Calendar

Lawrence J. Hatab

Krista Johansson

David Kilpatrick

Yunus Tuncel

This is an RSVP only event and participants will be informed about the location prior to the event. Please RSVP by April 1st either with Luke Trusso at trussol@nietzschecircle.com or Yunus Tuncel at tuncely@nietzschecircle.com.

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.

Nietzsche Circle Presents: An Evening with Music and Philosophy

Speakers:

• Michael Teinmann
• Yunus Tuncel

Pianist:

• Aysegul Durakoglu

RSVP required!

Refreshments will be served. If you like to attend, Please RSVP by sending email to Luke Trusso at trussol@nietzschecircle.com

Is Transhumanism a Dangerous Idea?

Book Launch Discussion

Moderated by Gregory Morgan

Speakers:

Babette Babich

Francesca Ferrando

Michael Steinmann

Yunus Tuncel

There is only a perspectival seeing, only a perspectival ‘knowing’; and the more affects we allow to speak about a matter, the more eyes, different eyes, we know how to bring to bear on one and the same matter, that much more complete will our ‘concept’ of this matter, our ‘objectivity’ be.

Thus wrote Friedrich Nietzsche, and we at the Gotham Philosophical Society agree. We believe that to make sense of something, we need to see it from as many sides as possible.

That is why we are launching a new discussion series with the aim of contributing to the pursuit of New York’s objectivity. We will be taking on all manner of ideas, issues, and topics of significance to New Yorkers, and approaching them from legal, artistic, and philosophical perspectives. We believe that a philosophical understanding cut-off from our legal reality is irrelevant, and that laws uninspired by our poetic imagination are without soul.

With Dr. Joseph S. Biehl (Gotham Philosophical Society), Jane LeCroy, Shahabuddeen Ally

So please join us as we kick-off this series with a look at the concept of truth, the concept that is central to human discourse. What is truth? How can we know it? And what can it mean to say, as so many have, that we are now living in a ‘post-truth’ world?  We’ll ask these questions and more, Monday, December 4, 2017, at Le Chélie NYC at 8pm.

Discussion with Seth Binsted, Michael Steinmann, and Yunus Tuncel. If you like to attend, Please RSVP by sending email to Luke Trusso at trussol@nietzschecircle.com

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.

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.