The New York City Wittgenstein Workshop has the following workshops scheduled for this semester and more planned workshops to be announced soon.
All workshops are on Fridays from 4 to 6 pm in room D1106.
2/22 — Zed Adams (the New School) — History of the digital/analogue distinction in philosophy
4/19 — Nickolas Pappas (CUNY) — “Plato on the Opposite of Philosophy”
4/26 — Larry Jackson
5/03 — Nuno Venturinha (Nova University of Lisbon) — “Autobiographical Writing, Self-knowledge, and the Religious Point of View.”
5/10 — Pierre-Jean Renaudi (Lyon)
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
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).
Selected speakers:
Please R.S.V.P.
The City University of New York, Graduate Center, is hosting its second Emotion Workshop. This semester, we are profiling the work of local scholars and visitors to New York. Topics relate to mind, social philosophy, epistemology, aesthetics, experimental philosophy, and psychology. The workshop will be 1 day long. Participants should not feel obligated to attend every session, but we do ask you to RSVP (this is to make sure everyone is allowed Saturday building access). If you think there is a chance you will join us for any part of the day, please send your name to Sarah Arnaud, postdoc in the Philosophy Program and co-organizer: sarnaud@gc.cuny.edu
PROGRAM
10:00-10:15 Introduction
10:15-11:00 Jesse Prinz (CUNY, Philosophy), “Are emotions socially constructed?”
11:00-11:15 Break
11:15-12:00 Rodrigo Díaz (Bern, Philosophy), “Folk emotion concepts”
12:00-12:45 Juliette Vazard (NYU / Institut Jean Nicod, Paris / University of Geneva), “Epistemic anxiety”
12:45-2:15 Break (lunch)
2:15-3:00 S. Arnaud & K. Pendoley (CUNY, Philosophy), “Intentionalism and the understanding of emotion experience”
3:00-3:15 Break
3:15-4:00 Jonathan Gilmore (CUNY, Philosophy), “Emotion, absorption, and experiential imagining”
4:00-4:45 Jordan Wylie (CUNY, Psychology), “Investigating the influences of emotion on object recognition”
4:45-6:00 Reception
What makes right acts right? A Stoic answer to Ross’s question.
When W.D. Ross poses the question, “what makes right acts right?” (The Right and the Good ch. 2), he is asking a question that is prior to the deliberative question, “how do I determine the right thing to do?” The Stoics recognize this: in De Officiis 1.7, Cicero says that every inquiry about duty has two parts: (1) a theoretical part concerned with the end of goods and evils, which addresses such matters as whether all duties are perfect, whether some are more important than others, and what are the kinds of duties, and (2) a practical part which sets out rules (praecepta) by which our conduct can be made to conform with the end. This paper focuses on (1) and in particular asks Ross’s question about Stoic right actions (kathêkonta).
The endpoint of Stoic deliberation is determining what token action is the right action. The paper begins with the Stoic distinction between a thing’s choiceworthiness, its intrinsic disposition to elicit a choice response in a suitable subject, and its possession being to-be-chosen. The determination of what is to-be-done is made by weighing against each other all the values of the relevant action types specified by their content (the so-called ‘intermediate actions’) that are in accordance with nature, as Stoic value theory says that according with nature is an objective reason to do an action. What constitutes the rightness of the token right action, and is given in its reasonable defense, is the same as what constitutes the rightness of a perfect (katorthôma) action. The Stoic distinction between right and perfect action depends on the action’s moral goodness—not rightness—which is due to its causal origin.
Presented by Professor Rachana Kamtekar (Cornell University)
This conference celebrates the 50th anniversary of the first publication of Saul Kripke’s masterpiece, Naming and Necessity, by showcasing new work on a range of topics on which it has had a lasting influence. These topics include, but are not limited to: the nature of names and natural kind terms; the failure of the description or cluster/description theories; the distinction between metaphysical necessity and epistemic apriority; empty names; the metaphysics of essence and origin; the nature of modality and possible worlds; conceivability and the epistemology of modality; the role of philosophical intuition; and the mind-body problem.
Dates: 12th and 13th December, from 9am to 5pm.
Venue: The CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue, New York, New York.
Format: hybrid
Registration: for both online and in person attendance, please register by the 28th of November, 2022 at https://forms.gle/Jbr3uaFx1ZwRxJpZ7.
Speakers:
Organisers:
Book discussion on Gwenda-lin Grewal’s, Thinking About Death in Plato’s Euthydemus. A Close Reading and New Translation (OUP 2022)
Speakers:
Gwenda-lin Grewal (NSSR)
Cinzia Arruzza (NSSR)
Nicholas Pappas (CUNY)
Thinking of Death places Plato’s Euthydemus among the dialogues that surround the trial and death of Socrates. A premonition of philosophy’s fate arrives in the form of Socrates’ encounter with the two-headed sophist pair, Euthydemus and Dionysodorus, who appear as if they are the ghost of the Socrates of Aristophanes’ Thinkery. The pair vacillate between choral ode and rhapsody, as Plato vacillates between referring to them in the dual and plural number in Greek. Gwenda-lin Grewal’s close reading explores how the structure of the dialogue and the pair’s back-and-forth arguments bear a striking resemblance to thinking itself: in its immersive remove from reality, thinking simulates death even as it cannot conceive of its possibility. Euthydemus and Dionysodorus take this to an extreme, and so emerge as the philosophical dream and sophistic nightmare of being disembodied from substance. The Euthydemus is haunted by philosophy’s tenuous relationship to political life. This is played out in the narration through Crito’s implied criticism of Socrates-the phantom image of the Athenian laws-and in the drama itself, which appears to take place in Hades. Thinking of death thus brings with it a lurid parody of the death of thinking: the farce of perfect philosophy that bears the gravity of the city’s sophistry. Grewal also provides a new translation of the Euthydemus that pays careful attention to grammatical ambiguities, nuances, and wit in ways that substantially expand the reader’s access to the dialogue’s mysteries.
When is anxiety justified? When does anxiety cease to function as an effective and reasonable signal preventing imminent threats, and when does it become an invasive projection of our own ghosts? My talk is divided into three sections. First, I will emphasize the anthropological relevance of anxiety: in various theoretical frameworks, the difference between free-floating anxiety and fear directed at a specific danger even serves as a criterion for distinguishing human beings from animals. Second, I will conduct a phenomenological analysis of anxiety focusing in particular on the altered relationship between perception and imagination. Third, I will address a specific form of anxiety which is particularly dominant in the context of our post-disciplinary societies: the feeling of being left behind. My talk presents a philosophical inquiry into the affective phenomenon that can both protect us from danger and be a danger in itself.
Bio:
Stefano Micali is a Professor at the KU Leuven and the Coordinator of the Husserl-Archives: Centre for Phenomenology and Continental Philosophy. He has published over 60 articles in different languages (English, German, Italian, French, and Dutch) in various areas of research ranging from psychopathology to religion, from political philosophy to aesthetics. He is the author of four monographic books: Überschüsse der Erfahrung (2008), Esperienze temporali (2008), Tra l’altro e se stessi (2020) and Phenomenology of Anxiety (2022). Together with Thomas Fuchs, he has edited several volumes focusing on the relation between psychopathology and philosophy. He is also co-editor of the DGAP (German Society for a Phenomenological Anthropology) series and the Phaenomenologica series (Springer).
Keynote: Harry Brighouse (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Pedagogy Workshop Leader: TBA
Location: The Graduate Center, CUNY—New York, New York
Abstracts & Workshop Applications due: July 31st 2023
Responses: August 31st 2023
Organizers: Michael Greer (CUNY), Maria Salazar (CUNY)
Contact email: gscope.committee@gmail.com
The committee for the Graduate Student Conference on Philosophy of Education (GSCOPE) invites abstracts for papers on the topic of Higher Education, Democracy, and Controversy. The theme of the conference & post-conference pedagogy workshop reflects the difficulty in creating and maintaining respectful discourse in higher-education classrooms, especially surrounding controversial empirical, moral, and political issues. Some argue that this is an equity issue. Undergraduate students who come from rural and/or underprivileged areas are more likely to experience alienation on campus, sometimes because they have never been exposed to certain “politically correct” language or ideas, and sometimes simply because they lack the financial and social capital that their peers have. It seems crucial (and follows from democratic and civic values) to foster safe learning environments for all students, especially those students who are more likely to feel alienated on college campuses and in elite spaces. At the same time, some argue that the aim of higher education is purely epistemological, and not civic or democratic. Proponents of this view might hold that free speech and academic freedom must be properly protected for higher education to perform its proper social function: education. What is the appropriate relationship between higher education, knowledge-production, teaching, free speech, and democracy? How can higher education instructors and professors be effective teachers in the light of these relationships?
Papers must pertain to higher educationbut maybe about anything from interpersonal classroom dynamicstoinstitutional policies to campus controversy. We are particularly interested in papers that explore the following topics:
- Philosophical issues around teaching controversy
- Navigating different identities in the classroom and on campus
- Free speech and controversial issues in classrooms and on campus
- Differential roles of various higher education actors when it comes to protecting free speech (administration, tenured professors, students, residential life)
- Training (or lack thereof) of graduate students to be teachers and the impact of this on teaching in our current political moment
- Theright relationship(s) between democracy, knowledge,free speech, and higher education
- The role of controversy in democracy
- The relationship between controversy and equality
- Teaching as an equity issue – how education might foster or impede different kinds of equity (class equity, racial equity, urban/rural equity, gender equity)
- Disagreement in classrooms
- Epistemological issues around disagreement and understanding
- Trust in classrooms
- Pedagogical tools to cope with disagreement in classrooms
- Philosophical views on coming to understanding from different social locations, epistemic commitments, and material circumstances
We especially welcome contributions that:
- Think about universities outside of the “top 50” and the “top 500” — we want our conversation to reflect issues found across the entire spectrum of international higher ed institutions
- Engage with CUNY-specific issues and offer CUNY-specific solutions
Abstracts should:
– Outline the paper’s principal argument(s).
– Give a good sense of the paper’s philosophical and/or empirical contributions and methods.
– Be anonymized.
Proposal Guidelines:
Please submit abstracts of up to 500 words by midnight EST on Monday, July 31, 2023.
PDF or DOC.X by email to gscope.committee@gmail.com
Post-Conference Pedagogy Workshop
The theme of our conference Higher Education, Democracy, and Controversy is relevant to graduate student educators, who are routinely under-trained and under-equipped to engage with real-life problems they may encounter in the classroom. The lack of training for higher education teachers is a growing iue in philosophy of education.
This workshop attends to this issue by facilitating a space for graduate student educators to reflect on how to foster good teaching environments for controversial issues, and be good interlocutors with each other on controversial issues. The workshop will also touch on promoting equity in classrooms. We will provide workshop participants with a certificate of completion.
https://philevents.org/event/show/112546