Oct
24
Fri
Jake Davis – The scope for Wisdom: Early Buddhism on Reasons and Persons @ Columbia U. Religion Dept. Room 101
Oct 24 @ 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm

THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY

Welcomes:
JAKE DAVIS (CUNY Graduate Center)

With responses from:
CHARLES GOODMAN (SUNY Binghamton)

Please join at Columbia University’s Religion Department on FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24 at 5:30PM for his lecture entitled:

“‘The scope for Wisdom’: Early Buddhism on Reasons and Persons”

The idea that meditation leads to the realization that there is no self, and that this realization motivates selfless action for the welfare of all beings, is widely understood to be a central feature of Buddhist doctrine. Goodman’s (2009) recent interpretation of Buddhist ethics moves in this way from a reductionist metaphysical stance regarding persons to a consequentialist theory of ethics. Goodman draws from Derek Parfit’s influential arguments in Reasons and Persons (1984) in support of such a move; Parfit in turn explicitly claims that “Buddha would have agreed” with his reductionist view about persons. One strand of early Buddhist thought, however, suggests that meditation could not in principle show that there is no self, and that ethical evaluation should focus on emotional motivations for action rather than on consequences of action. This approach addresses ethical disputes over how to be, as well as metaphysical disputes over what there is, by appealing to the judgments that we ourselves would make if we were aware of the changing flow of experience in an alert and unbiased way. I develop this early Buddhist line of thought to bring out the novel contributions it has to make to contemporary philosophical discussions in ethics and metaphysics.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24
5:30-7:30 pm
Rm. 101, 80 Claremont Ave, Columbia University
http://goo.gl/maps/zfUKH

– See more at: http://www.cbs.columbia.edu/cscp/2014/10/index.html#sthash.BOkCKua3.dpuf

Feb
23
Mon
How to be an Atheist (and why you should): A conversation with Philip Kitcher @ Book Culture
Feb 23 @ 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Please join us in conversation with Philip Kitcher as we discuss themes from his new book, Life after Faith.  While atheist writers gleefully cataloguing religion’s intellectual and moral vices have been numerous of late, too few have treated their target with the respect it deserves for successfully providing emotional comfort and social cohesion. Kitcher changes that, acknowledging religion’s virtues even as he constructs a secular humanist alternative to replace it.

Talk with him about this on Monday, February 23, 2015 at 7:00pm at Book Culture, 536 West 112th St., NY, NY  (212) 865-1588

Nov
10
Tue
The Weirdness of Consciousness @ Union Theological Seminary
Nov 10 @ 7:30 pm – 9:30 pm

Science can explain the body, but can it explain the mind? The failure of scientists and philosophers to reach a consensus explanation of consciousness has led to a revival of interest in theories once widely dismissed, such as panpsychism. Robert Wright, Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary, explores the mind-body problem with renowned philosopher David Chalmers and the MacArthur-Award-winning novelist and philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein.

DAVID CHALMERS is Professor of Philosophy and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at New York University. He is best known for his work on consciousness, especially for his formulation of the “hard problem” of consciousness and his arguments against materialism, and is the author of the books The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, The Character of Consciousness, and Constructing the World. Chalmers has also written extensively about artificial intelligence and computation, metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of language.

REBECCA NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN is a philosopher and novelist and the recipient of numerous honors, including a MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’ and the National Humanities Medal, awarded this past September by President Obama at a ceremony at the White House, as well as having been named Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association. Her books include The Mind-Body Problem, Thirty-Six Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, and, most recently, Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away. She has also written studies of philosophers Kurt Gödel and Baruch Spinoza. As of 2016 Goldstein will be a Visiting Professor at New York University.

ROBERT WRIGHT is the author, most recently, of The Evolution of God, which was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His other books include The Moral Animal, which The New York Times Book Review named one of the ten best books of 1994, and Nonzero, which Bill Clinton called “astonishing” and instructed White House staff members to read. In 2009 Wright was named by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the top 100 global thinkers. Wright has written for The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Foreign Policy, and the op-ed pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Financial Times. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and his awards include the National Magazine Award for Essay and Criticism. Wright is Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and is editor-in-chief of the websites Bloggingheads.tv and MeaningofLife.tv.

This event is part of “Contentions,” an interview and debate series hosted by Robert Wright, Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary. Through conversations with prominent intellectuals, “Contentions” examines the relationship between science and spiritual questions.

Have questions about The Weirdness of Consciousness? Contact Union Theological Seminary
Nov
18
Wed
Lawrence Krauss and Robert Wright on Physics, Philosophy, and ‘New Atheism’ @ Union Theological Seminary
Nov 18 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Robert Wright, Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary, interrogates prominent physicist and ‘new atheist’ Lawrence Krauss on the origins of the universe, quantum weirdness, and the limits of scientific knowledge.

LAWRENCE KRAUSS is director of the Origins Project and Professor of Physics at Arizona State University. He has won numerous international awards and is the only physicist to have received the top awards from all three U.S. Physics Societies.  He is the author of over 300 scientific publications and is also the author of 9 books including bestsellers The Physics of Star Trek and A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing. Krauss has recently delved into the film world as executive producer and subject of The Unbelievers, a documentary film that discusses science and reason.  He has dedicated his time, throughout his career, to issues of science and society and has helped spearhead national efforts to educate the public about science, ensure sound public policy, and defend science against attacks at a variety of levels. In 2015 Krauss was named Humanist of the Year.

ROBERT WRIGHT is the author, most recently, of The Evolution of God, which was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His other books include The Moral Animal, which The New York Times Book Review named one of the ten best books of 1994, and Nonzero, which Bill Clinton called “astonishing” and instructed White House staff members to read. In 2009 Wright was named by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the top 100 global thinkers. Wright has written for The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Foreign Policy, and the op-ed pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Financial Times. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and his awards include the National Magazine Award for Essay and Criticism. Wright is Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and is editor-in-chief of the websites Bloggingheads.tv and MeaningofLife.tv.


This event is part of “Contentions,” an interview and debate series hosted by Robert Wright, Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary. Through conversations with prominent intellectuals, “Contentions” examines the relationship between science and spiritual questions.
Mar
5
Mon
Hindus Against God: Anti-theistic Arguments in Sāṃkhya and Vedānta Philosophy – Andrew Nicholson (SUNY Stony Brook) @ Knox Hall, Room 208
Mar 5 @ 4:15 pm – 5:45 pm
Moderated by Sheldon Pollock, Arvind Raghunathan Professor of South Asian Studies, MESAAS
Andrew J. Nicholson is Associate Professor at State University of New York at Stony Brook. He earned his PhD in South Asian Languages and Civilizations at Chicago.  Nicholson’s primary area of research is Indian philosophy and intellectual history, most recently focusing on medieval Vedānta philosophy and its influence on ideas about Hinduism in modern Europe and India. His first book, Unifying Hinduism: Philosophy and Identity in Indian Intellectual History (2010) was part of the South Asia Across the Disciplines book series sponsored by the university presses at California, Chicago, and Columbia.  In 2011, it won the American Academy of Religion’s Award for Best First Book in the History of Religions.  His second book is Lord Śiva’s Song: The Īśvara Gītā (2014).
Feb
1
Fri
Finding the Way to Truth: Sources, History, and Impact of the Meditative Tradition @ Buell Hall, Columbia U
Feb 1 – Feb 2 all-day

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.