Lectures on Wittgenstein and Hume
delivered by
Mark Steiner
Emeritus Professor of Philosophy,
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
2-4 pm
Wednesday,
Nov 16, Nov 30, Dec 7
The CUNY Graduate Center,
Room 9205/6
SWIP-Analytic’s session, “Women in Philosophy: Publishing, Jobs, & Fitting In” will be a roundtable featuring Elise Crull (City College, CUNY), Una Stojnic (NYU), and Denise Vigani (Drew University). They will discuss work habits, publishing, and job searches, among other things.
Elise Crull is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy, City College, CUNY. She received a B.Sc in Physics from Calvin College, and holds an M.A. in Philosophy and Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Notre Dame. Among her primary interests is the historical and philosophical foundations of quantum mechanics (cf. her book, The ‘Einstein Paradox’: Debates on Nonlocality and Incompleteness in 1935, Cambridge University Press 2017, and an edited volume, Grete Hermann: Between Physics and Philosophy, Springer 2017 – both with G. Bacciagaluppi). She has also published on the metaphysics of quantum decoherence and on interpretational issues within quantum gravity and relativistic cosmology, and enjoys puzzling over more general topics at the intersection of physics and ontology.
Una Stojnic is a Bersoff Assistant Professor/ Faculty Fellow in Philosophy at NYU and a Research Fellow in Philosophy at the School of Philosophy at ANU. In fall 2017, she will join the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University as an Assistant Professor of Philosophy. She earned her PhD in Philosophy and a Certificate in Cognitive Science from Rutgers University in 2016. She mainly works in philosophy of language, formal semantics and pragmatics of natural languages, and philosophical logic. Her research aims at understanding and modeling language and linguistic communication. This situates her work within a network of traditional questions in philosophy of language, as well as within a set of empirical questions in linguistics and cognitive sciences.
Denise Vigani is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Drew University. She recently earned her Ph.D. in Philosophy and Certificate in Women’s Studies from The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her primary areas of research are virtue ethics and moral psychology. Her current research agenda is to offer an empirically plausible moral psychology of neo-Aristotelian virtue. While virtue may be an ideal that is hard to cultivate and perhaps rarely fully attained, she contends that it is very much a human ideal. It does not, as some have alleged, require us to become super-human or to cultivate traits that are beyond our psychological capabilities.
Everyone (men & women, philosophers & non-philosophers) is welcome at our public events.
April 25, Saray Alaya-Lopez (Cal. State, Sacramento), “Agency in Structural Explanations of Injustice.” 6:30-8:00pm, CUNY Graduate Center 5414.
May 23, Karen Jones (U. Melbourne), “Radical Consciousness and Epistemic Privilege.” 6:30-8:00pm, CUNY Graduate Center 5414.
Jim Weatherall (University of California, Irvine)
There will be 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 are welcome, but only the speaker’s dinner will be covered). If you have any other questions, please email isaac.wilhelm@rutgers.edu.
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Metro Area Philosophy of Science group (MAPS) Presents:
Heather Demarest (University of Colorado, Boulder)
Abstract: I argue that if we take the standard formulation of special relativity seriously, causation is frame-dependent. Thus, many ordinary causal claims require a parameter to specify the relevant frame of reference. This is in contrast to the widely-accepted belief that the causal structure of the world is objectively and absolutely determined by the light cone structure. Any event that can affect another (so the thought goes) must do so via light or matter, and the spacetime structure will tell us which of those came first, absolutely. For instance, according to Carl Hoefer (2009, 694, italics in original), if we assume that all signals travel slower than or equal to the speed of light, “we may take the light-cone structure of Minkowski spacetime as equally representing the causal structure of spacetime.” I argue that causation in relativistic spacetime is not so simple. Events can be extended in space and time, and events can be related to one another by distance and duration. Yet, according to special relativity, extension in space and time (i.e., distances and durations) are not invariant—they depend upon relative motion. Therefore, when ordinary events enter into causal relations, they do so relative to frames of reference, which can yield different causes and different effects. If you want to keep your promises, or bring about one outcome rather than another, you should take note of your reference frame.
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Abstract: Hugh Everett III’s pure wave mechanics, sometimes known as the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, was proposed as a solution to the quantum measurement problem. Both physicists and philosophers of physics have repeatedly claimed to be able to deduce the standard quantum probabilities from pure wave mechanics alone. We will consider why this is impossible, then consider how Everett himself understood quantum probabilities. This will involve clearly distinguishing between typical and probable quantum worlds.
The paper draws on the first sentence of Nicomachean Ethics I, but goes beyond interpretation in putting forward a new version of the Guise of the Good (GG). This proposal is Aristotelian in spirit, but defended on philosophical grounds. GG theorists tend to see their views as broadly speaking Aristotelian. And yet they address particular actions in isolation: agents, the thought goes, are motivated to perform a given action by seeing the action or its outcome as good. The paper argues that the GG is most compelling if we distinguish between three levels: the motivation of small-scale actions, the motivation of mid-scale actions or pursuits, and the desire to have one’s life go well. The paper analyzes the relation between small-, mid-, and large-scale motivation in terms of Guidance, Substance, and Motivational Dependence. In its Aristotelian version, the argument continues, the GG belongs to the theory of the human good.
Katja Maria Vogt, Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. She specializes in ancient philosophy, ethics, and normative epistemology. In her books and papers, she focuses on questions that figure both in ancient and in contemporary discussions: What are values? What kind of values are knowledge and truth? What does it mean to want one’s life to go well?
Presented by The New School for Social Research (NSSR) Philosophy Department.
SWIP-Analytic Schedule for Spring 2018
Here is a sneak peak at our exciting line-up of speakers and events for Spring 2018. Some times and rooms TBA.
Elanor Taylor, February 8, CUNY Graduate Center, The Committee for Interdisciplinary Science Studies, Room 5307, 4:00-6:00pm
Virginia Aspe Armella and Ma. Elena García Peláez Cruz (co-sponsored with SWIP-Analytic Mexico), March 2, NYU Room 202, 2:00-4:30pm
Round Table Women in Philosophy: Publishing, Jobs, and Fitting In (co-sponsored with NYSWIP), March 8, CUNY Graduate Center, The Committee for Interdisciplinary Science Studies, Room 5307, 4:30-7:30pm
Graduate Student Essay Prize Winner Presentation, April 12
Sophie Horowitz (UMass, Amherst), April 26
The CUNY Graduate Center Advanced Research Collaborative (ARC) and the Philosophy Program present a talk and book panel on:
RACIAL JUSTICE
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 3 (Rooms 9204-5)
4:15-5:00 PHILOSOPHY COLLOQUIUM LECTURE:
“Racial Justice”: Charles W. Mills, Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center
5:00-5:05 Break
5:05-5:45 BOOK PANEL on Charles W. Mills’s 2017 book, Black Rights/White Wrongs: The Critique of Racial Liberalism
Frank M. Kirkland (CUNY Hunter College & the Grad Center)
John Pittman (CUNY John Jay College)
5:45-6:30 Q & A
6:30-7:30 BOOK PARTY—Philosophy common room, 7113 (food and drink)
Efforts to diversify philosophy, at the curricular level, often focus on increasing the content covered in a semester: i.e., making room for more women on the syllabus, making room for more non-Western texts and thinkers, etc. Similarly, efforts to diversify philosophy, at the professional level, often focus on making room for marginalized topics and/or members of under-represented groups at conferences, in anthologies, and among faculty (both in terms of demographics and research specializations). This all serves to create an antagonistic situation where marginalized voices must fight to be heard and those in the discipline must make “tough choices” about where to cede precious resources such as syllabus space, publication credits, and faculty hires. I suggest that part of the antagonism, at least in the case of Asian philosophy, arises because we are trying to fit non-European texts and thinkers into disciplinary structures that are themselves designed to accommodate a Eurocentric model for philosophy. By “disciplinary structures” I mean the philosophical canon and historical narrative as well as departmental course offerings, curricular requirements for majors and minors, classroom pedagogical practices, and academic research methodologies. Truly transformative change must take place at the structural level. In this brief talk, I consider the scope of such changes, in concrete terms, and raise questions about the effects these changes would have on the disciplinary identity of philosophy as we know it today.
With a response from:
Andrew Lambert (College of Staten Island, CUNY)
In Plato’s Republic, Socrates argues that justice is good not only for its consequences but also in and of itself. Challenged by Glaucon and Adeimantus, who suggest that all human interactions are inherently competitive and that being unjust could help you get the better in these conflicts, Socrates establishes that justice is good because it is harmony in the city and in the soul. If justice is a kind of health of the soul, then surely it is better to be just than unjust. This claim might ameliorate the concerns of Glaucon and Adeimantus, but I will argue that Plato does more than address the vision of justice brought forth by Socrates’ interlocutors. Particularly through the contrasts among the different kinds of lives that are either described or depicted in the Republic, Plato points his readers toward a conception of justice that reveals it as the ground of mutuality, reciprocity, dialogue and friendship. In fact, the Republic reveals justice to be necessary to the philosophical life and, hence, to the best kind of life.
There is a broad consensus that Aristotle introduced the concept of matter in order to develop a consistent account of substantial change. However, it is disputed which role matter fulfills in substantial change. According to the traditional interpretation, matter persists while taking on or losing a substantial form. According to a rival interpretation, matter does not persist in substantial change; instead, it is an entity from which a new substance can emerge and which ceases to exist in this process. In my view, both interpretations are problematic in the light of Aristotle’s broader ontological project and are at odds with the way Aristotle describes the substantial generation of living beings. On the basis of Aristotle’s biological theory, I will suggest that Aristotelian matter is a continuant in substantial generation, but does not satisfy the common criteria for persistence that apply to individual substances.
Anna Schriefl
Anna Schriefl is Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin (assistant professor) at the University of Bonn, and currently a visiting scholar at the New School. She has published a book about Plato’s criticism of money and wealth, and most recently an introduction into Stoicism (both in German).