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Kinship and Progeneration

Lecture
philosopher's steps
Thursday, May 12, 2022, 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm

The Philosophy Department of the Central European University, the Institute Vienna Circle and the Unit for Applied Philosophy of Science and Epistemology (of the Department of Philosophy of the University of Vienna) are jointly organizing a series of talks this term.

This talk is going to be a hybrid event, in-person at CEU and can be followed via online Plattform. After the talk, the CEU's MAP group is going to interview Robert Wilson. The interview will not be hybrid but in-person only. 

Campus access: Due to Covid regulations on campus, on-campus-guests need to register for events on campus. Registration for on campus-attention to the talk closes on Thursday, 10am. To register please write to Zsófia Jeney-Domingues (Jeney-DominguesZs@ceu.edu). 

Online access (without registration):
univienna.zoom.us/j/61475205762

You can also log into our meetings through the Zoom application (rather than by clicking the link above), by using the following credentials:

Meeting-ID: 614 7520 5762

Password: 264065

No RSVP or registered accounts are required for online attention, it's enough to click on the link and enter your name. Chrome or Firefox browsers work best.

Abstract:

In this talk I draw on recent cognitive science, developmental cognitive psychology, and the philosophy of science to offer a novel argument for the progenerative character of kinship.  I shall argue that kinship involves a form of extended cognition that incorporates progenerative facts, going on to show how the resulting articulation of kinship’s progenerative nature can be readily expressed by an influential conception of kinds, the homeostatic property cluster view.  Identifying the distinctive role that our extended cognitive access to progenerative facts plays in kinship delivers an integrative account of kinship that provides a plausible alternative to dominant performativist or constructivist views within cultural anthropology.