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Bulletin of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research

Vol. 1, Issue 3 March/April 2013

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Brought to you by the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research

For more information please visit: www.thebrooklyninstitute.com

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If you want your lecture, discussion, publication, event, or anything else listed in our

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About the Brooklyn Institute:

The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research provides liberal arts educational opportunitiesto local communities. At the same time it provides material and intellectual support and

space for young scholars to teach, write, research, publish and, put simply, work.

Although consciously modeled after the famous Institute for Social Research inFrankfurt, Germany especially in its heyday under the directorship of Max Horkheimer

we are not all scholars in that tradition, nor is any intellectual, literary or artistic

tradition unwelcome in our Institute. As we honor and build upon their extraordinarycontributions to human thought and social commitments, we strive to engage the worldsof philosophy, literature, science, the arts and social sciences with the world at largeand people everywhere. At a time when the price of traditional higher education reachesever higher, even as support for scholars and scholarship has substantially diminished,we are committed to the idea that to learn, teach, study, write and think is labor worth

doing both for its own sake and for the sake of communities and citizens who are active,engaged and alive.

For more information, please see www.thebrooklyninstitute.com.

Table of Contents

Course Offerings of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research for March/April

In Session Beavoir and Beyond: Philosophy and Sexual Difference 3

In Session Gdels Incompleteness Theorems: History, Proofs, Implications 4

Upcoming! Emerson and Thoreau: American Transcendentalism 7

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Beavoir and Beyond: Philosophy and Sexual Difference

Abby Kluchin

Presented in collaboration with the Barnard Center for Research on

Women

But if I wish to define myself, Simonede Beauvoir writes, I must first of all

say: I am a woman; on this truth mustbe based all further discussion.

With this declarationand thepublication of The Second Sexin

1953the question of womanbecomes a proper topic ofphilosophical investigation, as Beauvoirdemystifies the eternal feminine andlays bare the relationship of masculine

and feminine and how they function toconstruct woman as Other. In the wakeof Beauvoir, other feminist thinkers takeup many of her questions, but abandonher existentialist presuppositions. I nthis course, we will examine a set of twentieth century texts that insist on taking woman,

gender, and sexual difference seriously. The first half of the course will center aroundreadings from the new unabridged English edition of The Second Sex, in conjunction

with relevant primary and secondary literature, including the work of Jean-Paul Sartreand selections from Toril Mois Simone de Beauvoir: the Making of an IntellectualWoman. The second half of the course will consider so-called French feminism afterBeauvoir, a designation that includes figures as diverse as Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray,Hlne Cixous, Monique Wittig, and Michle le Doueff. These thinkers diverge in avariety of ways from Beauvoirs approach. But they continue to insist on the necessity ofconfronting the question of sexual difference, as well as the theorization andperformance of distinctly feminine writing that they term criture feminineor parler-

femme.

Held Thursdays, 7-9pm, starting March 7, 20136 sessions over 6 weeks

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Gdels Incompleteness Theorems: History, Proofs,

Implications

Suman Ganguli

In 1931, a 25-year-old Kurt Gdelpublished a paper inmathematical logic titled OnFormally UndecidablePropositions of Principia

Mathematica and Related

Systems. This paper contained

the proofs of twoincompleteness theorems:For any consistent axiomaticformal system that can expressfacts about basic arithmetic:

1. There are true statements thatare unprovable within the system2. The systems consistency cannot be proven within the systemIn this course, we will unpack the meanings of these statements and put them in contextas follows.

First, we will examine the historical context of the theorems. Gdels theorems were

immediately recognized as a pivotal achievement in logic and the foundations of

mathematics (metamathematics). They struck a seemingly fatal blow to the logicistand formalist programs of Frege, Russell, and Hilbertthe effort, going back to Fregeswork in the late 1800s and carried forward by Whitehead and Russell s PrincipiaMathematica and Hilberts formalist philosophy of mathematics, to provide a provablyconsistent axiomatic foundation for all of mathematics. Second, we will go through theproofs of the incompleteness theorems, with a focus on the first theorem. The level ofmathematical detail will be calibrated according to the interests and abilities of the class.This will entail discussions of propositional and predicate logic; formal axiomatic

systems (and the consistency and completeness of such); Peano arithmetic; the

arithmetization of syntax via Gdel numbering; effective/computable enumerability (viacomputable functions and Turing machines); and the diagonalization argument thatleads to a self-referential formula of arithmetic which says I am not provable (asyntactic version of the liar paradox). We will discuss the influence and impact of

Gdels theorems: on mathematics and the philosophy of mathematics as well as theuses and abuses of Gdel incompleteness in fields such as cognitive science,philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence, and even political science and sociology.

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A Q&A with Suman Ganguli, Instructor for Gdels Incompleteness Theorems

BISR Bulletin: What inspired you to teach a course specifically on Kurt Gdel's

Incompleteness Theorems? Will someone with no background in mathematical logic beable to engage in relevant dialogue with the material of this course?

SG: In this course we are discussing Gdel's incompleteness theorems--Kurt Gdel'sfamous results in mathematical logic. We are starting with the intellectual historicalcontext, in logic and the foundations of mathematics, before going through the proofs ofGdel's theorems. We'll close with discussing the implications and interpretations ofGdel incompleteness in a number of fields: the foundations of mathematics, the theoryof computation, the possibilities for artificial intelligence, and philosophy of mind.

My Ph.D. was in mathematical logic, and before that I had studied mathematics and

philosophy as an undergraduate. Indeed, it was an interest in the intersection ofmathematics and philosophy that led me to study mathematical logic. I've worked indifferent fields of applied mathematics since then, however, so this is a chance to returnto the fascinating ideas of "mathematical philosophy" (as Bertrand Russell put it). It'salso a chance to try to explain these fairly technical ideas to people who are interestedin the ideas and interested in learning them (and in some cases have tried to work

through them before), but don't necessarily have the mathematical background to workthrough all the details on their own.

Held Tuesdays, 7-9pm, starting March 5, 2013

6 sessions over 7 weeks

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Upcoming!

Emerson and Thoreau: American Transcendentalism

[Thoreaus] problemat once philosophical,

religious, literary, and, I will argue, politicalis to getus to ask the questions, and then to show us that wedo not know what we are asking, and then to show usthat we have the answer.Stanley Cavell, Senses ofWalden

Transcendentalism had always had troubleimagining how to bridge the gap between principle

and action largely because it tended to think of actionas a kind of sullyinga frustrating and degradingattempt to force pure ideas into a world of corruptionand compromise. What Thoreau learned was that if

you acted purely from principle to withdrawyourallegiance from the world of corruption, the worldwould soon come to you. Barbara Packer, The Transcendentalists

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.Good and bad are but names very readily

transferable to that or this; the only right is what isafter my constitution, the only wrong what is againstit.Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

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Emerson and Thoreau: American Transcendentalism

Christine Smallwood

In the 19th century, a small group of New England radicals seeking a break with spiritualconventions, an immediate encounter with the natural world, and a revitalization of daily

lifewhat Emerson called an original relation to the universebecame known astranscendentalists. What kind of individual life, and what sorts of social communities, didthe transcendentalists imagine? How did they understand notions like self-reliance andexperience? Is Thoreaus famous move to Walden Pond best interpreted as a proto-libertarian withdrawal from the community, or the first step towards a new community,differently oriented and committed? In this course we will read Emersons Natureand

his major essays, and Thoreaus Waldenand selections from his journals. We will beattentive to how transcendentalist thought was influenced by German idealists, English

romantics, the Bhavagad-Gita, and other sources, and how it in turn influencedabolitionist actions and communal utopian experiments. (Thoreau, on a visit to BrookFarm: As for these communities, I think I had rather keep a bachelor s room in Hell thango to board in Heaven.) Critical reading will include Stanley Cavell, Barbara Packer,and Leo Marx.

A Q & A withBISR Bulletin: Why a class on American Transcendentalism?

CS: It is always a good time to read, and reread, Emerson and Thoreau. They provideinsight into perennial Americanadropping out, antinomianism, individualismwhilechallenging what we think of as the meaning of withdrawal, protest for protests sake,and political action.

The Transcendentalists were a mixed group, with some thinkers espousing radicalintrospection and others attuned to achieving democratic reform, abolition, and

economic equality. While we will be attentive to this context and to the social forces thatincubated Transcendentalist thought, this class will focus on closely reading some of the

most importantand very differenttexts written by Emerson and Thoreau, includingNature, Walden, and assorted essays and journals. What wasTranscendentalism in thefirst place? What is the meaning of terms like self-reliance, experience, reception, andtemperament? What exactly did Thoreau do at Walden Pond, and what can be learnedfrom his time there? How can literary style be the basis for philosophical argument?

This is a class for anyone who wants to learn about the history of American thought,who is curious about the travel of German idealism to America, who doubts the meaning

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of hoeing beans as a political action, or who simply wants to know these particular texts.

Above all, it is a class for anyone who wants to think seriously about that mostfundamental question: How should I live? Readings will range from 50-150 pages perweek.

Held Wednesdays, 7-9pm

Starting April 17, 2013

6 sessions over 7 weeks

For more information visit

thebrooklyninstitute.com