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.
Contact Professor Gooding-Williams for more info.
Generative art made with algorithms has existed since the early days of computing in the 1960s. In recent years, a new strand of generative art has emerged: AI-generated art, which leverages the recent progress of artificial intelligence to create artworks. Unlike old-fashioned generative art, AI-generated art is not produced with an explicit set of programming instructions provided by human artists; instead, it involves training an algorithm on a dataset so that it can later produce artworks (images, music, or video clips) using its own internal parameters that have not been explicitly defined by a human. This process raises fascinating questions at the intersection of computer science, art history, and the philosophy of art. At a superficial level of analysis, AI-generated art seems to offload much of the creative impetus of art production to the machine, requiring minimal intervention from the artist. On closer inspection, however, it involves a novel process of curation at two key stages: upstream in the selection of the dataset on which the algorithm is trained, and downstream in the selection of the outputs that should qualify as artworks. Instead of replacing human artists with computers, AI-generated art can be understood as a new kind of collaboration between mind and machine, both of which contribute to the aesthetic value of the final artwork.
This seminar will bring together AI artists and philosophers to explore the significance of this new mode of art production. It will discuss the implications of AI-generated art for the definition of art, the nature of the relationship between artists and tools, the process of digital curation, and whether AI systems can be as creative as humans.
Event Speakers
- Sougwen Chung, artist and researcher
- Helena Sarin, visual artist
- Anne Spalter, digital mixed-media artist
- Katherine Thomson-Jones, Professor of Philosophy at Oberlin College
- Moderated by Raphaël Millière, Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience at Columbia University
Event Information
Free and open to the public. Registration is required via Eventbrite. Registered attendees will receive an event link shortly before the seminar begins.
This event is hosted by the Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience as part of the Seminars in Society and Neuroscience series.
The Center for Science and Society makes every reasonable effort to accommodate individuals with disabilities. If you require disability accommodations to attend a Center for Science and Society event, please contact us at scienceandsociety@columbia.edu or (212) 853-1612 at least 10 days in advance of the event. For more information, please visit the campus accessibility webpage.
A prominent logician Melvin Fitting has turned 80. This hybrid conference is a special event in his honor.
Melvin Fitting was in the departments of Computer Science, Philosophy, and Mathematics at the CUNY Graduate Center and in the department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Lehman College. He is now Professor Emeritus. He has authored 11 books and over a hundred research papers with staggering citation figures. In 2012, Melvin Fitting was given the Herbrand Award by the Conference on Automated Deduction (CADE) for distinguished contributions to the field. In 2019, Professor Fitting received a Doctor Honoris Causa (an Honorary Doctorate) from the University of Bucharest.
Greetings, congratulations, photos for posting, and ZOOM link requests could be sent to Sergei Artemov by sartemov@gmail.com or sartemov@gc.cuny.edu.
Conference website https://sartemov.ws.gc.cuny.edu/fitting-at-80/
Program (the times are given in the Eastern Day Time zone EST). In-person location: CUNY Graduate Center, rm. 3310-B.
January 28, Saturday
8:00-8:45 am Arnon Avron (Tel Aviv), “Breaking the Tie: Benacerraf’s Identification Argument Revisited”
8:45-9:30 am Junhua Yu (Beijing), “Exploring Operators on Neighborhood Models”
9:30-9:45 am Break
9:45-10:30 am Sara Negri (Genoa), “Faithful Modal Embedding: From Gödel to Labelled Calculi”
10:30-11:15 am Heinrich Wansing (Bochum), “Remarks on Semantic Information and Logic. From Semantic Tetralateralism to the Pentalattice 65536_5”
11:15-11:30 am Break
11:30 am -12:15 pm Roman Kuznets (Vienna), “On Interpolation”
12:15-1:00 pm Walter Carnielli (Campinas), “Combining KX4 and S4: A logic that encompasses factive and non-factive evidence“
1:00-1:15 pm Break
1:15-2:00 pm Eduardo Barrio and Federico Pailos (Buenos Aires), “Meta-classical Non-classical Logics”
2:00-2:45 pm Graham Priest (New York), “Jaśkowski and the Jains: a Fitting Tribute”
2:45-4:00 pm Session of memories and congratulations featuring Sergei Artemov, Anil Nerode, Hiroakira Ono, Melvin Fitting, and others.
The COVID-19 pandemic is said to be a once-in-a-century incident, and it brought to us a sense of crisis at various levels. What is a crisis, though? Can any unnerving moment or period be called a crisis, or are there different dimensions of a crisis to which we need to be attentive? Is solidarity possible after experiencing a crisis like Covid-19? Can Buddhism make any contribution to facilitating solidarity? This presentation explores the meaning and nature of a crisis and our responses to it by drawing on modern Korean political thinker Pak Ch’iu’s (1909–1949) analysis of crisis and feminist-Buddhist thinker Kim Iryŏp’s (1896–1971) Buddhist philosophy. By doing so, this presentation considers what social, political, existential, and even religious meaning we can draw from our experience of crises, and what questions these insights present to us.
With responses from Karsten Struhl (John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY)
Presented by THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY
RSVP is required for dinner. If you would like to participate in our dinner, a $30 fee is required. Please contact Lucilla at lm3335@columbia.edu for further information.
The first section of the talk will give an account of the Hindu-Buddhist debate about the existence of selves. The particular Hindu / Brāhmaṇical tradition concentrated on is Nyāya, and ‘Buddhism’ is used to refer specifically to Dharmakīrtian Buddhism with its doctrine of momentariness. The second section looks at a Nyāya argument against Buddhism. I will argue that it is not difficult for the Buddhist to come up with a satisfactory response. The third section will introduce the view of Rāmakaṇṭha (950–1000 CE) and look at three of his arguments against the Buddhist view. These I view as more difficult for the Buddhist to respond to. The fourth section introduces the view of Galen Strawson, relates it to the Buddhist view, and considers the extent to which it is susceptible to Rāmakaṇṭha’s arguments.
With responses from Martin Lin (Rutgers University)
NOTE ON ENTRY FOR NON-COLUMBIA GUESTS: The door to Philosophy Hall will only open with a Columbia University ID card. If you do not have this card please arrive early where someone will be standing outside until the meeting begins. If you arrive late, you can ask someone walking nearby to let you in or contact Cole at cf2798@columbia.edu. Please only contact Cole as a final resource so as not to interrupt the talk.
NOTE REGARDING DONATIONS: Due to COVID-19, donations are only accepted through Columbia University’s secure online giving form, Giving to Columbia.
RSVP is required for dinner. Dinner will take place at a nearby restaurant. Please contact Cole at cf2798@columbia.edu for further information.
Comparative Philosophy Seminar:
- January 19 – Alex Watson (Ashoka University)
- February 2 – Davey Tomlinson (Villanova University)
- April 5 – Laura Specker (Fordham University)
- May 3 – Daniel Stephens (University at Buffalo)
Democracy is often presented as the sine qua non of politics today. Yet our own democratic political orders across the West consistently fail to deliver the desiderata they promise to provide. Does this failure arise in part from the theoretical insufficiency of conventional diagnoses of democracy’s challenges and ills? As the primaries for the 2024 U.S. presidential election open, we invite participants to consider critically the status of democracy with an eye toward the concerns that have defined Telos over its 55-year history.
The main advantage of democracy over other political forms is that, by allowing broader participation in decision-making, it prevents domination of the many by the few. In theory, it also fosters decision-making that is comparatively effective and meaningful by allowing views and information from the many to be communicated efficiently to political leaders, while also holding the latter to account for their actions. At the same time, a major difficulty of democracy is that the rule by the many requires some procedure for translating a multitude of opinions into unified decisions and action. In addition, precisely by exercising its majority will, the many can trammel the integrity of the individual—the key threat that liberalism seeks to hold at bay.
These advantages—and, especially, these challenges—have produced two competing visions of democracy in the contemporary West. Their division reflects differences about the politics of representation and decision-making. On one hand, liberals view democracy as the following of appropriate procedures for channeling the opinions of the multitude through the election of representatives. On the other hand, populists might disregard such procedural restrictions to arrive at outcomes that are acclaimed by the people directly.
While both sides nod to the importance of the popular will, both are in fact willing to denigrate it. The liberal camp reacts in horror when democratic elections result in the election of populists, who are said to lack proper governing expertise, as in the 2016 victory of Donald Trump. The populist camp charges conspiracy when electoral results fail to reflect their own conception of the people’s will, as in Trump’s reaction to his 2020 ouster. Depending on which camp is describing the times, the false mediator of popular will is either the demagogue or the bureaucrat—Telos has long opposed both.
Different narratives, in turn, have taken hold about democracy’s present challenges. From the point of view of the liberal proceduralist critique of demagogues, the means of moving from a multiplicity of opinions to a unified decision inevitably involves discourse within a public sphere. This discourse depends on a common understanding of historical facts, as well as a public sphere that allows different perspectives to face each other in debate. In our contemporary world, however, the breakdown of previous limits to accessing the public sphere has led to an inability to arrive at a consensus on the difference between fact and fiction, as well as an increasing tendency of citizens to exist within a social media echo chamber of their own views, undermining the common ground that a public sphere presupposes.
At the same time, public debate necessarily implicates values and identities that have an ultimately mythic basis that cannot be rationally determined. People’s opinions, moreover, are invariably shaped by leaders as much as the people shape what leaders ought to do. Experts lament how this representational dynamic undermines the procedures that govern and channel the representation of the popular will. Yet the narrative aspect of representation is an ineradicable element of the way in which the popular will coalesces. The process of narrativized representation will never be an entirely rational one, and the prominence of media personalities such as Reagan, Trump, and Zelensky as politicians underlines the futility of attempting to rid the public sphere of drama and spectacle.
For the populist, by contrast, the primary threat to democracy lies in bureaucracy. In his 2016 end run around the political establishment, Trump’s electoral success was driven by a broader critique of the administrative state’s undermining of democratic process. The rise of the managerial bureaucratic state that was set in motion by the development of the welfare state in the twentieth century has created a class divide between managers and managed that has shifted decision-making power over the conditions of everyday life away from individuals and toward government and corporate bureaucracies. Because more and more of our economic and social welfare is under the direct influence of the state, the resultant bloated administrative state has now become prey to a frenzy of lobbyists, who further distance the people from political decision-making. The protections of minority rights that constitute the liberal aspect of today’s democracies have turned communities into special interests that lobby administrators to pass on privileges to favored groups. The result has been a growing restriction of freedom of expression in the public sphere and an eroding of a unifying basis for constructing a political order now dominated by the collusion of bureaucracy with corporations.
While the liberal critique of demagoguery resorts to more government controls that exacerbate the expansion of bureaucracy, the populist critique of bureaucracy has attempted to dismantle government without considering how to establish mechanisms that would take over the functions that bureaucracies have coopted. Focusing on opposition to government, the populist perspective often lacks any sense of alternative institutional structures that could remedy the administration and commodification of everyday life.
Both sides have contributed to a polarization of views that threatens the underlying consensus necessary for democratic politics. The political gridlock that has ensued from their diverging diagnoses has meant that our political orders consistently fail to deliver peace, prosperity, and accountable government. Moreover, regardless of the rhetoric or credentials of those in power, democracy today seems always to leave us with broadly the same basic policies, despite some of them being deeply unpopular.
We invite those who are interested in presenting at the 2024 Telos Conference to consider critically the status of democracy today by addressing one or more of the following questions:
Democratic Values
- Does democracy have a value of its own independent of its practical consequences?
- What kinds of basic agreements on principles are necessary to maintain a democracy?
- Is there a limit to diversity in a democracy?
- To what extent is polarization itself a threat to democracy?
- What is the relationship between democracy and liberalism?
Democracy and the Administrative State
- To what extent is the consistent reality of all self-styled “democracies” of the world today a form of managerial governance that resists change from below?
- What role is left in an age of managerialism for the popular will?
- Might the appropriate response to managerialism not be more democracy, both at the level of the state but also inside corporate and workplace structures, e.g., through workers’ self-management?
Democracy and the Public Sphere
- What is the role of representation in a democracy, and how do today’s representational processes threaten democratic decision-making?
- How have social media and artificial intelligence changed the way in which democratic processes function, and what changes to these processes might be necessary in the future to accommodate these new technological developments?
- To what extent and in what ways does the public sphere function in today’s democracies? What kinds of limitations are necessary to guarantee the functioning of the public sphere as a space for democratic debate and decision-making?
Democracy and Religion
- What role is there for religion in today’s democracies?
- To what extent does either secularization or religion pose a threat to democracy?
Democracy and Authoritarianism
- What is the relationship between democracy and authoritarianism? Do the current ills of democracy promote a global shift toward authoritarian government?
- What are the key components of democracy that differentiate it from authoritarianism? Where do countries such as Hungary, Turkey, India, and Russia fall on the continuum from democracy to authoritarianism?
Abstract Submissions
Whatever specific questions you address, we invite you to present your analysis with an eye toward the long-standing concerns of the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute and thereby to help develop a trenchant, independent view of democracy that can inform both critique and practical action within our present historical moment. Please submit a short c.v. and an abstract of up to 250 words by October 15, 2023, to telosnyc2024@telosinstitute.net and place “The 2024 Telos Conference” in the email’s subject line. Please direct questions to Professor Mark G. E. Kelly, Western Sydney University, M.Kelly@westernsydney.edu.au.
Conference Location
The conference will take place at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute in New York City from Friday, March 22, to Saturday, March 23, 2024.
Comparative philosophy is gaining traction in professional academic philosophy, with specialist journals, organizations, books, and public campaigns. These inroads have been made in canonical areas of philosophy, including epistemology, metaphysics, logic, and value theory. Yet comparative philosophy still plays little role in practical applied ethics, an interdisciplinary research area in which work with practice and policy implications are dominated by the anglophone world. In this article, I explain why comparative work might be especially difficult in this type of applied ethics, and I suggest how comparative philosophers might overcome these challenges to connect their theoretical work with contemporary practical issues.
With responses from Wenqing Zhao (CUNY Baruch)
NOTE ON ENTRY FOR NON-COLUMBIA GUESTS: The door to Philosophy Hall will only open with a Columbia University ID card. If you do not have this card please arrive early where someone will be standing outside until the meeting begins. If you arrive late, you can ask someone walking nearby to let you in or contact Cole at cf2798@columbia.edu. Please only contact Cole as a final resource so as not to interrupt the talk.
RSVP IS REQUIRED FOR DINNER:. Dinner will take place at a nearby restaurant. Please contact Cole at cf2798@columbia.edu for further information. RSVPs are limited.
Comparative Philosophy Seminar:
- January 19 – Alex Watson (Ashoka University)
- February 2 – Davey Tomlinson (Villanova University)
- April 5 – Laura Specker (Fordham University)
- May 3 – Daniel Stephens (University at Buffalo)