Donald Ainslie
University of Toronto
Stefanie Grüne
University of Potsdam
Susan James
Birkbeck, University of London
Jonathan Lear
University of Chicago
Michael G. F. Martin
University College London
Ulrich Schlösser
University of Tübingen
This talk describes and criticizes traditional approaches to moral psychology, which try to understand moral judgments through questionnaires. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues that it is more accurate and illuminating to use tests of implicit attitudes modeled on tests of implicit racial attitudes. Sinnott-Armstrong explains one such test that we have used with great success in predicting not only personality variables but also behavior (charity donations and voting). Finally, he draws out potential lessons for traditional issues in moral philosophy and legal responsibility.
Walter Sinnott–Armstrong is Chauncey Stillman Professor of Practical Ethics at Duke University in the Philosophy Department, the Kenan Institute for Ethics, the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, and the Law School. He publishes widely in ethics, moral psychology and neuroscience, philosophy of law, epistemology, informal logic, and philosophy of religion.
CALL FOR PAPERS
7th Annual New York City Workshop
in Early Modern Philosophy
Fordham University
Lincoln Center Campus
12th Floor Lounge
May 13-14, 2017
Keynote Speakers:
François Duchesneau (Université de Montréal)
Christia Mercer (Columbia)
Anja Jauernig (NYU)
The workshop aims to foster exchange and collaboration among scholars, students, and anyone with an interest in Early Modern Philosophy. We welcome presentations of papers on any topic in early modern philosophy (roughly covering the period 1600-1800).
Please submit abstracts of 250-300 words to newyorkcityearlymodern@gmail.com no later than January 15, 2017.
Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus is located on the western side of Manhattan at 60th Street and Columbus Avenue, about two blocks from Columbus Circle at the southwest corner of Central Park. More details about the program, accommodation options, and other practical matters will be made available On This Website.
Conference Organizers:
Ohad Nachtomy, Bar-Ilan (ohadnachtomy@mac.com)
Reed Winegar, Fordham (bwinegar@fordham.edu)
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.
World renowned and revered French writer, literary critic, and philosopher Hélène Cixous celebrates her 80th birthday in 2017. To mark this occasion, New York University is organizing a major event that will bring Hélène Cixous to the Washington Square Campus once again, together with a number of distinguished scholars and writers from Europe and the United States. Cixousversaire, A Celebration of Hélène Cixous will include, from September 14 to 16, 2017, a keynote address by Hélène Cixous; a discussion with Hélène Cixous, Karen Finley, and Avital Ronell; a screening by filmmaker Olivier Morel; readings by director Daniel Mesguich; a roundtable on Cixous’ theater, including Anne Bogart, Hélene Cixous, and Judith Miller; and presentations by Cixous specialists Peggy Kamuf, Marta Segarra and others; and writers Camille Laurens and Bertrand Leclair.
For further information, contact Melanie Hackney at 212-992-9848 or Tom Bishop at 212-998-8710.
Margaret Atherton
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
William Bristow
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Michael Friedman
Stanford University
James Kreines
Claremont McKenna College
Samantha Matherne
University of California, Santa Cruz
Kris McDaniel
Syracuse University
Ian Proops
University of Texas, Austin
Sam Rickless
University of California, San Diego
Dorothy Rogers
Montclair State University
Eric Watkins
University of California, San Diego
Organisers:
Don Garrett
New York University
Anja Jauernig
New York University
Béatrice Longuenesse
New York University
John Richardson
New York University
The metaphysics of implicit bias has been an area of heated debates involving philosophers and psychologists. Most theorists of implicit bias posit that associations underwrite implicit bias. Recent dissenters have argued that propositional attitudes undergird this pernicious attitude. However, the propositional attitude view of implicit bias does not satisfyingly explain its various manifestations that are underwritten by its diverse contents. In this paper my criticism targets: (1) legitimacy of ascriptions of unconscious mental content, and (2) the phenomenology of implicit bias. The first criticism focuses on a common assumption in philosophy of mind—the equivalence of content in the conscious and unconscious domain—and raises problems regarding the propositional attitude theorist’s strategy to ascribe propositional attitudes to explain implicit biases which they locate in the unconscious mind of the subject. Second, I argue that the similarities between a more familiar mental phenomenon—the phenomenon of moods—and the conscious manifestations of implicit bias have been ignored. I identify several parallels between moods and implicit bias: their context-dependence, the subject’s lack of awareness of their source, their effects on the salience and valence of their targets, and their simultaneous responsiveness and recalcitrance to reasons. I argue that an explanatorily robust view of implicit bias must be commensurate with this analogy. I end with a proposal that I dub the indeterminate content view, which avoids these problems and promises explanatory power.
We will also be giving an award to 2nd-place essay prize winner Elis Miller (Harvard) for her paper “Whether to Suspend Judgment”.
Gottlob Frege famously argued that we should always ‘always separate sharply the psychological from the logical, the subjective from the objective’. While analytic philosophers have generally followed this advice when discussing logic and mathematics (in their rejection of ‘psychologism’ about these things), they have not followed it when discussing the psychological itself. It might be thought that if psychologism was true of anything, it is true of the psychological. But much 20th and 21st century analytic philosophy of mind has thought otherwise, approaching the study of the mind using ideas from logic, semantics and the theory of meaning (e.g. the proposition, truth, reference etc.). In this lecture I make two claims: (i) that its rejection of psychologism is one of the things that has made it difficult for philosophy of mind to gain a proper understanding of consciousness, and (ii) that despite the widespread rejection of behaviourism in philosophy and psychology, contemporary philosophy of mind still works with a conception of consciousness that derives from mid-20th century behaviourism. The relationship between psychologism and behaviourism explored here is different, though complementary to, Ned Block’s discussion In his classic 1981 paper, ‘Psychologism and Behaviourism’.
NYIP Lunchtime Talk: Tim Crane (CEU)
“Psychologism and Behaviourism Revisited”
12:30pm – 2:00pm
NYU Department of Philosophy, Room 202
5 Washington Place, New York, NY 10003
Lunch will be served.
For information, contact: nyip.events@nyu.edu
Fourteenth Annual NYU Conference on Issues in Modern Philosophy
17th/18th Century Philosophy
19th Century Philosophy
20th Century Philosophy
November 9, 2018 – November 10, 2018
Department of Philosophy, New York University
60 Washington Square South
New York 10012
United States
The workshop, which is now in its 9th year, aims to foster exchange and collaboration among scholars, students, and anyone with an interest in Early Modern Philosophy. This year’s workshop will focus on the topic of “Freedom and Evil” in Early Modern Philosophy (roughly the period from 1600-1800).
We welcome submissions on the conference topic, which may be broadly construed to include the problem of free will, theodicy, political and social liberty, and evil practices and institutions. For consideration, please submit abstracts of 250-300 words to newyorkcityearlymodern@gmail.com no later than December 31, 2018.