I *Really* Do Love New York in the Fall

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The fall semester is set to kick off, and I am very excited about it. I am giving the first talk in the CUNY Philosophy Colloquium tomorrow September 5th. It is entitled “The Nature of Phenomenal Consciousness”. I haven’t recorded a practice run yet, but this talk is my attempt to talk about everything related to phenomenal consciousness that interests me. It should be a lot of fun! I am especially excited about it since it is almost exactly four years to the date since I was a student at CUNY! I still can’t believe it has been four years since I defended; that’s a lot of New York Minutes!

In October I will be giving a talk at the Metro-Area Research Group on Awareness and Meditation run by Zoran Josipovic . And of course there will be many, many awesome talks around town. I am going to try to blog a bit more about any I happen to attend. I am also teaching in my ‘cluster’ Brain, Mind, and Consciousness. A cluster is a group of classes centered around a theme in which all students take all of the same classes. Mine has a mind-themed intro to phil, an intro psych, and two english classes. This is the third time I have done it and I am thinking of recording some supplementary video lectures.

In other news, I have joined the list of contributors at The Philosopher’s Cocoon, a new blog for early career types (I still have a year left of being ‘early career, right?). I’ll be posting on career and teaching related issues over there. For instance, at LaGuardia I am taking a professional development seminar on online teaching. Specifically I am working on transitioning my traditional face to face Logic and Philosophy course to a hybrid model. I have been teaching online for a few years now and I thought I might blog a bit about it.

Or at least such are my (academic) New Year’s resolutions.

And then there is of course the Qualia Fest waiting for us on the other side of Fall!

SSPP 2013

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UPDATE 09/01/12
To be honest I have never paid much attention to the Psychology part of the SSPP, but this year looks really excellent and features a joint session on attention and a symposium with Steve Fleming and Hakwan Lau. Very cool to see more of an attempt to integrate the two sides of the conference.
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Looks like we are on track for another awesome SSPP this year. This is turning into one of my favorite conferences…and that’s not just because I was an invited participant in a symposium last year. It starts right when the Online Consciousness Conference will be coming to an end!

Call for Philosophy Papers

The Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology announces a call for papers for its One Hundred and Fifth Annual Meeting, to be held February 28 – March 2, 2013 in Austin, TX. SSPP meetings feature concurrent programs in Philosophy and Psychology, as well as plenary sessions jointly sponsored by the Philosophy and Psychology Program Committees. The deadline for all submissions is October 15, 2012.

President’s Invited Speaker:

Patricia Smith Churchland
UC San Diego/Salk Institute, San Diego

Invited Speakers:

Austen Clark, University of Connecticut
Fred Dretske, Duke University
Michael Tye, University of Texas, Austin

Invited Symposia:

Epistemology of Perception
Jack Lyons
Susanna Siegel

Naturalism
Owen Flanagan
Steven Horst

New Perspectives on Type Identity
Alyssa Ney
Thomas Polger

Introspection & Self-Knowledge
Peter Carruthers
Brie Gertler
Eric Schwitzgebel

Attention! (Joint Symposium)
Marisa Carrasco
Robert Kentridge
Christopher Mole
Sebastian Watzl

Epistemic Paradoxes
Krista Lawlor
Roy Sorensen
Michael Veber

The Philosophy Program Committee encourages the submission of papers and symposium proposals. Their selection will be based on quality and relevance to Philosophy, Psychology, and other sciences of the mind. The aim of the committee is to present a program as balanced as the quality of submissions in each area permits.

Submissions exceeding 3,000 words will not be considered. Submissions should include a word count and an abstract of no more than 150 words. Self-reference should be deleted to permit blind reviewing. All papers submitted and presented should employ gender-neutral language. All submissions must be made using our online submission system at: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sspp2013

Under the Keywords section, in addition to descriptions of the submission, please include any of the following if they are applicable: To volunteer to be a session chair: ‘Chair.’ To comment on a paper: ‘Comment.’ To be considered for a Graduate Student Travel Award: ‘GSTA.’ To be considered for the Griffith Prize: ‘Griffith.’ For details and eligibility see: http://www.southernsociety.org/griffithaward.htm

Please direct Philosophy Program related questions to the Program Chair, Rik Hine at: rikhine@gmail.com

Zombies vs Shombies

Richard Brown 2 Comments

Richard Marshall, a writer for 3am Magazine, has been interviewing philosophers. After interviewing a long list of distinguished philosophers, including Peter Carruthers, Josh Knobe, Brian Leiter, Alex Rosenberg, Eric Schwitzgebel, Jason Stanley, Alfred Mele, Graham Priest, Kit Fine, Patricia Churchland, Eric Olson, Michael Lynch, Pete Mandik, Eddy Nahmais, J.C. Beal, Sarah Sawyer, Gila Sher, Cecile Fabre, Christine Korsgaard, among others, they seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel, since they just published my interview. I had a great time engaging in some Existential Psychoanalysis of myself!

Kant’s Response to Hume’s Challenges in Ethics

Richard Brown 1 Comment

As you may have guessed from the last post, I am in the middle of teaching an ethics course in the Summer session. Lately I have been trying to formulate Kant’s response to Hume’s arguments. It seems odd to me that Kant would explicitly respond to Hume’s challenge on causation and yet not respond to his other well known challenges (though, I am in no way entirely up to date on the literature in this area).

The first challenge is Hume’s argument that reason, strictly speaking, never directly causes an action. I have come to believe that Kant basically accepts Hume’s arguments for this conclusion and then introduces a special moral passion which he calls ‘respect for the moral law’. As I see it his answer is that someone with the good will is someone in whom contemplation of the Categorical Imperative causes the feeling of respect. In many ways it seems the same to me as the feeling of rational compulsion one has when contemplating Modus Ponens. I know the standard line is that Kant claims that it is the belief alone that motivates one to act, but what is the argument for this? Does anyone have any thoughts on this, or sources?

The second challenge is the is-ought gap. I am definitely not up on this debate like I should be, but it looks to me that Kant’s endorsement of the ‘ought implies can’ principle commits him to denying that there is an is-ought gap. On the other hand since Kant sees the requirements of morality to be in some sense requirements of rational agency, and since rationality is itself a normative enterprise, you might expect that he would agree with Hume on this point. In fact the emphasis on a priori methodology may in part be explained by wanting to avoid crossing the is-ought divide. I can’t find any discussion of this in Kant or in the secondary literature. Any thoughts?

A Question about Aristotle on Theft

Richard Brown 6 Comments

Here is an issue that I thought of today as I was preparing for my class on Aristotle’s ethics. I thought I knew the answer, but after having thought about it a bit I am not sure, so I’ll ask you.

Suppose that you accepted Aristotle’s claim that there are somethings which are always wrong, like theft, murder, and adultery while with everything else the right action is that action which a virtuous person would perform. If we assume the standard interpretation of what this means then we end up with the view that the virtuous person is able to determine, or see, what the virtuous action is in the given situation they find themselves in. Does this mean, then, that Aristotle is committed to the claim that it is impossible that there could ever be a situation in which a virtuous person determined that theft was the proper action? A (seemingly) obvious counter-example would be the ‘looters’ in New Orleans who were taking bread and other supplies from a local store. Whatever one thinks about that, it seems possible that a virtuous person would act this way in some situation. Does anyone know of anyplace where this is discussed in the literature (or have any thoughts about what Aristotle is committed to here)?

Consciousness and Computation

Richard Brown 2 Comments

2012 marks 100 years since the birth of Alan Turing. Saturday June 23rd is the actual centenary. That weekend also happens to be pride week in nyc. Given this line up of the Celestial Signs, The New York Consciousness Collective invites you to the Lower East side of Manhattan to let your freak flag fly in honor of Alan Turing. The event is free and features music from cognitive scientists and philosophers!

When: Saturday June 23rd
Turing festivities start at 7:30 p.m.

Where: The Local 269
269 E. Houston st NY, NY

The Line Up

1:00-1:45 The P-Branes -Newly minted PhD, David Pereplyotchick on bass and guitar, Hakwan Lau on guitar, and Richard Brown on drums. Two of these three are leaving nyc to seek fortune and fame in the wild blue yonder. Don’t miss your chance to see this special late night funk fest!

11:00-12:45 Space Clamps -Who invented the space clamp? S P A C E C L A M P S ! Sara Steele on vocals, Erik Nylen on keys and vocals, Lawrence De Geest on guitar and vocals, David Billingsley on bass and vocals, and Richard Brown on drums.

10:00-10:45 Quiet Karate Reflex -8bit fusion of higher-order thoughts about vegan unicorn meat with experimental breakbeats. exileFaker on 8bit Gameboy and keys, Pete Mandik on Guitar, Hakwan Lau on Kindle Fire and guitar, Richard Brown on drums.

9:00-9:45 William James Trio -Two neuroscientists and a philosopher walk into a bar…to play funky jazz standards! Steve Fleming on keys, Hakwan Lau on guitar, Richard Brown on drums. This may be the last performance of WJ3!

8:00-8:45 The Whims -led by Dr. Fletcher Maumus this group constructs lush indie rock. 60s hooks meets 70s guitars — all filtered through a 90s slacker aesthetic.