Our speaker next week will be Marija Jankovic, who is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Davidson College. Marija will present joint work with Greg Ray called ‘Knowledge and Linguistic Communication’:
My goal in this paper is to argue against a knowledge requirement on communicative success. I agree that something more that just getting things right is required for successful communication. But I claim that this additional element is not to be found in the domain of belief or knowledge. Instead, we should look for it in the domain of intention. I propose that communication is a collective intentional action type—a type of action that, like dancing the tango or playing basketball, has to be performed by a group of agents acting together intentionally. For that to happen, intentions of the agents have to be connected in the right way. This interlocking, I will suggest, is what is required for success in communication in addition to getting the correct message across. This same interlocking, instead of common knowledge of conventions, is what is required for speakers to share a language.
The workshop will take place on Monday, October 31st at 6:30 in room 302 of NYU’s philosophy building (5 Washington Place).
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We’re a community of philosophers of language centered in New York City. We have a meeting each week at which a speaker presents a piece of their own work relating to the philosophy of language.
During the Fall of 2016, we’ll meet at NYU (5 Washington Place, Room 302) on Monday evenings from 6:30 until 8:30. Please see our schedule of speakers below. Anyone with an interest in philosophy of language is welcome!
Fall 2016 Speakers
Sept 12
Nat Hansen (Reading/Stanford)
Sept 19
Zsofia Zvolenszky (Eötvös U, Budapest)
Sept 26
Peter Van Elswyk (Rutgers)
Oct 3
Valentine Hacquard (Maryland)
Oct 10
(No Workshop)
Oct 17
Kyle Rawlins (Johns Hopkins)
Oct 24
Rachel McKinney (Harvard)
Oct 31
Marija Jankovic (Davidson College)
Nov 7
Richard Stillman (CUNY)
Nov 14
Kristen Syrett (Rutgers)
Nov 21
Rachel Rudolph (Berkeley)
Nov 28
Kyle Blumberg (NYU)
Dec 5
Milo Phillips-Brown (MIT)
Dec 12
Craige Roberts (OSU)
The full program can be viewed here.
The workshop will bring together philosophers working in ancient epistemology with those working in contemporary epistemology to discuss issues relevant to the debates in both fields.
It was assumed until recently that the distinction between doxa and epistêmê, key players in ancient epistemology, maps directly onto the contemporary distinction between knowledge and belief. Recent interpreters of Plato and Aristotle have challenged this assumption. Some argue that epistêmê is closer to understanding than to knowledge because (for example) it requires explanation rather than justification, cannot be transmitted by testimony, is hard to come by, and can only be had of a restricted range of objects. Others argue that doxa is narrower than belief, perhaps closer to opinion, because (for example) doxa is excluded by epistêmê while belief is entailed by knowledge, doxa is imprecise and unclear while these are not essential features of belief, and doxa too has a restricted range of objects.
Contemporary epistemology tackles issues that are related to the debates above. Is knowledge to be distinguished from understanding and if so, which one should be seen as the proper goal of inquiry? Does understanding have value over and above the value of knowledge? Much like Plato and Aristotle, epistemologists aim to elucidate the conceptual relations between knowledge, understanding, justification, explanation, epistemic authority, and testimony. In addition, contemporary epistemologists sometimes produce fictional genealogies of epistemic concepts to arrive at an improved understanding of our epistemic practices. If epistêmê and doxa are distinct from knowledge and belief in a way indicated above, then it seems appropriate to raise the question whether the actual history of epistemic concepts can help to improve these fictional genealogies.
The presentations are followed by a response and a general discussion.Papers by speakers who specialize in Ancient epistemology will be assigned to commentators who specialize in contemporary epistemology and vice versa.
Presenters: Gail Fine (Cornell), Richard Foley (NYU), Jane Friedman (NYU), Allison Hills (Oxford), Robert Pasnau (Colorado), Whitney Schwab (Baltimore/NYU), Katja Vogt (Columbia), Ralph Wedgwood (USC).
Respondents: John Bengson (Harvard), Hugh Benson (Oklahoma), Paul Boghossian (NYU), Toomas Lott (NYU/Tartu), Jessica Moss (NYU), James Pryor (NYU), Michael Strevens (NYU).
Organisers:
September 7, 2017, 7:00pm EST
email tl1972 at nyu
Abstract: Traditional theories of knowledge often focus on the epistemic status of full beliefs. In Probabilistic Knowledge (forthcoming), I argue that like full beliefs, credences and other probabilistic beliefs can constitute knowledge. This talk applies probabilistic knowledge to problems in legal and moral philosophy. I begin by arguing that legal standards of proof require knowledge of probabilistic contents. For instance, proof by a preponderance of the evidence requires the factfinder to have greater than .5 credence that a defendant is liable, and also requires this probabilistic belief to be knowledge. Proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt requires knowledge of a significantly stronger content. The fact that legal proof requires knowledge explains why merely statistical evidence is insufficient to license a legal verdict of liability or guilt. In addition to explaining the limited value of statistical evidence, probabilistic knowledge enables us to articulate epistemic norms that are violated by acts of racial and other profiling. According to these norms, it can be epistemically wrong to infer from statistics that a person of Mexican ancestry is likely undocumented, for instance, even when inferring parallel facts about ordinary objects is perfectly okay.
Reception to follow in 6th floor lounge.
The Department of German at NYU and Deutsches Haus at NYU present a discussion between Slavoj Žižek, Rebecca Comay, and Frank Ruda which will revolve around Comay and Ruda’s book The Dash—The Other Side of Absolute Knowing.
Event information
In The Dash—The Other Side of Absolute Knowing (MIT Press, 2018), the authors present a reading of Hegel’s most reviled concept, absolute knowing. Their book sets out from a counterintuitive premise: the “mystical shell” of Hegel’s system proves to be its most “rational kernel.” Hegel’s radicalism is located precisely at the point where his thought seems to regress most. Most current readings try to update Hegel’s thought by pruning back his grandiose claims to “absolute knowing,” but Comay and Ruda invert this deflationary gesture by inflating what seems to be most trivial: the truth of the absolute is grasped only in the minutiae of its most mundane appearances. What if everything turns out to hinge on the most inconspicuous and trivial detail—a punctuation mark?
About the speakers
Slavoj Žižek, is a senior researcher at the Institute of Sociology, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and a visiting professor at a number of American Universities (Columbia, Princeton, New School for Social Research, New York University, University of Michigan). He obtained his Ph.D. in Philosophy in Ljubljana studying Psychoanalysis. He also studied at the University of Paris. Slavoj Zizek is a Hegelian philosopher, Lacanian psychoanalyst, and Marxist social analyst. He is the author of The Indivisible Remainder, The Sublime Object of Ideology, The Metastases of Enjoyment, Looking Awry: Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture, The Plague of Fantasies, and The Ticklish Subject. His latest publications are Disparities, and Antigone (both at Bloomsbury Press, London).
Rebecca Comay, is Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto. Other publications include Mourning Sickness: Hegel and the French Revolution (Stanford, 2011) and Hegel and Resistance, co-ed with Bart Zandtvoort (Bloomsbury, 2018).
Frank Ruda, is Senior Lecturer for Philosophy at the University of Dundee, UK. Other publications include: Reading Marx (with Slavoj Žižek and Agon Hamza)(Polity, 2018); Abolishing Freedom: A Plea for A Contemporary Use of Fatalism (Nebraska UP, 2016); For Badiou: Idealism without Idealism (Northwestern UP, 2015).
Attendance information
Events at Deutsches Haus are free of charge. If you would like to attend this event, please send us an email to deutscheshaus.rsvp@nyu.edu. Space at Deutsches Haus is limited, please arrive ten minutes prior to the event. Thank you!
“A Dash of Hegel: A Discussion with Slavoj Žižek, Rebecca Comay, and Frank Ruda” is a DAAD supported event.