We discuss two approaches to life: presentism and futurism. The first one, which we are identifying with the Buddha, is to live in the present and not to allow the future to hinder us from living in the ever present now. The second one, which we will identify with Karl Popper, is to think before we act, and act now for a better future. We will discuss various aspects of presentism and futurism, such as Ruth Millikan’s Popperian animal, the psychologist Howard Rachlin’s social and temporal discounting, and even the popular but controversial idea, YOLO (you live only once). The purpose of this talk is to contrast one with the other. The central question of ethics is: How should one live? Our variation on that question is: When should one live? We conjecture that the notion of flow, developed by Csikszentmihalyi, may be a better optimal choice between these two positions.
This work, which is joint with Jongjin Kim, is to appear in the Journal of Buddhist Ethics.
Logic and Metaphysics Workshop:
September 2 GC Closed NO MEETING
September 9 Yael Sharvit, UCLA
September 16 Ole Hjortland and Ben Martin, Bergen
September 23 Alessandro Rossi, StAndrews
September 30 GC Closed NO MEETING
October 7 Dongwoo Kim, GC
October 14 GC Closed NO MEETING
October 21 Rohit Parikh, GC
October 28 Barbara Montero, GC
November 4 Sergei Aretmov, GC
November 11 Martin Pleitz, Muenster
November 18
November 25
December 2 Jessica Wilson, Toronto
December 9 Mark Colyvan, Sydney
December 16 MAYBE A MEETING; MAYBE NOT
We are pleased to announce that the 2024 meeting of the Northeast Conference on Chinese Thought (NECCT) will be held on November 2-3 at Baruch College, City University of New York. This annual meeting is an opportunity for scholars of Chinese thought (broadly construed) from across the northeast US (also somewhat broadly construed) to gather and share their research. As we are interested in generating interdisciplinary discussions, we welcome work of any disciplinary/methodological orientation that bears on Chinese thought.
- When: Saturday, November 2-Sunday, November 3, 2024
- Where: Baruch College, CUNY, New York, NY
- Format: Approximately fifteen thirty-minute slots. We ask that presenters plan for a twenty-minute presentation and allow for a ten-minute Q&A.
- Meals, Travel, and Accommodations: Presenters will be provided with lunch and dinner at the conference. Presenters are expected to pay for their own travel and accommodations.
- Submissions: Please email your paper proposals by July 31st to nell.evans@baruch.cuny.edu with the subject line “NECCT 2024 Submission”. The paper proposal should be a one-page document with a title and abstract. It should be anonymized for review. We expect to have the schedule finalized by August 15th.
We are grateful for the generous financial support of CUNY Graduate Center and the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College.
Please direct any questions about the conference to Hagop Sarkissian (hagop.sarkissian@baruch.cuny.edu) or Wenqing Zhao (zhaowenqing711@gmail.com).
We look forward to hearing from you!
NECCT Organizing Committee:
Stephen Angle (Wesleyan University)
Mick Hunter (Yale University)
Andrew Lambert (CUNY College of Staten Island)
Ellen Neskar (Sarah Lawrence College)
Thomas Radice (Southern Connecticut State University)
Hagop Sarkissian (CUNY Graduate Center/Baruch College CUNY)
Christopher Yang (Brown University)
Wenqing Zhao (Baruch College, CUNY)