Calendar

Various programmes and results in the philosophy/foundations of spacetime theories illustrate themes from reductionism and functionalism in general philosophy of science. I will focus on some programmes and results about how the physics of matter contributes to determining, or even determines, or even explains, chrono-geometry. I hope to say something about most of the following examples: in the philosophical literature, Robb (1914), and Mundy (1983); and in the physics literature: Barbour and Bertotti (1982); Hojman, Kuchar and Teitelboim (1976); Dull, Schuller et al. (2012, 2018); and Gomes & Shyam (2016).

Presented by Metro Area Philosophers of Science

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Armin Schulz (University of Kansas)
Details: 4:30-6:30pm Wednesday Oct 9; 3rd floor seminar room, 5 Washington Place (NYU).

Title: TBD.

Abstract: TBD.

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Christopher Weaver (University of Illinois)
Details: 4:30-6:30pm Wednesday Nov 13; 3rd floor seminar room, 5 Washington Place (NYU).

Title: TBD.

Abstract: TBD.

Zionists and anti-Zionists alike agree that Zionism consists in the idea that the Jewish People has the right to their own nation state. They deeply disagree about the legitimacy of such politics. Whereas anti-Zionists maintain that a Jewish State is necessarily discriminatory and even racist, Zionists tend to reject anti-Zionist arguments as anti-Semitic. I argue that both sides of this familiar debate are wrong. (Or worse: all too often, both are right.) A Jewish State indeed cannot be a liberal democracy; and yet Zionist politics — contrary to the consensus held by Zionists and anti-Zionists alike — does not require a Jewish State. That’s a form of Zionism that’s legitimate, important and still viable: the liberal Zionism of the future.

Learn more about the book A Future for Israel, Beyond the Two-State Solution, by Omri Boehm.

Meetings are held on Tuesdays at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus in Manhattan in the Plaza View Room on the 12th floor of the Lowenstein Building (113 W 60th St).We meet from 5:30 to 6:45 and papers are read in advance. If interested in attending, contact sahaddad@fordham.edu, swhitney@fordham.edu, or jeflynn@fordham.edu.
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2019-20

• September 24 – Rosaura Martínez (UNAM) “Alterability and Writing. Rethinking an Ontology of Dependency”
• October 15 – Jesús Luzardo (Fordham) “The Wages of the Past: Whiteness, Nostalgia, and Property”
• November 19 – Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson (Syracuse) “Conceptualizing Terrorism ‘From Below’: Lynching as Racial Terrorism”
• February 11 – Jill Stauffer (Haverford)
• March 10 – Sina Kramer (Loyola Marymount), “How to Read a City: Toward a Political Epistemology of Gentrification.”​
• April 7 – David Lay Williams (DePaul) “’Too much abundance in one or a few private men’: Hobbes on Inequality and the Concentration of Wealth”

Meetings are held on Tuesdays at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus in Manhattan in the Plaza View Room on the 12th floor of the Lowenstein Building (113 W 60th St).We meet from 5:30 to 6:45 and papers are read in advance. If interested in attending, contact sahaddad@fordham.edu, swhitney@fordham.edu, or jeflynn@fordham.edu.
​

2019-20

• September 24 – Rosaura Martínez (UNAM) “Alterability and Writing. Rethinking an Ontology of Dependency”
• October 15 – Jesús Luzardo (Fordham) “The Wages of the Past: Whiteness, Nostalgia, and Property”
• November 19 – Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson (Syracuse) “Conceptualizing Terrorism ‘From Below’: Lynching as Racial Terrorism”
• February 11 – Jill Stauffer (Haverford)
• March 10 – Sina Kramer (Loyola Marymount), “How to Read a City: Toward a Political Epistemology of Gentrification.”​
• April 7 – David Lay Williams (DePaul) “’Too much abundance in one or a few private men’: Hobbes on Inequality and the Concentration of Wealth”

Although the Colloquium on Legal, Political, and Social Philosophy is on hiatus this year, it will convene a special “pop-up” session on Thursday, October 17 from 4-7 p.m. in the Faculty Library on the third floor of Vanderbilt Hall. Professor Joseph Raz, who has long been an important member of the Colloquium community, will present a pre-circulated paper on this occasion, which marks the end of many years during which he has taught regularly at Columbia Law School each fall. Professor Raz’s paper will be posted on the Colloquium website in due course.

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.

In public discourse, but also in political theory, the opinion prevails, that democracy is incompatible with aspirations of truth. Some assume, in the Hobbesian tradition, that civic peace requires that truth assertions be restricted to science and religion (normative positivism), whereas the political sphere is constituted by interests, bargaining and collective decisions based on interests, bargaining and rules of aggregation, be they implicit or explicit. In this perspective Collective Choice as preference aggregation is paradigmatic for the understanding of democracy. Postmodernist and neo-pragmatist thought dismisses truth, because it threatens solidarity and belonging. Libertarian political thought relies on market mechanisms reducing citizens to consumers and producers of material and immaterial goods like security and welfare. Accounts of deliberative democracy focus on reasoning in the public sphere but dismiss a realistic understanding of truth, because it is thought to threaten collective and individual self-determination.

In my talk I will argue that a realistic understanding of empirical and normative truth is compatible, even necessary, for an adequate understanding of democracy, that truth assertions do not threaten civic peace, that postmodernist relativity undermines democratic practice, that libertarian market-orientation is incompatible with the status of citizens in democracy and that even deliberative, but anti-realist, accounts of democracy do not allow for an adequate understanding of democracy. My argument is based on a Davidsonian, or pragmatist, understanding of truth, therefore one might say: it critizises normative positivism, postmodernism, libertarianism, and critical theory using pragmatist insights.

Julian Nida-Rümelin presently holds a chair for philosophy and political theory at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, is a member of the European Academy of Sciences, was president of the German Philosophical Association (DGphil) and state-minister for culture and media in the first government of Gerhard Schröder. The topics of his books include Democracy as Cooperation (1999); Democracy and Truth (2006), translated in Chinese and Italian, Philosophy and the form of Life (2009), Realism (2018) and A Theory of Practical Reason (2020, forthcoming, de Gruyter and PUP).

Generous support provided by the New York Institute of Philosophy.