Lewis Gordon: Black Consciousness

Check out Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Lewis Gordon’s recent interview on the Overthink podcast on Black Consciousness. The episode discusses Professor Gordon’s book, Fear of Black Consciousness, as well as other works by race and philosophy scholars.

See below for a brief overview of the episode written on the Overthink website:

“Do you need black skin to be Black? How might concepts such as white privilege be limiting our understanding of how racism works? In Episode 117 of Overthink, Ellie and David chat with philosopher Lewis Gordon about his book, Fear of Black Consciousness. They talk through the history of anti-Black racism, the existential concept of bad faith, why Rachel Dolezal might have Black consciousness, and Frantz Fanon’s experience of being called a racial slur by a white child on a train. From the American Blues to the Caribbean movement of Negritude, this episode is full of insight into Black liberation and White centeredness.”

Congratulations, Lewis!

Resilience and the Brown Babe’s Burden

Tracy Llanera, Editor

This volume examines the concept and practice of resilience from the perspective of Filipina philosophers. It investigates the double-edged nature of resilience and other key assumptions and ideas about human resilience and resilient cultures and institutions. The chapters in the collection are intersectional in approach, drawing from feminist theory, social and political philosophy, critical theory, pragmatism, virtue theory, social epistemology, and decolonial theory in their engagement of the theme.

Part of the Academics, Politics and Society in the Post-Covid World series, the book will be of interest to scholars and students of philosophy, political theory, feminist theory, philosophy of education, cultural studies, and development studies. It will be valuable to academics in Philippine Studies, Asian and Southeast Asian Studies, and Global South Studies.

Cover of "Resilience and the Brown Babe's Burden"

Lewis Gordon: The Honorable Shyne

Congratulations to Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Lewis Gordon on his appearance in Hulu’s new documentary, The Honorable Shyne. The movie follows Moses “Shyne” Barrow, and his journey from famous hip-hop artist to Belizean politician. Below is an excerpt from the film’s synopsis:

This documentary provides an intimate look at Shyne’s personal evolution as he navigates fame, incarceration and a return home to Belize, where he finds new purpose and strives to lead his country to a brighter future.

 

You can watch the official trailer on Hulu’s YouTube channel.

Lewis Gordon: Final Installment in Spectrum Series

Check out the final installment on Spectrum‘s series on Distinguished Professor Lewis Gordon’s book, Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization. The final article, written by Maury Jackson, explores chapter seven of Gordon’s book. You can read the article, entitled “Irreplaceability and Bodily Resurrection: Adventist Philosophers Review ‘Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization'” on the Spectrum Magazine website.

Dr. Lewis Gordon will also be the featured lecturer at the November 2024 SAP conference this week.

Congratulations, Lewis!

Michael Lynch: Podcast Interviews

Congratulations to Dr. Michael Lynch on his two recent podcast appearances!

The first interview is the episode “Communicating Truth,” hosted by the American Associated of Biological Sciences on their Bioscience Talks podcast, where Professor Lynch talks about truth and misinformation.

The second interview is hosted by The Chasing Leviathan Podcast, where Professor Lynch discusses his the metaphysics of truth and his 2001 book, The Nature of Truth.

ELM2 | October 4-6, 2024

Dorit Bar-On and Utku Sonsayar stand at a podium in front of a PowerPoint slide, addressing attendees of the ELM2 Conference.

The Expression, Communication, and Origins of Meaning (ECOM) research group hosted their second Expression, Language, and Music Conference (ELM2) this past weekend to rave reviews. This event brings together researchers from linguistics, music theory, anthropology, neurobiology, cognitive science, philosophy, and more, with the aim of integrating recent findings and insights from diverse perspectives concerning, e.g. the significance of emotional expression for both music and language, the importance of systematic structure in both music and language, and the interrelations between expressive, musical, and communicative capacities and their relevance for understanding the emergence of language (in ontogeny and phylogeny). Attendees came from around the globe, traveling from China, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, Iceland, and more.

Thank YOU for this very stimulating and really well organized conference! It was fun and inspiring.

-Isabelle Charnavel, Université de Genève

Reception

The first day of the conference concluded with a reception at the Zachs Family Fine Arts Administration Building. Attendees enjoyed lively discussion, fine fare, and a musical performance evening, organized by Stefanie Acevedo (UConn Music Theory; IBACS) featuring performers from among our conference participants.

We could not have asked for a better scholarly venue or confab of scholars – their input will prove invaluable. And it was really wonderful to hear and enjoy their music-making at the reception which was such a beautiful and unexpected bonus.

-Peter Kaminsky, UConn Music

Woman plays piano.

Woman plays piano.

 

Speakers

ELM2 featured an impressive line-up of invited and contributing speakers across a variety of disciplines. Keynotes included: Aniruddh Patel (Tufts, Psychology), Paul Boghossian (NYU, Philosophy), Isabelle Charnavel (Universite de Geneve, Linguistics), Reyna Gordon (Vanderbilt, Psychology), Eduardo Mercado (U at Buffalo, Psychology), Philippe Schlenker (NYU & Ecole Normale Superieure, Linguistics), and Alison Wray (Cardiff, Language and Linguistics).

Thanks for a stimulating conference. That was probably the most multidisciplinary conference I've ever been to...

-Elliott Moreton, UNC-Chapel Hill

A small sample of our talks:

A man stands at a podium in front of large windows while lecturing to conference attendees.

What is the Role of Meaning in Musical Experience?

Paul Boghossian (NYU)

Paul Boghossian revisits the classic questions: Does music have an extra-musical meaning?  If so, what is it?  How is it determined?  And what role does it play in our appreciation of music?

A woman stands at a podium in front of large windows while lecturing to conference attendees.

Genomic discoveries shed new light on the biological underpinnings of human musicality and language

Reyna Gordon (Vanderbilt)

Studies of inter-individual differences in musical rhythm and language skills often show positive associations, even when the stimuli and tasks are quite different. Complementing neurocognitive explanations, in this talk I will focus on genomic approaches that are unraveling some of the shared variance between people's rhythm and language abilities. I will discuss the Musical Abilities, Pleiotropy, Language, and Environment (MAPLE) framework, and make a case that it will fill a key gap in our understanding of the etiology of individual differences in language acquisition and skill during the lifespan . We posit that musical and language-related abilities likely share some common genetic architecture (i.e., genetic pleiotropy) in addition to some degree of overlapping neural endophenotypes. I will present new genomic and epidemiological findings in support of MAPLE's predictions, revealing mechanistic underpinnings in the form of pleiotropy of rhythm and language traits and their downstream neurobiological processes influenced by that shared genetic variation.

One woman stands in front of lecture hall introducing the guest speaker, who is standing behind a podium.

Linking Music and Dance Perception: a Linguistics-based approach focused on Rhythm

Isabelle Charnavel (Université de Genève)

The specific goal of the talk is to apply the formal methodology of linguistics to the exploration of the interaction between music and dance rhythm perception based on specific case studies from the Western tradition. The more general goal is to shed further light on the organizational principles governing the mental representations induced by dance and music perception, as well as their relationship, by distinguishing between general cognitive properties and modality-specific or domain-specific properties

A woman stands at a podium in front of large windows while lecturing to conference attendees.

Phonological Rhythm Constrains Speech and Musical Gestures

Kathryn Franich (Harvard)

In many musical traditions, rhythmic aspects of spoken language interact with musical form. Theorists studying the music of West and Central Africa have alluded to the importance of spoken language rhythm in shaping musical form; however, little linguistic work has sought to understand the rhythmic properties of languages spoken in sub-Saharan Africa. I draw on patterns from 2 multi-modal corpora of language and gesture for speakers of Medʉmba and Igbo to demonstrate that rhythmic structure is not only a critical component of linguistic grammar for these languages, but also serves as a locus for coordination of linguistic and musical gesture.

A man with long hair stands behind a podium presenting a PowerPoint slide to conference attendees.

Emotive Expressions and Discourse Structure

Christian De Leon (Williams)

Emotive expressions (including facial expressions, emotive markers, emoji, linguistic expressives, and emotional prosody) are classically analyzed as contributing content that is aside from the "main point" of an utterance—contributing not-at-issue content. I argue that emotive expressions enable a special kind of speech act that is unpredicted by standard views. I present data that show how an emotive makes a speaker's expressed attitude available for explanation, regardless of medium (e.g., prosody vs. written "damn") or whether the attitude makes sense in context. I develop a dynamic discourse semantics on which emotives make public commitments available for certain anaphoric relations.

A man stands at a podium in front of large windows while lecturing to conference attendees.

Musical Neurodynamics

Ed Large (UConn)

A great deal of research in the neuroscience of music suggests that neural oscillations synchronize with musical stimuli. One well-known consequence of synchronization is expectation; however, neural synchronization has far-reaching implications for music. I will describe how fundamental dynamical principles based on known neural mechanisms can explain basic aspects of music perception and performance, as summarized in neural resonance theory (NRT). Building on principles such as resonance, stability, attunement, and strong anticipation, I suggest that people anticipate events not through predictive neural models, but because brain-body dynamics physically embody musical structure. The interaction of certain kinds of sounds with ongoing pattern-forming dynamics results in patterns of perception, action, and coordination that we collectively experience as music. Statistically universal structures may have arisen in music because they correspond to stable states of complex, pattern-forming dynamical systems. This analysis of empirical findings from the perspective of neurodynamic principles sheds new light on the neuroscience of music and on what makes music powerful.

A man stands behind a podium presenting a PowerPoint slide to conference attendees.

The Metasemantics of Music

John Schindler (Pittsburgh)

Many believe that, in addition to expressing emotions, music represents extramusical ideas; however, there is scant philosophical literature discussing what it is for a piece of music to have a particular representational meaning—music’s metasemantics. To answer this question, I distinguish between a musical sound’s descriptive meaning—how it tends to be interpreted—and its normative meaning—how it ought, aesthetically speaking, to be interpreted. I reductively analyze both concepts in terms of hearing a sound as something else. I then argue against two alternative proposals; descriptive musical meaning can be analyzed neither in terms of resemblance nor in terms of musicians’ communicative intentions.

Posters

Select participants were invited to present their research posters, which sparked lively discussion.

Lewis Gordon: Featured in Spectrum Magazine

Check out Spectrum magazine’s reviews of Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Lewis Gordon‘s book Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization (Routledge 2021). Each article reviews a chapter of the aforementioned book. There are currently four installments in the series, which you can read below:

Africana Thought: Adventist Philosophers Review “Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization” – 1 by Yi Shen Ma

Re-Imagining Liberations: Adventist Philosophers Review “Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization” – 2 by Marlene Ferreras

The Problem with Justice: Adventist Philosophers Review “Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization” – 3 by Yi Shen Ma

Neighbor Love, Political Love, and Divine Love by Zane Yi

 

Congratulations, Lewis!