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CCNY Philosophy Pizza Forum

Fall 2025 Schedule

All pizza forums take place during Thursday club hours (12:30-1:45pm) 

Special *Wednesday* Pizza Forum:

Wed 09/03 @ 12:30-1:45pm in NAC 5/144D — Dr. Charlie Bennet (IBM), "Can we Reason about our place in the universe without defining 'us'?"
 
Abstract: The hard problem of consciousness—the inability of a complete understanding of a physical system’s state and dynamics to reveal whether it is conscious—plagues both ethics (“Which systems have rights?”) and cosmology (“Is our viewpoint in the universe—e.g. far from thermal equilibrium, not long after the big bang—typical of what a cosmological model predicts a sentient observer in that model would observe).  Algorithmic information theory, by computerizing the Occam’s razor paradigm, offers a way forward without needing to define consciousness or count observers.

09/11—Chad Kidd (Prof. CCNY) and Ben Vilhauer (Prof. CCNY): “What are Philosophical Thought Experiments? A practical introduction”—NAC 5/111

09/18—“Writing Philosophy in the Age of AI”—a roundtable discussion with Professors Pat Hope and Chad Kidd—NAC 5/144

09/25 Joseph Levine (Professor, University of Mass. Amherst): “Zionism and Nationalism or: What Does it Mean to Say that Israel has a Right to Exist? And does it, or any state, have one?” —NAC 5/111

10/09 — Phil Club Hosts—topic TBA—NAC 5/144

10/16 Tianqun Pan (Professor, Nanjing University; researcher at NYU): “AI and the Future of Humanity” —NAC 5/111

10/23 Jon Gill (Professor, Gustavus Adolphus College): “Multi/race/less/ness: A Process Philosophical Alternative to Racial Categories” —NAC 5/144

10/30, Jeff Blustein (Professor, CCNY), “Clinical Bioethics: Theory and Practice” —NAC 5/111

11/6 Phil Club Hosts—topic TBA—NAC 5/144

11/13 Muhammad Ali Khalidi (Professor, CUNY Graduate Center): “Political Framing of Mental Disorder: Palestine as a Case Study” —NAC 5/111

11/20 World Philosophy Day: Roundtable discussion on “Philosophy as a Public Good” with Christia Mercer (Professor, Columbia University), Barry Lam (Professor, University of California, Riverside), and Massimo Pigliucci (Professor, CCNY). —NAC 5/144

12/4 End of Semester Party—NAC 5/144