Calendar

One way for an attempt at explanation to fail is for the explanans (which does the
explaining) to be too close to the explanandum (the thing explained). In this paper
I discuss this feature, which I call explanatory distance. I consider some different
approaches to explanatory distance, and propose an account of explanatory
distance articulated in terms of dependence. I then discuss the implications of this
View for some recent applications of grounding.

Schedule for Spring 2018

Here is a sneak peak at our exciting line-up of speakers and events for Spring 2018. Some times and rooms TBA.

Elanor Taylor, February 8, CUNY Graduate Center, The Committee for Interdisciplinary Science Studies, Room 5307, 4:00-6:00pm

Virginia Aspe Armella and Ma. Elena García Peláez Cruz (co-sponsored with SWIP-Analytic Mexico), March 2, NYU Room 202, 2:00-4:30pm

Round Table Women in Philosophy: Publishing, Jobs, and Fitting In (co-sponsored with NYSWIP), March 8, CUNY Graduate Center, The Committee for Interdisciplinary Science Studies, Room 5307, 4:30-7:30pm

Graduate Student Essay Prize Winner Presentation, April 12

Sophie Horowitz (UMass, Amherst), April 26

The Pratyabhijñā Śaiva tradition, as first systematized by Utpaladeva (10th century) and elaborated by Abhinavagupta (10th-11th century), follows a number of other classical Indian philosophical traditions in 1) fully acknowledging that Buddhist Vijñānavādins claim to account for the diversity manifest in the conventional world through an appeal to beginningless karmic imprints; and 2) utterly rejecting that this solution avoids circularity. To sum up the Śaiva critique: a Vijñānavādin cannot avoid the question of what causes the diversity of experiences in the conventional world by appealing to beginningless causal processes because these processes themselves require the existence of some kind of real stuff that has the capacity to manifest in diverse forms. These Śaivas hone their argument in relation to a Dharmakīrtian view of ultimate consciousness as utterly beyond causal relations—a view that Dharmakīrti (7th century) uses to brush aside any questions about the real relationship between conventional and ultimate reality as incoherent. These Śaivas argue that the question of how the variegation of a specific moment of awareness arises if no part of this variegation­—including the variegation of the causes that produce it—is inherent to what is ultimately real is philosophically salient. Moreover, this question cannot be addressed simply by an appeal to beginningless ignorance. While an appeal to beginningless karmic imprints is perfectly sufficient to account for the differences between various karmic streams within the conventional world, it is not sufficient to account for the mere fact that there is differentiated stuff capable of entering into causal relations. The Pratyabhijñā Śaivas offer a complex and distinctive solution to this problem: while they affirm that ultimate reality is beginningless in the sense that it is beyond time, they also claim that time itself has a “beginning” in the expression of the nondual differentiation inherent to the ultimate itself. They further link the expression of time with the creation of the subject/object pairs that define conventional worlds—and use Dharmakīrti’s own apoha (exclusion) theory of concept formation to explain how this happens.

THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY

Welcomes:

Catherine Prueitt (George Mason University)

With a response from:

Andrew Nicholson (Stony Brook University, SUNY)

Please save the following dates for our upcoming talks:

March 30: Kin Cheung (Moravian College)

April 13: Lara Braitstein (McGill University)

May 11: David Cummiskey (Bates College)

What constitutes evidence is rarely self-evident. We need theories to make sense of evidence—to transform patterns of physical occurrences into something meaningful, i.e., data. This relationship between theory and evidence is often at least partially opaque, particularly in a field like neuroscience that often aims to use physical evidence to characterize mental, and in some cases social, events. Neuroscience navigates this relationship by purporting to offer mechanistic descriptions of “how” mental processes operate. Yet, this inquiry relies on theoretical assumptions that are not fully tethered to data. Neuroscience can certainly generate predictions from theories that have practical implications and link them with mechanistic knowledge of the physical (e.g., anatomy and physiology). But changing the basis of our assumptions can change the kinds of questions we ask and how we interpret experimental findings. So, exactly what kind of knowledge does neuroscience offer? How independent is it from psychology? How do we navigate this potential divide, particularly in cases in which we would want to use neuroscience to characterize constructs that are heavily influenced by theoretical priors?

This event addresses this question from a range of perspectives in neurology, psychiatry, philosophy, and economics.  We consider the relationship between theory and evidence by exploring how practitioners, theorists, and experimentalists negotiate the multiple dimensions of evidence in neuroscience.

Speakers:
Peter Bearman, Jonathan R. Cole Professor of the Social Sciences, Columbia University
Suzanne Goh, Co-Founder & Chief Medical Officer, Cortica

Moderator:
Aniruddha Das, Associate Professor of Neuroscience, Columbia University

More speakers to be confirmed soon.

Free and open to the public, but RSVP is required via Eventbrite. This event is part of the Seminars in Society and Neuroscience series.

Psychopathy is a mental disorder closely associated with marked emotional dysfunctions, limited capacity for moral judgments, recidivistic offending, and poor treatment outcome. Considering its peculiar characteristics, the status of psychopathy in the field of law raises several disputes. While current criminal law holds psychopaths fully responsible and punishable for their misbehavior, some scholars argue that psychopathy is a condition that may severely compromise an individual’s moral agency and capacity for rationality. As such, it should be included among the potential excusing or mitigating factors for criminal responsibility and punishment. This argument finds additional support in the body of studies from neurocriminology showing that people who suffer from psychopathy exhibit (often severe) reduced functioning in the socio-emotional brain regions that are now known to be significantly involved in moral decision-making and prosocial behavior. The insights into the neurobiological roots of psychopathy seem to challenge even more the perennial dilemmas that have occupied the minds of legal scholars and philosophers for many years: Are psychopaths “bad” or “mad” (or both)? And how should criminal law and the justice system deal with them? This seminar aims to examine these issues and explore other contentious arguments about the status of psychopathy in the field law.

Three leading experts in neurocriminology, law, and philosophy will discuss recent neuroscientific findings in psychopathy research. The speakers will consider how these findings might contribute to the reconsideration of the responsibility of psychopathic offenders and how criminal justice should optimally respond to individuals suffering from such a controversial disorder.

Speakers:
Stephen J. Morse; Ferdinand Wakeman Hubbell Professor of Law; Professor of Psychology and Law in Psychiatry; Associate Director, Center for Neuroscience & Society; University of Pennsylvania Law School
Adrian Raine; Richard Perry University Professor, University of Pennsylvania
Katrina L. Sifferd; Professor and Chair of Philosophy, Elmhurst College

Free and open to the public, but RSVP is required via Eventbrite. This event is part of the Seminars in Society and Neuroscience series.

The circa 9th century CE poet-saint Saraha enjoys a close association with spontaneity in both his reported actions and recorded works. This association leads him to be popularly read and remembered as a freewheeling antinomian sacred figure opposed to institutions, rituals, and even social norms. His appears to be a call to joyful chaos. But many of his verses invite readers towards a different kind of chaos, towards mental/perceptual chaos as the path towards correct conventional perception.

What does it mean to correctly perceive an object? Many Buddhist sources describe how perception functions, and theorize the differences between correct and incorrect perception. A related important distinction is made between conventional and ultimate truth in the discussion of the reality of phenomena even when correctly perceived. But this arguably epistemic distinction may also be understood as the difference between an ordinary person’s correct perception and a Buddha’s perception. I am not here exploring ultimate truth. I am interested in conventional truth, in what makes it true. Broadly, correct conventional perception is associated with the product of a rational mind processing sense perceptions fed to it by functioning sense organs, and conventional truth then is the experience of that reality. Correct conventional perception can be contrasted with incorrect conventional perception, which would be perception based on an irrational or deluded mind, or an experience based on damaged or non-functioning sense organs.

Saraha, however, sings a different tune. His work tells us that the very process of identifying and recognizing objects – what most of us would associate with the basic skills necessary to get around in the world – is itself deluded, its objects adventitious. He calls this kind of perception drenpa (dran pa; usually translated as mindfulness, memory, or recollection). In other words, he claims that our very perception of objects – no matter how carefully or clearly experienced – is evidence of our being deluded. In contrast, correct conventional perception is the undoing of that object-making, what he refers to as drenmé (dran med). Drenmé is an uncommon term the contexts of the two truths and meditation. Usually denoting a swoon or a coma, here it refers to a reversal or undoing of drenpa. What does it mean – if it means anything – to describe our perception of objects itself as evidence of our delusion? Can perception as object-making ever produce truth?

The Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy (CSCP) is a University Seminar dedicated to the advancement of projects that draw on both western and non-western philosophy. The CSCP meets monthly on the campus of Columbia University and occasionally hosts conferences.

Please save the following dates for our upcoming talks:

March 30: Kin Cheung (Moravian College)

April 13: Lara Braitstein (McGill University)

May 11: David Cummiskey (Bates College)

At the core of Kantian liberalism is a conception of the independent autonomous subject. On the other hand, the most central and distinguishing feature of Buddhist philosophy is the doctrine of no-self. It thus seems that Buddhists should reject Kantian liberalism. My larger project develops the connections between Buddhist perfectionism, liberalism, and principles of justice. In this paper, I focus on Buddhist and Kantian conceptions of self-constitution, but my ultimate concern is the significance of the doctrine of no-self to theories of justice.

Buddhists need some conception of a minimal self to account for the karmic-continuity of persons and also to provide an adequate account of the subjectivity of experience. I argue that we should reject the (Abhidharma) reductionist view of the self as a mere fiction that is reducible to its simpler and more basic parts. As is often noted, the Buddhist reductionist approach is similar to Derek Parfit’s view. Parfit also argues that there is no deep metaphysical self and that relations of personal identity are reducible to relations of psychological connectedness and causal continuity in a series of experiences. Christine Korsgaard has responded to Parfit’s reductionist view by developing a non-metaphysical account of Kantian agency and self-constitution. I argue that the Buddhist doctrine of no-self is consistent with a more minimal, non-substantial, emergent, view of the self. This approach, which is more fully developed by Evan Thomson, Matthew MacKenzie, Georges Dreyfus, and others, is surprisingly similar to Korsgaard’s practical conception of the self. As a result, the non-reductionist Buddhist approach is also not vulnerable to Korsgaard’s objection to reductionist views. In addition, I argue that the process of self-constitution is embedded in a recursive nexus of dependent origination, and reject Korsgaard’s conception of the independent autonomous subject, which she refers to as “over and above” its ends. In short, a Buddhist can accept Korsgaard’s basic account of self-constitution but nonetheless reject the Kantian idea of the independent autonomous subject. For Buddhists, the Kantian autonomous subject is instead part of the “primal confusion” that projects a reified subject-other division on experience. This confusion is the source of existential suffering, anxiety and stress, which characterizes too much of the human condition. The goal is to transcend the Kantian subject and internalize the pervasive interdependence of persons. Instead of the autonomous self, Buddhism embraces a perfectionist ideal, of a non-egocentric reorientation and re-constitution of the self.

Buddhists thus have reason to reject Kantian liberalism, if it is based on the autonomy and independence of persons. In his shift to Political Liberalism, John Rawls recasts the conception of the person, as “a self-originating source of valid claims,” and emphasizes that this conception is restricted to the political domain. It is part of a narrow conception of the “moral powers” of a free and equal citizen; it is not a metaphysical conception or comprehensive ideal. I conclude by exploring the contrast between Buddhist Perfectionism and Political Liberalism.

With a Response From:

Carol Rovane (Columbia University)

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Also, please visit our website:

http://www.cbs.columbia.edu/cscp/

Co-Chairs

Professor Jonathan Gold

Associate Professor, Princeton University, Department of Religion

jcgold@princeton.edu

Professor Hagop Sarkissian

Associate Professor, The City University of New York, Baruch College | Graduate Center, Department of Philosophy

hagop.sarkissian@baruch.cuny.edu

Rapporteur

Jay Ramesh

jr3203@columbia.edu

Robyn Marasco (Hunter College) will deliver a paper entitled “Hegel’s Esotericism,” and Jeremy M. Glick (Hunter College) will respond.

Speakers:
Amanda Pustilnik, Professor of Law, University of Maryland
Tor Wager, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder

Moderators:
Federica Coppola, Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience, Columbia University
Lan Li, Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience, Columbia University

We will provide additional information as soon as possible.

Free and open to the public, but RSVP is required via Eventbrite. This event is part of the Seminars in Society and Neuroscience series.

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.