Speakers:
Jennifer Carr (University of California, San Diego)
Ryan Doody (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Harvey Lederman (Princeton University)
Chris Meacham (University of Massachusetts, Amherst)
Organizer:
Melissa Fusco (Columbia University)
| 9:30 – 10:00 | Breakfast (716 Philosophy Hall) |
| SESSION I | Chair: Melissa Fusco |
| 10:00 – 11:30 | Jennifer Carr: “Can Accuracy Motivate Modesty?” |
| 11:30 – 11:45 | Coffee Break I |
| SESSION II | Chair: Jessica John Collins |
| 11:45 – 1:15 | Ryan Doody: “Hard Choices Made Harder” |
| 1:15 – 2:30 | Lunch |
| SESSION III | Chair: Jennifer Carr |
| 2:30 – 4:00 | Harvey Lederman: “Verbalism” |
| 4:00 – 4:30 | Coffee Break II |
| SESSION IV | Chair: Ryan Doody |
| 4:30 – 6:00 | Chris Meacham: “Decision in Cases of Infinitely Many Utility Contributions” |
| 6:00 | Drinks |
The 18th Annual Columbia-NYU Graduate Conference in Philosophy
The graduate students and faculty of the Columbia and NYU Philosophy Departments invite graduate submissions in any area of philosophy for a conference to be held on Saturday, March 24th, 2018 at Columbia University.
Keynote Speaker:
Richard Moran
Brian D. Young Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University
Submission Guidelines
- Submissions Deadline: Please make your submissions by following the
instructions provided at ColumbiaNYU.wordpress.com by December 17th,
2017 (Notification by February 1st, 2018). - Papers must meet the following requirements:
- All papers must be between 3,000 and 5,000 words in length, suitable for
a presentation of 30-40 minutes to a general philosophical audience. - Submit papers with a separate cover sheet in .pdf format that includes the
following information: name, home institution, contact details, area of
paper (e.g., metaphysics, meta-ethics, philosophy of mind, etc.), and an
abstract of no longer than 300 words. - Papers must be submitted in .pdf and blind-review format.
Organizing Committee
Martina Botti, Olivia Branscum, Anthony Garruzzo, Chuyu Tian, Helen Zhao (Columbia), Alan Barat, Banafsheh Beizaei, Sophie Cote, Clara Lingle, Stephan Pohl (NYU)
Please note that only submissions by current graduate students will be considered.
Submissions by mail will NOT be accepted. Please email further questions to:
columbianyu.philgradconference@gmail.com
Randomized acts play a marginal role in traditional Bayesian decision theory, essentially only one of tie-breaking. Meanwhile, rationales for randomized decisions have been offered in a number of areas, including game theory, experimental design, and machine learning. A common and plausible way of accommodating some (but not all) of these ideas from a Bayesian perspective is by appeal to a decision maker’s bounded computational resources. Making this suggestion both precise and compelling is surprisingly difficult. We propose a distinction between interesting and uninteresting cases where randomization can help a decision maker, with the eventual aim of achieving a unified story about the rational role of randomization. The interesting cases, we claim, all arise from constraints on memory.
UNIVERSITY SEMINAR ON LOGIC, PROBABILITY, AND GAMES
On the Rational Role of Randomization
Thomas Icard (Stanford)
The Department’s colloquium series typically meets on Thursdays in the Seminar Room at Gateway Bldg, 106 Somerset Street, 5th Floor.
- 2/27/18 Goldman Lecture, 4pm
- 3/1/18 Mesthene Lecture, Prof. Miranda Fricker (GC-CUNY), 3:00-6:30 pm
- 3/22/18 RU Climate Lecture, Prof. Sally Haslanger (MIT) 3:00-5:00 pm
- 4/8/18 Karen Bennett (Cornell University)
- 4/12/18 Sanders Lecture, Prof. Linda Zagzebski (University of Oklahoma)
- 4/13/18 Rutgers Chinese Philosophy Conference, 9:30 am-6:30 pm
- 4/13-4/14/18 Marilyn McCord Adams Memorial Conference
- 4/14-4/15/18 Rutgers-Columbia Undergraduate Philosophy Conference (held at Columbia University)
- 4/17/18 Class of 1970’s Lecture, Prof. Jeremy Waldron (NYU), Alexander Teleconference Lecture Hall, 4:30-7:30 pm
- 5/21-5/25/18 Metaphysical Mayhem
- 6/8-6/9/18 Pantheism Workshop
- 7/8-7/15/18 Summer Institute for Diversity in Philosophy (held at the Rutgers University Inn and Conference Center)
The Eastern Study Group of the NAKS invites submissions for its 15th annual meeting to take place at Columbia University on Friday and Saturday, May 4–5, 2018. Our host this year is Professor Patricia Kitcher.
Keynote Speakers:
Stephen Engstrom (Pitt)
Paul Guyer (Brown)
Submissions of detailed abstracts (1,000 words) or papers (no more than 5,000 words, including notes and references) should be prepared for blind review as PDF files. Please include a word count at the end of your abstract or paper. Please supply contact information in a separate file. If you are a graduate student, please indicate this in your contact information.
The selection committee welcomes contributions on all topics of Kantian scholarship (contemporary or historically oriented), including discussions of Kant’s immediate predecessors and successors. Reading time is limited to 30 minutes, followed by 30 minutes of discussion. The best graduate student paper will receive a $200 stipend and be eligible for the Markus Herz Prize. Women, minorities, and graduate students are encouraged to submit.
Papers already read or accepted at other NAKS study groups or meetings may not be submitted. Presenters must be members of NAKS in good standing.
Papers will be posted in the “members only” section of the NAKS website and circulated in advance among participants, who are expected to have read them at the time of the conference.
ENAKS receives support from NAKS and host universities. Earlier programs are available on our website: http://word.emerson.edu/enaks/
For questions about ENAKS or the upcoming meeting, please contact Kate Moran (kmoran@brandeis.edu).
Submission Deadline: January 15, 2018
Time: May 4–5, 2018
Place: Columbia University
Please send all abstracts electronically to Kate Moran, kmoran@brandeis.edu
A standard way to challenge convergence-based accounts of inductive success is to claim that they are too weak to constrain inductive inferences in the short run. We respond to such a challenge by answering some questions raised by Juhl (1994). When it comes to predicting limiting relative frequencies in the framework of Reichenbach, we show that speed-optimal convergence—a long-run success condition—induces dynamic coherence in the short run. This is joint work with Eric Wofsey.
Michael Nielsen (Columbia University).
4:10 pm, Friday, November 16th, 2018
Faculty House, Columbia University
What does it mean that an event C “actually caused” event E? The problem of defining actual causation goes beyond mere philosophical speculation. For example, in many legal arguments, it is precisely what needs to be established in order to determine responsibility. (What exactly was the actual cause of the car accident or the medical problem?) The philosophy literature has been struggling with the problem of defining causality since the days of Hume, in the 1700s. Many of the definitions have been couched in terms of counterfactuals. (C is a cause of E if, had C not happened, then E would not have happened.) In 2001, Judea Pearl and I introduced a new definition of actual cause, using Pearl’s notion of structural equations to model counterfactuals. The definition has been revised twice since then, extended to deal with notions like “responsibility” and “blame”, and applied in databases and program verification. I survey the last 15 years of work here, including joint work with Judea Pearl, Hana Chockler, and Chris Hitchcock. The talk will be completely self-contained.
How is the ancient exhortation to “know thyself” related to consolation, virtue, and the study of nature? How did the commitment to self-knowledge shift over the centuries in writings by Islamic, Jewish, Christian, and early modern natural philosophers? How did medieval women contribute to modern notions of self, self-knowledge, and knowledge of nature? This conference explores the meditative “reflective methodology” from its ancient roots, through medieval Christian, Muslim, and Jewish traditions to the so-called “new” methodologies of early modern science. Speakers include Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Pierre Force, Clémence Boulouque, Christia Mercer, and Pamela Smith.
Points of focus will be: (1) the relation between the ancient imperative to “know thyself” and medieval concerns to reflect on one’s self as a means to find ultimate truths; (2) the meditative genre as it developed from Augustine’s Confessions through Christian and Islamic spiritual exercises to late medieval Christian meditations and early modern kabbalist writings; (3) the continuity between medieval meditations and the reflective methodology of early modern science; and (4) the meditative genre’s afterlife in Freud, Foucault, Arendt, and contemporary science.
Conference co-sponsored by the Center for New Narratives in Philosophy, the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, the Departments of Philosophy, French, English and Comparative Literature and the Maison Française
To download a PDF about this event click here.
The seminar is concerned with applying formal methods to fundamental issues, with an emphasis on probabilistic reasoning, decision theory and games. In this context “logic” is broadly interpreted as covering applications that involve formal representations. The topics of interest have been researched within a very broad spectrum of different disciplines, including philosophy (logic and epistemology), statistics, economics, and computer science. The seminar is intended to bring together scholars from different fields of research so as to illuminate problems of common interest from different perspectives. Throughout each academic year, meetings are regularly presented by the members of the seminar and distinguished guest speakers.
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02/08/2019 Faculty House, Columbia University
4:00 PM
03/22/2019 Faculty House, Columbia University
4:00 PM
04/19/2018 Faculty House, Columbia University
4:00 PM
There are two approaches to life. The first one, which we are identifying with Sir Karl Popper, is to think before we act and to let our hypotheses die in our stead when the overall outcome is likely to be negative. We act now for a better future, and we think now which action will bring the best future. Both decision theory and backward induction are technical versions of this train of thought. The second approach, which we will identify with the Buddha, is to live in the present and not allow the future to pull us away from living in the ever present Now. The Buddha’s approach is echoed in many others who came after him, Jelaluddin Rumi, Kahlil Gibran, and even perhaps Jesus. It occurs in many contemporary teachers like Eckhart Tolle and Thich Nhat Hanh. We may call Popper’s approach “futurism” and the Buddha’s approach “presentism.”
In this talk, we will discuss various aspects of the discourse on presentism and futurism. The purpose is to contrast one with the other. We will not attempt to side with one against the other, and instead leave it as a future project to find a prescriptive action-guiding choice between the two. We merely conjecture that a better optimal choice between these two positions may be somewhere in between. (This is joint work with Jongjin Kim.)