A post-election colloquy with Dr. Robert Ackland

[Cindy McMurray]

Controlling Our Own Thoughts

Condillac's 1775 Antidote to Orwell's 1984

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Noon – 1 p.m., Zoom only (link to follow)

Robert T. Ackland, Emeritus Professor of Literacy and Teacher Education at
SUNY Plattsburgh, will facilitate an exploration of Orwell’s use of
Newspeak to control thinking and maintain the hierarchy of Big Brother’s
society in the novel 1984. Readers may remember that words like crimestop
and doublethink were designed to dissuade people from conscious
investigation. We will contrast this use of language with the tenets of
reflection and analysis proposed by Condillac in pre-revolutionary 18th
century France, particularly in The Art of Thinking (1775). How can people
be encouraged to become more consciously aware of their processes of
thought and their use of words to generate understanding? This colloquy is
dedicated to the memory of Tim Hartnett.

Ethics Institute colloquies are open to all members of the SUNY Plattsburgh
community. The fellowship program at the Institute for Ethics in Public
Life is supported by generous gifts to the Plattsburgh College Foundation.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://ls.plattsburgh.edu/pipermail/employee-digest/attachments/20201115/236b7c76/attachment.htm>