IAP 2019 Activities by Sponsor - Linguistics and Philosophy

Rose Lenehan

Jan/31

Thu

02:00PM-04:00PM

32-D461

Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up

People throw around the words 'capitalism' and 'socialism' a lot, often without having a good sense of what those terms mean. Now right-wing pundits have started using the term 'cultural Marxism' to describe an ideology that has supposedly become prevalent in the academy and among young progressives. In this class I'll introduce some basic concepts from Marxism and explain some features of a Marxist worldview, including the idea that capitalism is necessarily exploitative, that struggle between economic classes is the most basic dynamic of history, and that the widespread ideology of a society is the ideology that best serves the ruling class. I will also provide information about where to find more on these topics and others, including Marxist theories of gender and race.

Sponsor(s): Linguistics and Philosophy
Contact: Rose Lenehan, rlenehan@mit.edu

Haley Schilling, Philosophy Graduate Student

Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up
Attendance: Participants welcome at individual sessions
Prereq: none

This year’s MITing of the Minds is the Fifteenth Annual MIT Philosophy Alumni Conference. The conference will showcase recent work in a variety of areas of contemporary philosophy. Presentations will be accessible to a broad audience.

Sponsor(s): Linguistics and Philosophy
Contact: Christine Graham, 32-D808, 617 253-4653, CGRAHAM@MIT.EDU

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MITing of the Minds 2019

Jan/24

Thu

10:30AM-06:00PM

32-D461

Please see website for complete details:http://web.mit.edu/philosophy/mm/

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MITing of the Minds 2019

Jan/25

Fri

09:30AM-04:00PM

32-D461

Please see website for complete details:http://web.mit.edu/philosophy/mm/

Daniel Munoz, Kelly Gaus

Enrollment: Unlimited: No advance sign-up
Attendance: Participants welcome at individual sessions

When Kenneth Arrow published his famous "Impossibility Theorem," he inaugurated an interdisciplinary inquiry into the nature and possibility of collective choice. Now it's called Social Choice Theory, and it's been an enormous inspiration for moral, legal, and political philosophers (like Rawls, Kamm, Gibbard, and Dworkin). It is a rigorous way of testing which of our values (fairness, freedom, rationality, utility) can be combined into a method of collective choice -- and which combinations are impossible.

This session is an introduction to Social Choice Theory: its Greatest Hits, technical machinery, and philosophical upshots. No background required: if you're interested, you're welcome! We'll focus on really understanding Arrow's theorem, along with Amartya Sen's paradox of liberalism. We can also go into one or two other major results. Email us if you'd like to request one of the following (or something else!):

1. Partial comparability and interpersonal welfare comparisons.
2. Majority rule and when it works.
3. The Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (and its importance for real-world voting procedures).

Sponsor(s): Linguistics and Philosophy
Contact: Kelly Gaus & Daniel Munoz, klgaus@mit.edu, munozd@mit.edu

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	Jan/29	Tue	02:00PM-04:00PM	32-D831
	Jan/30	Wed	02:00PM-04:00PM	32-D831

We are hoping to have two hour-long sessions spread over two days: the first for technical background and Arrow's theorem, and the second for Sen's paradox and other fun results. If you'd prefer one session one day, let us know!