Invitatation to two philosophy lectures

The CEU Philosophy Department cordially invites you to two lectures (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by John Cooper (Princeton University)) on Chrysippus on Physical Elements NOTE! Monday!! 26 January,, 5.30 PM, Zrinyi 14, Room 412 ABSTRACT This paper concerns fundamental aspects of the Stoic conception of the physical world (Stoic cosmology). In Stoic theory, everything there is is corporeal (there are no "spirits" or "spiritual entities" of the sort that Platonist philosophy indulges in with abandon). But not all corporeal things arematerial entities: reason (whether in nature as a whole, organizing the world at large, or in our own minds and souls) is a spatially extended thing, able to act on matter, through which it is extended, but it is not a material thing. I discuss a neglected and not well appreciated text of Chrysippus, the most important philosopher among the originators of the Stoic "school" of philosophy, in which he identifies three usages of the term (physical) "element." One of these refers to the familiar physical elements of Greek theory: fire, water, air, and earth (the elements of matter). The other two usages are hard to figure out, and my focus in the paper is on how to understand these other two usages. AND by Alberto Voltolini (University of Turin) on The Mark of the Mental Tuesday, 27 January, 2009, 5.30 PM, Zrinyi 14, Room 412 ABSTRACT I will claim that intentionalism about qualitative states, i.e. the thesis that qualitative states are identical with or supervene on intentional states, is incorrect even in its weak form, according to which qualitative states also have an intentional content. The best way to argue for intentionalism is to show that qualitative states have the features that qualify the simplest intentional states, i.e. objectual states such as Othello’s being jealous of Desdemona or Vladimir’s looking for Godot, namely the possible nonexistence and the possible aspectual shape of the intentional object of a state. Yet there are cases of qualitative states which fail to possess those features. As a result, if one wants to look for the mark of mental, it is better to turn one’s eyes away from intentionality. Kriszta Biber Department Coordinator Philosophy Department Tel: 36-1-327-3806 Fax: 36-1-327-3072 E-mail: biberk(a)ceu.hu