Sjoerd van Tuinen and Jürgen Schaflechner will present their film “Toxic Reigns of Resentment” featuring Wendy Brown, Grayson Hunt, Rahel Jaeggi, Alexander Nehamas, Robert Pfaller, Gyan Prakash, Peter Sloterdijk, and Sjoerd van Tuinen. NSSR philosopher Jay Bernstein will respond after the screening.
After the fall of the Soviet empire and the triumph of global capitalism, modernity appeared to keep its dual promise of liberty and equality. The spreading of human rights and democratic forms of government were intrinsically linked to free flows of global capital and free markets. Supported by technological developments and an ever-increasing digitalization of daily life, the future contained the promise of abundance and recognition for all.
Only a few decades later, however, we witness an oppositional trend: A revival of nationalism paired with xenophobia, an increasing tribalization of politics, a public sphere oscillating between cruelty and sentimentality, and a Left caught up in wounded attachments. Social media, once the promise to give voice to the disempowered, link cognitive capitalism with a culture of trolling and hyper moralization. Algorithms programmed to monetarize outrage feed isolated information bubbles and produce what many call the era of post-truth politics.
How did we enter this toxic climate? Are these developments a response to the ubiquity of neoliberal market structures eroding the basic solidarities in our society? Has the spread of social media limited our ability to soberly deal with conflicting life worlds? And have both the left and the right given in to a form of politics where moralization and cynical mockery outdo collective visions of the future?
The NYU Center for Bioethics is pleased to welcome submissions of abstracts for its 1st Annual Philosophical Bioethics Workshop, to be held at NYU on Friday, April 3, 2020.
We are seeking to showcase new work in philosophical bioethics, including (but not limited to) neuroethics, environmental ethics, animal ethics, reproductive ethics, research ethics, ethics of AI, data ethics, and clinical ethics.
Our distinguished keynote speaker will be Frances Kamm.
There will be four additional slots for papers chosen from among the submitted abstracts, including one slot set aside for a graduate student speaker. The most promising graduate student submission will be awarded a Graduate Prize, which includes coverage of travel expenses (up to $500, plus accommodation for two nights) as well as an award of $500. Please indicate in your submission email whether you would like to be considered for the Graduate Prize.
Please submit extended abstracts of between 750 and 1,000 words to philosophicalbioethics@gmail.com by 11:59 pm EST on Friday, January 24, 2020. Abstracts should be formatted for blind review and should be suitable for presentation in 30-35 minutes. Notification of acceptance will take place via email by Friday, February 14, 2020.
When submitting your abstract, please also indicate whether you would be interested in serving as a commentator in the event that your abstract is not selected for presentation. We will be inviting four additional participants to serve as commentators.
Presented by Metro Area Philosophers of Science
Spring 2020 Schedule:
Anthony Aguirre (UCSC) – “Entropy in long-lived genuinely closed quantum systems”
6:30-8:30pm Tuesday Feb 4; NYU Philosophy Department (5 Washington Place), 3rd floor seminar room.
David Papineau (King’s College London & CUNY) – “The Nature of Representation”
4:30-6:30pm Tuesday March 3; CUNY Graduate Center (365 5th Ave, NYC), room 5307.
Jim Holt (Author of Why Does the World Exist?) – “Here, Now, Photon: Why Newton was closer to EM than Maudlin is”
4:30-6:30pm Tuesday April 7; CUNY Graduate Center (365 5th Ave, NYC), room 5307.
Deborah Mayo (Virginia Tech)
4:30-6:30pm Tuesday April 28; CUNY Graduate Center (365 5th Ave, NYC), room 5307.
Socrates’ close association of madness and philosophy from the Phaedrus’ Palinode has puzzled interpreters. How can philosophy be equated to irrationality? In this paper I argue against interpretations that either deny that the association of madness and philosophy ought to be taken seriously or downplay this association by considering madness as akin to the unreflective inspiration characterizing only the first stages of philosophizing but subsequently overcome by the mature philosopher. I show that the association of madness and philosophy is an integral part of Socrates’ polemics against what he calls “human moderation”, characterized by a cold calculation of costs and benefits. And, moreover, that madness is an ongoing feature of philosophy and of the philosopher, who is never fully in possession of all his rational and cognitive processes but has to constantly work on them in an effort of self-clarification.
External visitors must comply with the university’s guest policy as outlined here: https://www.newschool.edu/covid-19/campus-access/?open=visitors.
Audience members must show proof of a full COVID-19 vaccination series (and booster if eligible), ID, and remain masked at all times.
Professor Williamson will give 3 lectures: September 19, 21, and 23. All will take place in AB-2400 [East Wing] from 4:30-6:30pm.
The lectures will discuss problems in the methodology of contemporary philosophy. Although philosophy without use of counterexamples would be a disaster, the way they are currently handled is naïve. In particular, it is too vulnerable to fake counterexamples generated by more or less universal human heuristics.
Lecture One: Heuristics [9/19]
Human cognition, from sense perception to abstract reflection, frequently employs heuristics, quick, easy, efficient, and imperfectly reliable ways of solving problems. To a neglected extent, philosophical problems and paradoxes from reliance on the outputs of fallible heuristics. This will be illustrated with examples involving vagueness, conditionals, belief ascription, truth and falsity, and reasons aggregation. Potential lessons for philosophical method will be discussed.
Lecture Two: Overfitting [9/21]
Overfitting is a well-recognized methodological problem in natural science, where use of models with too many degrees of freedom leads to unstable theorizing and failure to detect errors in the data. Overfitting is also a major but ill-recognized methodological problem in philosophy, exacerbated by its reliance on heuristics. General intellectual tendencies conducive to overfitting in philosophy will be discussed.
Lecture Three: Hyperintensionality [9/23]
The ‘hyperintensional revolution’ proclaims that central metaphysical distinctions cannot be captured in modal terms since they are sensitive to differences between necessary equivalents. Such hyperintensionalism fits the profile of overfitting. It is motivated by case judgments that are explicable as results of a fallible heuristic and it leads to models with too many degrees of freedom.
Professor Williamson will give 3 lectures: September 19, 21, and 23. All will take place in AB-2400 [East Wing] from 4:30-6:30pm.
The lectures will discuss problems in the methodology of contemporary philosophy. Although philosophy without use of counterexamples would be a disaster, the way they are currently handled is naïve. In particular, it is too vulnerable to fake counterexamples generated by more or less universal human heuristics.
Lecture One: Heuristics [9/19]
Human cognition, from sense perception to abstract reflection, frequently employs heuristics, quick, easy, efficient, and imperfectly reliable ways of solving problems. To a neglected extent, philosophical problems and paradoxes from reliance on the outputs of fallible heuristics. This will be illustrated with examples involving vagueness, conditionals, belief ascription, truth and falsity, and reasons aggregation. Potential lessons for philosophical method will be discussed.
Lecture Two: Overfitting [9/21]
Overfitting is a well-recognized methodological problem in natural science, where use of models with too many degrees of freedom leads to unstable theorizing and failure to detect errors in the data. Overfitting is also a major but ill-recognized methodological problem in philosophy, exacerbated by its reliance on heuristics. General intellectual tendencies conducive to overfitting in philosophy will be discussed.
Lecture Three: Hyperintensionality [9/23]
The ‘hyperintensional revolution’ proclaims that central metaphysical distinctions cannot be captured in modal terms since they are sensitive to differences between necessary equivalents. Such hyperintensionalism fits the profile of overfitting. It is motivated by case judgments that are explicable as results of a fallible heuristic and it leads to models with too many degrees of freedom.
Professor Williamson will give 3 lectures: September 19, 21, and 23. All will take place in AB-2400 [East Wing] from 4:30-6:30pm.
The lectures will discuss problems in the methodology of contemporary philosophy. Although philosophy without use of counterexamples would be a disaster, the way they are currently handled is naïve. In particular, it is too vulnerable to fake counterexamples generated by more or less universal human heuristics.
Lecture One: Heuristics [9/19]
Human cognition, from sense perception to abstract reflection, frequently employs heuristics, quick, easy, efficient, and imperfectly reliable ways of solving problems. To a neglected extent, philosophical problems and paradoxes from reliance on the outputs of fallible heuristics. This will be illustrated with examples involving vagueness, conditionals, belief ascription, truth and falsity, and reasons aggregation. Potential lessons for philosophical method will be discussed.
Lecture Two: Overfitting [9/21]
Overfitting is a well-recognized methodological problem in natural science, where use of models with too many degrees of freedom leads to unstable theorizing and failure to detect errors in the data. Overfitting is also a major but ill-recognized methodological problem in philosophy, exacerbated by its reliance on heuristics. General intellectual tendencies conducive to overfitting in philosophy will be discussed.
Lecture Three: Hyperintensionality [9/23]
The ‘hyperintensional revolution’ proclaims that central metaphysical distinctions cannot be captured in modal terms since they are sensitive to differences between necessary equivalents. Such hyperintensionalism fits the profile of overfitting. It is motivated by case judgments that are explicable as results of a fallible heuristic and it leads to models with too many degrees of freedom.
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.
Naked Statistical Evidence and Verdictive Justice
A conference hosted by the Motherhood and Technology Working Group at the Center for the Study of Social Difference on the theme of “Conception and Its Discontents.”
Medical technologies have radically transformed the biological and social experience of motherhood. Advances in genomic and reproductive care, the circulation of novel kinship structures, the entrenchment of existing global networks of power and privilege, and the politics of contested bodily sites mark this emerging constellation.
Technological advancements have in particular impacted not just the understanding of conception, but the very process by which a human embryo is created, implanted, and matured. Egg freezing, embryo storage, IVF, and surrogacy afford women new freedoms in choosing when and how to become mothers, while also raising troubling questions about the pressures of capitalism and the extension of worklife, as well as the global inequalities present in the experience of motherhood. In addition, technologies have arisen allowing for unprecedented control over not just who becomes a mother, but what kind of embryo is allowed to be implanted and to grow. Technologies such as CRISPR and NIPT have re-introduced the question of eugenics, radically shifting the very epistemology of motherhood and what it means to be “expecting.” And contemporary abortion debates draw on technology in order to make arguments both for and against access, with imaging technologies being instrumentalized in the building of a sympathetic case for the unborn, and the very notion of a “heartbeat bill” reliant on the misreading of technologies for measuring fetal activity.
While these problems are urgent today, questions of conception and technology are by no means recent developments. The 18th century saw a flourishing of philosophical and scientific theories regarding the start of human life and its formation within the womb. Such theories relied on modern technologies, such as autopsy, to atomize and visualize the body. In the 19th and 20th centuries, eugenic medical science produced theories of reproductive difference between differing racial and social groups, leading to forced sterilization laws in both the US and in Germany. This long history of racializing the rhetoric of fertility and motherhood continues to influence political debates on immigration and demographic changes in the present.
Full conference details and schedule to come.
Please email disability@columbia.edu to request disability accommodations. Advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility needs