Calendar

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Month
2018 Jan February 2019 Mar 2020
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1
Finding the Way to Truth: Sources, History, and Impact of the Meditative Tradition
Finding the Way to Truth: Sources, History, and Impact of the Meditative Tradition @ Buell Hall, Columbia U
Feb 1 – Feb 2 all-day
Tickets
How is the ancient exhortation to “know thyself” related to consolation, virtue, and the study of nature? How did the commitment to self-knowledge shift over the centuries in writings by Islamic, Jewish, Christian, and early modern natural philosophers? How did medieval women contribute to modern notions of self, self-knowledge, and knowledge of nature? This conference explores the meditative “reflective methodology” from its ancient roots, through medieval Christian, Muslim, and Jewish traditions to the so-called “new”[...]
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RESCHEDULED: The variety of scientism and the limits of science, Massimo Pigliucci (CUNY) 4:30 pm
RESCHEDULED: The variety of scientism and the limits of science, Massimo Pigliucci (CUNY) @ CUNY Grad Center, 5307
Feb 5 @ 4:30 pm – 6:30 pm
Tickets
Massimo Pigliucci’s talk has been rescheduled, for personal reasons outside of his control. It will be rescheduled for a later date: here. Science is by far the most powerful approach to the investigation of the natural world ever devised. Still, it has limits, and there are many areas and questions where the scientific approach is ill suited, or at best provides only pertinent information rather than full answers. The denial of this modest attitude about[...]
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Buddha versus Popper: Do we live in the present or do we plan for the future? Rohit Parikh (CUNY) 4:10 pm
Buddha versus Popper: Do we live in the present or do we plan for the future? Rohit Parikh (CUNY) @ Faculty House, Columbia U
Feb 22 @ 4:10 pm
Tickets
There are two approaches to life. The first one, which we are identifying with Sir Karl Popper, is to think before we act and to let our hypotheses die in our stead when the overall outcome is likely to be negative. We act now for a better future, and we think now which action will bring the best future. Both decision theory and backward induction are technical versions of this train of thought.  The second[...]
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The variety of scientism and the limits of science, Massimo Pigliucci (CUNY) 4:30 pm
The variety of scientism and the limits of science, Massimo Pigliucci (CUNY) @ NYU, rm 110
Feb 26 @ 4:30 pm – 6:30 pm
Tickets
Science is by far the most powerful approach to the investigation of the natural world ever devised. Still, it has limits, and there are many areas and questions where the scientific approach is ill suited, or at best provides only pertinent information rather than full answers. The denial of this modest attitude about science is called scientism, which declares science to be the only form of human knowledge and understanding, attempting to subsume everything else,[...]
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Bryce Huebner: “Meditating and hallucinating: A socially situated and neuro-Yogācarin perspective” 6:00 pm
Bryce Huebner: “Meditating and hallucinating: A socially situated and neuro-Yogācarin perspective” @ Wolff Conference Room, D1103
Feb 28 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Tickets
A number of philosophers working on Buddhist traditions have recently explored similarities between the cultivated experience of not-self, and the clinical experience of depersonalization. In this talk, I will offer some reflections on this theme. But my primary aim will be to push a similar kind of exploratory project one step further. Drawing on tools from cognitive and computational neuroscience, as well as insights from Yogācāra Buddhist philosophy, I will explore some of the most[...]
2018 Jan February 2019 Mar 2020