Propositional dynamic logic (PDL) is a framework for reasoning about nondeterministic program executions (or, more generally, nondeterministic actions). In this setting, nondeterminism is taken as a primitive: a program is nondeterministic iff it has multiple possible outcomes. But what is the sense of “possibility” at play here? This talk explores an epistemic interpretation: working in an enriched logical setting, we represent nondeterminism as a relationship between a program and an agent deriving from the agent’s (in)ability to adequately measure the dynamics of the program execution. More precisely, using topology to capture the observational powers of an agent, we define the nondeterministic outcomes of a given program execution to be those outcomes that the agent is unable to rule out in advance. In this framework, determinism coincides exactly with continuity: that is, determinism is continuity in the observation topology. This allows us to embed PDL into (dynamic) topological (subset space) logic, laying the groundwork for a deeper investigation into the epistemology (and topology) of nondeterminism.
The seminar is concerned with applying formal methods to fundamental issues, with an emphasis on probabilistic reasoning, decision theory and games. In this context “logic” is broadly interpreted as covering applications that involve formal representations. The topics of interest have been researched within a very broad spectrum of different disciplines, including philosophy (logic and epistemology), statistics, economics, and computer science. The seminar is intended to bring together scholars from different fields of research so as to illuminate problems of common interest from different perspectives. Throughout each academic year, meetings are regularly presented by the members of the seminar and distinguished guest speakers.
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02/08/2019 Faculty House, Columbia University
4:00 PM
03/29/2019 Faculty House, Columbia University
4:00 PM
04/19/2018 Faculty House, Columbia University
4:00 PM
This essay tries to develop a “black radical Kantianism” – that is, a Kantianism informed by the black experience in modernity. After looking briefly at socialist and feminist appropriations of Kant, I argue that an analogous black radical appropriation should draw on the distinctive social ontology and view of the state associated with the black radical tradition. In ethics, this would mean working with a (color-conscious rather than colorblind) social ontology of white persons and black sub-persons and then asking what respect for oneself and others would require under those circumstances. In political philosophy, it would mean framing the state as a Rassenstaat (a racial state) and then asking what measures of corrective justice would be necessary to bring about the ideal Rechtsstaat.
Response by César Cabezas Gamarra.
Presented by the German Idealism Workshop
Conference Schedule
10AM Teddy Seidenfeld – Conditional Probability, Conditionalization, and Total Evidence
11AM Eleonora Cresto – Beyond Indeterminate Utilities. The Case of Neurotic Cake-Cutting
11:20AM Ignacio Ojea Quintana – Unawareness and Levi’s Consensus as Common Ground
11:40AM Rush Stewart – Uncertainty, Equality, Fraternity
1PM Nils-Eric Sahlin – Levi’s Decision Theory: Lessons Learned
1:45PM Wilfried Sieg – Scientific Theories as Set-Theoretic Predicates?
2:45PM Panel Discussion – Learning from Levi
Abstracts available in attached documents under “Supporting material.”
Memorial
A memorial service will be held at 5PM at St. Paul’s Chapel on the Columbia campus. Reception to follow on the 7th floor of Philosophy Hall.
In 1804 Schelling diagnosed our impending “annihilation of nature” due to our conceptual detachment from and consequent economic exploitation of our natural world. His critique of Modernity’s Cartesian Idealisms, effected through his inversion of the Kantian categories, results in a philosophical project whose relevance to our ongoing climate crisis is difficult to overstate.
Bruce Matthews
Bard College/BHSEC, professor of philosophy, research in German Idealism and Romanticism, with a focus on life and thought of F.W.J. Schelling, whose recent work revolves around Schelling’s critique of modernity with its anticipation of, as he wrote in 1804, ‘the annihilation of nature,’ and its relevance to the Anthropocene.
“Schelling in the Anthropocene: A New Mythology of Nature,” (Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, 2015), “Schelling: A Brief Biographical Sketch of the Odysseus of German Idealism,” in The Palgrave Handbook to German Idealism (2014), and “The New Mythology: Between Romanticism and Humanism,” in The Relevance of Romanticism (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Books include the forthcoming intellectual biography, Schelling: Heretic of Modernity (2018), Schelling’s Organic Form of Philosophy: Life as the Schema of Freedom (SUNY 2011).
Presented by the Philosophy Department at The New School for Social Research
The Vanishing Point of Existence: Kierkegaard and the Ethics of the Novel.
Presented by: Yi-Ping Ong, Associate Professor, Department of Comparative Thought and Literature, Johns Hopkins University.
Presented by Liberal Studies at The New School of Social Research
Selected speakers:
The Politics department at the New School for Social Research will host its 1st Graduate Conference in Political Theory on March 6-7th, 2020.
We are launching this event to provide graduate students in the history of political thought, political theory and political philosophy an opportunity to present and receive feedback on their work. A total of six (6) papers will be accepted and each of them will receive substantial comments from a New School graduate student, to be followed by a general discussion. We welcome submissions from all traditions, but we are particularly interested in providing a venue for those students working on critical approaches. We would also like to encourage applications from under-represented groups in the field.
We are delighted to announce that Professor Robyn Marasco (Hunter College, City University of New York) will deliver the inaugural keynote address.
Submissions for the conference are due by December 10th, 2019. Papers should not exceed 8,000 words (excluding footnotes and bibliography) and should be sent in PDF format with the help of the electronic form provided below. Papers should be formatted for blind review with no identifying information. Abstracts will not be accepted. A Google account is needed in order to sign-in to the submission form; if you don’t have one, please email us. Papers will be reviewed over the winter break and notifications will be sent out early January 2020.
For any questions, please contact NSSRconferencepoliticaltheory@gmail.com
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfqJWRPS5DBI-zlmS4-3m-FpZA3suckmInHSIlvayKoibzQYg/viewform
https://philevents.org/event/show/77746
This event will feature a thought-provoking panel discussion with sexual and reproductive justice experts on the value of the sexual and reproductive justice framework and how it can be applied to diverse stakeholders, settings, and contexts. Panelists will also highlight examples from around the world of momentum towards sexual and reproductive justice.
Event Information
Free and open to the public; registration is required for both in-person and online attendance. For additional information, please visit the event webpage. Please email Malia Maier at mm5352@cumc.columbia.edu with any questions. All in-person attendees must follow Columbia’s COVID-19 policies.
Hosted by the Global Health Justice and Governance Program at Columbia University.
In Sanskrit epistemology, philosophers are preoccupied with the notion of pramā. A pramā, roughly, is a mental event of learning or knowledge-acquisition. Call any such mental event a knowledge-event. In A Confection of Refutation (Khaṇḍanakhaṇḍakhādya), the 12th century philosopher and poet Śrīharṣa argued that knowledge-events are indefinable. Any satisfactory (and therefore non-circular) definition of knowledge-events will have to include an anti-luck condition that doesn’t appeal back to the notion of learning or knowledge-acquisition itself. But there is no such anti-luck condition. What is novel about Śrīharṣa’s argument is that it is motivated by his commitment to a certain “knowledge first” approach to epistemology: the view that knowledge-events are epistemically prior to other non-factive mental states and events. On this view, when we are trying to determine whether an agent has undergone a knowledge-event, we don’t initially ascribe to them some other non-factive mental event, and then check if that event meets some further conditions (like truth or reliability) necessary for it to count as a knowledge-event; rather, we treat certain mental events by default as knowledge-events until a defeater comes along. Surprisingly, Śrīharṣa argues that this kind of “knowledge first” epistemology should give us reason to doubt whether our ordinary attributions of knowledge-events are reliably tracking any sui generis psychological kind. In this talk, I reconstruct Śrīharṣa’s position.
With responses from Rosanna Picascia (Swarthmore College)
RSVP is required for dinner. Dinner will take place at a nearby restaurant. Please contact Lucilla at lm3335@columbia.edu for further information.
The importance of incorporating value pluralism into a theory of justice is recognized in many conceptualizations of justice. This pluralism is often seen as a reason to attend to a range of perspectives, perspectives which can function as a source of information in determining which principles should guide justice. However, philosophy’s ability to properly attend to different perspectives has received extensive attention in the criticisms of various non-ideal theorists, who argue that ideal-theoretical philosophy runs the risk of excluding important aspects of actual social problems. Taking these criticisms on board, this paper builds on non-ideal theory by arguing for a Wittgensteinian family resemblance approach to justice. I will explain how this linguistic practice-embedded understanding of justice can be a helpful tool for non-ideal theory, as it can give us insight into why, in various similar but different cases, the notion of justice is seen as applicable. In light of this approach, I will suggest a reorientation of the pluralist demand towards an empirical starting point.