Jonathan Neufeld was invited to give a talk at Cornell Law School’s Law and Humanities Colloquium on March 14, 2013
Monthly Archives: February 2013
Prof. Hough Presenting at Central APA
Prof. Sheridan Hough will be chairing a session on Nietzsche, Moral Psychology, and Empirical Psychology and presenting commentary on the paper, “Stories and Their Place in Theories” at the Central meeting of the American Philosophical Association February 21 – 24 in New Orleans.
Prof. Coseru Presenting at Central APA
Prof. Christian Coseru will be presenting two papers, “Presence & Temporality: A Buddhist Approach to Phenomenal Consciousness” and “Reflexivity and the First-Person Stance: Coming to Terms with Phenomenal Consciounesss” at the Central meeting of the American Philosophical Association February 21 – 24 in New Orleans.
2/14 Faculty Panel: Narrative, Ethics, and The Lives of Animals
Roundtable discussion with Jonathan Neufeld (Philosophy), Simon Lewis (English), and Ornaith O’Dowd (Philosophy)
In 1997, J. M. Coetzee’s delivered the Tanner Lectures on Human Values that would become his novella The Lives of Animals. Typically, the Tanner lectures are philosophical essays presenting arguments on specific ethical or political problems or concepts. Instead of presenting the usual set of arguments, Coetzee delivered two lectures that were two chapters from a novella. The novella’s central character, Elizabeth Costello, herself delivers two lectures on humans’ mistreatment animals (to put it mildly). While she presents arguments and counterarguments, as do other characters in the story, these arguments do not simply stand as arguments—they are also, of course, literary devices that constitute the book as the work of art that it is. Is Coetzee really just making an argument, and just adding color to it with the story? Or does the fact that it is a piece of literature change the status of the arguments in it? Why might we make certain kinds of ethical claims in artistic form rather than in some other form (the form of philosophical argument typically found in the Tanner Lectures, for example)? Is there something about talking about the lives of animals, in particular, that calls for a literary, rather than a philosophical response?
February 14, 12:15-1:30PM Alumni Center in the School of EHHP
Narrative Ethics & The Lives of Animals (pdf flier)
Coseru Lecture 2/12: “The Enchantment of Consciousness”
Tuesday, February 12, 3:15PM
Tate Center, Room 202
A reception will follow at the Philosophy Office, 14 Glebe Street
“Every consciousness upon whatever object it is primarily directed, is constantly directed upon itself,” wrote Franz Brentano in 1874 in his seminal work, Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint. This assertion of the unity of consciousness as reflexive awareness, which finds its roots in Aristotle, has been both criticized and vigorously defended by contemporary philosophers working in the interdisciplinary field of Consciousness Studies. In this presentation, I first consider various alternatives to the reflexivist theory of consciousness, specifically higher-order, representationalist, token-physicalist, and dualist theories. I then review evidence from embodied cognitive science that highlights various problems these latter theories face in accounting for the character of consciousness. Finally, I entertain the question whether this sort of evidence provides sufficient ground for claiming that something like a pre-reflective self-awareness is prior to the types of consciousness that presuppose conceptual and narrative competence.