The 1st Latinx Philosophers Conference is an initiative of some Latin American PhD candidates in the Columbia Philosophy Department. We hope to initiate a tradition of annual conferences to serve the following ends. First, to foster the creation and development of a Latinx Philosophers Network in the United States. This network, in turn, will help us provide a space for camaraderie and collaborative work, as well as identify and pursue the common interests of Latinx Philosophers in the U.S. Second, to provide a space for discussing issues of particular relevance to Latinx from a philosophical perspective.
The conference will take place on April 29-30 and will be organized around two clusters of topics. The first day will be devoted to issues in Epistemology, Logic, Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science. The second day will focus on Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy, Philosophy of Race, and Latin American Philosophy. We are happy to announce that Otavio Bueno and Jorge Gracia will be our keynote speakers for each day, respectively.
We invite graduate students who identify as Latinx or who are interested in forming part of the Latino/a Philosophers Network to submit papers on any of the topics mentioned above. We encourage submissions by women. We also encourage submissions that discuss issues relevant to the Latinx experience.
Papers should not exceed 4000 words (or the equivalent of a 30-minute presentation). They should be prepared for blind review and sent as a PDF file to latinophilosophersnetwork@gmail.com. In a separate PDF attachment, please include your name, academic affiliation, email address, telephone number, paper title, and an abstract of no more than 250 words. Any questions can be directed to César Cabezas (cgc2125@columbia.edu), or Ignacio Ojea (ignacio.ojea@columbia.edu). Acceptances will be announced by March 15.
This event is supported by:
MAP (Minorities and Philosophy), and
The Center for Race, Philosophy and Social Justice at Columbia University
We are pleased to announce the second symposium at Columbia University, Saturday, March 4, 2017,
Keynote Speakers:
Dr. John Morrison, Department of Philosophy at Columbia University/Barnard College
Professor Morrison is currently working on three projects. The first is about how we manage to perceive secondary qualities, such as redness. He argues that we perceive them in virtue of perceiving the differences and similarities between objects, thereby reversing the traditional order of explanation. He then develops similar explanations of how we perceive objects, kinds, and many primary qualities. The second is about uncertainty and perception. He argues that our perceptual experiences sometimes assign degrees of confidence. Both of these projects draw heavily on empirical psychology, particularly psychophysics and cognitive psychology. The third project is about the foundations of Spinoza’s metaphysics. He hopes to unravel Spinoza’s claims about minds, bodies, God, and their essences.
Dr. Alexander Todorov, Department of Psychology at Princeton University
The primary focus of research in Professor Alexander’s lab is on the cognitive and neural mechanisms of social perception and social cognition with a particular emphasis on the social dimensions of face perception. Our approach is multidisciplinary. He uses a variety of methods from behavioral and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) experiments to computational modeling. The span of our research ranges from the social consequences of rapid, initial person impressions to the basic neural mechanisms underlying such impressions. Current major areas of research include computational modeling of social perception of faces, identifying brain networks involved in representing other people, and mechanisms of updating person representations.
Topic: What is a cognitive understanding of visual intelligence?
Keywords: analytic philosophy, fine art, intelligence, logic, artificial intelligence, data science & mining, philosophy of mind, epistemology, philosophy of language, grammar, philosophy of games, visual studies, aesthetics, art history & criticism, psychology, philosophy of science.
Call for Papers:
We would consider papers with parameters of the following:
Philosophy of language, logic, artificial intelligence, aesthetics, analytic philosophy, philosophy of psychology, psychology, visual studies, philosophy of science, data science, philosophy of mind, art history & criticism
Submission deadline: Fri, February 10, 2017. Accepted submissions will be announced before Feb 17.
Length: 500 – 1000 words
How to submit: Please email PDF files to insvi [at] insvi.org
or upload your files at http://insvi.org/submission
The umwelt is a notion invented by the Baltic-German biologist Jakob von Uexküll. It represents how a creature, an animal, a child or even an adult “sees” the world and is a precursor to the Wumpus world in contemporary AI literature. A fly is caught in a spider’s web because its vision is too coarse to see the fine threads of the web. Thus though the web is part of the world, it is not a part of the fly’s umwelt. Similarly a tick will suck not only on blood but also on any warm liquid covered by a membrane. In the tick’s umwelt, the blood and the warm liquid are “the same”.
We represent an umwelt as a homomorphic image of the real world in which the creature, whatever it might be, has some perceptions, some powers, and some preferences (utilities for convenience). Thus we can calculate the average utility of an umwelt and also the utilities of two creatures combining their umwelts into a symbiosis.
A creature may also have a “theory” which is a map from sets of atomic sentences to sets of atomic sentences. Atomic sentences which are observed may allow the creature to infer other atomic sentences not observed. This weak but useful notion of theory bypasses some of Davidson’s objections to animals having beliefs.
Russell, Stuart J., and Peter Norvig. “Artificial intelligence: a modern approach (International Edition).” (2002).
Von Uexküll, J., von Uexküll, M., & O’Neil, J. D. (2010). A foray into the worlds of animals and humans: With a theory of meaning. U of Minnesota Press.
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)
Robyn Marasco (Hunter College) will deliver a paper entitled “Hegel’s Esotericism,” and Jeremy M. Glick (Hunter College) will respond.