Calendar

At long last, Brooklyn Public Philosophers is back for 2015! Coming up on 2/23 at 7:00 P.M., Geoff Holtzman (NYU Polytechnic Institute) will share his work on why philosophy is so male-dominated, and why it’s important that that changes. Here’s a bit more about the talk, in Geoff’s own words:

Rejecting Beliefs, or Rejecting Believers?

The Troublesome Causes and Effects of Excluding Women in the Philosophy Classroom

Why do so few women major in philosophy, and why are there so few female philosophy professors? Some authors have suggested that the dearth of women in philosophy can be attributed to gender differences in philosophical belief. On this view, college-aged women persistently find their intuitions to be at odds with those of their male classmates and their mostly-male professors, and this leads women to feel out of place and to leave philosophy. I think this suggestion is both false and pernicious, and my first aim in this talk will be to debunk this suggestion with data I have been collecting for the past five years. While there may be gender differences in philosophical belief, the evidence of these differences does not explain the paucity of women in professional philosophy.

I will suggest that, in fact, the nature of philosophical debate enables pre-existing gender biases—similar to those that exist in other fields—to take foot in ways they cannot take foot in many other fields in which women have traditionally been underrepresented. This consideration will segue into the second part of the talk, which will concern the social nature of philosophy. Are philosophical claims only about the ways we see the world, or are they sometimes responses to the ways other people see the world and, as such, partly claims about the ways we see those other people?

As usual, we meet in the Info Commons Lab at the central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library (10 Grand Army Plaza). Events are all 100% free and open to the public, and aimed at a general audience.

See you there, I hope!

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.

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.

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.