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Department of

Philosophy

Past Events

Apr

2

Seminar

"Why was Spinoza Excommunicated? by Steven Nadler (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Location:
Scheler Humanities Forum (Linderman 200)
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In July 1656, Bento (Baruch) de Spinoza was given the harshest herem (ban or ostracism) ever issued by the Amsterdam Portuguese-Jewish community. The text of the ban rains curses down upon the young man, for his “abominable heresies and monstrous deeds”. Unlike other bans issued…
Mar

26

Mar

7

Lecture

Selfridge 2024 College Talk: "Becoming One: Theology and Philosophy, Will and Intellect, Finite and Infinite in Spinoza" by Michael Della Rocca

Location:
Scheler Humanities Forum (Linderman 200)
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Professor Michael Della Rocca is Sterling Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. A rationalist, monist, skeptic, and renegade analytic philosopher, Michael Della Rocca is the author of The Parmenidean Ascent, of two books on Spinoza's philosophy, and of many…
Mar

6

Lecture

Selfridge Lecture 2024: The Original Sin of Analytical Philosophy

Location:
Neville Hall 003
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In this lecture, Professor Della Rocca will examine five crucial and influential episodes from early analytical philosophy in which Frege, Russell, Moore, and others play key roles.  In each episode, the debate is, he argues, structurally analogous to the debate over…
Feb

6

Lecture

"Social Robots with AI: Last Call for Robophilosophy" by Johanna Seibt

Location:
on Zoom or watch with us in EWFM 625
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Virtual:
On
Never in its history has philosophy been as socially relevant as today: we are blindly entering the “automation age” (McKinsey) without any reliable means of risk calculation: the creation of intelligent embodied artificial ‘social’ agents, increasingly equipped with generative…
Nov

28

Lecture

Philosophy Seminar Series: Lorraine Juliano Keller, "Polysemy, Analogy, and Ineffability"

Location:
Scheler Family Humanities Forum (LI 200)
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Contemporary linguists have been impressed by the pervasiveness of polysemy, the sort of lexical ambiguity that goes beyond mere homonymy, whereby the distinct meanings of words are related. For example, instances of ‘bark’ in ‘dogs bark’ and ‘tree bark’ are mere homonyms, while…
Nov

10