Language and Its Possible Worlds

Language and its Possible Worlds is a research group stemming from the work of a previous research group hosted by the Center for Discursive Inquiry, Cold War Cold World (2015-2017) that produced the publication Cold War Cold World (Urbanomic, 2017). A second volume, Construction Site for Possible Worlds, was published in 2020, also by Urbanomic.

Its focus is an in-depth navigation of ontology and epistemology at the intersection of the relationships between the conditions of knowing, and environments for constructing. A tradition of critique has overdetermined projects of knowledge to ‘end of the world’ scenarios, borne as much from recognitions of the banality of difference and the lugubrious ennui of neo-liberal capital. Instead, we charge ourselves with questions of the future, what is not merely speculative in antirealist hypotheticals, but which are deemed as possible; worlds that are moored. The Constructivist Working Group is the first phase in this investigation of building. We ask how thought, model and form can be practiced across scientific, logic based, mathematical and ordinary languages; how the “ordinary language” that is culture, can do more than mirror the paradigms of negativity and finitude that often spring from cultures of critique and skepticism, and move to propose forms of life, work and construction that re-engage questions of foundations, borders and territories – the scope of a world.

The focus in 2020 is an in-depth navigation of ontology and epistemology at the intersection of the relationships between the conditions of knowing, and environments for construction and re-construction. We ask how thought, model and form can be practiced across both scientific, logic-based mathematical languages as well as quotidian languages; and further, how the “ordinary language” that is culture can do more than mirror the paradigms of negativity and finitude that often spring from cultures of critique and skepticism, and move to propose forms of life, work and construction that re-engage questions of foundations, borders and territories – the scope of a world. Succinctly, how can we address with reflective urgency the relevant questions of the future?

Conveners

Amanda Beech
James Wiltgen
Christine Wertheim

Events

Spring 2019

  • Thursday, March 14 – Reading Seminar on Modality, Normativity Intentionality by Robert Brandom,  2001. 

    The session will be lead by Daniel Sacilotto, who will introduce the essay and begin our
    discussion. This meeting is in part designed to further our investigation of language & possible worlds, and as a prelude to both Brandom's new book A Spirit of Trust. You can find the text at the following link: http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/rules/papers/Brandom.pdf

    Daniel Sacilotto is a philosopher and an instructor in the CULB Comparative Literature program. His research focuses on the reconciliation of rationalism with materialism, and the pursuit of revisionary naturalism in the work of Wilfrid Sellars, Alain Badiou, Lorenz Puntel, Jay Rosenberg, and Ray Brassier. He is currently preparing a monograph in which he develops a functionalist theory of cognition and realist theory of knowledge, chiefly inspired by the works of Wilfrid Sellars. His essays include: Puncturing the Circle of Correlation (2017); A Thought Disincarnate: What Does it Mean to Think? (2018); & Realism and Representation: On the Ontological Turn (2012).

Fall 2018

  • Thursday, Sept. 17 – Reading Seminar on Allography & the Strange Agency of the Objectile by Matthew Poole, with Jeremy Lecomte as respondent.
  • Thursday, October 18 – Reading Seminar on The History of Philosophy as a Philosophical Problem by Martial Gueroult.

    The session will be lead by Anna Longo, who will introduce the essay and begin our
    discussion. 
  • Thursday, Nov. 8 – Panel discussion on Language and Possible Worlds, featuring Daniel Sacilotto, Inigo Wilkins, Amanda Beech and Anna Longo.