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Effective Altruism at NYU is privileged to host Will MacAskill, Associate Professor in Philosophy at University of Oxford and author of Doing Good Better, for a talk on The Ethics of the Next Billion Years. The event is open to the public, and members of Effective Altruism NYC, Columbia Effective Altruism, and other groups are welcome to attend.

Society is currently taking actions whose impact goes far beyond the present generation. These impacts are vast in scale because they affect so many people, with future people outnumbering us by thousands to one. Yet those future generations have little representation in the world today. They can’t bargain with us. They don’t get a vote.

In this talk, Professor Will MacAskill argues that our impact on future generations is the most important moral consideration in the world today. He introduces the philosophy of longtermism, which is concerned with ensuring that long-run outcomes go as well as possible, and discusses the ways in which we can benefit future generations, including by changing political incentives, guiding the development of new technology, and reducing the risk of human extinction. He discusses crucial considerations to help you work out what strategy to pursue, and gives advice on how you can choose a career to maximise your positive impact on the long run.

Note: If you are not an NYU student or faculty member, then to attend the event, you will be required to register on Eventbrite with your full legal name, and also bring a valid ID. Please see further information on the Eventbrite page.

Hosted by Effective Altruism at NYU. Generous support provided by the NYU Center for Bioethics, the NYU Department of Environmental Studies, and the NYU Department of Philosophy.

Here is the tentative schedule for PoPRocks sessions this semester. We will be meeting, usually, on Thursday or Friday evenings from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm in the 2nd floor seminar room at the NYU philosophy department.

Th. 10/03 Luke Roelofs
Fr. 10/18 Josh Myers
CANCELLED Fr. 10/25 Sam Clarke
Th. 10/31 Simon Brown
Th. 11/14 Noga Gratvol
Fr. 11/22 Cristina Ballarini
Th. 12/12 Rodrigo Diaz

You can still sign up to present! Of course, the earlier you request, the easier it is to schedule a session.

Theoretical reasoning is a process by which we form doxastic states on the basis of our previously-held attitudes. One of the foundational questions about the nature of reasoning is with which mental states we can reason. Many discussions of reasoning assume that we can only reason with doxastic states such as beliefs. In this paper, I argue that we can also reason with imaginings. The argument has two parts. First, I argue that epistemic uses of the imagination instantiate a number of markers which, taken together, are very good evidence for a process counting as reasoning. These include (rule-based) operation on contents, the transmission of justification, transitions between mental states that we can be held epistemically responsible for, and the ability of imaginings to enter into explicit conscious deliberation. Second, I argue that reasoning with imagination is not reducible to reasoning with beliefs. Imaginings and beliefs make different kinds of epistemically appropriate transitions available. This is, in part, due to the distinctive way that imaginative episodes develop their content over time. Thus, the markers of reasoning that epistemic uses of the imagination instantiate cannot be explained away. One interesting upshot is that, although reasoning with imagination and reasoning with beliefs are quite psychologically different in certain important respects, they share an underlying epistemic structure.

Here is the tentative schedule for PoPRocks sessions this semester. We will be meeting, usually, on Thursday or Friday evenings from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm in the 2nd floor seminar room at the NYU philosophy department.

Th. 10/03 Luke Roelofs
Fr. 10/18 Josh Myers
Fr. 10/25 Sam Clarke
Th. 10/31 Simon Brown
Th. 11/14 Noga Gratvol
Fr. 11/22 Cristina Ballarini
Th. 12/12 Rodrigo Diaz

You can still sign up to present! Of course, the earlier you request, the easier it is to schedule a session.

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.

Here is the tentative schedule for PoPRocks sessions this semester. We will be meeting, usually, on Thursday or Friday evenings from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm in the 2nd floor seminar room at the NYU philosophy department.

Th. 10/03 Luke Roelofs
Fr. 10/18 Josh Myers
CANCELLED Fr. 10/25 Sam Clarke
CANCELLED Th. 10/31 Simon Brown
Th. 11/14 Noga Gratvol
Fr. 11/22 Cristina Ballarini
Th. 12/12 Rodrigo Diaz

You can still sign up to present! Of course, the earlier you request, the easier it is to schedule a session.

Here is the tentative schedule for PoPRocks sessions this semester. We will be meeting, usually, on Thursday or Friday evenings from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm in the 2nd floor seminar room at the NYU philosophy department.

Th. 10/03 Luke Roelofs
Fr. 10/18 Josh Myers
CANCELLED Fr. 10/25 Sam Clarke
Th. 10/31 Simon Brown
Th. 11/14 Noga Gratvol
Fr. 11/22 Cristina Ballarini
Th. 12/12 Rodrigo Diaz

You can still sign up to present! Of course, the earlier you request, the easier it is to schedule a session.

Here is the tentative schedule for PoPRocks sessions this semester. We will be meeting, usually, on Thursday or Friday evenings from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm in the 2nd floor seminar room at the NYU philosophy department.

Th. 10/03 Luke Roelofs
Fr. 10/18 Josh Myers
CANCELLED Fr. 10/25 Sam Clarke
Th. 10/31 Simon Brown
Th. 11/14 Noga Gratvol
Fr. 11/22 Cristina Ballarini
Th. 12/12 Rodrigo Diaz

You can still sign up to present! Of course, the earlier you request, the easier it is to schedule a session.

Here is the tentative schedule for PoPRocks sessions this semester. We will be meeting, usually, on Thursday or Friday evenings from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm in the 2nd floor seminar room at the NYU philosophy department.

Th. 10/03 Luke Roelofs
Fr. 10/18 Josh Myers
CANCELLED Fr. 10/25 Sam Clarke
Th. 10/31 Simon Brown
Th. 11/14 Noga Gratvol
Fr. 11/22 Cristina Ballarini
Th. 12/12 Rodrigo Diaz

You can still sign up to present! Of course, the earlier you request, the easier it is to schedule a session.