At The Threshold: Interdisciplinary Panel on Art, Perception, Engineering and Time

Maria Balcells of the Philosophy department will be joining Samek Director/Chief Curator Richard Rinehart and Maurice Aburdene of Electrical Engineering for an interdisciplinary panel discussion at the Samek Art Gallery (LC, 3rd floor) this Wednesday, March 20th from 6-7 pm. 

The panel will discuss the Samek's current exhibition by electrical engineer and new media art pioneer Jim Campbell, and the exhibit's relationship to art, engineering, and perceptions of imagery and time. Professor Balcells will speak on the notions of our consciousness and how Campbell's use of electric engineering "fools" our minds, so to speak, on how we perceive an image. Professor Aburdene will discuss and show demos of the processes behind electronics. Finally, Rick Rinehart will give an overview of the new media genre and how this form of art crosses disciplines.

Please join us for what will be an interesting and insightful evening. Feel free to invite any other potentially interested folks as well! A reception will follow in the gallery.  

For more information, see: "At the Threshold": Interdisciplinary Panel

(Note: the original date for this event was 2/13/13, but it has been rescheduled for 3/20/13).

"The Island President" at the Campus Theatre

Next up in the Green Screens film series, "The Island President": Tuesday, March 5th at 7:30 PM in the Campus Theatre, with a post-screening discussion.

ON FEBRUARY 7, 2012, MOHAMED NASHEED RESIGNED THE PRESIDENCY UNDER THE THREAT OF VIOLENCE IN A COUP D'ETAT PERPETRATED BY SECURITY FORCES LOYAL TO THE FORMER DICTATOR. THIS FILM IS THE STORY OF HIS FIRST YEAR IN OFFICE. 

Jon Shenk’s The Island President is the story of President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives, a man confronting a problem greater than any other world leader has ever faced—the literal survival of his country and everyone in it. After bringing democracy to the Maldives after thirty years of despotic rule, Nasheed is now faced with an even greater challenge: as one of the most low-lying countries in the world, a rise of three feet in sea level would submerge the 1200 islands of the Maldives enough to make them uninhabitable.

The Island President captures Nasheed’s first year of office, culminating in his trip to the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009, where the film provides a rare glimpse of the political horse-trading that goes on at such a top-level global assembly. Nasheed is unusually candid about revealing his strategies—leveraging the Maldives’ underdog position as a tiny country, harnessing the power of media, and overcoming deadlocks through an appeal to unity with other developing nations. When hope fades for a written accord to be signed, Nasheed makes a stirring speech which salvages an agreement. Despite the modest size of his country, Mohamed Nasheed has become one of the leading international voices for urgent action on climate change (Synopsis from the film's website).

"Chasing Ice" at the Campus Theatre

As part of the Environmental Center's "Green Screens" documentary film series, the critically-acclaimed documentary, three years in the making, of arctic melting comes to the Campus Theatre on Tuesday, February 26th at 7:30PM with a post-screening panel discussion.

2013 Sellars Lecture: Sally Haslanger, "Structural Injustice: What It Is and How It's Hidden"

Thursday, February 28th
Forum, Langone Center: 7PM
Reception to follow in Walls Lounge

Professor Haslanger is Professor of Philosophy and Director of Women's and Gender Studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her areas of specialization are analytic metaphysics, epistemology, feminist theory, and social philosophy. A collection of her papers, Resisting the Real: Social Construction and Social Critique was published by Oxford University Press in 2012. She has also co-edited three volumes: Adoption Matters: Philosophical and Feminist Essays, with Charlotte Witt, Theorizing Feminisms, with Elizabeth Hackett, and Persistence, with Roxanne Marie Kurtz. In 2009 she founded the Women in Philosophy Task Force and has collaborated extensively with others to promote gender equity in academia in general, and in philosophy in particular. In 2010 she was awarded the Distinguished Woman Philosopher of the year by the Society of Women in Philosophy. Haslanger gave the Carus Lectures, the American Philosophical Association’s most prestigious lecture series, in 2012 and is President-Elect of the Eastern Division of the APA.

Professor Haslanger | Photograph by Jon Sachs

See here for a recent Q&A with Professor Haslanger, courtesy of MIT.

Darwin Day Lectures: Aesthetics, Ecology, and Pleistocene Rewilding!

Happy Darwin Day! If you love science and philosophy, you should come out on Thursday to listen to Harry Greene, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University, speak on "Natural History, Aesthetics, and Conservation":

The diversity of life on earth is under serious threats from multiple human-related causes, and science plays well-known roles in addressing management aspects of this problem. My presentation will describe how natural history also plays a vital role in enhancing our appreciation for organisms and environments, thereby influencing the value judgments that ultimately underlie all conservation. I will first explain how an 18th century philosopher’s distinction between “beauty” and “sublime” can be used in the context of Darwin’s notion of “descent with modification,” then illustrate this approach with frogs, rattlesnakes, the African megafauna, Longhorn Cattle, and California Condors.

Thursday, February 14th at 7:30PM in Rooke 116. 
The talk is hosted by the Biology Department and co-sponsored by the Environmental Studies Program and the Departments of Geography, Philosophy, and Religion.

Professor Greene will also be giving a colloquium on Friday at noon in the same room on "Pleistocene Rewilding: Lions in a Den of Daniels?"

More than five years ago a group of us published papers in Nature and American Naturalist proposed partially restoring the lost North American Pleistocene megafauna with conspecifics and closely related proxies for tortoises, cheetah, elephants, and other species. In this seminar I will summarize our initiative and the subsequent response from conservation biologists and the public, with emphasis on implications for conserving biodiversity on a rapidly changing earth.

These should both be fascinating talks! Come out and make Darwin your valentine.

At The Threshold: Interdisciplinary Panel on Art, Perception, Engineering and Time

Maria Balcells of the Philosophy department will be joining Samek Director/Chief Curator Richard Rinehart and Maurice Aburdene of Electrical Engineering for an interdisciplinary panel discussion at the Samek Art Gallery (LC, 3rd floor) this Wednesday, February 13th from 6-7pm.

The panel will discuss the Samek's current exhibition by electrical engineer and new media art pioneer Jim Campbell, and the exhibit's relationship to art, engineering, and perceptions of imagery and time. Maria will speak on the notions of our consciousness and how Campbell's use of electric engineering "fools" our minds, so to speak, on how we perceive an image. Maurice will discuss and show demos of the processes behind electronics. Finally, Rick Rinehart will give an overview of the new media genre and how this form of art crosses disciplines.

Please join us for what will be an interesting and insightful evening. Feel free to invite any other potentially interested folks as well! A reception will follow in the gallery.

For more information, see: "At the Threshold": Interdisciplinary Panel

Lunch Chat (2/7): The Ethics of Lying

Philosophy Lunch Chats make their triumphant return in 2013! We're trying a slightly different format this semester (something we piloted I thought very successfully last term): each chat will feature a guest expert to help us think through the topic in question. Since I can only twist so many arms, we're decreasing their frequency somewhat and doing them only on the first Thursday of each month — so: February 7th, March 7th, and April 4th.

For the first Lunch Chat, we're lucky to have a regular lunch chat participant, Professor Tristan Stayton, associate professor of biology, facilitating a discussion on the ethics of lying. There are lots of really fascinating questions here that we can get into. Here's how Professor Stayton describes the issues:

Tristan Stayton

Lying is a long-standing human activity, as old as or perhaps even older than verbal communication, but there is still debate about the degree to which it is, at least in some situations, permissible or even desirable. On one end of the spectrum are those who hold that lying is wrong under any circumstances.  Kant seems to have been of this opinion; when challenged that this implied that "it would be a crime to tell a lie to a murderer who asked whether our friend who is being pursued by the murderer had taken refuge in our house", Kant replied that it would indeed be a crime and that he would not lie to such a murderer: "To be truthful (honest) in all declarations is, therefore, a sacred and unconditionally commanding law of reason that admits of no expediency whatsoever". On the other hand are the many situations in which people have lied to potential murderers about who was in their house;  in many cases lying seems not only permissible, but admirable or even obligatory. The book Les Misérables begins similarly, with the Bishop Myriel lying to the police in order to save the convict Jean Valjean from life in prison. The lie fools the police and keeps Valjean out of prison for life. Myriel's lie is presented as a life-changing and life-saving event for Valjean; an unambiguously good act, despite being a deception. 

Finally, there seem to be situations in which lying may have no moral consequences. The desert island problem is one of these. Jan Narveson explains the problem thus: "You and Jones are marooned on a desert island, and Jones takes to cultivating flowers, which he does with splendid results. You have no particular taste in flowers, and also no particular affection for Jones. Jones then becomes fatally ill and, in his final moments of life, he requests you to tend his flowers for him for a while after he dies — until, let us say for definiteness, the nasturtiums cease to bloom. You promise him to do this — though just exactly why is not at all clear. It is stipulated that neither you nor Jones has any belief in immortality or in special religious doctrines which have the consequence that you are in any way obliged to tend the flowers. Jones then dies. So now the question arises: do you or don't you have to admit that there is some moral value in tending Jones' flowers until the nasturtiums cease to bloom? And thus the dilemma looms for the consequentialist: either he does not admit any moral value in tending the flowers, in which case his view is radically at variance with the common moral consciousness; or he does admit it, in which case he appears to have on his hands a case in which something has moral value but not on account of its consequences."  

I am interested in discussing the ethics of lying for our philosophy lunch. Are there situations in which lying is permissible? Obligatory? Is there a difference between lying and deception? Lying and omission? Do your instincts tell you that it's immoral to lie in a "desert island" situation, or do they tell you that it's okay? Any and all honest opinions are welcome!

References for background: (don't feel compelled to read these!)
Kant, "On a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns"
Mahon, "Kant on Lies" 
Narveson, "The Desert-Island Problem"

We hope you'll join us for pizza and what's sure to be an interesting discussion on Thursday, 2/7 at noon in 62 Coleman Hall.