Tentative Schedule for MAPS, 2016 Spring (more details soon):
Aprili 12. 4:30-6:30pm @ NYU. Laura Franklin-Hall (NYU). Topic: TBA.
Apr 26. 4:30-6:30pm @ NYU Silver 621. Lev Vaidman (Tel Aviv). Topic: Many-Worlds QM.
May 10. 3:00-6:30pm @ NYU. Mini Workshop on Philosophy of Physics: (1) Elizabeth Miller (Yale) & Ned Hall (Harvard), and (2) Angelo Bassi (Trieste). Topics: TBA.
Conceptions of unstructured content take contents to be sets of possibilities, or circumstances, or conditions (or functions from such things to truth values). In recent years, a great variety of new conceptions of unstructured content have been developed and applied, often with great formal ingenuity. Debates on relativism and context-sensitivity more generally, on expressivism, de se attitudes, counterfactual attitudes, vagueness, truthmaker semantics, and many more bear witness to these developments. At the same time, not as much attention has been paid to the philosophical foundations of unstructured conceptions.
In sharp contrast, proponents of structured propositions have recently spent a great amount of their time developing and clarifying the foundations of their conceptions in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind. This conference encourages new reflexion on the foundations of unstructured conceptions of content, the availability of existing foundational stories to new technical conceptions, the competitiveness of unstructured conceptions vis-a-vis structured conceptions as well as the relationship between the two conceptions. It also aims to establish renewed dialogue between, on the one hand, proponents of structured conceptions and of unstructured conceptions and, on the other hand, between proponents of the various conceptions and applications of unstructured content.
Speakers:
In addition to invited talks, there will be a CFA for 2-4 further talks.
(Non-exhaustive) list of topics:
- Foundations in philosophy of mind of conceptions of unstructured content
- Kinds of unstructured content \& the nature of representation
- Philosophical and / vs formal motivations for unstructured content
- What are the relationships between structured and unstructured conceptions of content? Competition? Complementation?
- Promiscuity on permissible sets of n-tuples: anything goes? (worlds-hyperplans, worlds-languages, worlds-standards of taste, …)
- What is it that gets characterised, or modelled, by a set of possibilities, or circumstances, or conditions?
- What are outstanding problems of fineness of grain?
- What progress has been made on the the problems of deduction / logical omniscience as they arise for unstructured content?
- The role of (unstructured) content in semantic theory
- Truthmaker semantics
- Notions of hyperintensionality with unstructured content
- Mental fragmentation/compartmentalisation
- Metaphysical foundations of unstructured content
- Possible worlds/points in the possibility-space: primitive or construed (e.g. out of structured things/sentences)?
Organisers: Andy Egan (Rutgers), Dirk Kindermann (University of Graz)
Please direct all queries to dirk.kindermann@uni-graz.at. If you’d like to attend the event, please informally register at dirk.kindermann@uni-graz.at.
The Institute for Visual Intelligence
is thrilled to announce its inaugural symposium in New York City in November 2016. We are seeking a philosophical understanding of visual intelligence.
Keynote Speakers:
Dr. Ahmed Elgammal
Director of the Art & AI at Rutgers University
Professor at the Department of Computer Science, Rutgers University. He is the founder and director of the Art and Artificial Intelligence at Rutgers, which focuses on data science in the domain of digital humanities. He is also an Executive Council Faculty at Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science. Prof Elgammal has published over 140 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and books in the fields of computer vision, machine learning, and digital humanities. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He received the National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2006. Dr Elgammal’s recent research on knowledge discovery in digital humanities received wide international media attention, including reports on the Washington Post, New York Times, NBC News, the Daily Telegraph, Science News, and many others.
Dr. Gary Hatfield
Director of the Visual Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania
Adam Seybert Professor in Moral and Intellectual Philosophy and Director of the Visual Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania. He works in the history of modern philosophy, the philosophy of psychology, theories of vision, and the philosophy of science. In 1990, he published The Natural and the Normative: Theories of Spatial Perception from Kant to Helmholtz; at HOPOS 2016, the 25th anniversary of the book was celebrated. In 2009, Perception and Cognition: Essays in the Philosophy of Psychology appeared from the Clarendon Press; a revised version of his book on Descartes’ Meditations appeared in 2014. He is a member of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, the Penn Perception group, and the History and Sociology of Science Graduate Group. He has directed dissertations in history of philosophy, philosophy of psychology, and philosophy and history of science. He has long been fascinated by visual perception and the mind–body problem.
Dr. Sun-Joo Shin
Professor of Philosophy at Yale University
At Yale Sun-Joo Shin teaches logic, philosophy of logic, history of logic, philosophy of linguistics and, philosophy of language.
In her book “The Iconic Logic of Peirce’s Graphs” Shin explores the philosophical roots of the birth of Peirce’s Existential Graphs in his theory of representation and logical notation. She demonstrates that Peirce is the first philosopher to lay a solid philosophical foundation for multimodal representation systems.
We would consider papers with parameters of the following:
Philosophy of language
Logic
Artificial intelligence
Aesthetics
Analytic philosophy
Philosophy of psychology
Visual studies
Philosophy of science
Data science
Philosophy of mind
Art history & criticism
http://philevents.org/event/show/26754
Abstract: Organisms physically transform their environments in ways that affect their downstream evolution. The importance of this fact has been a topic in recent debates in and around evolutionary biology. I’ll discuss this theme in a general way and then extend it. A subset of “niche construction” phenomena work by way of the perceptual, cognitive, and agential properties of organisms. These cases have distinctive features seen on several scales. I’ll look at these in relation to both the large-scale history of life and attempts to give a materialist account of the place of mind in nature.
There will be a dinner after the talk. If you are interested, please send an email with “Dinner” in the heading to nyphilsci@gmail.com (please note that all faculty and grad students are welcome, but only the speaker’s dinner will be covered). If you have any other questions, please email eddy.chen@rutgers.edu
Presented by Metro Area Philosophy of Science Presents
Peter Godfrey-Smith (CUNY Graduate Center)
Title: The Subject as Cause and Effect of Evolution
Abstract: The theory of evolution has evolved, so to speak, a number of times since Darwin and Wallace proposed the original version back in 1858. In this talk, I will explore some of those changes and focus on current proposals to develop a new version of the theory, known as the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. I will also try to address the question of whether these new developments amount to an example of what philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn called a “paradigm shift” within the biological sciences.
Reception to follow the talk, please join us! There will also be dinner after the reception. If you are interested, please send an email with “Dinner” in the heading to nyphilsci@gmail.com (please note that all are welcome, but only the speaker’s dinner will be covered). If you have any other questions, please email eddy.chen@rutgers.edu
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More Upcoming MAPS Talks:
(1) 4:30-6:30 PM Tuesday February 28 at NYU.
Matt Stanley. (Author of Huxley’s Church and Maxwell’s Demon: from Theistic Science to Naturalistic Science, University of Chicago Press);
“The Uniformity of Natural Laws: A Historical Perspective from Victorian Britain”
(2) Jesse Prinz (CUNY). Title TBA. Time TBA.
(3) Alyssa Ney (UC Davis). Title TBA. 4:30-6:30 PM Tuesday May 2 at Columbia.
It is a generally accepted principle of Buddhist philosophy that it denies the ultimate reality of the self as an autonomously existing entity. Yet the philosopher Rick Repetti, who is also a seasoned practitioner and instructor of meditation and yoga, argues that the Buddhist view of meditation is in fact a method of cultivating mental freedom, and that such cultivation simultaneously increases free will. Join Dr. Repetti as he takes us on a journey into the Buddhist perspective in order to dissolve the apparent tension of free will for selves that do not exist.
Wednesday, February 1 at 6pm. This event is part of the Philosophy Series at The Cornelia Street Café, located at 29 Cornelia Street, New York, NY 10014 (near Sixth Avenue and West 4th St.). Admission is $10, which includes the price of one drink. Reservations are recommended (212. 989.9319)
Dr. Repetti is Professor of Philosophy at CUNY Kingsborough, the co-founder and co-leader of the CUNY Contemplatives Network, and a Fellow with the Center for the Contemplative Mind in Society. He has published over a dozen articles, chapters, and books about, Buddhism, meditation, mental freedom, and free will, among other articles in the areas of ethics, philosophy of religion, and contemplative philosophy of education. His most recent book is Buddhist Perspectives on Free Will: Agentless Agency? (London: Routledge, 2016)
Dao — often translated as “the Way” — is China’s original and invaluable contribution to philosophy. Ineffable yet inexhaustible, Dao is metaphysically profound, empirically sound, and aesthetically renowned. From quantum physics to modern medicine, from fractal geometry to martial arts, from family relations to warring states, Dao’s insights are pervasive and effective. Daoism’s practices rank with those of Buddhism and Stoicism in cultivating peoples’ “best selves.” Dao conduces to individual serenity, social harmony, and political unity. This talk will be based on Lou Marinoff’s book “The Power of Dao,” using its case studies to illustrate some foundational ideas and their applications.
Lou Marinoff is Professor of Philosophy and Asian Studies at The City College of New York, and founding president of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association. He has authored internationally best-selling books on philosophy for everyday life. The Power of Tao reflects Lou’s lifelong devotion to Chinese philosophy. In youth he was a student of venerable Sing Ming Li, a grandmaster of Kung Fu and practitioner of Chinese medicine. In maturity Lou became a cultural advisor to venerable Xi Yongshin, Abbott of Shaolin Temple. As faculty of Horasis and the WEF, he serves global forums. His hobbies include photography, music, and tennis. Dao is his constant guide. For more information visit www.loumarinoff.com
Tuesday, May 2, 2017 at 6pm. This event is part of the Philosophy Series at The Cornelia Street Café, located at 29 Cornelia Street, New York, NY 10014 (near Sixth Avenue and West 4th St.). Admission is $10, which includes the price of one drink. Reservations are recommended (212. 989.9319)
New York Workshop for the Cosmos of Dōgen Presents
Dōgen in Dialogue with Analytic Philosophy
Dōgen (1200-1251) is a Japanese Zen master and one of the most original and intriguing philosophers in the entire history of Japan. In this workshop, some important themes of Dogen’s philosophy such as self, time, reality, causation, ineffability of the ultimate truth & etc., are reinterpreted, mainly but not exclusively, from the perspectives of analytic philosophy. Those analytic Dōgen studies purport to shed new lights to his thoughts as well as the contemporary philosophical debates on those topics. The workshop also features contemporary philosophical talks on Self, that are inspired by Dōgen’s insights. So, overall it aims to revive Dōgen as a fruitful dialogical partner for contemporary philosophy.
I Analytic Dōgen Studies
Yasuo DEGUCHI (Kyoto University): Self as Anyone
This talk will explore Dōgen’s ideas on self as well as time, being and reality in terms of analytic philosophy such as trope, formulating it as Self as Anyone.
Naozumi MITANI (Shinshū University): On the Elusiveness of Dōgen’s Ontology
This talk tries to explicate Dōgen’s Ontology that can be found in those chapters of Sōbōgenzō as Gebjōkōan, Busshō and Inmo, as non-monistic process philosophy, consulting philosophical ideas of contemporary philosophers such as W. Sellers and T. Nagel.
Shinya MORIYAMA (Shinshū University): Dōgen on Time and Self: Reflections on Uji
This talk will summarize the main theses of Sōbōgenzō’s Uji chapter as (1) time doesn’t pass, (2) time presupposes self that is to be reduced to everything in the world, and (3) time succeeds with each other without any gap between them. Then it tries to explicate Dōgen’ ideas on time and self that are encapsulated as those enigmatic claims in the light to contemporary metaphysics and philosophy of time.
Naoya FUJIKAWA (Tokyo Metropolitan University): Eloquence of Silence? : A Note on Dōgen on Silence
This talks will try to analyze Dōgen’ ideas on silence as the best way to convey Dharma in terms of contemporary pragmatics such as Gricean framework, mentioning to interpretations by Priest and Casati (forthcoming), Priest’s Fifth Corner of Four, Garfied’s Engaging Buddhism.
Hsun Mei CHENG (Kyoto University/National Taiwan University): The Knowledge of Reality and Reality in Dōgen’s Philosophy
Dōgen’s idea on our knowledge of the ultimate reality will be explored in terms of contemporary philosophical vocabularies such as knowing-that vs. knowing-how (G. Ryle, J. Stanley and T. Williamson), tacit knowledge (M. Planyi) and non-conceptual knowledge (F. Hoffman). Then it will be claimed that Dōgen’s knowledge should be understood as a tacit and non-conceptual knowing-how.
Hayato SAIGŌ (Nagahama Institute of Bio-Science and Technology): Dōgen on Interdependence: Nārgārjuna and Category Theory
Recently Yorizumi (2011) proposed a Saussurian reading of Dōgen’s idea of interdependence, following Toshihiko Izutsu’s interpretation of Buddhistic philosophy, interpretation it as an arbitrary construct of our minds. This talk tries to propose an alternative interpretation on his idea of interdependence in the light of
category theory in contemporary mathematics, focusing on reflexive features of Dōgen’s interpretation.
II Philosophy of Self a là Dōgen
Yasuo DEGUCHI (Kyoto University): Self as We: Toward a Revival of East Asian Holistic Self
This talks tries to argue for a new idea on holistic and somatic self; self as we, being inspired the speaker’s interpretation on Dōgen’s ideas on self; self as anyone.
Shigeru TAGUCHI (Hokkaido University): Self in Superposition: Husserl, Tanabe, and Dōgen
The aim of this talk is to compare Husserl’s concept of Ur-Ich with Tanabe Hajime’s concept of “species” in order to reconsider the basic state of “self” and its primordial relation to other selves. I claim that self is not a substance, but a kind of “mediation.”
Schedule
5 th Oct. 2018 Room 6300
Analytic Dōgen Studies I
10:00 – 11:30 Deguchi
Lunch
13:00 – 14:30 Mitani
14:40 – 16:10 Moriyama
16:20 – 17:50 Fujikawa
Dinner
6th Oct. 2018 Room 7113.XX
Analytic Dōgen Studies II
10:00 – 11:00 Hsun-Mei Cheng
11:00 – 12:00 Hayato Saigo
Lunch
II Philosophy of Self a là Dōgen
13:30 – 15:00 Deguchi
15:10 – 16:40 Taguchi
17:00 – 17:00 Lap Up Discussion
Dinner
Columbia Fall 2018 Colloquium Series
Laura Franklin-Hall (New York University)
Reception to follow
Thursday, November 15th, 2018
Simona Aimar (UCL)
Title: TBA
4:10 PM – 6:00 PM, 716 Philosophy Hall
Reception to follow
When we’re asked to give examples of philosophical questions, we’re likely to think of questions that are very, very old. Is the physical world all there is? How should I live? How do we know what we know? But some philosophical problems are quite new, made possible or urgent by new developments in science and culture. These are often the most exciting problems to think through.
On March 7th at 7:30 PM, Derek Skillings joins Brooklyn Public Philosophers to share his work on the philosophical consequences of the fact that we are holobionts – biological units composed of hosts and their associated swarms of microorganisms. If you’re interested in health, the problem of personal identity, the philosophy of biology in general, or the philosophical consequences of the fact that we’re made up of a bunch of little things which are themselves alive in particular, you’ll want to check this one out. Here’s the abstract:
“I, holobiont. Are you and your microbes a community or a single entity?”
You are a holobiont – a biological unit made up of a host and its associated microbiome (bacteria, protists, viruses and other microscopic entities). What consequences does this have for how we understand ourselves and other similar organisms? What are our spatial and temporal boundaries, and what does it mean to be a healthy holobiont? In this talk I will look at some alternatives for making sense of both holobiont individuality and “healthy holobiont/microbiome” talk. I will argue that existing accounts of human health are not appropriate for microbiomes, and that notions of ecosystem health face similar shortcomings. I will end by looking at some possibilities for understanding overall host health given the importance and ubiquity of microbiomes.
As usual, we meet at the Dweck Center at the Grand Army Plaza branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. Here’s the Facebook event! Tell everyone, please!