In ethics, in epistemology, in philosophy of mind and even (Searlean protestations notwithstanding) in ontology interest has steadily been growing in the idea that intersubjectivity is a central concept for understanding various aspects of our world. Similarly, the concept of interpretation has come to attention in a new light as a key means by which the interactions between subjectivities is mediated. This line of research raises a number of philosophical questions:
– What is intersubjectivity? Can it be given ‘a clear explanation’? In what relation does it stand to objectivity? In what relation does it stand to the first-person and second-person perspectives?
– What is interpretation? What is it to interpret another person’s behaviour as that of a genuine subject of experience? Is this notion of interpretation the same as that which we employ when speaking of interpreting language, rules, art, or data?
– Does intersubjectivity require interpretation? Must we rely on interpretive practices in order to make sense of others as subjects? If so, what implications might this have for the concept of intersubjectivity, and those practices and entities that might depend upon it?
– Does interpretation require intersubjectivity? Is there a sense of interpretation for which one cannot genuinely interpret something without taking it to be the result of intentional action on the part of a subject, produced for other subjects? And if so, what implications might that have for our understanding of interpretive practices?
– How do these questions connect with issues in areas of philosophy such as epistemology, aesthetics, phenomenology, philosophy of mind, social philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, political theory?
The keynote speaker will be Jay Garfield, who will deliver a talk on “The Second Person: Reflexivity and Reflection”.
We are pleased to invite abstracts sufficiently in the spirit of the project theme of no more than 1,000 words. Abstracts should:
– Outline the paper’s principal argument(s).
– Give a good sense of the paper’s philosophical contribution(s).
– Be anonymized.
The deadline for abstracts is January 19th, 2019. Abstracts should be e-mailed to 2019cunygradconference@gmail.com. Please include with your submission a cover page that includes your name, affiliated institution, contact information, and title of paper.
We will accept submissions from any area of philosophy, and from any philosophical tradition. We strongly encourage participants from groups whose voices are disproportionately excluded from philosophical discourse to submit abstracts.
This workshop will provide a forum for researchers doing work on emotions and related states. The goal is to share new ideas and lines of inquiry, to develop new reflections, and to foster communication between those of us who are investigating emotions in the New York area, and beyond.
*** The event is free but registration is required for those attending on Saturday. To register, send an email with your name by May 2, to Sarah Arnaud: sarnaud@gc.cuny.edu ***
Program (download printable flyer)
Friday, May 3
9:45-10:30
- Introduction by Jesse Prinz
9:45-10:30
- Sarah Arnaud
“What are unconscious emotions?”
10:30-10:45: Break
10:45-11:30
- Katherine Rickus
“1st and 3rd person knowledge of emotions”
11:30-12:15
- Hilla Jacobson
“Pain and mere tastes”
12:15-1:45: Break – lunch
1:45-2:30
- Kathryn Pendoley
“Nagging Guilt, Tentative Fear: Uncertain Emotions and the Problem of Recalcitrance”
2:30-3:15
- Alexandra Gustafson
“Love Alters Not: A Study of Unrequited Love”
3:15-3:30: Break
3:30-4:15
- Justin Leonard Clardy
“A New Challenge for Romantic Love as Union”
4:15-5:00
- Adam Lerner
“Empathy is evidence”
5:00-6:00: Reception
Saturday, May 4
9:45-10:30
- Federico Lauria
“What does emotion teach us about self-deception?”
10:30-10:45: Break
10:45-11:30
- Hyunseop Kim
“Meaningfulness as Correct Fulfillment”
11:30-12:15
- Sergio Gallegos
“Emilio Uranga’s analysis of zozobra (anguish)”
12:15-1:45: Break – lunch
1:45-2:30
- Xiaoyu Ke
“Virtue Responsibilism, Epistemic Emotions, and Epistemic Situationism”
2:30-3:15
- Michael Zhao
“Guilt without perceived wrongdoing”
3:15-3:30: Break
3:30-4:15
- Shawn Tinghao Wang
“Moral agency account of shame”
4:15-5:00
- Daniel Shargel
“Lol: What we can learn from forced laughter”
5:00-6:00: Reception
Columbia University’s Department of Philosophy, the Morningside Institute, and the Thomistic Institute invite graduate students in philosophy, theology/religious studies, literature, and related disciplines to submit papers for “The Moral Imagination of the Novel.” The conference will examine the ways in which individual novels and the novel as a literary genre can be understood both to depict the search for moral, philosophical, and religious truth and to engage in this very search themselves. Is the novel a realistic or idealistic genre? Can novels expand our sense of moral possibilities? Can they contract them?
The conference will begin with four twenty-minute graduate student papers on Friday, October 4, followed by talks that day and the next from faculty. Confirmed speakers include:
Paul Elie (Georgetown)
Ann Astell (Notre Dame)
Thomas Pavel (Chicago)
Lauren Kopajtic (Fordham)
Dhananjay Jagannathan (Columbia)
Limited financial assistance is available to defray the cost of travel for student presenters, but students are encouraged to seek funds from their own institutions as well.
One-page proposals should be emailed to Molly Gurdon at mcg2197@columbia.edu by Saturday, August 31 to be considered. Invitations to present papers will be sent by Friday, September 6. Submissions should not contain any identifying information except for a title, but the author’s institution and program, along with the title of their proposed submission, should be noted in the e-mail submission.
The philosophical and psychological literature on well-being tend to focus on the prudential value of positive emotions such as pleasure, joy, or gratitude. But how do the negative emotions such as grief fit into our understanding of well-being? It is often assumed that negative emotions are intrinsically bad far us and that we should work toward eliminating them, especially from the perspective of our own well-being.
In this presentation I want to question this assumption by drawing on the ideas of Zhuangzi (a prominent early Daoist thinker from the 4th Century BCE) to argue that negative emotions are not intrinsically bad for us, and that their prudential value or disvalue is context dependent. Zhuangzi’s outlook, with his focus on the flexibility of perspectives and living according to our natural, spontaneous inclinations, gives us reason to reconsider the role of negative emotions in our lives and how we might think about them in a more constructive way.
With responses from: CHRISTOPHER GOWANS (Fordham University)
The Fall dates for the Comparative Philosophy seminar:
September 20 – Justin Tiwald (San Francisco State University)
October 11 – Richard Kim (Loyola University, Chicago
November 8 – Sungmoon Kim (City University of Hong Kong)
December 6 – Paul R. Goldin (University of Pennsylvania)
More details (such as titles, abstracts, and respondents) to follow. Looking forward to seeing you soon.
Hagop Sarkissian
Associate Professor & Chair, Department of Philosophy, The City University of New York, Baruch College
Associate Professor, Department of Philosophy, CUNY Graduate Center
Co-Director, Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy
https://www.cbs.columbia.edu/cscp/
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.
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
The 23rd Annual CUNY Graduate Student Philosophy Conference invites graduate students to submit their work engaging with philosophical topics and traditions that consider or bridge the analytic/continental divide. The analytic/continental division typically assumes contrasting notions of what philosophy ‘is’ and what it ought to be. The divide also describes the varying methodologies employed when we practice philosophy. Whether it refers to meta-philosophical commitments or strategies used, the divide can do exactly that – divide. When concerned with the nature of philosophy and how one ought to conceive of the practice the stakes can be high; when we ask, “What counts as philosophy?” we implicitly ask, “What doesn’t ‘count’ as philosophy?” This conference aims to explore issues that need to be explored by the philosophical community at large, especially when the legitimacy of certain practices are under scrutiny. The conference also aims to create a space where we can learn to ask better questions concerning the nature of our academic practices, the traditions we draw from, the methodologies we employ, and the topics we consider.
Keynote speaker: Talia Mae Bettcher (California State University, Los Angeles)
We are particularly interested in papers from all areas of philosophy that:
- explore the meta-philosophical or sociological questions concerning the analytical/continental divide without exclusionary border-policing. Is such a divide legitimate? What has motivated this divide? What are the advantages and disadvantages of maintaining the divide? How can we bridge or dismantle the divide? Etc.
- broadly engage with the question of “what can philosophy be?” How can philosophy establish fewer borders and more bridges?
- engage with philosophers (i.e. Rorty, Badiou, Williams, etc.), philosophical topics (i.e. race, gender, coloniality, etc.), and/or traditions (i.e. critical race theory, feminist philosophy, queer theory, postcolonial/decolonial theory, etc.) that have always or currently do bridge the analytic/continental divide, again without exclusionary border-policing.
- explore the analytic/continental divide in an interdisciplinary manner drawing from sociology, critical psychology, gender studies, race studies, literature, history, the arts, etc.
The conference is committed to providing a platform for marginalized persons and topics in the discipline. In answering some of the questions presented we highly encourage papers regarding, among other topics: critical race theory, feminist philosophy, queer theory, trans philosophy, and disabilities studies. Speakers from marginalized groups in the discipline are strongly encouraged to submit. Any abstracts that aim to discredit already marginalized philosophers or philosophies are strongly discouraged.
What can science teach us about how we perceive and understand art? How can art help us understand ourselves and each other? In this event, the Zuckerman Institute explores the interactions between our brains and the artistic world, finding connections and parallels between art and science.
Event Speakers
Please visit the event webpage to view the speaker list.
Event Information
Free and open to the public, registration is required by January 28, 2022. This event will also be live-streamed. Please email zuckermaninstitute@columbia.edu with any questions.
This talk is part of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Brain Insight Lecture series hosted by Columbia’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.
Submissions from any area of philosophy/social science are welcome. The primary author must be an undergraduate, and papers should be no more than 10 pages in length and suitable for 15-20 minute presentations. Electronic submissions should be in Word or PDF format and should be ready for blind review. In your submission email please include your name, the title of your paper, your institutional affiliation, and your preferred email address for correspondence.
Email essays to lagccphilosophy@gmail.com
Submission deadline: April 15, 2022
Please note: This is an in-person event. In order to present you must provide proof of vaccination.
Conceptual misalignment is a pervasive phenomenon in the studies of Non-Western philosophy and the History of Philosophy (NW&HP). However, conceptual misalignment is often undetected, unsuspected, or seen as a hurdle that NW&HP materials need to overcome to contribute to contemporary discussions. Specifically, conceptual misalignment refers to the following: In the process of crystalizing NW&HP materials, a linguistic coordination of concepts is formed between the speaker, i.e., NW&HP, and its context of contemporary anglophone philosophy. However, in philosophically meaningful ways, the original NW&HP concept and its anglophone counterpart misalign. This misalignment is particularly intricate and hard to detect when it comes to emotion concepts, as they are thought to involve phenomenal and/or intentional features. Through investigating the concept of emotion in Chinese philosophy, I propose a refocusing on conceptual misalignment as a method of cross-cultural comparative and history of philosophy. Moreover, I argue that conceptual misalignment is an important resource for contemporary conceptual engineering and amelioration projects.
With responses from Andrew Lambert (College of Staten Island, CUNY)
RSVP is required for dinner. Dinner will take place at a nearby restaurant. Please contact Lucilla at lm3335@columbia.edu for further information.