May
10
Fri
Hannah Arendt and Reiner Schurmann Annual Symposium in Political Philosophy “Varieties of Intentionality” @ Theresa Lang Center, I202, New School
May 10 – May 11 all-day

Conference Schedule

Friday May 10

  • 1pm: Rachel Goodman (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee)
    Introductory Overview

    1:30pm: Jake Quilty-Dunn (University of Oxford)
    On Elisabeth Camp’s “Putting Thoughts to Work”

    4:30pm: John Kulvicki (Darmouth College)
    On Jacob Beck’s “Perception is Analog”

Saturday May 11

  • 1pm: Jacob Beck (York University)
    On Jake Quilty-Dunn’s “Perceptual Pluralism”

    4pm: Elisabeth Camp (Rutgers University)
    On John Kulvicki’s “Modeling the Meanings of Pictures”

The Five Essential Readings for the Conference

The conference is predicated on the assumption that everyone in attendance will have read all five of these essays:

Some Helpful Background Readings

Here are ten additional readings that help to fill in some of the background to the topics that will be discussed at the conference. Those new to these topics might start with the Kulvicki, Camp, and Giardino and Greenberg readings, and then move on to the others.

If you have any questions about the conference, please contact Zed Adams at zed@newschool.edu.

Sep
12
Thu
International Merleau-Ponty Circle: Affect / Emotion / Feeling @ 12th Floor Lounge
Sep 12 – Sep 14 all-day

Thursday, September 12 Schedule

8:30 – 9 a.m. Registration and coffee
9 – 9:15 a.m. Opening remarks: Shiloh Whitney, Conference Director
Session 1 – Organic Affectivity and Animality
Moderator: Emilia Angelova, Concordia University
9:15 – 10 a.m. Hermanni Yli-Tepsa, University of Jyväskylä: “How to feel like our eyes: tracing the theme of instinctive affectivity in Phenomenology of Perception”
10 – 10:45 a.m. Sarah DiMaggio, Vanderbilt University: “Flesh and Blood: Reimagining Kinship”
10:45 – 11 a.m. Break
Session 2 – Passivity
Moderator: Philip Walsh, Fordham University
11 – 11:45 a.m. David Morris, Concordia University: “The Transcendentality of Passivity: Affective Being and the Contingency of Phenomenology as Institution”
11:45 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Rajiv Kaushik, Brock University “Merleau-Ponty on Passivity and the Limit of Philosophical Critique”
12:30 – 2 p.m. Lunch Break
Session 3 – Theorizing Emotion 1: Outside-in, Inside-Outside
Moderator: Duane H. Davis, University of North Carolina at Asheville
2 – 2:45 p.m. Ed Casey, Stonybrook University: “Bringing Edge to Bear: Vindicating Merleau-Ponty’s Nascent Ideas on Emotion”
2:45 – 3:30 p.m. Ondřej Švec, Charles University Prague: “Acting out one’s emotion”
3:30 – 3:45 p.m. Break
Session 4 – Theorizing Emotion 2: Intersubjective Dimensions
Moderator: April Flakne, New College of Florida
3:45 – 4:30 p.m. Jan Halák, Palacky University Olomouc: “On the diacritical value of expression with regard to emotion”
4:30 – 5:15 p.m. Corinne Lajoie, Penn State University: “The equilibrium of sense: Levels of embodiment and the (dis)orientations of love”
Winner of the M. C. Dillon Award for best graduate essay
5:15 – 5:45 p.m. Snack Break (light refreshments provided)
Thursday Keynote
Introduction: Shiloh Whitney, Fordham University
5:45 – 7:15 p.m. Alia Al-Saji, McGill University
“The Affective Flesh of Colonial Duration”

Friday, September 13 Schedule

8:30 – 9 a.m. Registration and coffee
Session 5 – Affective Pathologies and Empathy
Moderator: Lisa Käll, Stockholm University
9 – 9:45 a.m. Ståle Finke, Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim: “Structuring Affective Pathology: Merleau-Ponty and Psychoanalysis”
9:45 – 10:30 a.m. Catherine Fullarton, Emory University: “Empathy, Perspective, Parallax”
10:30 – 10:45 a.m. Break
Session 6 – Eating and Breathing
Moderator: Ann Murphy, University of New Mexico
10:45 – 11:30 a.m. Whitney Ronshagen, Emory University: “Visceral Relations: On Eating, Affect, and Sharing the World”
11:30 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. Amie Leigh Zimmer, University of Oregon: “Rethinking Chronic Breathlessness Beyond Symptom and Syndrome”
12:15 – 2 p.m. Lunch Break (and graduate student Mentoring Session in Lowenstein 810)
Session 7 – Critical Phenomenologies 1: Work and Freedom
Moderator: Whitney Howell, La Salle University
2 – 2:45 p.m. Talia Welsh, University of Tennessee Chattanooga: “Toward a Critical Phenomenology of Work and Its Discontents”
2:45 – 3:30 p.m. Laura McMahon, Eastern Michigan University: “The ‘Great Phantom’: Merleau-Ponty on Habitus, Freedom, and Political Transformation”
3:30 – 3:45 p.m. Break
Session 8 – Critical Phenomenologies 2: The “I Can”
Moderator: Cheryl Emerson, SUNY Buffalo
3:45 – 4:30 p.m. Kym Maclaren, Ryerson University: “Criminalization and the Self-Constituting Dynamics of Distrust”
4:30 – 5:15 p.m. Joel Reynolds, University of Massachusetts Lowell and Lauren Guilmette, Elon University: “Rethinking the Ableism of Affect Theory with Merleau-Ponty”
5:15 – 5:45 p.m. Snack Break (light refreshments provided)
Friday Keynote
Introduction: Shiloh Whitney, Fordham University
5:45 – 7:15 p.m. Matthew Ratcliffe, York University
“Towards a Phenomenology of Grief: Insights from Merleau-Ponty”

Saturday, September 14 Schedule

8:30 – 9 a.m. Registration and coffee
Session 9 – Feeling Beyond Humanism
Moderator: Wayne Froman, George Mason University
9 – 9:45 a.m. Marie-Eve, Morin, University of Alberta. “Merleau-Ponty’s ‘cautious anthropomorphism’”
9:45 – 10:30 a.m. Jay Worthy, University of Alberta: “Feelings of Adversity: Towards a Critical Humanism”
10:30 – 10:45 a.m. Break
Session 10 – Art and Affect
Moderator: Stephen Watson, Notre Dame
10:45 – 11:30 a.m. Veronique Foti, Pennsylvania State University. “Body, Animality, and Cosmos in the Art of Kiki Smith”
11:30 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. Rebecca Longtin, State University of New York New Paltz: “From Stone to Flesh: Affect and the Poetic Ambiguity of the Body”
12:15 – 2:15 p.m. Lunch Break (and Business Lunch at Rosa Mexicano, 61 Columbus Ave)
Session 11 – Voice and Silence
Moderator: Gail Weiss, George Washington University
2:15 – 3 p.m. Susan, Bredlau, Emory University. “Losing One’s Voice: Merleau-Ponty and the Lived Space of Conversation”
3 – 3:45 p.m. Martina, Ferrari, University of Oregon. “The Laboring of Deep Silence: ‘Conceptless Opening(s),’ the Suspension of the Familiar, and the Dismemberment of the Ego”
3:45 – 4 p.m. Break
Session 12 – Affectivity and Language
Moderator: Galen Johnson, University of Rhode Island
4 – 4:45 p.m. Silvana de Souza Ramos, University of São Paulo. “Merleau-Ponty and the Prose of Dora’s World”
4:45 – 5:30 p.m. Katie Emery Brown, University of California Berkeley. “Queer Silence in Merleau-Ponty’s Gesture”
Banquet
7 – 10 p.m. At Salam, 104 W 13th St.
Oct
24
Thu
IS ACTIVITY IN PREFRONTAL CORTEX IMPORTANT FOR CONSCIOUS PERCEPTION? @ Deutsches Haus at NYU
Oct 24 @ 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm

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.

Feb
4
Tue
Castoriadis and the Permutations of the Social Imaginary. Suzi Adams @ Wolff Conference Room, D1103
Feb 4 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm

This paper considers Cornelius Castoriadis’s articulation of social imaginary significations with an emphasis on their link to the radical imaginary. Castoriadis wrote on social imaginary significations for more than thirty years, and his understanding of them changed significantly during this time, yet this is not reflected in debates on his work. The paper argues that there are three distinct phases in his reflections. The first phase can be dated 1964-1970. This early phase is characterized by Castoriadis’s break from Marx and subsequent settling of accounts with Marxism. Central to Castoriadis’s critique of Marx was the recognition of history (or: the social-historical) as the domain of meaning and unmotivated creation as the work of the radical imaginary. Importantly, Castoriadis also considered the intertwining of the imaginary with the symbolic, on the one hand, and with social doing, on the other. Castoriadis’s approach in this early phase can be considered phenomenological in the broad sense that Merleau-Ponty gave it in the Phenomenology of Perception. The second phase is dated 1970-1975; that is, the period in which Castoriadis wrote the second part of The Imaginary Institution of Society wherein he announced his turn to ontology. This is his most self-contained and systematic articulation of social imaginary significations. Castoriadis extends and develops his notion of magma in relation to social imaginary significations and emphasizes the social imaginary creation of a world ex nihilo as an ontological creation, whilst the radical imaginary is presented as a part of his emergent general ontology of à-être. The third ‘kaleidoscopic’ phase is dated 1976-1997 and may be understood as a period of consolidation and expansion. Although his basic understanding of social imaginary significations did not dramatically alter (although further developments are visible), his thought went in a myriad of different directions and patterns – hence kaleidoscopic — that nonetheless shaped a wider background against which his elucidation of social imaginaries were configured. His reconsideration of the sacred, the ‘ground power’ of institutions, and the development of a poly-regional ontology of the for-itself were key to this changing background. The paper will conclude with a critical engagement with the implications of the changing permutations of the imaginary element for Castoriadis’s thought.

Dr. Suzi Adams is Senior Lecturer in the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at Flinders University and permanent External Fellow at the East-Central European Institute for Philosophy, Charles University (Prague). She is a founding co-ordinating editor of the Social Imaginaries refereed journal and book series, and from October-December 2019, was an inaugural Senior Research Fellow at the Humanities Centre for Sustainable Futures at the University of Hamburg. She has published widely in the social imaginaries field, including most recently Social Imaginaries: Critical Interventions (Eds. Suzi Adams and Jeremy Smith), 2019, Rowman and Littlefield International, London. She is currently writing a monograph entitled Castoriadis and the Imaginary Element (forthcoming with Rowman and Littlefield International).

Feb
2
Fri
Mental Imagery, Tantric Practice, and the Drama of the Imagination. Davey K. Tomlinson (Villanova) @ Columbia Religion
Feb 2 @ 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm

How does the imagination change us? Why should picturing ourselves a certain way have any real effect on what we are? These questions are central to debates in Buddhist tantric literature regarding the generation stage (utpattikrama), wherein practitioners visualize themselves as buddhas ensconsed in magnificent mandala-palaces. For some, this practice is what sets Buddhist tantra apart: through this “yoga of the imagination,” as David Shulman puts it, a practitioner can achieve buddhahood in a single lifetime. And yet, as the Buddhist tantric author Indrabhūti (8th century) argues, a pauper who imagines himself to be a king does not thereby become one—so, in the same way, practitioners who visualize themselves as buddhas will not thereby become buddhas. The mental imagery (ākāra) involved in this practice is just so much unreal fabrication. Why should it have real transformative effects? I’ll consider here how these debates played out in Sanskrit Buddhist tantric texts from the 10th–11th centuries. I’ll focus on early authors in the Kālacakra tradition, who upheld Indrabhūti’s critique of the generation stage, and authors like Ratnākaraśānti, Vāgīśvarakīrti, and Advayavajra (aka Maitrīpa), who each in their own way critiqued mental imagery yet defended the importance and effectiveness of generation-stage practice. In the first part of the paper, I’ll consider arguments against mental imagery as these appear in generation-stage practice texts and the early Kālacakra tradition. In the second part, I’ll turn to why we might think unreal mental imagery can nevertheless have real transformative effects, paying special attention to the ways Buddhist tantric authors writing in Sanskrit take up ideas from the tradition of dramatic theory (nāṭyaśastra) and Sanskrit culture more broadly.

With responses from Thomas Yarnall (Columbia University)

DATE: February 2nd, 2024

TIME: 5:30 pm EST

LOCATION: Philosophy Hall, Room 716, Columbia University

1150 Amsterdam Ave, New York, NY 10027

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.

ACCESSIBILITY STATEMENT: Columbia University encourages persons with disabilities to participate in its programs and activities. The University Seminars’ participants with dis- abilities who anticipate needing accommodations or who have questions about physical access may contact the Office of Disability Services at 212.854.2388 or disability@columbia.edu. Disability accommodations, including sign-language interpreters, are available on request. Requests for accommodations must be made two weeks in advance. On campus, seminar participants with disabilities should alert a Public Safety Officer  if they need assistance accessing campus.

PLEASE VISIT OUR WEBSITEhttps://universityseminars.columbia.edu/seminars/comparative-philosophy/

(Please do not reply to this announcement. You may contact the Co-Chairs using the link above.) 

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)