About this Event
Wednesday, September 11, 2019 6:15 – 8:45 pm at Columbia University
With Professor Amy Allen and Bernard E. Harcourt
Readings include:
Foucault, Michel. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” In The Foucault Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow, 76-100. New York, Pantheon Books, 1984.
_____. “Nietzsche, Freud, Marx.” In The Essential Works of Michel Foucault: Power, ed. James D. Faubion, trans. Robert Hurley et al., 277-278. New York: New Press, 2000.
Harcourt, Bernard E., “The Illusion of Influence: On Foucault, Nietzsche, and a Fundamental Misunderstanding” (May 24, 2019). Columbia Public Law Research Paper No. 14-627 (2019). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3393827
These events are free and open to the public. Please RSVP.
The syllabus is available here.
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
About this Event
Wednesday, September 25, 2019 6:15-8:45 pm at Columbia University
Professor Axel Honneth and Bernard E. Harcourt discussing the early Frankfurt School, specifically Max Horkheimer’s 1937 essay, “Traditional and Critical Theory,” and Theodor Adorno’s 1931 essay, “The Actuality of Philosophy.”
This event is co-sponsored by the Columbia Maison Française.
Readings include:
Horkheimer, Max. “Traditional and Critical Theory, in Horkheimer, Max. Critical Theory: Selected Essays. New York: Continuum, 1992.
Adorno, Theodor W. “The Actuality of Philosophy.” Telos 1997, no. 31 (1997): 120-133.
These events are free and open to the public. Please RSVP.
The syllabus is available here.
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.
Scholars working under the broad umbrella of New Materialism have offered compelling reappraisals of the ways in which we know, interact with, and exist in the world. This scholarship also intersects with recent work on music and sound, which raises rich sets of questions regarding human agency, material, ethics, aesthetics, embodiment, and the subject/object dichotomy, among other issues.
We invite scholars working in the humanities, arts and sciences to submit proposals for papers and performances that engage with the themes of sound and new materialism, broadly construed. We welcome work that adopts historical, technological, analytical, philosophical, materialist, and creative vantage points, among others. Overall, this conference will direct these diverse disciplinary and methodological perspectives towards convergent and critical issues, creating new, interdisciplinary lines of enquiry and generating original research.
The one-day conference will consist of panels that comprise of papers with short reflections by a moderator, as well as an evening concert that includes opportunities for discussion. The concluding concert of work that engages with these themes from creative perspectives will afford attendees with an opportunity to consider and discuss issues concerning sound, material, and agency in a forum that contrasts with, but also complements, our events during the day. Conference participants are strongly encouraged to attend both the daytime and evening portions of the conference.
Proposals are called for:
Paper presentations of 20 minutes with 10 minutes of Q&A.
Artistic presentation of 20 minutes with 10 minutes of discussion
Submission: Proposals of no more than 500 words (300 words for artistic presentation) should be submitted as a PDF by August 14th 2019 to jc5036@columbia.edu
and include “NMAS Submission” in the subject line. If you’re applying for an artistic presentation please include three representative 2 minute audio/video examples. Please also include the title of your proposed paper and anonymize your submission. Include your name, affiliation, and contact information in the body of the email, and also nominate any audio/visual requirements for your paper or performance.
Reading and discussing The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt
Reading and discussing Orientalism by Edward Said
Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to automate and scale solutions to perennial accessibility challenges (e.g., generating image descriptions for blind users). However, research shows that AI-bias disproportionately impacts people already marginalized based on their race, gender, or disabilities, raising questions about potential impacts in addition to AI’s promise. In this talk, Cynthia Bennett will overview broad concerns at the intersection of AI, disability, and accessibility. She will then share details about one project in this research space that led to guidance on human and AI-generated image descriptions that account for subjective and potentially sensitive descriptors around race, gender, and disability of people in images.
The COVID-19 pandemic is said to be a once-in-a-century incident, and it brought to us a sense of crisis at various levels. What is a crisis, though? Can any unnerving moment or period be called a crisis, or are there different dimensions of a crisis to which we need to be attentive? Is solidarity possible after experiencing a crisis like Covid-19? Can Buddhism make any contribution to facilitating solidarity? This presentation explores the meaning and nature of a crisis and our responses to it by drawing on modern Korean political thinker Pak Ch’iu’s (1909–1949) analysis of crisis and feminist-Buddhist thinker Kim Iryŏp’s (1896–1971) Buddhist philosophy. By doing so, this presentation considers what social, political, existential, and even religious meaning we can draw from our experience of crises, and what questions these insights present to us.
With responses from Karsten Struhl (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY)
Presented by THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
RSVP is required for dinner. If you would like to participate in our dinner, a $30 fee is required. Please contact Lucilla at lm3335@columbia.edu for further information.
How does the brain cope with Complexity? How do we make decisions when confronted with practically infinite streams of information?
The conference showcases cutting edge research on these questions in Neuroscience and Psychology (neural mechanisms of cognitive control, exploration, decision-making, information demand, memory and creativity), Computer Science (artificial intelligence of curiosity and intrinsic motivation) and Economics (decision making and information demand). Alongside formal presentations, the conference will encourage ample interactions among faculty, students and postdocs through informal discussions and poster presentations.
Submissions for poster presentations and travel awards are due February 15, 2023. Please visit the call for submissions for complete requirements.
Event Information
Free and open to the public. Registration is required and will open shortly. All in-person attendees must follow Columbia’s COVID-19 policies. Visitors will be asked to provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination. Online attendees will receive a Zoom link. Please email events@zi.columbia.edu with any questions.