Calendar

8 February @Columbia

Patricia Kitcher: The Fact of Reason in Kant’s Moral Psychology

Response: Jessica Tizzard

22 February @NSSR

Matters of Love: A Conference

5 April @Columbia

Beatrice Longuenesse: Residues of First Nature

19 April @NSSR

Angelica Nuzzo: Approaching Hegel’s Logic Obliquely: Melville, Moliere, Beckett

Response: David Carlson

10 May @Columbia

Amy Allen: Turning Dead Ends into Through Streets: Psychoanalysis and the Idea of Progress

8 February @Columbia

Patricia Kitcher: The Fact of Reason in Kant’s Moral Psychology

Response: Jessica Tizzard

22 February @NSSR

Matters of Love: A Conference

5 April @Columbia

Beatrice Longuenesse: Residues of First Nature

19 April @NSSR

Angelica Nuzzo: Approaching Hegel’s Logic Obliquely: Melville, Moliere, Beckett

Response: David Carlson

10 May @Columbia

Amy Allen: Turning Dead Ends into Through Streets: Psychoanalysis and the Idea of Progress

8 February @Columbia

Patricia Kitcher: The Fact of Reason in Kant’s Moral Psychology

Response: Jessica Tizzard

22 February @NSSR

Matters of Love: A Conference

5 April @Columbia

Beatrice Longuenesse: Residues of First Nature

19 April @NSSR

Angelica Nuzzo: Approaching Hegel’s Logic Obliquely: Melville, Moliere, Beckett

Response: David Carlson

10 May @Columbia

Amy Allen: Turning Dead Ends into Through Streets: Psychoanalysis and the Idea of Progress

Critique is an assertion of values pitted against a state of affairs. To say that things should not be the way they are–to respond to questions such as ‘Why do I think this political or economic arrangement is wrong (and why should I care?)?’ implies an ethical stance. Critique thus draws together fact and value, domains that a long tradition of moral thought has argued exist on distinct planes. For there are dimensions of political life that are incomprehensible without this conjunction between ethical motivations and social realities. But if they are to have political consequences, such questions cannot be confined to private introspection. Scale matters. This talk looks at the articulation between everyday interactions and social movements to show the interplay among the first, second, and third person stances that characterize ethical life. Drawing ethnographic examples from American feminism and Vietnamese Marxism, it considers some of the ways in which ethical intuitions emerge, consolidate, and change, and argues that objectifications and the reflexivity they facilitate help give ethical life a social history.

Rebecca Comay, Professor of Philosophy and Comparative Literature, The University of Toronto discusses Hegel and Beckett followed by a response from Paul Kottman of The New School for Social Research.

Speakers:

Biyu Jade He (NYU Medical Centre)
Hakwan Lau (UCLA)
Victor Lamme (University of Amsterdam)
Johannes Fahrenfort (University of Amsterdam)

Where in the brain are the neural correlates of perceptual consciousness?  Some leading theories of consciousness, including global workspace and higher-order thought theories, hold that these correlates centrally involve prefrontal cortex.  Other leading theories, including first-order and integrated information theories, hold that these correlates centrally involve sensory cortices, with prefrontal cortex playing at most a secondary role.  In recent years much experimental evidence has been brought to bear on both sides of the question.

In this debate, Hakwan Lau (UCLA) and Biyu Jade He (NYU) will defend the view that neural activity in prefrontal cortex is important for conscious perception, while Victor Lamme (Amsterdam) and Johannes Fahrenfort (Amsterdam) will argue that prefrontal activity is not important for conscious perception.

One of the central questions facing human beings is how we should respond to the humanity of others. Since the enlightenment, secular Western ethics has gravitated towards two kinds of answer: we should care for others’ well-being, or we should respect them as autonomous agents. Largely neglected is an answer we can find the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Buddhism: we should love all. Analytic philosophers have started to pay more attention to love. But unlike those working within religious traditions, for whom an ideal of love for all serves as the central, organizing ideal in ethics, most of these philosophers see love as confined to the domain of intimate relationships between friends, family, romantic partners and the like. This paper argues that an ideal of love for all, of agape, can be understood apart from its more typical religious contexts and moreover provides a unified and illuminating account of the the nature and grounds of morality. Against challenges to the idea that love for all is possible, I offer a novel account of what it would be to love all. I go on to argue that while it is possible to love all, most of us should not, as doing so would rule out the possibility of loving particular friends and families. Instead, we should approximate love for all. I argue that the minimal approximation of love for all is, surprisingly, respect, deriving the basic, structural features of deontological ethics (including anti-welfarism and anti-aggregation) from my account of love for all.

Reception to follow.