Professor Michele Moody-Adams (Columbia) will present “Moral Progress and Human Agency” at the CUNY Graduate Center, Skylight Room 9100, Monday, October 5, 2015.
Abstract: I argue that the idea of moral progress is a necessary presupposition of action for beings like us. We must believe that moral progress is possible, and that it might have been realized in human experience at some point in history, if we are to be confident that continued human action can have any morally constructive point. I discuss the implications of this truth for moral psychology. But I also argue that once we understand the complex nature—and the complicated social sources—of moral progress, we will appreciate that we cannot find a single principle, or set of principles, to reliably guide attempts to make the world “a better place.” Yet while the idea of moral progress cannot ultimately yield such principles of action, it can serve, as I’ll show, as a plausible and constructive principle of historical interpretation.
Diana Tietjens Meyers
Passivity in Theories of the Agentic Self: Reflections on the views of Soren Reader and Sara Buss.
Sponsored by NY SWIPshop
Nearly everyone agrees that knowledge is gained through diligent study and investigation, but there is far greater ambiguity when it comes to the meaning of wisdom and how it is acquired. What is wisdom, and how can it be attained? Is there an empirical relationship between wisdom and the cultivation of character, as Aristotle and others have argued? Is the development of virtue and the fulfillment of our innate potential a prerequisite to living the good life? Philosopher of science Philip Kitcher joins Humean philosopher Valerie Tiberius and distinguished psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett to explore the role of wisdom in the interplay between positive emotions, virtues, and character.
*Reception to follow.
Featuring
Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD
University Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University
Director of the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory
Philip Kitcher, PhD
John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University
Author of “The Ethical Project”
Valerie Tiberius, PhD
Chair and Professor of Philosophy at University of Minnesota
Author of “The Reflective Life: Living Wisely With Our Limits”
Moderator
Steve Paulson
Executive Producer, Wisconsin Public Radio’s nationally-syndicated program To the Best of Our Knowledge
Registration — Individual Lecture Prices
| Member | $5 |
| Member (Student / Postdoc / Resident / Fellow) | $5 |
| Nonmember | $15 |
| Nonmember (Student / Postdoc / Resident / Fellow) | $7 |
The new season of Brooklyn Public Philosophers is upon us! Ask a Philosopher is coming back in a big way, and we have some, dare I say, dope af talks lined up for the semester – Elvira Basevich on W.E.B. Du Bois and the metaphysics of race, Christia Mercer on women in the history of philosophy, Chris Lebron on the philosophy of Black Lives Matter. Coming up on February 23rd at 7:00 P.M., Ben Abelson (Mercy College) will be kicking things off with a talk on what science fiction can teach us about what it means to be a person (human or otherwise). Here’s more about the talk, in Dr. Abelson’s own words:
“Persons in Science Fiction”
There is a crucial distinction between the concepts “human” and “person”. To be a person, one need not be a member of the human species. Science fiction is filled with a variety of non-human persons, including artificially intelligent robots, intergalactic aliens, super-evolved animals, and more. But what are the qualities that are essential to something counting as a person? This talk will examine the nature of personhood by considering myriad examples from sci-fi literature and film.
As usual, we meet at the Dweck Center at the Grand Army Plaza branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. Bring a date! Or at least bring a sci-fi nerd! Come prepared with your favorite example of a marginal case of a person!
See you there, I hope!
Upcoming events:
3/23 – Elvira Basevich, “W.E.B. Du Bois’s Racialism and Two Liberal Conceptions of Plurality” @ the Dweck Center // 7:00 P.M.
4/27 – Christia Mercer on women in the history of philosophy @ the Dweck Center // 7:00 P.M.
5/18 – Chris Lebron on the philosophy of Black Lives Matter @ the Dweck Center // 7:00 P.M.
April 25, Saray Alaya-Lopez (Cal. State, Sacramento), “Agency in Structural Explanations of Injustice.” 6:30-8:00pm, CUNY Graduate Center 5414.
May 23, Karen Jones (U. Melbourne), “Radical Consciousness and Epistemic Privilege.” 6:30-8:00pm, CUNY Graduate Center 5414.
I’ve argued that the Indian Buddhist tradition, broadly construed, has tended to endorse a unique view of freedom and responsibility, a view I’ve called Buddhist Perspectivalism. According to this view, we should always regard ourselves as genuinely free and responsible agents, because we have good reason to do so, while we should never regard others in this way, because we have equally good reason to see them as neither free nor responsible. In this talk, I clarify Buddhist Perspectivalism as a theory of moral responsibility and defend it against some concerns that scholars like Christopher Gowans and Charles Goodman have raised.
With a response from:
Rick Repetti (Kingsborough Community College, CUNY)
Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy:
Oct. 6: Jake Davis (New York University)
Nov. 3: Daniel Breyer (Illinois State University)
Dec. 8: Nico Silins (Cornell University) and Susanna Siegel (Harvard University)
People feel on occasion that life should be embraced in a certain way. You only live once, carpe diem, #YOLO: we commonly associate the thought of our limited lives with the thought that we should take adventures, risks, or break with our routines and norms. But how, if at all, does the thought that you only live once motivate adventurous, risky, or unusual behavior? After all, having only one life seems to equally well motivate the exact opposite of adventure and risk. I consider several ways of supporting the thought that life should be embraced. All are found wanting, except one.
Join us for an evening of accessible philosophical thought and erudite fun. Former pro skater and USD philosophy professor Nick Riggle’s debut title, On Being Awesome: A Unified Theory of How Not to Suck draws on pop culture, politics, history, and sports to to illuminate the ethics and culture of awesomeness and pinpoint its origins in America. Philosopher Aaron James (UC Irvine), a longtime globetrotting surfer and author of the bestselling Assholes: A Theory, returns with Surfing with Sartre: An Aquatic Inquiry Into a Life of Meaning, using the experience and the ethos of surfing to explore key concepts in philosophy. Join Nick and Aaron in conversation followed by a reception and book signing.
‘Philosophy begins in wonder. And at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains. There have been added, however, some grasp of the immensity of things, some purification of emotion by understanding. Yet there is a danger in such reflections. An immediate good is apt to be thought of in a degenerate form of a passive enjoyment. Existence (life) is activity ever merging into the future. The aim of philosophical understanding is the aim of piercing the blindness of activity in respect to its transcendent functions.’ (A.N. Whitehead, Modes of Thought, Capricorn Books, New York, 1938, 232).
Please read Anthony O’Hear work titled Philosophy – Wisdom or Technique? starting on page 351. Please click here.
Please remember to bring $3 for the Setauket Neighborhood House.
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.