Graduate Student Organization - Stony Brook

“Listening to Language” was a huge success. Approximately 50 graduate students attended, including many from outside the philosophy department.

The conference featured 8 philosophy graduate students from Professor Gary Mar’s philosophy of language course. The first panel featured collaborative papers from 4 students followed by commentary from professors James DiGiovanna (John Jay College)
and Harvey Cormier (SBU).

The keynote speaker, Jason Stanley (Rutgers), spoke about the historical developments in the philosophy of language, and situated the problems in an insightful way. He also connected the various themes from our conference presentations into his speech, and elaborated on their significance. Professors Gary Mar and Richard Larson (Linguistics, SBU) commented on the keynote lecture by expanding on themes outlined by Jason, and adding personal anecdotes about their own work in the field.

The second panel featured collaborative papers from 4 other students followed by commentary from professors Jason Stanley and Eva Kittay (SBU).

Following the conference was catering by Istanbul Café. During dinner, students had the opportunity to discuss their work, and get more feedback from the paper commenters. This was a lively meal full of interesting conversation.

We, as presenters in this conference, learned more about a field of philosophy that was foreign to us, and gained professional skills by discussing these issues in a conference setting. Inviting distinguished philosophers Jason Stanley and James DiGiovanna was especially helpful in terms of getting critical feedback on our work.

Please check out the photos from the event here.