sex work, consent
- mental health, illness, neurodiversity
- (dis)ability and ableism
- non-Western Web(s), language barriers, hegemony, globalization
- social movements, protest, revolution, social control, censorship
- hate, harassment, intimidation, trolling, bullying, resistance
- pain, sickness, loss, death and dying
- parenting, birth, life course
- bodies, cyborgs, wearables, trans/post-humanism, bots
- the self, identity, subjectivity, (in)authenticity, impression management
- privacy, publicity, surveillance
- encryption, anonymity, pseudonymity
- presence, proximity, face-to-face, (dis)connection, loneliness
- capitalism, Silicon Valley, venture capital
- crowd funding, micro currencies, crypto currencies, blockchains
- work, labor, “gig” or “sharing” economy, “Uber for”, exploitation
- transportation, self-driving cars, drones, cities
- code, affordances, infrastructure, critical design
- knowledge, “big” data, data science, algorithms, positivism
- memes, virality, metrics, (micro-)celebrity, fame, attention, click-baiting
- underground markets, child porn, revenge porn, the extra-legal web
- fiction, literature, visual narratives, storytelling, self-publishing, fandoms
- time, (a)temporality, ephemerality, history, memory, right to forget
- games, gaming, gamification, free-to-play, fantasy sports, gambling
- elections, campaigns, presidential politics
Successful abstracts will address intersections of gender, race, class, age, sexual orientation, disability, and other forms of inequality as they pertain to any of the topics above.
Abstract submissions should be 300 to 500 words (only the first 500 words will be reviewed). Arguments should be scaled to fit 12-minute panel presentations, and titles should appeal to a general audience. Your submission should not only describe your topic and question but also summarize your thinking and your conclusions. Good abstracts will provide a specific, original argument with clear stakes. Please do not ask questions in your abstract without answering them, or state “I will make an argument about X” without making the argument.
Note that, because Theorizing the Web deeply values public engagement, we expect all TtW16 presentations to be both comprehensible and rewarding to people from outside the presenter’s specific areas of expertise.
Abstract submissions are due by 11:59 EST on January 24, 2016, and can be submitted through our form located at theorizingtheweb.org/submit. The TtW16 selection committee will blindly review all submissions. Space is limited, and selection is competitive. Our acceptance rate is typically 20% to 35%.
Please note that we have a separate submissions process for art and alternative-format presentations. If you would like to participate in some way that isn’t giving a spoken presentation (e.g., displaying a piece of art; giving a performance; doing something else entirely), please use this separate submission form.
Registration for Theorizing the Web remains “pay what you can,” and we ask that you donate whatever amount you deem fair or can afford (minimum $1). More information (including the registration form) can be found at theorizingtheweb.tumblr.com/2016/registration.
Stay tuned to theorizingtheweb.org for announcements about invited panels, and mail us at theorizingtheweb@gmail.com if you would like to help out with our all-volunteer event in any way.
The conference hashtag is #TtW16.
<3
This week week we turn our page to explore the relationship between the mind and the body. The materialist say there isn’t a mind, only a material brain. Is this true? And if this is so, how do we explain our fear of speaking in public, for example, and the causal relationship of ‘butterflies’ in our belly. There is much more to said on this and curious to hear what you have to say.
Please read Mind Body Problem
Please remember to bring $3 for the Setauket Neighborhood house.
When we tell the history of philosophy, we tend to focus on a handful of great men – Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes… The stories we tell are false in the same ways that all Great Man histories are false. But what have we lost by ignoring women’s philosophical thinking in particular? How different would philosophy look today if we paid better attention to the female philosophers of the past?
Coming up on Thursday, April 27th at 7:00 P.M., Christia Mercer (Columbia University) joins us to help answer those questions. Here’s a bit more about the talk in Dr. Mercer’s own words:
How Women Changed the Course of Philosophy, 1300-1700
In this lecture, Professor Christia Mercer explores ideas drawn from medieval Europe’s most innovative women and shows how their views about self-knowledge, cognition, and truth laid the groundwork for early modern philosophy. She concludes with a call to rethink philosophy’s past in light of these women’s long-ignored innovations.
As usual, we meet at the central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.
Tell your coworkers/students/Facebook friends! Bring a date! Bring (a mental representation of) your favorite female philosopher!
See you there, I hope!
more BKPP:
5/18 – Chris Lebron on the philosophy of Black Lives Matter @ the Dweck Center // 7:00 P.M.
12/13 – Susanna Siegel on perception and rationality @ the Dweck Center // 7:30 P.M.
An original collection of lauded philosopher Galen Strawson’s writings on the self and consciousness, naturalism and pan-psychism.
Galen Strawson might be described as the Montaigne of modern philosophers, endlessly curious, enormously erudite, unafraid of strange, difficult, and provocative propositions, and able to describe them clearly–in other words, he is a true essayist. Strawson also shares with Montaigne a particular fascination with the elastic and elusive nature of the self and of consciousness. Of the essays collected here, “A Fallacy of Our Age” (an inspiration for Vendela Vida’s novel Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name) takes issue with the commencement-address cliche that life is a story. Strawson questions whether it is desirable or even meaningful to think about life that way. “The Sense of the Self” offers an alternative account, in part personal, of how a distinct sense of self is not at all incompatible with a sense of the self as discontinuous, leading Strawson to a position that he sees as in some ways Buddhist. “Real Naturalism” argues that a fully naturalist account of consciousness supports a belief in the immanence of consciousness in nature as a whole (also known as panpsychism), while in the final essay Strawson offers a vivid account of coming of age in the 1960s.
Drawing on literature and life as much as on philosophy, this is a book that prompts both argument and wonder.
Galen Strawson is a writer and professor of philosophy. He has published seven books of philosophy and is currently the President’s Chair in Philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin.
Brooklyn Public Philosophers is excited to announce a new program that we’ve put together for the fall! In addition to the Philosophy in the Library speaker series (stay tuned), we’re also starting a philosophy screening and discussion series that I’m calling Onscreen until I come up with a better name.
On Saturday, September 15th at 1:00 PM at the Flatbush Library (22 Linden Blvd.), we’ll be screening Ex Machina, a very good, very creepy movie about hubris, relationships, and what it takes to have a mind. Ian Olasov (CUNY), a.k.a. the person writing this post, will lead a brief discussion of it afterwards.
The screening is free. There will be free popcorn. It will be fun.
Einstein once remarked, “Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” Indeed, discovering the true nature of reality may ultimately hinge on grasping the nature and essence of human understanding. What are the fundamental elements or building blocks of human understanding? And how will superintelligent machines challenge our ideas about cognition, reality, and the limits of human understanding?
The 21st century has seen rapid advancements in the realm of artificial intelligence, or AI, which aims to generate a synthetic capacity to mimic and even surpass human knowledge. But beyond the creation of programs that detect statistical patterns in vast data sets, it remains to be seen whether AI can formalize the basic elements of human understanding into a system of rules that could then be applied in computer programs. Such “knowledge engineering” would constitute a significant breakthrough, enabling machines to share some of our cognitive abilities rather than merely imitating the results of our thinking. These advancements in AI may ultimately force us to confront more profound questions about what it means to be human.
Logician/mathematician Roger Antonsen and computer science pioneer Barbara J. Grosz join Steve Paulson to break down the fundamental elements of human understanding and analyze what lies ahead on the horizon of AI.
*Reception to follow
This event is part of the Conversations on the Nature of Reality series.
Moderated by journalist Steve Paulson, Executive Producer of Wisconsin Public Radio’s To the Best of Our Knowledge, this three-part series at the New York Academy of Sciences brings together leading scientists and thinkers to explore the fundamental nature of reality through the lens of personal experience and scientific inquiry.
To learn more about each lecture and to purchase tickets, click on the links below.
- The Mystery of Our Mathematical Universe, Wednesday, October 10, 2018
- Human Cognition and the AI Revolution, Thursday, December 6, 2018
- Reality is Not As it Seems, Thursday, February 7, 2019
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.
Despite remarkable strides across virtually all scientific disciplines, the nature of the relationship between our brain and our conscious experience—the “mind-body problem”—remains perhaps the greatest mystery confronting science today. Most neuroscientists currently believe that neural activity in the brain constitutes the foundation of our reality, and that consciousness emerges from the dynamics of complicated neural networks. Yet no scientific theory to date has been able to explain how the properties of such neurons or neural networks actually translates into our specific conscious experiences.
The prevalent view in cognitive science today is that we construct our perception of reality in real time. But could we be misinterpreting the content of our perceptual experiences? According to some cognitive scientists, what we perceive with our brain and our senses does not reflect the true nature of reality. Thus, while evolution has shaped our perceptions to guide adaptive behavior, they argue, it has not enabled us to perceive reality as it actually is. What are the implications of such a radical finding for our understanding of the mystery of consciousness? And how do we distinguish between “normal” and “abnormal” perceptual experiences?
Cognitive scientist Donald D. Hoffman and neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan join Steve Paulson to discuss the elusive quest to understand the fundamental nature of consciousness, and why our perception of reality is not necessarily what it seems.
*Reception to follow
This event is part of the Conversations on the Nature of Reality series.
Moderated by journalist Steve Paulson, Executive Producer of Wisconsin Public Radio’s To the Best of Our Knowledge, this three-part series at the New York Academy of Sciences brings together leading scientists and thinkers to explore the fundamental nature of reality through the lens of personal experience and scientific inquiry.
To learn more about each lecture and to purchase tickets, click on the links below.
- The Mystery of Our Mathematical Universe, Wednesday, October 10, 2018
- Human Cognition and the AI Revolution, Thursday, December 6, 2018
- Reality is Not As it Seems, Thursday, February 7, 2019