This Friday, Feb. 11^th, CSUN will be holding its annual Student Research and Creative Works Symposium:

The CSUN Student Research and Creative Works Symposium takes place each fall semester. The purpose of the symposium is to highlight student achievement and to inform the campus community of the excellent quality and diversity of research and creative activity being conducted by undergraduate and graduate students across all academic disciplines. The symposium format permits a 10 minute oral presentation or a poster presentation. Undergraduate and graduate students from all disciplines are encouraged to participate. There are separate undergraduate and graduate divisions for each of the following categories (unless a division had only a few entrants, in which case undergraduate and graduate disciplines were combined). Students make either an oral or poster presentation. Based on the recommendation of the judges, cash awards are presented to the outstanding oral presenter and runner-up in each category for both the graduate and undergraduate divisions. For the poster session, a cash award is given to the outstanding undergraduate and graduate student.

In addition to the many events scheduled for that day, two of our Philosophy students will also be presenting!  You’ll definitely want to check them both out.  During Session #6, Philosophy majors Sara Rose and Michael Sechman will each present—respectively—at around 1:50pm and 2:10pm.  They will their presentations in the Ventura Room of CSUN’s University Student Union.

• For a complete schedule of the day’s presentations, click here.

Time for the second Student Philosophy Society meeting of the Spring 2010 semester!  This time, Alberto Mendoza, will be giving a presentation on Robert C. Solomon’s book, The Passions: The Myth and Nature of Human Emotion.  Following the presentation, as usual, we will have a discussion on the topic.  The delicious—not to mention free—food and drinks that will be provided during this week’s meeting will undoubtedly help in providing an ample amount of nutrients to your brain.  This, in turn, will likely cause you to ask many questions during the group discussion after the presentation.  We dare you to tell us that doesn’t all sound yummy to you.  You simply can’t.  This meeting is sure to be as yummy as it is insightful; and that’s something you can take to the bank!

Book Description: The Passions takes a radical new stand on the nature of human emotions. Rather than being enslaved by these irrational, primitive forces, Robert C. Solomon shows that our passions—our emotions—alone provide our lives with meaning.

It’s the beginning of the Spring 2010 semester and the Student Philosophy Society is back in full swing.  This semester, CSUN Philosophy major Alberto Mendoza continues to serve as the SPS President and already has many exciting ideas for future meetings.  You’ll definitely want to check back here often so you don’t miss out on anything!

For this semester’s first meeting, we’ll be discussing Heidegger’s distinction between World and the Intraworldly.  Our very own Alvin Mayorga will begin the meeting with a presentation on this topic and then we’ll have time for some discussion and questions.

What shall be explored (briefly) is the ontological structure of the human Dasein and the relationship which this being has to its surrounding environment as it is Being-in the world as such. Also, although many of Heidegger’s concepts can initially seem confusing and complicated, during this meeting you can count on these concepts being presented in a manner as clear and as accessible as possible.

Because Martin Heidegger’s philosophy is often recognized as being groundbreaking, this semester we hope to have a number of subsequent discussions about his philosophical ideas in particular, and about existentialist phenomenology more generally.  Who knows?  You may just find these topics and different approaches to philosophy interesting and refreshing.  Or…maybe not.  Perhaps you’ll find it’s interesting and yet quite unrefreshing.  Guess there’s only one way to find out, huh?  You’ll just have to come to our first meeting and find out for yourself!

What’s that?  You wish you could watch some videos of Heidegger that are narrated in German?  Done!:

• Heidegger: Human … All Too Human  [youtube video]
• Clips from a 1975 German documentary on Heidegger  [youtube video]

You read correctly: There most definitely will be some free food and drinks available for all to enjoy.  However, we do kindly ask that you also bring some type of food/snack/drink with you to the meeting for everyone to enjoy.  That way, we’ll all have a nice variety of snacks from which to choose.  For example, you might wish to bring some chips, salsa, drinks, sandwiches, thirty-five McDonald’s Oreo-McFlurrys, twelve large-sized Togo’s sandwiches, or even three bags of genuine Bubblicious-brand bubblegum.  You get the point; All snacks are welcome—and graciously appreciated!

And, regarding snacks, one last note: Please, please send a quick note to Alberto letting him know what you plan on bringing so he knows what to expect ahead of time and can plan accordingly.  (Alberto says, “Thanks!”)

As usual, all CSUN philosophy majors & minors, professors, and all other philosophically-minded students are welcome to join us during this gathering; and you definitely should, seeing as this is the last meeting of the semester!

This will be a discussion on the role of Existential-Phenomenology in the twenty-first century and the importance of understanding the interconnection between freedom, action, and responsibility

As always, feel free to bring your philosophically-interested friends!

Some links that you might enjoy taking a look at before the meeting:

• Jean-Paul Sartre – Stanford Encyclopedia Article
• Jean-Paul Sartre – Wikipedia Page

Also of note, our very own Dr. Tim Black will be presenting on epistemology in a talk titled, How To Do Epistemology.

Additionally, Dr. Julie Tannenbaum—who many of you will remember from CSU, Northridge, and who currently is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Pomona College—will be co-presenting a paper titled, Full Moral Status of the Cognitively Impaired: Rescuing the Commonsense View, along with Dr. Agnieszka Jaworska, from UC Riverside.

Click here for a complete program (with abstracts and an updated room listing).

Come support these professors of ours and check out the various other presentations that will be going on that day:

• Saba Bazargan (UC, San Diego), “On the Permissibility of Participating in Unjust Wars”
• Sara Bernstein (University of Arizona/ UNC-Chapel Hill), “The Social Composition Problem”
• Noell Birondo (Claremont McKenna College), “The Wrong Kind of Reasoning.”
• Tim Black (CalState, Northridge), “How To Do Epistemology”
• Michael Cholbi (CalState Poly, Pomona), “A neo-Kantian view of moral dilemmas”
• Amy Coplan (CalState, Fullerton), “Feeling without Thinking: Lessons from the Ancients on Emotion and Virtue Acquisition”
• Sean Greenberg (UC, Irvine), “Controlling Consent: Malebranche on Human Freedom”
• Pamela Hieronymi (UC, Los Angeles) “Of Metaethics and Motivation: The Appeal of Contractualism”
• Kristen Irwin (UCSD/Biola Univ.) “Bayle’s “Qualified Academic Skepticism”
• Agnieszka Jaworska (UC, Riverside) & Julie Tannenbaum (Pomona College), “Full Moral Status of the Cognitively Impaired: Rescuing the Commonsense View”
• Brandon Johns (USC), “How to Try without Intending”
• A. J. Julius (UC, Los Angeles), “Wrongness, the fourth dimension”
• JeeLoo Liu (CalState, Fullerton) “Memory, Quasi-memory and Personal Identity”
• Marcy Lascano (CalState, Long Beach) “Early Modern Women on the Cosmological Argument: A Case Study in the Methodology of Feminist Historiography”
• Gideon Manning (Caltech) “Descartes’ genetic answer to the other minds skeptic”
• Chris Naticchia (CalState, San Bernadino) “Nonideal Normative Theory in International Relations: The Case of Recognition.”
• Calvin Normore (UC, Los Angeles) “The Discovery of Self in Avicenna and Olivi”
• David Pitt (CalState, Los Angeles) “Demonstrative Thoughts”
• Gila Sher (UC, San Diego), “Forms of Correspondence: The Intricate Route from Thought to Reality”
• Clinton Tolley (UC, San Diego), “Kant and Frege on the Generality of Logic”
• Cory Wright (CalState, Long Beach) ‘Pluralism about Truth: A Progress Report’
• Aaron Zimmerman (UC, Santa Barbara) “On Inferring “Ought” from “Is”"

In Better Never to Have Been, Benatar argues that coming into existence is a serious harm, regardless of the feelings of the existing being once brought into existence, and that, as a consequence, it is always morally wrong to create more sentient beings.

Many take Benatar’s conclusion to be more than a little counterintuitive, so count on a lively discussion after the presentation!  Also, as always, feel free to invite your friends to this meeting, as well as all those in the future.

Some links that may help familiarize you with this book and its author before the meeting:

• A review of Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.
• A short Wikipedia article on David Benatar.

Modal realism says that non-actual possible worlds and individuals are as real as the actual world and individuals. Takashi Yagisawa defends modal realism of a variety different from David Lewis’s theory. The notion of reality is left primitive and sharply distinguished from that of existence, which is proposed as a relation between a thing and a domain. Worlds are postulated as modal indices for truth on a par with times, which are temporal indices for truth. Ordinary individual objects are conceived as being extended in spatial, temporal, and modal dimensions and their transworld identity is explicated by the closest-continuer theory. Impossible worlds and individuals are postulated and used to provide accounts of propositions, belief sentences, and fictional discourse.

Currently Professor and Chair of Philosophy at California State University, Northridge, Dr. Yagisawa’s upcoming book is scheduled to debut in Feburary 2010 and will be published by Oxford University Press.

Seats will definitely fill up for this presentation, so make sure to come early!