24-26 October (Friday-Sunday)
32nd Annual Meeting of the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy (SAGP) with the Society for the Study of Islamic Philosophy and Science (SSIPS)
Lowenstein Building
Lincoln Center Campus
Contact: Daryl Tress
Kicking it all off will be Liz Camp (Rutgers University), who will be speaking on Monday 1/26 about why metaphors make good insults. Here’s a bit more about Dr. Camp’s talk, in her own words:
“Why Metaphors Make Good Insults”
Metaphors are powerful communicative tools because they ‘frame’ their subjects in certain ways. These effects are especially palpable when the metaphor is an insult that denigrates the hearer or someone she cares about. In such cases, comprehending the metaphor can produce a kind of complicity, one that cannot be undone just by denying the speaker’s claim. Where some theorists take this to show that metaphors accomplish something different in kind from ordinary talk, I argue that metaphorical insults are so rhetorically powerful because they combine three distinct features, each of which is independently common in communication. This result is not just theoretically interesting; it also helps to suggest more effective techniques for hearers to fight back.
As usual, we meet at 7:00 P.M. at the central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library in the Info Commons Lab. Hope to see you there!
Spring 2015 Schedule:
1/26 – Liz Camp
(Rutgers)
2/23 – Geoff Holtzman
(CUNY Graduate Center)
3/30 – Serene Khader
(Brooklyn College)
4/27 – Frank Kirkland
(Hunter College)
5/20 – Bruce Matthews
(Bard High School Early College)
8th Annual Conference of the American Association of Mexican Philosophers will take place at Columbia this spring (April 24-26). The Association is mainly a group of Mexican philosophers based in the United States. We hold a conference every year to discuss our work and get to know each other better, as well as the philosophical community of the hosting institution. The topics of the talks reflect the interests of each year’s presenters, and this year they go from the philosophy of mind & language, to the philosophy of physics, metaphysics, and metaethics.
CUNY PhD Students Adriana Renero and Javier Gómez-Lavín will present.
8th Annual Conference
Columbia University, New York
April 24-26, 2015
FRIDAY, APRIL 24
Room: 304 Hamilton
8:00 – 9:00 am Coffee & Bagels
9:00 – 10:15 am Jorge Pablo Oseguera Gamba (Florida State University) “Debunking Ethical Intuitionism” Commentator: Carlos Núñez (Stanford University)
10:35 – 11:50 pm Viorica Ramírez de Santiago (UNAM) “An alternative interpretation of Plato’s beard” Commentator: Azenet López (University of Miami)
12:00 – 2:10 pm Lunch
2:10 – 3:15 pm Elías Okón (UNAM) “Benefits of objective collapse models for cosmology and quantum gravity”
Commentator: Porter Williams (Columbia University)
3:45 – 5:00 pm Sofía Ortiz-Hinojosa (MIT) “Transformative Experiences and Imagination”
Commentator: Carla Merino (Arizona State University)
SATURDAY, APRIL 25
Room: 716 Philosophy Hall
9:00 – 10:00 am Coffee & Bagels
10:00 – 11:15 am Ricardo Mena (UNAM) “Vagueness”
Commentator: Martín Abreu (NYU)
11:45 – 1:00 pm Teresa Bruno (Syracuse University) “Externalism meets Alienation”
Commentator: Jesús Aguilar (Rochester Institute of Technology)
1:00 – 3:00 pm Lunch
3:00 – 4:15 pm Felipe de Brigard (Duke University) “Vivacity and the distinction between memory and imagination”
Commentator: Javier Gómez-Lavín (CUNY)
8:00 pm Dinner at a local restaurant
SUNDAY, APRIL 26
Room: 716 Philosophy Hall
9:00 – 10:00 am Coffee & Bagels
10:00 – 11:15 am Miguel Ángel Sebastián (UNAM) “A Naturalist Model of the Subjectivity of Experience”
Commentator: Sergio Gallegos (MSU Denver)
11:45 – 1:00 pm Adriana Renero (CUNY) “Introspection”
Commentator: Laura Pérez (Harvard University)
1:00 – 3:00 pm Lunch
3:00 – 4:15 pm Agustín Rayo (MIT) (co-authored with Adam Elga) “Fragmentation and Information Access”
Commentator: Nemira Gasiunas (Columbia University)
The Liberal Studies department at the New School for Social Research and the Culture & Media Department at Eugene Lang College are pleased to jointly present “Appetite for Distraction: Social Media and Today’s Attention-Economy,” an evening lecture by Chair and faculty memeber Dominic Pettman, which also marks the publication his forthcoming book Infinite Distraction (Polity Press, 2016).
It is often argued that contemporary media homogenize our thoughts and actions, without us being fully aware of the restrictions they impose. But what if the problem is not that we are all synchronized to the same motions or moments, but rather dispersed into countless different emotional micro-experiences? What if the effect of so-called social media is to calibrate the interactive spectacle so that we never fully feel the same way as other potential allies at the same time? While one person is fuming about economic injustice or climate change denial, another is giggling at a cute cat video. And, two hours late, vice versa. The nebulous indignation which constitutes the very fuel of true social change can be redirected safely around the network, avoiding any dangerous surges of radical activity.
Infinite Distraction examines the deliberate deployment of what Pettman calls hypermodulation, as a key strategy encoded into the contemporary media environment. His account challenges the various narratives that portray social media as a sinister space of synchronized attention, in which we are busily clicking ourselves to death. This critical reflection on the unprecedented power of the Internet requires us to rethink the potential for infinite distraction that our latest technologies now allow.
A Q&A will follow the lecture and refreshments will be on hand.
This week we focus our lens on the Media by exploring Agenda Setting. Agenda setting is when a certain media outlet frequently presents an issue that may not be as relevant as the frequent appearance of the piece suggests. However, as a result of the frequency the audience begins to think the issue is important. The concern is compounded when other media outlets jump on the band wagon. We’ll explore this little touched topic and more! Can’t wait to hear your thoughts!
Please read Agenda Setting pages 147 – 161
Please remember to bring $3 for the Setauket Neighborhood house.
Even though ancient philosophy and rhetoric have many overlapping interests (education, persuasion, politics, etc.), their relationship has long been a contentious subject, especially among ancient philosophers. Contemporary scholarship on the topic is equally divided: philosophers tend to approach the topic primarily through the works of Plato and Aristotle and regard rhetoric (and rhetorical compositions) as a second-rate notion/discipline which has little interest in shedding light on philosophically relevant questions about human nature and society, whereas classicists research oratorical compositions to get a better understanding of Greek prose style, historical details and context, but often shy away from philosophical questions that the texts might hint at. This workshop aims to bring together scholars working on ancient rhetoric and argumentative techniques on the one hand, and scholars working on ancient philosophy, on the other in order to open up a space for a constructive engagement with philosophy/rhetoric, one which might enrich our understanding of ancient texts as well as the context in which they were produced.
Confirmed speakers: Jamie Dow (Leeds), Richard Hunter (Cambridge), Joel Mann (St Norbert), Jessica Moss (NYU), Usha Nathan (Columbia), James Porter (Berkeley), Edward Schiappa (MIT), Nancy Worman (Barnard). All papers will be followed by a response and general discussion.
Attending the workshop is free, but in order to have an idea of numbers it would be greatly appreciated if those interested in participating in the event would email the organizers, Laura Viidebaum and Toomas Lott.
This Workshop is generously sponsored by the Department of Philosophy (NYU), Department of Classics (NYU) and NYU Center for Ancient Studies.
A talk by Anne Simon, moderated by Eliza Zingesser
Zoopoetics aims to highlight the plurality of stylistic, linguistic and narrative tools used by writers to express the plurality of animal activities, affects and worlds, as well as the intricacies of the interactions between humans and animals. Such an approach helps to understand that all life forms are in a relationship of dependence with an archè (Husserl)—an origin, a reason, a refuge, a dwelling, the Earth— and that animals are more stylistic or rhetorical beings than we usually think of them as being. Evolution and biomorphic logics allow us to intuitively understand other species related to us, to share many of their emotions and expressions, and to be able to account for them through specific human means, such as evocative and figurative language. The lecture will show that perspectivism, metamorphosis and hybridity are universal patterns and experiences that literature embodies in different ways.
Anne Simon is a Research Director at the Centre National de la Recherche Française and a Member of the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (Paris), where she leads the Project « Animots » ; an author of Trafics de Proust, 2016 and La rumeur des distances traversées, to be published in 2018. Her research focuses on disturbing relationships between philosophy and literature, and on zoopoetics.
Keynote speakers:
The Speculative Ethics Forum is a one day workshop-style event in which we’ll consider the most challenging matters of ethics. Ethical approaches of all sorts are welcomed–analytic, continental, ancient, medieval, Asian, and so on. Most papers are invited. However, there are two slots open for submissions. Any paper in ethical theory will be considered for acceptance. Bold and speculative inquiries are preferred to papers that primarily defend ground already gained or papers that are primarily scholarly. Our aim, in short, is to have a single day concentrated on expanding the horizons of ethics.
Our Invited Speakers Are:
Katja Vogt (Columbia University)
James Dodd (New School for Social Research)
Leo Zaibert (Union College)
Justin Clarke-Doane (Columbia University)
Organisers:
Register
November 17, 2017, 11:45pm EST
speculative.ethics.forum [at the host] gmail.com
Movie snacks and post-film discussion hosted by Professor Zed Adams
Questions? email: veronica@newschool.edu
Friday, February 1st 2019 at 55 W 13 Street Room I 203
6:00-9:00 PM
This event is sponsored by the Philosophy Department at the New School for Social Research
Vera List Professor of Philosophy, Richard J. Bernstein, will present his new book on Hannah Arendt, Why Read Hannah Arendt Now (2018, Polity Press), followed by a screening of the documentary film Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt.
Free and open to the public.