Wednesday, October 8th, 6:00 p.m.
Jurow Lecture Hall, NYU Silver Center for Arts and Science 100 Washington Square East (between Waverly & Washington Place)
Branka Arsic, Columbia University
Andrew Cole, Princeton University
John McDowell, University of Pittsburgh
Aristides Baltas, National Technical University of Athens
Moderated by Etienne Balibar, Columbia University
Aristides Baltas is Professor of Philosophy and Philosophy of Science at the National Technical University of Athens. His work has sought to bridge analytic and continental approaches to philosophy and traverses the areas of physics, mathematics, psychoanalysis, and historical materialism. He has written widely on Spinoza, Marx, Freud, Benjamin, Althusser, Balibar, and Derrida and has published several books on the relation between philosophy and politics. He received the prestigious State Award for Nonfiction in 2002 for his book, Aspects and Objects of Self, and the Prize for Excellence in Academic Teaching, awarded by the President of the Hellenic Republic. His books include On the Epistemology of Louis Althusser (1994), Hosting Jacques Derrida: In the Margins of Science and Politics(1996), Newton’s Unconscious and Freud’s Apple (2004), and Peeling Potatoes or Grinding Lenses: Spinoza and Young Wittgenstein Converse on Immanence and Its Logic (2012).
Professor Deirdre Wilson (UCL/CSMN) will present at SWIP-Analytic Monday, October 13th from 5:00 – 7:00 at New York University, in the first floor auditorium, room 101, 5 Washington Place. She will discuss a recent trend that treats jokes, sarcasm, banter and hyperbole as forms of irony,
Professor Karen Lewis (Columbia) will present “Reverse Sobel Sequences in Static Semantics” in Room 302, NYU Philosophy Department, 5 Washington Place, New York City.
ABSTRACT: Sobel Sequences are consistent sequences of counterfactuals like the following:
(1a) If Sophie had gone to the parade, she would have seen Pedro dance.
(1b) But of course, if Sophie had gone to the parade and been stuck behind someone tall, she wouldn’t have seen Pedro dance.
But reverse the sequence, and it does not sound so good at all. This observation – that order makes a difference to the consistency of the sequence – motivated Kai von Fintel and Thony Gillies to abandon the classic Lewis-Stalnaker semantics and adopt a dynamic semantic account of counterfactual conditionals. Subsequently, Sarah Moss defended the classic Lewis-Stalnaker semantics against the charge that it need be abandoned because of Reverse Sobel Sequences, arguing for a pragmatic account of the infelicity of the sequences. I argue that ultimately both the dynamic semantic account and Moss’s account are untenable, but that seeing what is good about each account points the way to the right positive story. Finally, I defend a positive view that attributes the effect of counterfactuals on the context to pragmatics, but treats the effect of the context on counterfactuals as semantic.
If you wanted to prepare for the topic in advance, the paper by Sarah Moss on Sobel sequences is available online here.
Arianna Falbo
Simon Fraser University
“Why Two (or more) Belief-Dependent Peers are Better Than One”
1:00-3:00 PM, Room 202
NYU Philosophy Department
5 Washington Place, NYC
Joint NYU Department Tea & SWIP-Analytic Reception to Follow
ABSTRACT: The following principle is widely assumed in the literature surrounding the epistemology of peer disagreement: When S disagrees with a group of epistemic peers P1, P2, P3. . . Pn concerning the truth of p, if S has already taken into account the dissent of P1, then S’s disagreement with P2, P3. . . Pn does not need to be accounted for if the beliefs of these subsequent dissenters are not independent of P1’s belief that p. Hence, S can be rationally excused from considering these subsequent dissenters. I call this assumption ‘Belief-Dependence Excusal’ and argue that it is false. This is because the epistemic perspective of a peer can itself be evidentially significant irrespective of whether or not her beliefs are independent of other dissenters that I have already rationally accounted for. I focus on testimonial belief-dependence as it applies to a group of dissenters whose beliefs are all (at least partly) justified by the same report.
Everyone (men & women, philosophers & non-philosophers) is welcome at our public events.
SWIP-Analytic is a branch of the New York Society for Women in Philosophy dedicated to providing a forum for women in the New York area working on language, mind, metaphysics, logic, ethics, epistemology, and philosophy of science. It strives to continue NYSWIP’s commitment to being resource for all women in philosophy in the New York area.
SWIP-Analytic Spring 2017 Events
Friday February 10th, 11am- 1pm
GC, CUNY, The Committee for Interdisciplinary Science Studies, Room 5307
Roundtable Discussion: “Women in Philosophy: Publishing, Jobs, and Fitting In”
Speakers:
Elise Crull (City College)
Una Stojnik (NYU)
Denise Vigani (Drew College)
Friday March 10th, 10am- 12pm
NYU, Philosophy Department, Room 202
Speaker: Romina Padró (The Saul Kripke Center, GC, CUNY)
Title to be confirmed
Friday April 21st, 10am- 12pm
NYU, Philosophy Department, Room 202
Speaker: Winner of the SWIP-Analytic Essay Prize (TBD)
Friday May 5th, 11am- 13om
GC, CUNY (Room TBA).
Speaker: Alyssa Ney (UC Davies)
“Physics and Fundamentality”
CALL FOR PAPERS
SWIP-Analytic
2017 Graduate Student Essay Prize
SWIP-Analytic invites women graduate students to submit abstracts and papers in the areas of language, mind, metaphysics, logic, ethics, epistemology, & philosophy of science for consideration for a two-hour presentation at SWIP-Analytic in NYC.
https://philevents.org/event/show/29366
One student’s paper will be accepted for presentation on April 21st, 2017. The student will be awarded the 2017 SWIP-Analytic Graduate Student Paper Prize of $250. The winner will also be reimbursed for up to $250 of travel expenses.
Submission Requirements
(1) a pdf, .doc, or .docx of a maximum 300 word abstract and 5,000 word paper prepared for blind review
(2) document of identification with name, institution, and email address
Email both to swipanalytic@gmail.com by February 15th, 2017.
Notifications of decisions will be sent by March 15th 2017. The winning student paper presentation will take place on Friday, April 21st 2017 in New York City.
Please send any questions to swipanalytic@gmail.com.
SWIP-Analytic is made possible through the generous support of NYU’s New York Institute of Philosophy, The John H. Kornblith Family Chair, and The CUNY Graduate Center Department of Philosophy, and The Committee for Interdisciplinary Science Studies.
SWIP-Analytic continues the Society for Women in Philosophy’s commitment to being a resource for all women in philosophy by providing a forum for women working in language, mind, metaphysics, logic, ethics, epistemology, and philosophy of science. Let us know at swipanalytic@gmail.com if you’d like to subscribe or unsubscribe from the SWIP-Analytic email list.
Philosophers have employed two different varieties of felt necessity to explain central aspects of agency in addiction and love, respectively. In the case of addiction, the relevant felt need is often described in terms of an appetite, whereas love is characterized by necessities arising from a particular kind of caring. On Dr. Wonderly’s view, the extant literature offers an instructive, but incomplete picture of the roles of felt necessity in addiction and love. Dr. Wonderly argues that a third form of felt necessity – attachment necessity – often better captures central aspects of agency in love and addiction. Recognizing the role of attachment necessity will not only illuminate how felt necessity can impact the value of certain relationships, but it will also allow us to discern important features of addiction and love that remain obscured on extant approaches.
Monique Wonderly is the Harold T. Shapiro Postdoctoral Research Associate in Bioethics. She is primarily interested in puzzles at the intersection of ethics and the nature of emotions. She has published in the areas of applied ethics, philosophy of emotion, and history of philosophy. Her current research focuses on emotional attachment – and in particular, on questions concerning moral agency and ethical treatment that arise when considering certain attachment-related pathologies, including psychopathy and (some forms of) addiction. For more, visit here.
Reception to follow.
The standard way to show the consistency of a theory, or the independence of a given statement from that theory, is to exhibit a model. But there’s more than one thing that’s been called a “model” as this notion has evolved from its original role in 19th century foundations of geometry to its current role as a universallyapplicable tool in logic. This talk investigates some of the changes that bring us to the modern notion, and asks to what extent various kinds of model do, or don’t, successfully demonstrate various kinds of consistency and independence.
When: Friday October 20, 11:00am-1:00pm (with reception to follow)
Where: NYU Philosophy Department, 5 Washington Place, Room 202
Nina Emery (Mount Holyoke), November 3, The Graduate Center, CUNY