Join us for an evening of warm conversation, laughter, and insight, as philosopher Helena de Bres uses the curious experience of being a twin as a lens for reconsidering our place in the world. De Bres will read from her book How to Be Multiple: The Philosophy of Twins and discuss its themes with Paulina Sliwa. The audience will be encouraged to join the conversation, with plenty of time for questions and comments. The discussion will be followed by a wine reception.
About How to be Multiple:
Wait, are you you or the other one? Which is the evil twin? Have you ever switched partners? Can you read each other's mind? Twins get asked the weirdest questions by strangers, loved ones, and even themselves. For Helena de Bres, a twin and philosophy professor, these questions are closely tied to some of philosophy's most unnerving unknowns. What makes someone themself rather than someone else? Can one person be housed in two bodies? What does perfect love look like? Can we really act freely? At what point does wonder morph into objectification?
Accompanied by her twin Julia's drawings, Helena uses twinhood to rethink the limits of personhood, consciousness, love, freedom, and justice. With her inimitably candid, wry voice, she explores the long tradition of twin representations in art, myth, and popular culture; twins' peculiar social standing; and what it's really like to be one of two. With insight, hope, and humor, she argues that our reactions to twins reveal our broader desires and fears about selfhood, fate, and human connection, and that reflecting on twinhood can help each of us-twins and singletons alike-recognize our own multiplicity, and approach life with greater curiosity, imagination, and courage.
Helena de Bres is a professor of philosophy at Wellesley College, Massachusetts. She is the author of the academic/trade crossover Artful Truths: The Philosophy of Memoir (University of Chicago Press, 2021) and the philosophical personal essay collection How To Be Multiple: The Philosophy of Twins (Bloomsbury USA, 2023). In addition to her scholarly work, de Bres has published personal essays, book excerpts and op eds in The Point, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Yale Review, Aeon and Psyche, among other places. Her website can be found ↗ here.
Paulina Sliwa is a professor of moral and political philosophy at the University of Vienna. Working in moral philosophy, epistemology, and feminist philosophy, Sliwa’s research seeks to understand the practices that lie at the center of our moral lives: how we give and receive moral advice, how we blame, forgive, make excuses, how we praise and give credit. Such understanding is valuable for its own sake, but it can also point us towards ways in which those practices may contribute to unjust social arrangements and should be reformed. Her website can be found ↗ here.
A declaration of climate emergency calls for aradical break from business-as-usual in climate policy. Yet it raises crucialmoral, political and institutional questions: Should the demands of urgency andthe extent of potential harm alter procedures of decision-making or frameworksof justification? Which courses of action/institutions are permissible to avoidthe harms of global warming? How should we understand responsibilities forremedying loss and damage as well as future generations in the context ofclimate emergency? This one-day workshop will bring together researchersworking on the above and related issues surrounding climate emergency.
Speakers:
Kathrin von Allmen (Harvard University)
Ali Emre Benli (University of Vienna)
Angela Kallhoff (University of Vienna)
Ross Mittiga (SOAS University of London)
Tracey Skillington (University College Cork)
The diverse forms of negative affectivity and the ways they interact with one's sense of agency include: the distinction between affects and emotions; the understanding of (negative) affectivity across disciplines; phenomenological or hermeneutical approaches to affectivity and action; descriptive and normative aspects of negative emotional experiences; negative affectivity and embodiment; negative affective experience in mental illness and the sense of self, and; possible positive effects of negative experiences.
Negative Affectivity and Practical Possibilities is a bilingual conference at the intersections of philosophy, psychiatry, and psychotherapy. The two-day event is co-organized by the University of Graz and the Medical University of Graz.
Find the full program ↗ here.
Questions? Contact Denis Džanić and Bernhard Geißler.
Kant asked: how is metaphysics so much as possible? Quine answered: because metaphysics is broadly continuous with science. But Quine's answer gives us no reason to think that "joint-carving" metaphysics is possible. Joint-carvers want our theoretical primitives to keep track of what is metaphysically primitive (or fundamental, as opposed to derivative). But we have no reason to think that such a thing is possible. To explain why, Tim Button (UCL) offers some general considerations, a particular case study (about space), and a logical argument. The upshot of all of these is that we always end up with (arbitrary) artefacts of representational choices.
Tim Button is a Professor of Philosophy & Logic, and Head of the Philosophy Department at University College London.
He works at the area where philosophy meets logic and mathematics. Here are some short words about some things he likes. Right now, Button is thinking about theoretical equivalence, types, and sets.
He recently published a serialized trilogy on Level Theory. This trilogy now has at least five parts. Before that, Button and Sean Walsh published Philosophy and Model Theory (OUP, 2018). His first book was The Limits of Realism (OUP, 2013).
Button has made some open education resources. He is an associate editor of MIND and a managing editor of the Journal of the Philosophy of Mathematics.
Wir leben in einer Gesellschaft, die technisch, medizinisch, therapeutisch alles anbietet, was das Leben erleichtert. Warum da noch die Anstrengung tugendhaften Verhaltens auf sich nehmen? Ethische Tugenden bringen Verhältnismäßigkeit in den Umgang mit anderen und mit sich selbst. Sie verhindern, dass Moral in einen falschen und sozial destabilisierenden Moralismus kippt. Ebenso sorgen intellektuelle Tugenden für Balance: sie ermöglichen ein (selbst-)kritisches Denken. Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl, Philosophin und Ethikerin, erläutert, warum Tugenden auch und gerade angesichts der neuen gesellschaftlichen Herausforderungen unverzichtbar sind.
Diese Veranstaltung ist teil des ↗ Vienna Humanities Festivals.
Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl ist Professorin am Institut für Philosophie und Vizedekanin der Geisteswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz. Sie ist Leiterin des Arbeitsbereichs Klassische Phänomenologie, Co-Sprecherin des Schwerpunktbereichs Wahrnehmung: Episteme, Ästhetik, Politik, und Key Researcher des Cluster of Excellence Wissen in der Krise (COE 3).
Can truth be defined? Frege argued that it couldn't. Ramsey argued that defining it would be easy if only we had an analysis of judgement. Today Horwich claims that truth cannot be defined explicitly because doing so would require quantification into sentence position and such quantification is not coherent. Instead he proposes a “minimal theory” of truth, which comprises all the unproblematic instances of the equivalence schema. Künne, by contrast, argues that quantification into sentence position is coherent and may actually be part of some natural languages. Künne uses such quantification to define truth explicitly:
∀x (x is true iff ∃p ((x is the proposition that p) & p)). Or in English: a representation (belief, assertion etc) is true just if things are as it represents them as being. Künne claims also to find this definition in Frank Ramsey’s posthumous work, which, as an exegetical claim, is not uncontroversial.
Is truth definable? Is propositional quantification coherent? Do natural languages involve propositional quantification, and in what sense? What do the answers to these questions mean for philosophical attempts to define or explain truth? Is truth redundant if explicitly definable? Not redundant if not explicitly definable?
Tuomo Tiisala will present his book’s main ideas in conversation with Prof. Catarina Dutilh Novaes (VU Amsterdam), Prof. Paulina Sliwa (University of Vienna), and Prof. Tim Crane (CEU), followed by an open discussion with the audience, and a reception.
In his book, Tiisala argues that the received view of the distinction between freedom and power must be rejected because it rests on an untenable account of the discursive cognition that endows individuals with the capacity for autonomy and self-governed rationality. Drawing on pragmatist-inferentialist resources from the philosophy of language (Wittgenstein, Sellars, and Brandom), he presents a new interpretation of Michel Foucault’s philosophy that is unified by his overlooked idea of “the archaeology of knowledge.” As a result, the book not only explains why and how power and freedom must be entangled but also what it means ethically to pursue and gain autonomy with respect to one’s own understanding.
Tuomo Tiisala is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna as part of Knowledge in Crisis. Tiisala works mainly in social and political philosophy, and the history of 20th-century philosophy, with research interests in topics that intersect with epistemology, ethics, and the philosophy of language. A former Bersoff Faculty Fellow at New York University, he has held temporary faculty positions at NYU Abu Dhabi and the University of Helsinki, as well as research fellowships at the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought and the Center for Post-Kantian Philosophy at the University of Potsdam. His research has been supported by the Mellon Foundation and the Finnish Cultural Foundation.
Weltweit hat faschistische Politik wieder starken Zulauf: ob in den USA, in Myanmar, in Indien oder in Europa, wo mit Spannung auf die Wahlen vom 6. bis 9. Juni geblickt wird. Jason Stanley, der an der Yale University Philosophie lehrt, identifiziert in seinem Buch „Wie Faschismus funktioniert“ zehn Säulen faschistischer Politik und zeichnet ihren erschreckenden Wiederaufstieg und ihre Geschichte nach: Ob das die Mythologisierung der Vergangenheit einer Nation ist, ein gegen die Wissenschaft und Experten gerichteter Anti-Intellektualismus oder auch die Kriminalisierung von Minderheitengruppen – diese Säulen formen die Sprache und die Überzeugungen, die Menschen in ein „Wir“ und ein „Sie“ unterteilen.
Die faschistischen Taktiken greifen ineinander und entwickeln zusammen eine ungeheure Kraft, die letztlich eine für die Appelle einer autoritären Führung anfällige Gesellschaft formt. Stanley ist sich sicher: Nur wenn wir faschistische Politik erkennen, können wir ihren Auswirkungen widerstehen und zu demokratischen Idealen zurückkehren.
Jason Stanley wird sein Buch präsentieren. Es folgt eine Diskussion mit Prof. Stanley und Historiker Prof. Timothy Snyder.
Diese Veranstaltung wird von Dr. Shalini Randeria moderiert.
Jason Stanley ist Jacob-Urowsky-Professor für Philosophie an der Universität Yale und Key International Collaborator bei Knowledge in Crisis. Seine Forschungsschwerpunkte sind die Erkenntnistheorie, Themen der Linguistik, Kognitionswissenschaft und Sprachphilosophie sowie Theorie des Faschismus. Stanley ist der Autor von Know How, Languages in Context, Knowledge and Practical Interests, das mit dem Buchpreis der American Philosophical Association ausgezeichnet wurde, und How Propaganda Works, das den PROSE Award for Philosophy der Association of American Publishers erhielt. Er schreibt für die New York Times, die Washington Post, The Boston Review und The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Timothy Snyder ist US-amerikanischer Historiker. Er ist Professor an der Yale University und Permanent Fellow am Wiener Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen. Seine Forschungsschwerpunkte sind Osteuropäische Geschichte und Holocaustforschung.
Shalini Randeria ist seit 2021 Präsidentin und Rektorin der Central EuropeanUniversity. Sie ist die erste Frau und die erste Person aus dem Globalen Süden, die dieses Amt seit der Gründung der Universität vor 30 Jahren innehat. Randeria kann auf eine herausragende akademische Karriere als Soziologin/Sozialanthropologin an Hochschulen in ganz Europa verweisen. Sie war Rektorin des Instituts für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Wien und Professorin am Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Genf, wo sie das Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy leitete. Randeria ist Inhaberin des Exzellenzlehrstuhls an der Universität Bremen, wo sie eine Forschungsgruppe über "weiche Autoritarismen" leitet. Sie ist stellvertretende Vorsitzende der Class of Social and Related Sciences der Academia Europaea und Distinguished Fellow an der Munk School der Universität Toronto. Randeria hat zahlreiche Publikationen zur Anthropologie der Globalisierung, des Rechts, des Staates und der sozialen Bewegungen mit regionalem Schwerpunkt auf Indien veröffentlicht. Ihre einflussreiche Podcast-Reihe Democracy in Question, die 2021 ins Leben gerufen wurde, geht nun in die neunte Staffel.
This conference was organized by Bettina Bussmann.
More details ↗ here.
Check out the event summary ↗ here (in German).
Eine interaktive Performance der Philosophin Maria Kronfeldner über die menschliche Natur // An interactive performance by philosopher Maria Kronfeldner that explores human nature.
Maria Kronfeldner wird den Inhalt ihres Buches „Was bleibt von der menschlichen Natur: Ein post-essentialistischer, pluralistischer und interaktiver Bericht über ein umstrittenes Konzept“ präsentieren, indem sie die Galeriewand des Library Cafés der CEU mit Bildern und Texten füllt. Sie wird aus dem Buch und verwandten Texten (auch Gedichten) lesen und dabei den Prozess der philosophischen Forschung - die Ordnung des gefundenen Materials, die Schaffung eines kohärenten und komplex strukturierten Ganzen - performativ vermitteln, um philosophische Arbeit über den geschriebenen Text hinaus sichtbar und verständlich zu machen.
Maria Kronfeldner will depict the content of her book “What’s left of Human Nature: A Post-Essentialist, Pluralist and Interactive Account of a Contested Concept,” by filling the wall in the gallery of CEU’s Library Café with pictures and text. She will read from the book, along with related texts (including poems), performatively communicating the process of philosophical inquiry – the ordering of the material that one has found, the creation of a coherent and complexly structured whole – to make philosophical work visible and graspable beyond the written text.
Komm’ und geh’, wie es Dir gefällt. Jede:r ist willkommen // Come and go as you please. All are welcome.
This performance is for the Lange Nacht der Forschung.
More details ↗ here.
Sie wissen ganz schön viel. Aber wissen Sie eigentlich was "Wissen" ist? An dieser Station setzen wir uns mit Wissen auseinander. Was unterscheidet Wissen von Meinung? Was unterscheidet Wissen von Ignoranz? Wie kommen wir verlässlich zu Wissen? In Zeiten von Fake News und alternativen Fakten ist es wichtiger denn je, sich mit dem Begriff des Wissens auseinanderzusetzen.
Für die Lange Nacht der Forschung.
Mehr Details ↗ hier.
"Generative AI (transcribed as “dinner AI” when I dictated this abstract) is just one possible flavor of AI among many, but fully dominant right now. Is it actually the kind of AI that we want?
I will argue the generative AI is morally and technically inadequate, and that we need to foster the development of more trustworthy approaches."
This event is jointly supported by the Knowledge in Crisis Cluster of Excellence and the Department of Cognitive Science.
This event was recorded. ↗ Watch here
Gary Marcus is a leading voice in artificial intelligence. He is a scientist, best-selling author, and serial entrepreneur (Founder of Robust.AI and Geometric.AI, acquired by Uber). He is well-known for his challenges to contemporary AI, anticipating many of the current limitations decades in advance, and for his research in human language development and cognitive neuroscience.
An Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Neural Science at NYU, he is the author of five books, including, The Algebraic Mind, Kluge, The Birth of the Mind, and the New York Times Bestseller Guitar Zero. He has often contributed to The New Yorker, Wired, and The New York Times. His most recent book, Rebooting AI, with Ernest Davis, is one of Forbes’s 7 Must Read Books in AI.
The aim of this workshop is to connect researchers from the Cluster of Excellence with philosophers from the University of California, Irvine. Jointly organised by the Cluster and UC Irvine's Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, topics include the scientific realism problem and what consequences it might have for public policy; the role of experts and of groups in advice-giving immunisation advisory committees, and; aging research as an example of pseudoscience.
“Democracy is a mechanism for distributing knowledge about matters of public interest, allowing us to decide which politicians should govern.” This popular view paints the picture that a politician's role is to inform voters about what is in our best interest. Losing elections, then, must be the result of ineffective communication: “If only we'd managed to get our message across to people properly”, the story goes, “then they would have seen why they had to vote for us!”
This picture clearly falls short of the messy reality of politics. But why? Does it portray an overly rationalistic picture of the democratic process? Is this picture overly idealistic? Does it overestimate the importance of (conveying) knowledge in democratic decisionmaking? Does it overestimate the potential for people to know what is in their best interest? How can we even determine what a person's “best interest” truly is?
The discussion will be moderated by Eva Stanzl, journalist at the Wiener Zeitung.
Doors open at 19:00. Discussion begins promptly at 19:30 and will be followed by a reception at 21:00.
Panel: Michael Ignatieff, Oliver Traldi, Åsa Wikforss
Artificial Intelligence is in the process of transforming our society. But it also has profound implications for our methods of knowledge production and consumption. The products of recent AI machines like ChatGPT are linguistically impressive and convincing — but they are also full of factual errors which their creators euphemistically (and misleadingly) call ‘hallucinations’. Given the extent to which we are starting to rely on AI, the question arises: how can we trust any of its outputs? How do we know what to believe? Is this a technical problem or a social and epistemological one? Technology is also beginning to change our conception of knowledge itself. If someone asks you whether you know a friend’s phone number, you may say yes and reach for your phone. Do you really know it in this situation? And if so, what does this say about the concept of knowledge?
These and other questions will be introduced in a public discussion, the first public event of the Knowledge in Crisis Cluster of Excellence.
The discussion will be moderated by Professor Tim Crane, Director of Research of Knowledge in Crisis, and the author of the leading textbook on the philosophy of mind and AI, The Mechanical Mind (first edition 1995, third edition 2014).
The discussion will be followed by a wine reception.