Current Speaker's Series

CONCORDIA PHILOSOPHY COLLOQUIA SPEAKER SERIES

2011 -  2012 Program

Prof. Richard Samuels, Department of Philosophy, Ohio State University

Thinking Like a Scientist: Innateness as a Case Study

Friday September 23, 2011, 16:00 - 18:00, PR-100, Philosophy Department, 2100 Mackay Street

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Assistant Proffesor. John Basl, Department of Philosophy, Bowling Green State University

Making Animals Too Smart for Their Own Good: The Ethical Concerns Associated with Enhancing Non-Human Animals

Friday November 11, 2011, 16:00 - 18:00, PR-100, Philosophy Department, 2100 Mackay Street

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Prof. David P. Schweikard, Department of Philosophy, University of Münster, Germany

The Politics of Group Agency

Friday November 25, 2011, 16:00 - 18:00, PR-100, Philosophy Department, 2100 Mackay Street

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Prof. Guenter Zoeller, Department of Philosophy, Univeristy of Munich/McGill University

Homo homini civic. The Modernity of Classical German Political Philosophy

Friday March 23, 2012, 16:00 - 18:00, PR-100, Philosophy Department, 2100 Mackay Street

ABSTRACT: The paper focuses on the specifically political conception of the human individual in the moral, social and political philosophy of Kant and the German idealists, placing their political thinking into the larger historical context of modern accounts of the relation between the citizen and the state. In particular, I propose to draw on Kant, Fichte and Hegel for extracting a conception of selfhood that is mindful of the worth of the individual and attentive to its supra- and inter-individual existence in general and its existence in political or civil society and the state in particular.

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Prof. Erich Reck, Department of Philosophy, University of California Riverside

Cassirer's Reception of Dedekind: Structuralism and the History of Mathematics.

Friday March 30, 2012, 16:00 - 18:00, Room Location TBA

ABSTRACT:  While structuralist views have received a good deal of attention in recent philosophy of mathematics, most treatments of them have been a-historical.  Consequently, Richard Dedekind's original version of structuralism is still often ignored or misunderstood. There has also not been enough exploration of the historical background of Dedekind's position, and thus of structuralism more generally.  As a consequence of that, the significance of structuralism has been understood in a relatively narrow sense.  In this talk, I will attempt to rectify this situation by considering a figure from the early twentieth century, Ernst Cassirer, who developed a detailed and rich account of both Dedekind's contributions and their role in the history of mathematics.  Besides bringing Cassirer backinto contemporary debates as a historian of mathematics, I will arguethat there are philosophical insights in Cassirer's reception of Dedekind that remain relevant today.

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