Dr Ashley Woodward (Dundee University), “Lyotard’s Post-phenomenological Aesthetics”

Abstract:

This paper argues that unity can be given to the great diversity of Lyotard’s writings in aesthetics and philosophy of art if the itinerary of his thought is seen as a post-phenomenological arc. His reflections in this area take off from an encounter with the phenomenological aesthetics of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Mikel Dufrenne (supervisor of his Doctorat d’etat) in the late 1960s, traverse various approaches to art and aesthetic perspectives, and significantly return to some reflections on phenomenological themes in his late works. This arc can be seen as almost neatly delimited by two critical reviews of Dufrenne’s works, one from 1969 and one from 1996. From both Merleau-Ponty and Dufrenne, Lyotard inherits a concern with the sensible materiality of artworks. Yet with both, he is critical of a philosophy of nature which seems to ground their approaches to aesthetics. Lyotard’s post-phenomenological arc can be seen as taking him increasingly further away from such a philosophy of nature, which to him seems to mark the phenomenologists’ works with a romantic aesthetic which he believes is out of step with the times, and with which the artworld has definitively broken. This is reflected in his increasing interest in constructivist and conceptual strategies in artworks, where rational composition seems to take precedence over gestural immediacy, and conceptual meaning seems to dominate over sensible presence. This break from the romantic aesthetic in art, Lyotard suggests, is mirrored by the crisis of foundations in science, in which rational knowledge can no longer be grounded in perceptual givens. Together, these views cast doubt on the idea that there is a ‘nature’ which might be expressed through art or science. Lyotard’s commitment to the sensible materiality of artworks persists, however, and is reasserted in his late aesthetics, where we see themes from Merleau-Ponty and Dufrenne re-emerge.

Bio:

Ashley Woodward is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Dundee, Honorary Fellow at Deakin University, and a founding member of the Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy. He has published widely on contemporary European philosophy and his most recent book is Lyotard: The Inhuman Condition. Reflections on Nihilism, Information, and Art (Edinburgh University Press, 2016).

Where and when:

Tuesday 19 July, 4.00pm to 5.30pm, Burwood Campus, C2.05 (*** Please note the seminars are now back in C2.05 ***)

The seminar is free to attend and all are welcome.

For any inquiries, please email Sean Bowden: [email protected]

Hosted by the European Philosophy and History of Ideas Research Group (EPHI) and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Dr Laura Schroeter (University of Melbourne), Dr Francois Schroeter (University of Melbourne), “Deflationary Normative Naturalism”

Abstract:

Two core objections have been raised against naturalism about normative properties. According to non-naturalists, (1) normative properties are sui generis and cannot be reduced to causal-explanatory properties posited by the natural sciences, and (2) normative properties are “objective, universal and absolute” (Enoch). We explain how a deflationary form of naturalism can accommodate (1). We then explain how (2) involves implicit commitments about the way normative terms acquire their reference. We propose an independently plausible principle for assigning reference that can vindicate (2) while adhering to deflationary naturalism.

Bio:

François Schroeter (Dr Habil Fribourg) is a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on issues in moral psychology, metaethics, moral theory and Kantian ethics. Laura Schroeter (PhD Michigan) is currently a lecturer at the University of Melbourne. Previously she was an Austrialian Research Fellow at Melbourne and a postdoctoral fellow at the ANU. She works primarily on the nature of concepts and theories of reference. The two are currently working on a monograph on normative concepts.

Where and when:

Tuesday 12 July, 4.00pm to 5.30pm, Burwood Campus, C2.05 (*** Please note the seminars are now back in C2.05 ***)

The seminar is free to attend and all are welcome.

For any inquiries, please email Sean Bowden: [email protected]

Hosted by the European Philosophy and History of Ideas Research Group (EPHI) and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Maria Nichterlein’s and John Morss’s new book, Deleuze and Psychology, is forthcoming with Routledge.

For more information, see here.

Prof. Jack Reynolds (Deakin University), “Scientific Realism and Phenomenology: A Show down?”

Abstract:

Since Quentin Meillassoux’s influential critique of phenomenology, there has been renewed interested in understanding whether phenomenology is antithetical to scientific realism and instead supports versions of scientific anti-realism, whether instrumentalism, van Fraassen’s constructive empiricism, or Fine’s NOA. This paper works through the options here, and argues against views (like Meillassoux’s and Brassier’s, but also endorsed by many phenomenologists) that hold that phenomenology and scientific realism are mutually exclusive or forced into a “show down”. I contend that where a show down exists it is due to commitments that are sometimes (perhaps often) associated with scientific realism, but are not strictly required by the position (e.g. adopting a view from nowhen; a mechanistic conception of nature and the relation between parts and wholes; an objectivist aim to eliminate or replace the first-person perspective, etc.).

Bio:

Jack Reynolds is Professor of Philosophy and Associate Dean (Research) of the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University. He has written four books: Chronopathologies: The Politics of Time in Deleuze, Derrida, Analytic Philosophy and Phenomenology (2012), Analytic Versus Continental: Arguments on the Methods and Value of Philosophy (2010, with James Chase), Merleau-Ponty and Derrida: Intertwining Embodiment and Alterity (2004), and Understanding Existentialism (2006). He has also co-edited various books, including Phenomenology and Science (2016), Sartre: Key Concepts (2013), Continuum Companion to Existentialism (2011), Postanalytic and Metacontinental: Crossing Philosophical Divides (2010), and Merleau-Ponty: Key Concepts (2008). He is currently writing a book on the relationship between phenomenological philosophy and the empirical sciences (and hence on meta-philosophy). In arguing for the compatibility of weak forms of methodological naturalism with phenomenology, he contests many of the standard interpretations of this relationship. It is forthcoming with Routledge and titled Phenomenology, Naturalism and Science: A Hybrid and Heretical Proposal.

Where and when:

Tuesday 7 June, 4.00pm to 5.30pm, Burwood Campus, C2.05 (*** Please note the seminars are now back in C2.05 ***)

The seminar is free to attend and all are welcome.

For any inquiries, please email Sean Bowden: [email protected]

Hosted by the European Philosophy and History of Ideas Research Group (EPHI) and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Monima Chadha (Monash University), “No-Self and the Phenomenology of Ownership”

Abstract:

Abhidharma-Buddhist philosophers put forward a revisionary metaphysics which lacks a “self” in order to provide an intellectually and morally preferred picture of the world. I argue for a strong reading of the no-self view as a variety of no-subject or no-ownership view. The Buddhists are not just denying the diachronically unified and extended self but also minimal selfhood insofar as it associated with a sense of ownership and agency. The view is deeply counterintuitive and the Buddhists are acutely aware of this fact. Accordingly, the Abhidharma-Buddhist writings and contemporary reconstructions of the view are replete with attempts to explain the phenomenology of experience in a no-self world. The paper defends the no-ownership view using resources from contemporary discussions about sense (or lack thereof) of ownership.

Bio:

Monima Chadha is currently Head of Philosophy and Graduate coordinator of the Philosophy Program at Monash University, Australia. Her principal research area is the cross-cultural philosophy of mind, specifically the Classical Indian and Contemporary Western Philosophy of mind. Over the last few years, she has been at the forefront of research to integrate insights on mind, consciousness and the self from across these philosophical traditions and the cognitive neurosciences. The aim of this research is to create a cohesively universal philosophical framework to understand these entities and also to enrich each of these traditions by leveraging insights from the other. This work has regularly featured in leading academic journals like Philosophy East and West; Asian Philosophy; Phenomenology and Cognitive Sciences; and Consciousness and Cognition. Currently she is writing a book on the philosophical evolution of mind in Buddhism and its centrality to the doctrine in the absence of self. In 2013, she was awarded the Contemplative Studies Fellowship by the Mind and Life Institute and Templeton Foundation, USA.

Where and when:

Tuesday 24 May, 4.00pm to 5.30pm, Burwood Campus, C2.05 (*** Please note the seminars are now back in C2.05 ***)

The seminar is free to attend and all are welcome.

For any inquiries, please email Sean Bowden: [email protected]

Hosted by the European Philosophy and History of Ideas Research Group (EPHI) and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Dr Patrick Gray (Durham, Yale), an expert on Shakespeare, Montaigne, and early modern thought to visit Deakin next Tuesday. Patrick has offered to run a semi-informal “masterclass” on:

“Montaigne, ‘On Experience’: Essay, Experiment, and Interpretation.”

Interested staff, graduates and students are welcome to attend.

It would be terrific if interested people could look at the essay beforehand, which can be sourced here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3599/3599.txt
Information on Patrick is here: https://www.dur.ac.uk/english.studies/academicstaff/?id=11777 Background/introduction to Montaigne is here: http://www.iep.utm.edu/montaign/

For further information, please contact Associate Professor Matthew Sharpe, [email protected].

Dr Marilyn Stendera (University of Melbourne), “Enacting practical wisdom: Heideggerian connections between phronesis and enactive cognition”

Abstract:

The Aristotelian conception of phronesis has long been of interest to those philosophies of cognition that explain cognisers’ responsiveness to salience in terms of an always-already situated purposiveness, and features especially in accounts which are influenced by the phenomenological tradition. This paper will focus on the manner in which one such discourse, enactivism, brings together phronesis and phenomenology in modelling pragmatic context-sensitivity; the paper’s goal is to suggest that these connections run even deeper than is often appreciated in the literature. The motivation for that claim lies in the existing intersections between enactivism, the conceptualisation of phronesis and Heideggerian thought, particularly Heideggerian analyses of temporality. Heidegger’s interpretation of phronesis has contributed significantly to the ways in which Aristotle’s concept has been taken up in phenomenology-influenced discussions of cognition and mind. Temporality plays an important role in Heidegger’s reading, although the relation of the temporal concepts posited therein to those set out in Sein und Zeit is highly contested. This paper will outline a perspective from which the temporalities that Heidegger ascribes to phronesis and Being-in-the-world can be integrated, and will propose that the resulting framework can illuminate the relationship between the temporal structures of phronesis and enactive cognition.

Bio:

Dr Marilyn Stendera’s research focuses mainly on the phenomenological tradition, with a particular interest in the latter’s conceptions of temporality and intersections with the philosophy of cognition. She recently received her PhD in Philosophy from The University of Melbourne; her thesis, Dasein’s Temporal Enaction, argues that Heidegger’s model of temporality ought to play a significant role in contemporary dialogues between phenomenology and cognitive science. Marilyn is currently a tutor in Philosophy at The University of Melbourne and a Teaching Associate at Monash University.

Where and when:

Tuesday 10 May, 4.00pm to 5.30pm, Burwood Campus, C2.05 (*** Please note the seminars are now back in C2.05 ***)

The seminar is free to attend and all are welcome.

For any inquiries, please email Sean Bowden: [email protected]

Hosted by the European Philosophy and History of Ideas Research Group (EPHI) and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Dr Helen Ngo (Deakin University), “White ontological expansiveness and the lived experience of racialised embodiment”

Abstract:

In her study into the unconscious habits of racial privilege, Shannon Sullivan introduces the concept “ontological expansiveness” to describe what she argues characterises white embodiment. According to Sullivan, ontological expansiveness describes the pre-reflective and often unarticulated assumption that “geographical, psychical, linguistic, economic, spiritual, bodily [spaces]…are or should be available for them to move in and out of as they wish.” (Sullivan, 2006, p.10). In this talk I draw on the work of critical race thinkers such as Frantz Fanon and George Yancy in order to explore the contrasting experience of racialised embodiment. I examine the ways in which racialised embodiment is marked not only by a disjuncture on the level of the body schema, but also by movement through social space that fails to be fluid, co-ordinated, or transparent in the way that phenomenological accounts of the body tend to assume. In doing so, I raise some questions around phenomenology’s usual treatment of the body as synchronously experienced in its temporal and spatial registers, as well as normative questions around the different relations to social and shared spaces.

Bio:

Dr. Helen Ngo is an Honorary Fellow in Philosophy at Deakin University. She completed her PhD at Stony Brook University, USA, specialising in phenomenology, critical philosophy of race, and feminist philosophy. She is currently engaged in teaching and research at Monash University, and is also working on a forthcoming book based on her doctoral dissertation, The Habits of Racism.

Where and when:

Tuesday 26 April, 4.00pm to 5.30pm, Burwood Campus, C2.05 (*** Please note the seminars are now back in C2.05 ***)

Virtual Meeting Point: ARTSED VMP SHSS. Direct dial number: (+613) 5223 9354

On joining a VMP, see here.

The seminar is free to attend and all are welcome.

For any inquiries, please email Sean Bowden: [email protected]

Hosted by the European Philosophy and History of Ideas Research Group (EPHI) and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Dr Patrick Stokes (Deakin University), “I See Dead People – But Are There Any Dead Persons?”

Abstract:

Marya Schechtman’s recently offered “Person Life View” (PLV) aims to give an account of personal identity according to which a) persons are the unified loci of our various forms of practical judgment; b) each of us is essentially a person; and c) person-identity is literal rather than metaphorical identity. She also argues that PLV recognizes the personhood of prelinguistic infants, patients in permanent vegetative states, and even developmentally impaired infants who will never achieve ‘forensic’ moral identity, even if these are ‘degenerate’ forms of personhood. As such, PLV promises to capture much of what is intuitively compelling about the two main rival theories of identity, namely animalism and neo-Lockeanism. In this paper, I argue that the features of PLV that confer degenerate personhood also entail that the dead are still persons too, contrary to the widely-accepted ‘Termination Thesis’ according to which persons cease to exist when they die. Far from being an objection to Schechtman’s position, however, this actually counts in its favour: in light of our person-tracking practices and attitudes with regards to the dead, PLV turns out to handle the question of whether there are dead persons better than its competitors.

Bio:

Patrick Stokes is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Deakin University and a Research Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire. He has previously held research fellowships in the UK, US, and Denmark. He is the author of The Naked Self: Kierkegaard and Personal Identity (Oxford UP, 2015) and Kierkegaard’s Mirrors (Palgrave, 2010). He is also co-editor, with John Lippitt, of Narrative, Identity, and the Kierkegaardian Self (Edinburgh UP, 2015) and, with Adam Buben, of Kierkegaard and Death (Indiana UP, 2011). Patrick is also a regular contributor to publications including The Conversation and New Philosopher, and a media commentator on philosophical matters.

Where and when:

Tuesday 12 April, 4.00pm to 5.30pm, Burwood Campus, C2.05 (*** Please note the seminars are now back in C2.05 ***)

Virtual Meeting Point: ARTSED VMP SHSS. Direct dial number: (+613) 5223 9354

On joining a VMP, see here.

The seminar is free to attend and all are welcome.

For any inquiries, please email Sean Bowden: [email protected]

Hosted by the European Philosophy and History of Ideas Research Group (EPHI) and the School of Humanities and Social Sciences.