Efforts to diversify philosophy, at the curricular level, often focus on increasing the content covered in a semester: i.e., making room for more women on the syllabus, making room for more non-Western texts and thinkers, etc. Similarly, efforts to diversify philosophy, at the professional level, often focus on making room for marginalized topics and/or members of under-represented groups at conferences, in anthologies, and among faculty (both in terms of demographics and research specializations). This all serves to create an antagonistic situation where marginalized voices must fight to be heard and those in the discipline must make “tough choices” about where to cede precious resources such as syllabus space, publication credits, and faculty hires. I suggest that part of the antagonism, at least in the case of Asian philosophy, arises because we are trying to fit non-European texts and thinkers into disciplinary structures that are themselves designed to accommodate a Eurocentric model for philosophy. By “disciplinary structures” I mean the philosophical canon and historical narrative as well as departmental course offerings, curricular requirements for majors and minors, classroom pedagogical practices, and academic research methodologies. Truly transformative change must take place at the structural level. In this brief talk, I consider the scope of such changes, in concrete terms, and raise questions about the effects these changes would have on the disciplinary identity of philosophy as we know it today.
With a response from:
Andrew Lambert (College of Staten Island, CUNY)
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
David Albert’s work has been of seminal importance to the foundations of physics, exerting central influence on the direction the field and laying foundations for much of its ongoing development. In celebration of David’s many past and continuing contributions, we will be hosting a conference at Columbia University on the foundations of physics. We expect talks on a range of topics, including the foundations of quantum mechanics and statistical mechanics, the possible emergence of space and time, the metaphysics of science, and the nature of agency.
Confirmed Speakers
Jeff Barrett (UC Irvine)
Gordon Belot (Michigan)
Craig Callender (UC San Diego)
Sean Carroll (Caltech)
Eddy Chen (UC San Diego)
Sidney Felder (Rutgers)
Alison Fernandes (Dublin)
Shelly Goldstein (Rutgers)
Ned Hall (Harvard)
Barry Loewer (Rutgers)
Tim Maudlin (NYU)
Michael Miller (Toronto)
Alyssa Ney (UC Davis)
Lev Vaidman (Tel Aviv)
David Wallace (Pittsburgh)
Nino Zanghi (Genoa)
Organizing Committee
Alison Fernandes (alison.fernandes@tcd.ie)
Michael Miller (mike.miller@utoronto.ca)
Porter Williams (porterwi@usc.edu)
.
The conference is open to the public. Please direct any questions to Porter Williams (porterwi@usc.edu).
Friday, November 15
8:45 am: Breakfast
9:30 am: Jeff Barrett (UC Irvine): Quantum Randomness and Empirical Underdetermination
10:15 am: Shelly Goldstein (Rutgers): Typicality, Humean Probability, and the Mentaculus
11:00: Coffee Break
11:20 am: Craig Callender (UC San Diego): No Time for Time from No-Time
12:05 pm: Alyssa Ney (UC Davis): WFR or QFT?
12:50: Lunch
2:20 pm: Gordon Belot (Michigan): The Mach-Einstein Principle of 1917-1918
3:05 pm: Sean Carroll (Caltech): The Mentaculus as a Causal Network
3:50: Coffee Break
4:10 pm: David Wallace (Pittsburgh): TBA
4:55 pm: Ned Hall (Harvard): Respectful Deflationism
5:45 pm: Adjourn
Saturday, November 16
8:45 am: Breakfast
9:30 am: Lev Vaidman (Tel Aviv): The many-worlds interpretation and the Born rule
10:15 am: Eddy Chen (UC San Diego): Nomic Vagueness
11:00: Coffee Break
11:20 am: Michael Miller (Toronto): Infrared Cancellation and Measurement
12:05 pm: Alison Fernandes (Trinity College Dublin): The Direction of Records
12:50: Lunch
2:20 pm: Sidney Felder (Rutgers): Gödel’s Rotating Solutions, Bilking, and Natural Laws
3:05 pm: Nino Zanghi (INFN Genova): TBA
3:50: Coffee Break
4:10 pm: Tim Maudlin (NYU): S = k ln(B(W)): Boltzmann entropy, the Second Law, and the Architecture of Hell
4:55 pm: Barry Loewer (Rutgers): The Consequence Argument Meets the Mentaculus
5:45 pm: Adjourn
Kant and Spinoza on Prophecy, Enlightenment and Revolution
Presented by Columbia University Dept. of Philosophy
Samantha Matherne has written the first recent book in English on the philosophy of Cassirer, covering the full range of his thought. Her research also explores the reciprocal relationship between perception and aesthetics. She approaches these issues largely through a historical lens, as they are taken up by Kant and developed in Post-Kantian traditions in the 19th and 20th centuries, especially Phenomenology and Neo-Kantianism.