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
The Eastern Study Group invites submissions for its 17th annual meeting to take place at Fordham University on Saturday and Sunday, May 2-3, 2020. Our host this year is Reed Winegar.
Keynote Speakers: Patricia Kitcher (Columbia)
Please send all abstracts electronically to Kate Moran, kmoran@brandeis.edu
Please submit a detailed abstract (1,000–1,200 words) with a select bibliography. Submissions should be prepared for blind review and include a word count. Please supply contact information in a separate file. If you are a graduate student, please indicate this in your contact information.
The selection committee welcomes contributions on all topics of Kantian scholarship (contemporary or historically oriented), including discussions of Kant’s immediate predecessors and successors. Presentation time is limited to 30 minutes, followed by 30 minutes of discussion.
The best graduate student paper will receive a $200 stipend and be eligible for the Markus Herz Prize. Women, minorities, and graduate students are encouraged to submit. Papers submitted for the Herz prize should not exceed 6,000 words.
Papers already read or accepted at other NAKS study groups or meetings may not be submitted. Presenters must be members of NAKS in good standing.
ENAKS receives support from NAKS and host universities.
For questions about ENAKS or the upcoming meeting, please contact Kate Moran (kmoran@brandeis.edu) or consult the ENAKS website at www.enaks.net.
Our 12th annual workshop will take place entirely on-line. The workshop will focus on the topic of “Expanding the Early Modern Canon.” We are calling for papers on figures, topics, texts, and genres that have been standardly neglected within the study of early modern philosophy; e.g., women philosophers, philosophy of education, letters, and novels.
Please submit anonymized abstracts of 250-500 words to newyorkcityearlymodern@gmail.com by April 1st, 2022.
Speakers:
Organisers:
Details
The workshop, which is now in its 12th year, aims to foster exchange and collaboration among scholars, students, and anyone with an interest in Early Modern Philosophy (roughly the period from 1600-1800). This year’s workshop will be entirely online. We are calling for papers on figures, topics, texts, and genres that have been standardly neglected within the study of Early Modern Philosophy (e.g., women philosophers, philosophy of education, letters, and novels).
Please submit anonymized abstracts of 250-500 words to newyorkcityearlymodern@gmail.com by April 1st, 2022.
Is feminism in crisis? Recently, in the United States and abroad, historic events rendered ever more precarious the lives and well-being of people marginalized by their sex, gender, race, and class, often in complexly intersecting and regionally specific ways. The rise of right-wing populism transnationally and attacks on reproductive rights, for example, exacerbate the challenges feminists confront. At the same time, as external conditions shift, feminism’s own faultlines continue to deepen. Feminism’s rising trans-exclusionary contingent, certain feminists’ hesitancy to reckon with complicity in racial and colonial violence, and the ongoing cooptation of feminism by neoliberalism signal serious internal fractures.
As feminism faces external and internal pressures, how can philosophy help us understand this moment of potential crisis and what, if anything, can philosophy do to address it? To devise answers to these urgent questions, we welcome contributions that focus on:
1. The relation between feminism and philosophy, including how feminism should intervene in philosophical debates, and how philosophy should intervene in feminist debates;
2. Questions concerning the nature and practice of gender, sex, sexuality, race, class, and disability that draw on feminist literatures or methodologies;
3. Perspectives that integrate different feminist traditions to build intersectional and transnational feminist coalitions;
4. Analyses of discourses on sex, gender, sexuality, race, class, and disability in media, law, and the sciences;
5. Translating feminist views on sex, gender, sexuality, race, class, and disability into public policy and social advocacy.
We welcome contributions from scholars working in philosophy and who draw on a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Scholars of all identities, especially those from groups underrepresented and/or marginalized in academia, are encouraged to submit contributions.
Please send anonymized abstracts of up to 500 words to cunygc.philosophy.conference@gmail.com, along with any questions you may have. The deadline for submissions is September 7th.
Kant and Spinoza on Prophecy, Enlightenment and Revolution
Presented by Columbia University Dept. of Philosophy
This talk explores the reflexive nature of consciousness, which consists primarily in the fact that a state of consciousness has a reflexive relation to the subject who has that state, so that the subject can typically be aware of itself as having that state. Comparing Kant’s, Fichte’s, and selected contemporary analytic theories of this reflexivity shows that there is a crucial difference in the way the relation between form (or mode) and content of a state of consciousness is conceived. The first part examines Kant’s formal theory of consciousness: reflexivity is understood not in terms of a self-referential content resulting from a reflection on the state of the subject, but as the universal transcendental form that any content must have in order to be representationally significant and potentially conscious to the subject. The second part examines Fichte’s departure from Kant in his theory of a self-positing consciousness: in the original act of self-positing, the mere form of reflexivity is turned into a self-referential content that determines the subject as an object from the absolute standpoint of consciousness. The third part examines analytic theories that explain the reflexivity (or what is often called the subjective character) of consciousness on a model of mental indexicality. These theories tend to reduce reflexivity to an objective constituent of content that, although often implicit, can be read off from the subject’s contextual situatedness in nature. In conclusion, Kant’s theory can be understood as a moderate, human-centered kind of perspectivism that navigates between Fichtean absolute subjectivity and a naturalist absolute objectivity.
Registration is free but required. A registration link will be shared via email with our department mailing lists a few weeks before the event. Please contact Jack Mikuszewski at jhm378@nyu.edu if you did not receive a registration link.
The Philosophy Department provides reasonable accommodations to people with disabilities. Requests for accommodations should be submitted to philosophy@nyu.edu at least two weeks before the event.
Keynote: Naomi Zack (Lehman College, CUNY)
One of philosophy’s original questions still plagues us: to what extent are beings the same and to what extent do they differ? Arising in thinkers as diverse as Parmenides, Aquinas, and De Beauvoir and in arenas from social and political philosophy to phenomenology and metaphysics. This conference aims to gather graduate student scholars from a variety of specializations to discuss their work on identity and difference. Some of the many questions we may pursue together are the following:
What constitutes identity and difference? What makes someone who they are? How do we understand ourselves to be alike enough to communicate, yet different enough that we must work to understand another’s point of view? How do identity and difference shape belonging–within a community, within a social institution, within a political structure? Similarly, how do differences among the members of a group enrich the identity of that collective? How might overlapping identities of an individual give rise to one’s sense of self? How does identity inform a given group’s philosophical thought? How might one form their identity and sense of self when, as in the case of many marginalized groups/ minorities, the “self” is oppressed?
These questions additionally motivate ontological considerations. To what extent can we describe two objects that are in fact identical? What grants an object’s or a person’s identity over time: metaphysical characteristics, temporal continuity, or certain brain states? Upon what aspects of an entity do we predicate differences? When are two things metaphysically or logically identical? Are mereological composites more than the sum of their parts? Are they identical to matter? To what extent do beings differ from Being? How might experiences or acts of reason help ground an identity claim such as A=A?
Other questions broadly related to “Identity and Difference” are also welcome.
Please submit a 300-500 word abstract prepared for blind review to fordhamgradconference@gmail.com in PDF format. In the body of the email, please include:
- Name
- Paper title
- Institutional Affiliation
Submissions are due by Friday, December 30, 2022. After anonymous review, applicants will be notified by Tuesday, January 17, 2023. Presentations will be limited to 20 minutes.
The conference will take place in person on March 3-4, 2023 on Fordham University’s Rose Hill campus located at 441 East Fordham Road, Bronx, NY 10458.
For questions, please contact the conference organizers at fordhamgradconference@gmail.com
A two-day conference on the philosophy of deep learning, organized by Ned Block (New York University), David Chalmers (New York University) and Raphaël Millière (Columbia University), and jointly sponsored by the Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience program at Columbia University and the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at New York University.
About
The conference will explore current issues in AI research from a philosophical perspective, with particular attention to recent work on deep artificial neural networks. The goal is to bring together philosophers and scientists who are thinking about these systems in order to gain a better understanding of their capacities, their limitations, and their relationship to human cognition.
The conference will focus especially on topics in the philosophy of cognitive science (rather than on topics in AI ethics and safety). It will explore questions such as:
- What cognitive capacities, if any, do current deep learning systems possess?
- What cognitive capacities might future deep learning systems possess?
- What kind of representations can we ascribe to artificial neural networks?
- Could a large language model genuinely understand language?
- What do deep learning systems tell us about human cognition, and vice versa?
- How can we develop a theoretical understanding of deep learning systems?
- How do deep learning systems bear on philosophical debates such as rationalism vs empiricism and classical vs. nonclassical views of cognition.
- What are the key obstacles on the path from current deep learning systems to human-level cognition?
A pre-conference debate on Friday, March 24th will tackle the question “Do large language models need sensory grounding for meaning and understanding ?”. Speakers include Jacob Browning (New York University), David Chalmers (New York University), Yann LeCun (New York University), and Ellie Pavlick (Brown University / Google AI).
Conference speakers
- Cameron Buckner (University of Houston)
- Rosa Cao (Stanford University)
- Ishita Dasgupta (DeepMind)
- Nikolaus Kriegeskorte (Columbia University)
- Brenden Lake (New York University / Meta AI)
- Grace Lindsay (New York University)
- Tal Linzen (New York University / Google AI)
- Raphaël Millière (Columbia University)
- Nicholas Shea (Institute of Philosophy, University of London)
Call for abstracts
We invite abstract submissions for a few short talks and poster presentations related to the topic of the conference. Submissions from graduate students and early career researchers are particularly encouraged. Please send a title and abstract (500-750 words) to phildeeplearning@gmail.com by January 22nd, 2023 (11.59pm EST).
https://philevents.org/event/show/106406
One of the most challenging aspects of the war in Ukraine is the way in which the conflict has been constantly shifting in its form. In the first place, there is a conventional ground war between Russia and Ukraine, in which the identity and will of the two peoples is at stake. Yet Russia has used weapons supplied by Iran, and Ukraine depends on NATO for its own supplies, indicating that this war depends on the maintenance and expansion of alliances. The stability of these alliances in turn depends on a combination of Realpolitik and shared values as the glue that holds them together. This logic of alliances motivates the energy war that Russia is waging with Europe, revealing that, unbeknownst to Europe, Russian energy policy over the last decade was an early form of the war. Similarly, the threat of nuclear war also tests the resolve of NATO, forcing it to consider the values at stake in the conflict. Is the war about Ukraine’s sovereignty or the principle of nation-state sovereignty itself? Is it about human rights for Ukrainians or the entire human rights project? For Russia, is it about self-defense or a pan-Slavic identity? Is it about the protection of Russian minorities in Ukraine or the threat of Western secularization?
The material form of the war—economic, conventional, nuclear—will depend on the way in which the participants on all sides and in all parts of the world come to an understanding about these questions concerning the moral and spiritual stakes in the war. If it is just a matter of giving up Ukraine, then the economic costs for Europe may not be worth the fight, and Russia’s victory in the energy war could lead to a general NATO capitulation. But if the freedom and security of central and western Europe are also at stake, then even a severe economic recession would be a small price to pay for the reestablishment of a NATO-dominated security order. Is freedom worth the risk of annihilation? Is peace worth the indignities and repression of authoritarianism? As the most serious global conflict since World War II, the war in Ukraine risks going beyond the bounds of all other forms of war before it. What are the resources that are necessary for meeting its challenges? How can the shifting forms of the war be contained and channeled toward a future lasting peace?
These types of questions are not specific to the war in Ukraine but arise in any situation of war. Every war forces us to reconsider the character of war and the forms that it can take. In the first place, the insight that leads to a war is one about the nature of a conflict. War only begins once the parties determine that there is an otherwise irresolvable conflict about the basis of order. The course of a war also results in a practical insight into the form of a postwar order. Peace and stability cannot arrive until all come to an agreement about the new understanding of order. This intertwining of practical and theoretical gains means that the time of war is also a time of shifting manifestations of the forms by which war is fought, as well as the forms of order to be established by the outcome of the war. The course of a war will be decided by our understanding of the kind of world we want to live in, the risks we are willing to take to establish such a world, and our belief in its practical possibility. A war will necessarily change in form depending upon where we are in the movement from the conflict of competing ideas to the victory of a particular conception of order. Since the result of the conflict would be an establishment of sovereignty based on some understanding of order, the conflict is not just a material one but also a theoretical and spiritual one about the metaphysical basis of order. In the process of war, insight leads to conflict, and conflict leads to insight.
At the 2023 Telos-Paul Piccone Institute conference on forms of war, we will consider different ways of understanding the relationship between conflict and insight in war as well as examples of how the conceptualization of conflict affects the outbreak, progress, and outcome of wars. On the one hand, we will consider the way in which the experience of war, both on the battlefield and on the home front, affects the outcome of the war. On the other hand, we will look at how this importance of the experience of war in turn affects the strategy of war. Such strategizing begins already at the nascent stages of conflict, before any actual fighting begins, but in which the possibility of conflict can already lead to concessions by one side or the other that lead to a transformation of the basis of order. Similarly, fears and hopes for the future also determine the course of a war, helping the participants to end a war by offering them a mutually acceptable vision of the terms of peace.
Questions include:
- What are the different causes of war in any particular case? How do these causes attain such significance that they become a casus belli? Were there alternatives to war that were not taken?
- In what situations does the refusal of war lead to an outcome that is tantamount to surrender in war? How can the threat of war be used as a political tool?
- To what extent is war a continuation of politics? Or is war the breakdown of politics?
- How have different wars been experienced on the battlefield and on the home front? How have the different experiences of war affected the outcomes?
- How does our understanding of world order affect the turn to war?
- What is the relationship between war and peace in terms of international order?
- How do fictional or historical representations of war affect the conduct of war?
- What is the relationship between war and the collective identity of a people?
- How are wars between nation-states linked to their domestic politics? In what situations does an external enemy create unity or division in domestic politics?
- How is war used as a tool in domestic politics, for instance, as a way to divert attention from domestic political problems?
- What are the characteristics of different types of war, such as limited war, absolute war, civil war, cold war, proxy war, phony war, trade war, guerilla war, war on terror, nuclear war? What factors lead to a war being fought in a particular way?
- To what extent can a representation of war replace a real war, for instance, when single combat is supposed to substitute for the combat of armies, or when war is televised?
- What is the relationship between spiritual concerns and the forms of war? Are all wars in some sense religious wars?
Conference Location
The conference will take place at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute in New York City from Thursday, March 30, to Saturday, April 1, 2023.
Abstract Submissions
Please note: Abstracts for this conference will only be accepted from current Telos-Paul Piccone Institute members. In order to become a member, please visit our membership enrollment page. Telos-Paul Piccone Institute memberships are valid until the end of the annual New York City conference.
If you are interested in making a presentation, please submit a 200-word abstract and 50-word bio by December 15, 2022, to telosnyc2023@telosinstitute.net. Please place “The 2023 Telos Conference” in the email’s subject line.
The Center for Philosophy of Religion at Rutgers University is pleased to host an in-person, working-papers conference on the Psychology and Epistemology of Religious Experience. We are seeking abstracts (150-350 words) from those interested in participating. The tentative date is 15-16 April 2023. And the deadline for submission is 28 February 2023. Participants with accepted submissions will be given hotel accommodations and a modest honorarium to help defray travel costs.
Theme
The overall theme of the workshop is the Psychology and Epistemology of Religious Experiences. Philosophers of religion frequently assign religious experiences important epistemic roles, such as justifying religious beliefs. But religious experiences of the kind philosophers are interested in are also studied in other fields as well, such as psychology and religious studies. However, the psychology and epistemology of religious experiences are presumably not independent; studying them together is likely to be insightful in various ways. To that end, we are interested in bringing together scholars working on the psychology and epistemology of religious experiences. Potential topics include:
· The nature of religious experiences
· Taxonomies of religious experiences
· Potential psychological mechanisms and accounts of religious experience
· The relation between perception and religious experiences
· The epistemology of religious experience
· The interactions between the psychology and epistemology of religious experience
· The relation of cognitive science of religion to religious experience
Any proposed papers on these topics, or similar ones, are welcome. Papers exploring interdisciplinary approaches are also welcome.
Instructions
Please submit an abstract (150-350 words), long abstract (350-650 words), or full paper to Timothy Perrine at tp654@scarletmail.rutgers.edu. Submission should be prepared for blind review. In a separate document please provide your name, institutional affiliation (if applicable), and contact information. Submission deadline is 28 February; acceptances will be decided by 5 March; and the workshop will be held 15-16 April.