Robbins Library Notes

Good morning, readers!

Here is the list of some upcoming colloquia and a conference:

• Catherine Wilson (The Graduate Center, CUNY) will be presenting “Epicureanism and Early Modern Philosophy” as part of the Harvard Workshop in Early Modern Philosophy on 1 May 2009

• John Campbell (UC Berkeley) will deliver the 2009 Whitehead Lectures on 7 & 8 May 2009. The first talk will be “Causation in the Mind 1:  Interventions on the Mind” and will be held in Emerson 105; the second will be “Causation in the Mind 2:  Control Variables,” and will be held in Emerson 210

• The 2009 New England Conference in Early Modern Philosophy will be held on 29-31 May 2009.  A program for the conference is now available.

Good morning, readers!

There are two lectures coming up here at Harvard that you may be interested in attending:

• Brains, Computers, and Minds with Professor Daniel Dennett.  April 21, 22, & 23, 4-6pm in Yenching Auditorium, Harvard University, 2 Divinity Ave, Cambridge, MA
• Mozart’s Skull: Looking for Genius (in all the Wrong Places), by Professor Peter Kivy, Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy, Rutgers University.  Harvard Review of Philosophy 5th Annual Guest Lecture.  April 24, 2 pm, Emerson 210, Harvard University.

Good morning, readers!

Tomorrow, 18 April 2009, will be the date for the 17th Annual Harvard-MIT Graduate Philosophy Conference.  Here are the details, if you are interested in attending:

Dear All,

The organizers of the 17th Annual Harvard-MIT Graduate Philosophy Conference cordially invite you to join us at the conference, being held Saturday, April 18, 2009 in Emerson Hall at Harvard.

The papers to be presented are as follows:

“Are Conciliatory Views of Disagreement Self-Defeating?”
Jonathan Matheson
University of Rochester

“Generics, Semantic Blindness and Mosquitoes”
Rachel Sterken
University of St. Andrew/Oslo

“Double Vision and the Case for Separatism”
Boyd Millar
University of Toronto

“The New-New Problem of Induction”
Jacob Stegenga
University of California, San Diego

This year’s Keynote Address, “The Essential Contextual,” will be given by Professor Robert Stalnaker of MIT.

Further information concerning the conference, including the abstracts of the papers to be presented and the schedule, can be found at the following website:

http://web.mit.edu/gradphilconf/index.html

Breakfast, lunch, and snacks will be provided. We hope to see you all there!

Good morning, readers!

For those in the Boston area, and who are interested in Stanley Cavell’s work — there is going to be a Roundtable Discussion at Tufts on Friday, 24 April 2009, from 3-5 pm, titled, “Stanley Cavell and the Philosophy of the Ordinary.”  The talk will be held at The Center for the Humanities at Tufts (CHAT) at Tufts, 48 Professors Row. UPDATE: The talk will now be held in Eaton 201, Tufts University.

The presenters will be Alice Crary (The New School), Juliet Floyd (Boston University), and Jean-Philippe Narboux (University of Bordeaux), with Stanley Cavell to respond.

Good morning, readers!  Happy Friday to you!

For those interested in early modern philosophy, the program for the 8th Annual New England Conference in Early Modern Philosophy is now available.

The conference will be held here at Harvard from 29-31 May 2009.  More information about the Conference can be found here.

Also, next week is spring break for Harvard, and I will be away on vacation.  So, no posts next week.  See you when I return on Monday 30 March!

Good morning, readers!

I received this announcement yesterday — those interested in cognitive science, philosophy of mind, epistemology and consciousness may find it of interest:

Here is the blurb from the e-mail:

This February we have three great talks coming up: Christof Koch will revisit his stance on consciousness and attention, tying it in with Tononi’s theory, Steve Grossberg will tackle the Mind-Body Problem, and Ted Gibson will discuss his work on language comprehension…. See http://www.neuphi.com. For updates, contact organizers@neuphi.com.

Readers: I’ve just received word that the Department’s own Susanna Siegel will be delivering a Neuphi talk this coming Thursday, 11 December 2008.  Here’s the information:

Susanna Siegel, Harvard University

“What Do We See?”

4-6 pm 5-7 pm: PLEASE NOTE TIME CHANGE

Room 525

745 Commonwealth Avenue

Boston, MA 02215

Click here to see map of 745 Commonwealth Avenue

Enjoy!

(From top left:) Montaigne, Descartes, Newton, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, and Kant.

Good morning, readers!

The New England Conference in Early Modern Philosophy will be held here at Harvard on 29-31 May 2009.  Details about the conference are available, as well as a registration form.  Also, there is a Call for Abstracts, if you are interested in submitting a paper for consideration for presentation at this conference.

I’ll post another announcement closer to the conference date.

Good morning, all!  Welcome back after the Thanksgiving holiday!

Today’s post is an announcement for an upcoming conference here at Harvard:

The Role of Consciousness in Thought
6 December 2008
Harvard University
CGIS, Room N-354

The speakers for this workshop are:

• Imogen Dickie (NYU/Toronto)
• Declan Smithies (The Ohio State University)
• Matthew Soteriou (University of Warwick)
• Cheryl Chen (Harvard University).

From the flyer:

How do our conscious states figure in our knowledge of our own minds, on the one hand, or in the knowledge of the world that we gain by perception, on the other? In the case of perception, we can learn that the traffic light is red by consciously seeing it, or that there is garbage nearby from consciously smelling it, or that a friend is approaching from consciously hearing her voice and her footsteps. But could we end up with exactly the same knowledge – or with any knowledge at all – if the perceptions were unconscious? In the case of self-knowledge, when we consciously calculate a sum or deliberate about what to do next, we can quite easily know that we are calculating or deliberating. Does the status of our calculation or deliberation as conscious have any role to play in securing this knowledge? This workshop will the explore the epistemic roles played by conscious experience in grounding knowledge.

Complete information and a schedule can be found via the link above.

Good morning, readers, and happy Friday!

Yesterday, I received an announcement for the first meeting of the MBPA, the Massachusetts Bay Philosophy Alliance*, to be held on Saturday 8 November 2008.  Here are the details:

The MBPA (Massachusetts Bay Philosophy Alliance) is back in action with a talk this Saturday at 3pm by Annalisa Coliva. For details about MBPA, see http://www.mit.edu/~philos/mbpa/index.html, where you can also find a handout for Annalisa’s talk.

Annalisa Coliva, University of Modena and Reggio-Emilia

“Varieties of Failure of Warrant-Transmission”

3-5 pm, Emerson 310, Harvard University

All philosophers are welcome to attend.

For those curious about the MBPA, here’s the description from the Web site:

I have also posted a link to the MBPA on the Department of Philosophy’s Web Site’s Links page.

*Not to be confused with the MBTA, the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority.