Philosophy in an Age of Science

This is the title of the conference in honor of Hilary Putnam's 85th birthday. I think it is a nice gloss of contemporary philosophy as well. This is true in a trivial sense: natural sciences have been well established for at least two hundred and fifty years, and philosophy during this time is automatically qualified as "philosophy in an age of science." However, this title has a deeper connotation.

Philosophy is a weird subject. One can virtually do almost whatever one likes in this field, and this implies that one can disregard sciences and say whatever they like in philosophy. Of course this does not mean that people like that can all succeed in their professions, but at least there is no principal reason they will fail.

I do not think that philosophy is parasitic on sciences. However, I believe the interactions with sciences should be taken more seriously. There are so many branches in philosophy that are closely related to sciences: philosophy of science (obviously), of physics, of biology, of psychology, of mind, of language, and so on. Some kinds of metaphysics and ethics are like that too. Philosophers in these branches have no good excuse to avoid sciences. As Putnam remarked at the conference, philosophers of science should learn quantum mechanics, as opposed to pretending that they can work with Newtonian physics exclusively. This remark, together with my general suggestion above, might seem trivially true. And I agree. The trouble is that in practice it is difficult for philosophers - including myself - to follow the truism.

Before coming to the U.S., I always thought that it has been too late for me to learn psychology. And though I attended a lot events in psychology and tried to learn a bit, I found lots of excuses to not take it more seriously. To be sure, I have always respected the subject and taken it seriously theoretically speaking, but in practice I refused to engage it in more direct ways.

That was silly, and now I finally overcome it. After this year in NYC, I have totally changed my mind. The seminar on attention and perception by Ned Block and David Carmel in particular blew my mind, in a good way. And this conference for Putnam reinforced my new conviction: I want to do philosophy in an age of science, in a much more serious way. And Putnam is such a good paradigm for that.

Fall 2011 Schedule: Epistemology and Biology (and Much More)

Spring has been extremely busy, given that I attend totally eight classes, and many many events around. I went to Harvard four times this semester so far, and there will be another one at the end of this month; Putnam's birthday, you know. And I started to spend more time at Rutgers. Hopefully next semester I can do even more, and perhaps Princeton as well.

Now, fall 2011. Of course I haven't made the final decision, but it will be even crazier; that's for sure. Officially I will take this three:

Epistemology, Michael Levin
Philosophy of Biology, Peter Godfrey-Smith
Theory of Mind in Animals and Infants, Robert Lurz

They fit perfectly with my future project: philosophy of mind informed by psychology, biology, and epistemology. In the spring I have spent considerable time in psychology, and I will spend more during the summer, and of course, throughout my career. In the fall, I will concentrate on epistemology and biology. Again, it is not as though I can manage them quickly, but at least I need to start, and those three classes fit my purpose perfectly.

Now for those I might sit in on:

Epistemology, Alvin Goldman
Carnap's Aufbau, Ralf Bader
Kripke's Philosophy of Semantics, Nathan Salmon
Materialism, Mark Johnston and Frank Jackson
Metaphysics, Carol Rovane
Metaethics, Sharon Street
Quine and Sellars on Thought and Language, David Rosenthal

Okay, I am insane, and I know that. I must admit that this is extremely tiring, and I sometimes cannot really focus during classes. But I still learn a lot from this kind of schedule. I don't care how people look at me about this. I mean, most of them do not understand my background, and I don't blame them. The simple story is that in my home country western philosophy is not good enough, so in the past my education did not help me too much (let alone high schools and elementary school). On top of that, it is highly possible that I will need to have my career back there, and I will not have this kind of stimulating environment there. So I have to get as much as possible when I study abroad. There are much more details about this miserable story, of course.

Tell you what, Yu Guo, possibly the best Asian student in this ballpark (apart from native English speaker Asians, of course), works much harder than myself, though in a very different way; he often concentrates on his work virtually by himself. I take it as only a matter of style, reflecting our different personalities. At one point I will need to do something like he is doing now, but as a first-year (OK, second-year soon), I still want to learn to philosophize by attending a lot. It's hard to say what the balance is, but I will keep trying and at the mean time find the best way for me.

Okay, Now What?

There have been two months that no update appears. The graduate applications are all dead, and the conference submissions are almost all dead - I do not have time to attend the only one I got. And I spent some time recovering for all those defeats. But I do not stop, not even a day. The past two months are the most productive period in recent years. I just simply don't feel that there is anything worthy of posting; I just keep learning.

Now I need to worry about the term papers for The First Critique, Aesthetic Psychology, and Consciousness. I will write on spatial orientation for Kant, attention and aesthetic experience for psychology, and cognitive accessibility for consciousness. I try to deveop more positive, substantial theses this time.

And there will be the Rutgers Epistemology Conference in May, and the Putnam one in late May/early June; good things for one to look forward to. Two workshops on attention at Harvard are great too.

Spring Schedule Determined

I give up attending any undergrad lectures, and dropped Plato and Hume. But I am happy with my decisions. This PHILOSOPHY OF MIND semester demands me to do so. The most exciting thing is that I plan to go for a psychology seminar entitled "Consciousness and Attention" taught by Hakwan Lau at Columbia. I am lucky enough to notice this one in the last minute.

It is not clear to me that I am able to understand many things in this one, but I am happy to try. I need to know how far I can go in the empirical direction.

And in order to retain my secondary interest in philosophy of language, I will attend "Propositions" by Gary Ostertag. Who knows; maybe I will come back to language in the future, provided that I have suitable environment.

And I am still waiting for the results of all those graduate applications and conference submissions.

And although I have many ideas, I decide not to put them in the blog recently. This is not because I am aware that no one really reads them, but because I want to spend more time reading. So many things to learn.

Important Graduate Conferences CFP Due Dates

Oxford: Mid Aug.

MindGrad: Early Sep.

USC/UCLA: Late Oct.

Pitts/CMU: Late Dec.

Austin: Early Jan.

Harvard/MIT: Early Jan.

NYU/Columbia: Mid Jan.

Princeton/Rutgers: Mid Jan.

CUNY: Late Jan.

I hope I can do at least one or two of them during the Ph.D.; it's very hard, I know.

Spring 2011 Schedule: Kant, Consciousness, and Aesthetics (and Much More)

So I finally finished the difficult semester for philosophy of language. Next semester will be even busier, given that so many courses I want to sit in on. But let me start with the official three.

There is one on Kant's First Critique. This time I really want to focus more on the text itself; in the past I relied on secondary literature too much. And there will be Jesse Prinz's "Aesthetic Psychology"; this might be the most challenging one for me, since I have never touched on aesthetics in the past. And there will be David Rosenthal's "The Function of Consciousness." Philosophy of mind, Ich comme!

I might want to sit in on some undergrad classes at NYU, but I suspect that I won't be able to do so. As for seminars, two "must go" are Ned Block's one on perception and Christopher Peacocke's one on self-consciousness. Again, even if I restrict myself to this two, it is already too much indeed. But this is New York. And there will be Ernest Sosa's epistemology. Some other possibilities include one on Plato's Republic and one on Hume's Treatise. I will do my best. Since I suspect I will move to somewhere else to write the dissertation, I need to maximize what I can learn here.

By the way, I just submitted 10 graduate applications and 5 conference proposals; I expect all of them will be turned down, though. Philosophy, so competitive!

And now I have to work on the review of Chalmers's new book. It's way too big!

Graduate Application, Round II

That's what I have been doing for this entire semester, or at least some time slices of it. Actually there is nothing really worthy recording. Just to write down some random thoughts.

I was going to apply for 20+ places again, but later I decided to go for only 10. The main reason is that I am pretty sure about what I want to study in the following years, and that's a very narrow topic, at least in the U.S. to my observation. So there is no good philosophical reason for me to insist on staying in this country. To be sure, there are still some places I would like to go; that's why I still apply. But now they are very few (i.e., 10 or so). If shut out, I will go to the U.K. or Australia. No hesitation now.

And if shut out, staying in NYC for a M.A. thesis is not a bad idea as well. I want to write about proprioception, and there is at least one professor around who can help me with this. That said. I still try my best in applying. It is just that I am not as obsessed as I was last year.

A lot to say, as usual, but since no one cares, I shall keep my non-philosophical posts minimal.