Many philosophers have suggested that the aim of imaginative philosophical inquiry is not to provide right answers, but right questions. This means demonstrating why certain questions are meaningless, based on false assumptions, or become senseless when posed in a wrong context. The question in my title appears to be a good candidate for this type of philosophical inquiry and I will try to show why. However, I will also argue that posing the question is nevertheless important, perhaps not for moral philosophy, but for feminist politics.
The argument proceeds in three stages. In the first section, I will discuss Gabrielle Meagher’s article, Jstor, Spring 2002, ‘Is it Wrong to Pay for Housework?’. I will contend that rather than posing this question as an abstract philosophical question, it is crucial to place it in the specific historical and socio-economic context in which we encounter it today. A thorough politico-economic analysis of paid housework should then open our eyes to the fact that feminists need to make demands that are not merely ameliorative but embody a radically emancipatory future for all women. In the second section, I will critically assess one such demand, the idea of universal basic income (UBI) – a monthly income paid by the government to each member of society regardless of income from other sources and with no conditions attached. My contention is that a feminist demand for UBI could contribute to the attempts to tackle the deep causes behind the growing socio-economic disparities between women, as well as improving the status of unpaid care work, but only in the context of a feminist revolution of everyday life. In the third section, I will ask what such a revolution might entail and return to the question of individual choice. While I insist that scapegoating women who pay other women for housework misses the real political problem, I will nevertheless conclude by suggesting that there are compelling political reasons for feminists to answer the question in my title with a resolute yes.
In her paper, “The Non-Governing Conception of Laws,” Helen Beebee argues that it is not a conceptual truth that laws of nature govern their instances, and that this fact insulates Humeans about laws of nature from some of the most pressing objections against their view. I agree with the first claim, but not the second. For although it is not a conceptual truth that laws govern, the view that laws govern follows straightforwardly from an important, though under-appreciated, principle that constrains scientific theory choice, and the principles that constrain scientific theory choice ought to constrain theory choice in metaphysics as well. I then show how the specific understanding of governance that plays a role in this argument raises serious concerns for Humeans about laws of nature.
There will be dinner after the talk. If you are interested, please send an email with `Dinner’ in the heading to nyphilsci@gmail.com (please note that all are welcome, but only the speaker’s dinner will be covered). If you have any other questions, please email isaac.wilhelm@rutgers.edu.
Presented by Metro Area Philosophers of Science
The Department of Politics at The New School for Social Research is sponsoring its 8th Annual graduate student conference on the concept, history, practices and implications of radical democracy.
This year, we invite abstracts and panel proposals that deal with the questions of feminist and radical democratic theory.
The last couple of years gave rise to new democratic movements. This new stage of grassroots democratic protests in countries such as US, Brazil, Argentina, Spain or Poland has been centered around feminist issues including sexual harassment, abortion law, domestic violence, and gender inequality. The Women’s March against Trump and International Women’s Strike present only two examples of the recent and global feminist wave. Why does the current wave of political mobilization in the US, Argentina, or Brazil have a feminist face? How does it differ from earlier democratic movements, including the movements of Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter? What distinguishes this new wave from other feminist struggles from the past? Finally, what issues, reactions, and obstacles do contemporary feminists face in various places around the world? Our conference aims to address this set of questions.
We welcome papers that engage with the concept of feminism and its meaning, discuss the role of feminist and gender issues within the democratic tradition, as well as elaborate on the history of feminist politics. We particularly invite papers that propose a critical analysis of contemporary feminisms, elucidating their issues, dangers, and political potential.
Proposals should not be limited to this list, on the contrary, we encourage interdisciplinary papers and panels utilizing or critiquing the concepts of feminism and radical democracy from the point of view of post- anti- or de-colonialism, queer theory, indigenous studies, disability studies, or critical race theory
Please submit your paper or panel abstracts by March 8, 2019, to radicaldemocracy@newschool.edu.
http://www.radicaldemocracy.org/
https://philevents.org/event/show/70334
There are no reliable statistics on how many children are created in the United States from donated gametes. The CDC, which collects statistics on in vitro fertilization, reported that roughly 9,000 children were born from IVF with donated eggs in 2015. But according to the Donor Sibling, Registry, a survey of such parents found that 40% of those responding were never asked to report the birth of their child. And most births from donated sperm do not require IVF and are therefore not counted at all. Journalists writing about donor conception tend to rely on an outdated report of the Office of Technology Assessment, which estimated 30,000 births from donor insemination in the year 1986/87. The fertility industry has grown enormously since that date.
Although many countries have outlawed or restricted anonymous donor conception, the practice is virtually unregulated in this country. And because the U.S. has never debated legislation or regulation for donor conception, there has been almost no public discussion of whether it is ethical and, if so, under what circumstances and conditions.
On May 3-4, 2019, the NYU Department of Philosophy, together with the New York Institute of Philosophy and the NYU Center for Bioethics, will convene a conference of bioethicists to discuss the ethics of donor conception. The conference will be open to the public and free of charge. Required online registration will open a month before the conference.
Speakers
Elizabeth Brake (Arizona State University)
Reuven Brandt (University of California, San Diego)
Erin Jackson (journalist, San Diego)
Matthew Liao (New York University)
Inmaculada de Melo-Martin (Cornell-Weill Medical College)
Douglas NeJaime (Yale Law School)
Rivka Weinberg (Scripps College)
Over the last decades, the humanities have come under pressure from the scientific worldview. To many, it seems as if the humanities provide us at best with less-than-objective knowledge claims. Arguably, there are at least two overall reasons for this. On the one hand, the scientific worldview tends to associate objectivity with the kind of knowledge-acquisition, explanation, and justification characteristic of the natural sciences. On the other hand, the humanities themselves have contributed to the impression that they might be less relevant than the natural sciences to epistemic progress due to internal problems having to do with the very concept(s) of knowledge, reality and objectivity.
New Realism is a term for a whole series of current trends in philosophy that has important consequences for our understanding of knowledge in general. In particular, it reshapes our account of the human being qua source and object of knowledge claims. In this context, New Realism draws on a crucial indispensability thesis: we simply cannot eliminate the standpoint from which humans gather information about human and non-human reality alike from our account of reality itself. In light of this thesis, it turns out that the humanities are fully-fledged contributions to objective knowledge about reality – a fact we cannot ignore without succumbing to illusion. Against this background, the talk concludes that the so-called “scientific worldview” is untenable: it is built upon a denial of knowledge we actually possess, and so, by not being scientific enough, it fails to respect its own premises.
About the speaker:
Markus Gabriel holds the chair in epistemology, modern and contemporary philosophy at the University of Bonn. He is the director of the International Center for Philosophy and the multidisciplinary Center for Science and Thought. With Jocelyn Benoist he also directs Bonn-Paris Center for Research on New Realisms. His work focuses on contemporary philosophy, in particular epistemology and ontology, in an attempt to spell out the consequences of various trends in philosophy in a conversation with the humanities. Currently, he is working on a book called Fictions which deals with topics at the intersection of philosophy, literary studies and sociology.
The NYU Department of German and Deutsches Haus at NYU present “Objectivity and the Humanities – Prospects for a New Realism,” a talk by Professor Markus Gabriel.
Attendance information:
Events at Deutsches Haus are free of charge. If you would like to attend this event, please send us an email to deutscheshaus.rsvp@nyu.edu. Space at Deutsches Haus is limited; please arrive ten minutes prior to the event. Thank you!
“Objectivity and the Humanities – Prospects for a New Realism” is a DAAD-supported event.
Presented by Metro Area Philosophers of Science
Spring 2020 Schedule:
Anthony Aguirre (UCSC) – “Entropy in long-lived genuinely closed quantum systems”
6:30-8:30pm Tuesday Feb 4; NYU Philosophy Department (5 Washington Place), 3rd floor seminar room.
David Papineau (King’s College London & CUNY) – “The Nature of Representation”
4:30-6:30pm Tuesday March 3; CUNY Graduate Center (365 5th Ave, NYC), room 5307.
Jim Holt (Author of Why Does the World Exist?) – “Here, Now, Photon: Why Newton was closer to EM than Maudlin is”
4:30-6:30pm Tuesday April 7; CUNY Graduate Center (365 5th Ave, NYC), room 5307.
Deborah Mayo (Virginia Tech)
4:30-6:30pm Tuesday April 28; CUNY Graduate Center (365 5th Ave, NYC), room 5307.
The NYU Center for Bioethics is pleased to welcome submissions of abstracts for its 1st Annual Philosophical Bioethics Workshop, to be held at NYU on Friday, April 3, 2020.
We are seeking to showcase new work in philosophical bioethics, including (but not limited to) neuroethics, environmental ethics, animal ethics, reproductive ethics, research ethics, ethics of AI, data ethics, and clinical ethics.
Our distinguished keynote speaker will be Frances Kamm.
There will be four additional slots for papers chosen from among the submitted abstracts, including one slot set aside for a graduate student speaker. The most promising graduate student submission will be awarded a Graduate Prize, which includes coverage of travel expenses (up to $500, plus accommodation for two nights) as well as an award of $500. Please indicate in your submission email whether you would like to be considered for the Graduate Prize.
Please submit extended abstracts of between 750 and 1,000 words to philosophicalbioethics@gmail.com by 11:59 pm EST on Friday, January 24, 2020. Abstracts should be formatted for blind review and should be suitable for presentation in 30-35 minutes. Notification of acceptance will take place via email by Friday, February 14, 2020.
When submitting your abstract, please also indicate whether you would be interested in serving as a commentator in the event that your abstract is not selected for presentation. We will be inviting four additional participants to serve as commentators.
Since Plato, western philosophy has been set down a path paved by a disavowal of the sensuous, bracketed material bodies, and delimited aesthetic conceptions, leaving human beings and their built environments separated from the natural world. Such exclusions have left philosophy ill-equipped to deal with the various environmental crises we currently face, as economic rationality and utilitarian logic further de-animate the world and sharpen the human/nature distinction. Even the concept “environment” often, and ironically, brings with it implicit anthropocentric assumptions, conceptualizing, and thereby separating, the human as independent from the surrounding world and reinforcing the human/nature divide. As a result, our (mis)understandings of “nature” and “environment” may make us insensitive to and perpetuate, rather than address, climate change and other environmental catastrophes. To avoid ambiguities and clarify our understanding, we must ask: what role does Nature play within our theories and practices concerning so-called Environmental Philosophy? Furthermore, what spaces, practices, and questions are made possible when we broaden our understanding of “environment” to include a more robust conceptualization of the natural world and how the human being ought to be contextualized within it?
This conference asks how we might reorient the language and practices of philosophy in a way that can enable us to adequately respond to ongoing environmental crises. As a starting point, we propose a need to reimagine the concepts “human,” “nature,” and “environment,” as well as the reciprocal relations that constitute them. To recognize humans as natural organisms, we must reevaluate the sensuous, the material, and the aesthetic and the roles they play in our attempts to construct, understand, and preserve our environment(s). How should we make sense of our practices and our relations to those with whom we share our surroundings? How can we re-situate the human with/in the environment? Do we have the right tools to guide these investigations? How might philosophy look beyond itself—to literature, architecture, music, film, design—to better bring Environment, and thus the world, into view? In the spirit of this, we invite paper as well as project submissions from current graduate students in any discipline.
Possible Topics:
● Environmental Aesthetics: Re-Considering Beauty + the Sublime
● Environmental Justice + Restorative Justice + Transformative Justice
● Environmental Ethics + Sustainable Practices
● Diversity + Biodiversity
● Capitalism and Climate
● Eco-phenomenology
● Eco-deconstruction
● Environmental Racism/Racist Environments
● Ecofeminist conceptions of nature
● Land Rights and Property Relations
● Posthumanism + Object Ontologies
● Afrofuturism + Technological Utopias
● Environmental Ethics In Narratives
● Mastery of Nature in Philosophy
● Anarcho-primitivism
● Queer and Trans Ecologies
● Local and Global Ecologies
● Regionalisms and Globalisms in the Ecological Imagination
Confirmed Conference Keynotes:
Sandra Shapshay, CUNY Graduate Center, New York
Emanuele Coccia, École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris
Dates and Location:
This conference will be held at the New School for Social Research in New York City from Thursday, April 14, to Saturday, April 16. While we (tentatively) plan to hold the conference primarily in-person we would also like to provide a hybrid option for those who would prefer to participate remotely. Following the conference, on Sunday, April 17, all participants and attendees are invited to participate in a conference hike in Cold Spring, NY (about an hour and a half north of NYC and accessible by the Metro North commuter train).
Call for Papers: Submission Procedure:
Please submit complete papers (Word Limit: 3500) and an abstract of 250 words or less by January 1st in the form of a Word attachment (.docx) or PDF to WithInEnvironments@gmail.com. Please prepare your submission for blind review by removing any identifying information from the body of the paper. In your email please include your name, affiliation, and paper title. Notification of acceptance will be sent by January 15.
Call for Projects: Submission Procedure:
Please submit a project description (Word Limit: 1000) by December 1st in the form of a Word attachment (.docx) to WithInEnvironments@gmail.com, as well as:
For Visual Arts projects: submit 5 images of your work as .jpeg.
For Performing Arts projects: submit video/ audio of your work in .mp4 format
Please prepare your submission for blind review by removing any identifying information. In your email please include your name, affiliation, and project title. Notification of acceptance will be sent by January 15.
If you have any questions please email WithInEnvironments@gmail.com
Book Panel with:
Chiara Bottici (NSSR and Lang College), Judith Butler (UC Berkeley and NSSR) and Romy Opperman (NSSR and Lang College).
Abstract:
How can we be sure the oppressed do not become oppressors in their turn? How can we envisage a feminism that doesn’t turn into yet another tool for oppression? By arguing that there is no single arche explaining the oppression of women and LGBTQI+ people, Chiara Bottici proposes a radical anarchafeminist philosophy inspired by two major claims: that there is something specific to the oppression of ‘the second sexes’, and that, in order to fight that, we need to untangle all other forms of oppression and the anthropocentrism they inhabit. On the basis of a Spinozist philosophy of transindividuality, Anarchafeminism calls for a decolonial and deimperial attitude and for a renewed awareness of the somatic communism connecting all different life forms on the planet. In this revolutionary vision, feminism does not mean the liberation of the lucky few, but liberation of the planet from both capitalist exploitation and an anthropocentric politics of domination. Either the entire planet, or none of us will be free.
External visitors must comply with the university’s guest policy as outlined here: https://www.newschool.edu/covid-19/campus-access/?open=visitors.
Audience members must show proof of a full COVID-19 vaccination series (and booster if eligible), ID, and remain masked at all times.
Sponsored by the NSSR Philosophy Department & The Gender and Sexualities Studies Institute (GSSI)