Fritz Marti Lecture with Muhammad Ali Khalidi
Fritz Marti Lecture with Dr. Muhammad Ali Khalidi
Morris University Center Redbud Room
Friday, April 19, 2024 | 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM
Talk Title: The Mind-Dependent World
The world as a whole may not be mind-dependent, but some parts of it are. When it comes to the social world, it seems clear that it depends on our minds and would not exist without them. What interests me in this lecture is the different ways in which social roles, groups, institutions, and processes depend on our minds, and what implications this has for the nature of the social world. For example, while some social phenomena depend on their being represented as such (e.g. race), others need not be represented to exist (e.g. class). The former are not just mind-dependent but concept-dependent. The difference between “transparent” (concept-dependent) and “opaque” (mind-dependent) social phenomena has important consequences, and I will try to draw out some of these consequences for our understanding of three issues: social construction, looping effects, and the mark of the social.