THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
Welcomes:
JAKE DAVIS (CUNY Graduate Center)
With responses from:
CHARLES GOODMAN (SUNY Binghamton)
Please join at Columbia University’s Religion Department on FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24 at 5:30PM for his lecture entitled:
“‘The scope for Wisdom’: Early Buddhism on Reasons and Persons”
The idea that meditation leads to the realization that there is no self, and that this realization motivates selfless action for the welfare of all beings, is widely understood to be a central feature of Buddhist doctrine. Goodman’s (2009) recent interpretation of Buddhist ethics moves in this way from a reductionist metaphysical stance regarding persons to a consequentialist theory of ethics. Goodman draws from Derek Parfit’s influential arguments in Reasons and Persons (1984) in support of such a move; Parfit in turn explicitly claims that “Buddha would have agreed” with his reductionist view about persons. One strand of early Buddhist thought, however, suggests that meditation could not in principle show that there is no self, and that ethical evaluation should focus on emotional motivations for action rather than on consequences of action. This approach addresses ethical disputes over how to be, as well as metaphysical disputes over what there is, by appealing to the judgments that we ourselves would make if we were aware of the changing flow of experience in an alert and unbiased way. I develop this early Buddhist line of thought to bring out the novel contributions it has to make to contemporary philosophical discussions in ethics and metaphysics.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 24
5:30-7:30 pm
Rm. 101, 80 Claremont Ave, Columbia University
http://goo.gl/maps/zfUKH
– See more at: http://www.cbs.columbia.edu/cscp/2014/10/index.html#sthash.BOkCKua3.dpuf
Please join us in conversation with Philip Kitcher as we discuss themes from his new book, Life after Faith. While atheist writers gleefully cataloguing religion’s intellectual and moral vices have been numerous of late, too few have treated their target with the respect it deserves for successfully providing emotional comfort and social cohesion. Kitcher changes that, acknowledging religion’s virtues even as he constructs a secular humanist alternative to replace it.
Talk with him about this on Monday, February 23, 2015 at 7:00pm at Book Culture, 536 West 112th St., NY, NY (212) 865-1588
Science can explain the body, but can it explain the mind? The failure of scientists and philosophers to reach a consensus explanation of consciousness has led to a revival of interest in theories once widely dismissed, such as panpsychism. Robert Wright, Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary, explores the mind-body problem with renowned philosopher David Chalmers and the MacArthur-Award-winning novelist and philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein.
DAVID CHALMERS is Professor of Philosophy and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at New York University. He is best known for his work on consciousness, especially for his formulation of the “hard problem” of consciousness and his arguments against materialism, and is the author of the books The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, The Character of Consciousness, and Constructing the World. Chalmers has also written extensively about artificial intelligence and computation, metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of language.
REBECCA NEWBERGER GOLDSTEIN is a philosopher and novelist and the recipient of numerous honors, including a MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’ and the National Humanities Medal, awarded this past September by President Obama at a ceremony at the White House, as well as having been named Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association. Her books include The Mind-Body Problem, Thirty-Six Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction, and, most recently, Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away. She has also written studies of philosophers Kurt Gödel and Baruch Spinoza. As of 2016 Goldstein will be a Visiting Professor at New York University.
ROBERT WRIGHT is the author, most recently, of The Evolution of God, which was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His other books include The Moral Animal, which The New York Times Book Review named one of the ten best books of 1994, and Nonzero, which Bill Clinton called “astonishing” and instructed White House staff members to read. In 2009 Wright was named by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the top 100 global thinkers. Wright has written for The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Foreign Policy, and the op-ed pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Financial Times. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and his awards include the National Magazine Award for Essay and Criticism. Wright is Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and is editor-in-chief of the websites Bloggingheads.tv and MeaningofLife.tv.
This event is part of “Contentions,” an interview and debate series hosted by Robert Wright, Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary. Through conversations with prominent intellectuals, “Contentions” examines the relationship between science and spiritual questions.
Robert Wright, Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary, interrogates prominent physicist and ‘new atheist’ Lawrence Krauss on the origins of the universe, quantum weirdness, and the limits of scientific knowledge.
LAWRENCE KRAUSS is director of the Origins Project and Professor of Physics at Arizona State University. He has won numerous international awards and is the only physicist to have received the top awards from all three U.S. Physics Societies. He is the author of over 300 scientific publications and is also the author of 9 books including bestsellers The Physics of Star Trek and A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing. Krauss has recently delved into the film world as executive producer and subject of The Unbelievers, a documentary film that discusses science and reason. He has dedicated his time, throughout his career, to issues of science and society and has helped spearhead national efforts to educate the public about science, ensure sound public policy, and defend science against attacks at a variety of levels. In 2015 Krauss was named Humanist of the Year.
ROBERT WRIGHT is the author, most recently, of The Evolution of God, which was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His other books include The Moral Animal, which The New York Times Book Review named one of the ten best books of 1994, and Nonzero, which Bill Clinton called “astonishing” and instructed White House staff members to read. In 2009 Wright was named by Foreign Policy magazine as one of the top 100 global thinkers. Wright has written for The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Foreign Policy, and the op-ed pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Financial Times. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and his awards include the National Magazine Award for Essay and Criticism. Wright is Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and is editor-in-chief of the websites Bloggingheads.tv and MeaningofLife.tv.
This event is part of “Contentions,” an interview and debate series hosted by Robert Wright, Visiting Professor of Science and Religion at Union Theological Seminary. Through conversations with prominent intellectuals, “Contentions” examines the relationship between science and spiritual questions.
The Eastern Study Group of the NAKS invites submissions for its 15th annual meeting to take place at Columbia University on Friday and Saturday, May 4–5, 2018. Our host this year is Professor Patricia Kitcher.
Keynote Speakers:
Stephen Engstrom (Pitt)
Paul Guyer (Brown)
Submissions of detailed abstracts (1,000 words) or papers (no more than 5,000 words, including notes and references) should be prepared for blind review as PDF files. Please include a word count at the end of your abstract or paper. Please supply contact information in a separate file. If you are a graduate student, please indicate this in your contact information.
The selection committee welcomes contributions on all topics of Kantian scholarship (contemporary or historically oriented), including discussions of Kant’s immediate predecessors and successors. Reading time is limited to 30 minutes, followed by 30 minutes of discussion. The best graduate student paper will receive a $200 stipend and be eligible for the Markus Herz Prize. Women, minorities, and graduate students are encouraged to submit.
Papers already read or accepted at other NAKS study groups or meetings may not be submitted. Presenters must be members of NAKS in good standing.
Papers will be posted in the “members only” section of the NAKS website and circulated in advance among participants, who are expected to have read them at the time of the conference.
ENAKS receives support from NAKS and host universities. Earlier programs are available on our website: http://word.emerson.edu/enaks/
For questions about ENAKS or the upcoming meeting, please contact Kate Moran (kmoran@brandeis.edu).
Submission Deadline: January 15, 2018
Time: May 4–5, 2018
Place: Columbia University
Please send all abstracts electronically to Kate Moran, kmoran@brandeis.edu
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
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
How is the ancient exhortation to “know thyself” related to consolation, virtue, and the study of nature? How did the commitment to self-knowledge shift over the centuries in writings by Islamic, Jewish, Christian, and early modern natural philosophers? How did medieval women contribute to modern notions of self, self-knowledge, and knowledge of nature? This conference explores the meditative “reflective methodology” from its ancient roots, through medieval Christian, Muslim, and Jewish traditions to the so-called “new” methodologies of early modern science. Speakers include Souleymane Bachir Diagne, Pierre Force, Clémence Boulouque, Christia Mercer, and Pamela Smith.
Points of focus will be: (1) the relation between the ancient imperative to “know thyself” and medieval concerns to reflect on one’s self as a means to find ultimate truths; (2) the meditative genre as it developed from Augustine’s Confessions through Christian and Islamic spiritual exercises to late medieval Christian meditations and early modern kabbalist writings; (3) the continuity between medieval meditations and the reflective methodology of early modern science; and (4) the meditative genre’s afterlife in Freud, Foucault, Arendt, and contemporary science.
Conference co-sponsored by the Center for New Narratives in Philosophy, the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, the Departments of Philosophy, French, English and Comparative Literature and the Maison Française
To download a PDF about this event click here.