It’s the last Brooklyn Public Philosophers talk of the season! Tomorrow, Thursday May 10th, Kate Manne (Cornell) is coming to the Brooklyn Public Library to discuss her work on misogyny, sexism, the difference between the two, and the weird amount of sympathy that society grants to perpetrators of sexual violence. If you’re interested in #MeToo, excuses, and how to manage one another’s feelings about assaults on patriarchy, this is for you.
In her recent book, Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny (Oxford University Press: 2017), Kate Manne characterizes misogyny as the “law enforcement” branch of patriarchy, which serves to police, enforce, or restore patriarchal social order—often by visiting hostility on girls and women for perceived violations of gendered norms and expectations. As well as complementary ideologies (most notably, sexism), misogyny also has a flipside. And this flipside needs to be examined: the exonerating narratives and disproportionate sympathy of which comparatively privileged men tend to be the beneficiaries. Manne calls the latter ‘himpathy.’
In the May edition of Philosophy in the Library, Manne departs from the main example of himpathy which she discusses in her book—that of Brock Turner, the convicted sexual assailant and then student at Stanford University. Turner’s trial became notorious when he received disproportionate and inappropriate sympathy over his female victim from multiple sources, including the judge who found him guilty.
As Manne will discuss, this turns out to be only one variety of himpathy among many.
May 10 th / 7:30 P.M.
Brooklyn Public Library
10 Grand Army Plaza
100% free and open to the public
DATES:
October 4 and 5, 2018
LOCATION:
Feil Hall, Forchelli Conference Center, 22nd Floor, 205 State Street Brooklyn, New York
Sponsored by The Hastings Center and Brooklyn Law School’s Center for Health, Science and Public Policy; co-sponsored by Columbia University’s Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics and Harvard Medical School’s Center for Bioethics
Access the conference flyer here.
SPEAKERS:
| Catherine Bliss (University of California, San Francisco) | Alondra Nelson (Columbia University) |
| Catherine Clune-Taylor (Princeton University) | Carolyn Neuhaus (The Hastings Center) |
| Eva Kittay (SUNY Stony Brook) | Jenny Reardon (UC Santa Cruz) |
| Melinda Hall (Stetson University) | Sandra Soo-Jin Lee (Stanford University) |
| Colin Koopman (University of Oregon) | Joe Stramondo (San Diego State University) |
| Leslie Larkin (Northern Michigan University) | Jessica Kolopenuk (University of Alberta) |
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE:
Thursday, October 4, 8:15 am – 5:00 pm
REGISTRATION AND CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST: 8:15-9:00
- 9:00-9:10 Erik Parens, Welcome on Behalf of The Hastings Center
- 9:10-9:20 Karen Porter Welcome on Behalf of Brooklyn Law School
- 9:20-9:30 Joel Michael Reynolds Welcome and Introductory Remarks
- 9:30-10:20 Colin Koopman “Coding the Self: The Biopolitics & Infopolitics of Genetic Sciences”
SHORT BREAK: 10:20-10:40
- 10:40-11:40 Lesley Larkin “On Contemporary Literature and the ‘Good Bionarrative Citizen”
LUNCH: 11:40-1:00
- 1:00-1:50 Sandra Soo-Jin Lee “How Is Social Networking and Direct-To-Consumer Genetic Testing Shaping The Choices and Conundrums of the Biocitizen?”
- 1:50-2:40 Melinda Hall “On The Language of Risk and the Marginalization of Bodies”
BREAK: 2:40-3:10
- 3:10-4:00 Catherine Clune-Taylor “What Does The History of Medicine Teach about the Advent of Genomics as “Truth” Concerning Categories of Embodiment such as Sex and Sexuality?”
- 4:00-5:00 Joseph Stramondo “How Does Genomics Shape Categories of Disability and How Might the Virtuous Biocitizen Respond?”
Friday, October 5, 2018, 8:15 am – 5:00 pm
REGISTRATION AND CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST: 8:15-9:00
- 9:00-9:50 Jessica Kolopenuk “How Does Colonialism and Racism Inform Genomic Knowledge and How Might Such Legacies Be Undermined?”
- 9:50-10:40 Catherine Bliss “Given Genomics’ Potential for Reinscription of Erroneous Notions of Race, How Should One Think about Race Ethically in the Genomic Age?”
SHORT BREAK: 10:40-11:00
- 11:00-11:50 Eva Kittay “How Much of a Gift or Weight Is Genomics from the Perspective of Care?”
LUNCH 11:50-1:00
- 1:00-1:50 Carolyn Neuhaus “On the Rhetoric that Exaggerates the Weight and Elides the Gift”
- 1:50-2:40 Alondra Nelson “The Politics of Genomics in the USA: the OSTP and the PMI”
SHORT BREAK: 2:40-3:00
- 3:00-4:00 Jenny Reardon “How Should We Understand the Relationship between Genomics, Justice, and Democracy?”
- 4:00-5:00 Roundtable Discussion
This conference will have live on-screen captioning and will be livestreamed. Send inquiries about the conference and any accessibility-related requests to reynoldsj@thehastingscenter.org. Requests for a reasonable accommodation based on a disability to attend this event should also be made to Louise Cohen, the BLS Reasonable Accommodations Coordinator, at louise.cohen@brooklaw.edu or (718) 780-0377.
On Wednesday, November 7th at 7:30 PM, Sarah Clark Miller (Penn State) joins us to discuss “The Art of Refusal: Overcoming Epistemic Injustice in the #MeToo Era.” She’ll talk about how survivors of sexual assault and harassment can deal with the fact that many people don’t believe them. It’s a difficult topic, but I think it’s really, really important. If you’re interested in the epistemological questions surrounding #MeToo – what standards of evidence are appropriate for sexual misconduct claims made in different sorts of contexts, what are the moral and epistemic reasons to believe women, what new concepts might survivors need to understand their own experiences – this might be one to check out.
As usual, we meet at the Dweck Center at the central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library (10 Grand Army Plaza). You can find more details at the Facebook event. I’d appreciate it if you could help spread the word
Despite remarkable strides across virtually all scientific disciplines, the nature of the relationship between our brain and our conscious experience—the “mind-body problem”—remains perhaps the greatest mystery confronting science today. Most neuroscientists currently believe that neural activity in the brain constitutes the foundation of our reality, and that consciousness emerges from the dynamics of complicated neural networks. Yet no scientific theory to date has been able to explain how the properties of such neurons or neural networks actually translates into our specific conscious experiences.
The prevalent view in cognitive science today is that we construct our perception of reality in real time. But could we be misinterpreting the content of our perceptual experiences? According to some cognitive scientists, what we perceive with our brain and our senses does not reflect the true nature of reality. Thus, while evolution has shaped our perceptions to guide adaptive behavior, they argue, it has not enabled us to perceive reality as it actually is. What are the implications of such a radical finding for our understanding of the mystery of consciousness? And how do we distinguish between “normal” and “abnormal” perceptual experiences?
Cognitive scientist Donald D. Hoffman and neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan join Steve Paulson to discuss the elusive quest to understand the fundamental nature of consciousness, and why our perception of reality is not necessarily what it seems.
*Reception to follow
This event is part of the Conversations on the Nature of Reality series.
Moderated by journalist Steve Paulson, Executive Producer of Wisconsin Public Radio’s To the Best of Our Knowledge, this three-part series at the New York Academy of Sciences brings together leading scientists and thinkers to explore the fundamental nature of reality through the lens of personal experience and scientific inquiry.
To learn more about each lecture and to purchase tickets, click on the links below.
- The Mystery of Our Mathematical Universe, Wednesday, October 10, 2018
- Human Cognition and the AI Revolution, Thursday, December 6, 2018
- Reality is Not As it Seems, Thursday, February 7, 2019
Søren Kierkegaard’s most famous work, Fear and Trembling, has the distinction of drawing near-universal derision from scholars of political theory and ethics. Dr. Dinan suggests that Kierkegaard’s readers haven’t accounted for his return to Socratic political philosophy as a direct riposte to the politics of G.W.F. Hegel and his successors. He considers the implications of Kierkegaard’s use of the ‘questionable stratagem’ of Socratic irony in relation to politics, ethics, Christian faith, and philosophy. Kierkegaard is concerned not with destroying political philosophy, but with restoring its attentiveness to paradox.
Dr. Matt Dinan, Assistant Professor, St. Thomas University
Upward mobility through the path of higher education has been an article of faith for generations of working-class, low-income, and immigrant college students. While we know this path usually entails financial sacrifices and hard work, very little attention has been paid to the deep personal compromises such students have to make as they enter worlds vastly different from their own. Measuring the true cost of higher education for those from disadvantaged backgrounds requires that we look at the ethical dilemmas of upward mobility—the broken ties with family and friends, the severed connections with former communities, and the loss of identity—faced by students as they strive to earn a successful place in society. Why are students from disadvantaged backgrounds disproportionately burdened with these costs? And how can institutions of higher education contend with them?
Brooklyn Public Philosophers is a forum for philosophers in the greater Brooklyn area to discuss their work with a general audience, hosted by the Brooklyn Public Library. Its goal is to raise awareness of the best work on philosophical questions of interest to Brooklynites, and to provide a civil space where Brooklynites can reason together about the philosophical questions that matter to them.
10/23 – Philosophy in the Library: Jennifer Morton on Education @ the Brooklyn Public Library’s Information Commons Lab // 7:30-9:00 PM
11/6 – Philosophy in the Library: Asia Ferrin on Mindfulness @ the Brooklyn Public Library’s Information Commons Lab // 7:30-9:00 PM
12/4 – Philosophy in the Library: Sebastian Purcell on Aztec Philosophy @ the Brooklyn Public Library’s Information Commons Lab // 7:30-9:00 PM
Brooklyn Public Philosophers is a forum for philosophers in the greater Brooklyn area to discuss their work with a general audience, hosted by the Brooklyn Public Library. Its goal is to raise awareness of the best work on philosophical questions of interest to Brooklynites, and to provide a civil space where Brooklynites can reason together about the philosophical questions that matter to them.
If you’re interested in finding out more, or if you’d like to give a talk, please e-mail Ian Olasov at his first and last name at gmail.com.
2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the birth of hip-hop, and the beginning of a sonic, cultural and socio-political revolution that changed the U.S. and the world. To commemorate the anniversary, Brooklyn Public Library will present NIGHT IN THE LIBRARY: THE PHILOSOPHY OF HIP-HOP on Saturday, June 17th, from 7 pm – 2 am at Central Library.
Join us for this FREE event that will take over the entire Central Library building to celebrate hip-hop culture past, present and future, with keynote addresses, live DJs, film screenings, discussions, debates and contemplative engagements. BPL invites you to celebrate hip-hop and spend a NIGHT IN THE LIBRARY.
Co-curated by LeBrandon Smith and Kelly Harrison. The Dilemma Series is curated by April R. Silver, founder of AKILA WORKSONGS.
Keynote Speakers: Lewis Gordon (University of Connecticut), Michael Nagenborg (Twente University), and Paula Cristina Pereira (Universidade do Porto)
The Philosophy of the City Research Group (POTC RG) is a global community of scholars dedicated to understanding the city and urban affairs. We invite you to join us for our tenth-anniversary conference.
Presentations on any philosophical issue about cities are welcome. Some topics include urban aesthetics, housing, local governance, conceptualizing cities, policy, infrastructure, distribution, recognition, urban technologies, nonhuman considerations, water issues, feeding the city, street art, energy, mobility, city life, urban culture, justice, the city in philosophy’s history, discrimination, public space, immigration, examining specific cities, urban expansion, and defining the city.
For individual submissions, provide abstracts of 300 words. For panels of 3-4, each abstract should be 200 words. The submission portal is available here. Deadline: May 1, 2023.
We are pleased to offer a Graduate Student Presentation Award of 300 USD and refunded registration ($50) to be given at the concluding ceremony. To be eligible, indicate a desire for consideration at the end of the submission. All participants are encouraged to submit revised versions of presentations to the Philosophy of the City Journal.
A special panel featuring Shane Epting, Michael Menser, and guests will discuss philosophy of the city’s progress, and possible future directions will be announced. For more information and questions, visit The Philosophy of the City Research Group’s website.