Are People Abstract?

David Friedell, Union College

Thursday, April 7, 2022

4:00-6:00 pm

Watson Hall, Room 517 

Beach’s Gaelic Symphony, the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and the number π are abstract objects. They are non-physical and not located in space. Tables, cars, and planets are concrete. Could it be that people are abstract, as opposed to concrete? Are we more like Gaelic Symphony than a table? Are we more like software than hardware? 

I think the answer, probably, is: no—obviously, we are not abstract. But I’m less confident than I used to be. I will discuss some theoretical (and practical!) advantages of the view that people are abstract. And I will defend the view against some serious objections, most importantly an objection that relies on the claim that people, but not abstract objects, think.

Indigenous Feminist Philosophy of Language: Reclamation, Post-Traumatic Relationality, and Transformative Justice

Shelbi Nahwilet Meissner (Georgetown University)

Thursday, March 3, 2022

4:00-5:30 pm

Zoom (registration needed)

Indigenous language activists are continuously offering nuanced conceptions of language embedded with insights on tribally-specific, landbased onto-epistemologies and cosmologies, and co- creating decolonial and liberatory strategies for language reclamation and cultural resurgence. “Indigenous philosophies of language,” as I describe them, spring from Indigenous communities engaged in Indigenous language reclamation work. Many language resources, as well as other items of profound cultural import, are currently locked away within the confines of US research institutions. Legal avenues for repatriation are insufficient for language reclamation, not only because protections like NAGPRA usually do not apply to language resources, but also because a Western legalistic and property-based framework undermines the inherent relationality in Indigenous communities' understandings of language. I am interested in this talk in partnering Indigenous feminist transformative justice work with the language reclamation work stewarded by contemporary Indigenous communities to offer a relationality-based framework for the reclamation of stolen Indigenous language resources.