Feb
2
Wed
Art in the Brain of the Beholder @ ZOOM - see site for details
Feb 2 @ 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm

What can science teach us about how we perceive and understand art? How can art help us understand ourselves and each other? In this event, the Zuckerman Institute explores the interactions between our brains and the artistic world, finding connections and parallels between art and science.

Event Speakers

Please visit the event webpage to view the speaker list.

Event Information

Free and open to the public, registration is required by January 28, 2022. This event will also be live-streamed. Please email zuckermaninstitute@columbia.edu with any questions.

This talk is part of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Brain Insight Lecture series hosted by Columbia’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.

Feb
3
Thu
Jonathan Gilmore (CUNY & Baruch College): Feelings Fit for Fictions and Imaginings @ ZOOM - see site for details
Feb 3 @ 4:10 pm – 6:00 pm

*Zoom link can be requested if you are not on the email list, please send an email to ap3097@columbia.edu

May
13
Fri
A Case against Simple-mindedness: Śrīgupta on Mental Mereology. Allison Aitken, Columbia @ Faculty House, Columbia U
May 13 @ 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm

THE COLUMBIA SOCIETY FOR COMPARATIVE PHILOSOPHY

Welcomes you to an IN-PERSON meeting:

Allison Aitken (Columbia University)

« A Case against Simple-mindedness: Śrīgupta on Mental Mereology »

With responses from Alexander Englert (Princeton University)

ABSTRACT: There’s a common line of reasoning which supposes that the phenomenal unity of conscious experience is grounded in a mind-like simple subject. To the contrary, Mādhyamika Buddhist philosophers beginning with Śrīgupta (seventh-eighth century) argue that any kind of mental simple is incoherent and thus metaphysically impossible. Lacking any unifying principle, the phenomenal unity of conscious experience is instead an ungrounded illusion. In this talk, I will present an analysis of Śrīgupta’s “neither-one-nor-many argument” against mental simples and show how his line of reasoning is driven by a set of implicit questions concerning the nature of and relation between consciousness and its intentional object. These questions not only set the agenda for centuries of intra-Buddhist debate on the topic, but they are also questions to which any defender of unified consciousness or a simple subject of experience arguably owes responses.

Sep
29
Thu
I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes: Imaginative Meditation and Experience of Love in Medieval Contemplative Philosophy. Christina Van Dyke, Barnard @ 716 Philosophy Hall
Sep 29 @ 4:10 pm – 6:00 pm

Thursday, September 29th, 2022
Christina Van Dyke (Barnard College)
Title “I feel it in my fingers, I feel it in my toes: Imaginative Meditation and Experience of Love in Medieval Contemplative Philosophy”
4:10-6:00 PM
716 Philosophy Hall

May
5
Fri
Speak, Memory: Dignāga, Consciousness, and Awareness. Nicholas Silins (Cornell) @ Faculty House, Columbia U
May 5 @ 5:30 pm – 7:30 pm

When someone is in a conscious state, must they be aware of that state?  The Buddhist philosopher Dignāga offers a brilliant route to answering this question by leveraging the role awareness might play as a constraint on memory.  I begin by clarifying his strategy and what conclusions it might be used to establish.  Here I examine different candidate directions of explanation between consciousness and inner awareness.  I interpret the metaphor of consciousness as a lamp that lights itself, and use the metaphor to distinguish between his view and contemporary higher-order theories of consciousness.  I then turn to explain why the memory argument fails.  The first main problem is that, contrary to Dignāga’s contemporary defenders, there is no good way to use the argument to reach a conclusion about all conscious states.  The second main problem is that the proposed awareness constraint on memory is highly problematic, in tension both with ancient objections as well as current psychology.

With responses from Lu Teng (NYU Shanghai)

May
23
Tue
Curiosity, Creativity and Complexity Conference @ Jerome L. Greene Science Center (9th Floor Lecture Hall)
May 23 – May 25 all-day

How does the brain cope with Complexity? How do we make decisions when confronted with practically infinite streams of information?

The conference showcases cutting edge research on these questions in Neuroscience and Psychology (neural mechanisms of cognitive control, exploration, decision-making, information demand, memory and creativity), Computer Science (artificial intelligence of curiosity and intrinsic motivation) and Economics (decision making and information demand). Alongside formal presentations, the conference will encourage ample interactions among faculty, students and postdocs through informal discussions and poster presentations.

Submissions for poster presentations and travel awards are due February 15, 2023. Please visit the call for submissions for complete requirements.

Event Information

Free and open to the public. Registration is required and will open shortly. All in-person attendees must follow Columbia’s COVID-19 policies. Visitors will be asked to provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination. Online attendees will receive a Zoom link. Please email events@zi.columbia.edu with any questions.

Sep
20
Wed
Designing Space @ Havemeyer Hall (Room 309) & Online
Sep 20 @ 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm

How do we experience space? And what does this mean for the spaces we design? We explore these questions by bringing together speakers from Architecture, Neuroscience, and Virtual Reality, with two specific aims: First, we explore what Architecture and Virtual Reality can learn from each other, as two distinct approaches to “spatial design”. Whilst spatial experience has long been a central question of Architecture, Virtual Reality is only beginning to grapple with these questions, as technology transitions from 2D screens to 3D spatial interfaces. Second, we explore the nature of spatial experience itself, with two approaches to understanding the human mind. Whilst contemporary Architecture is influenced by Philosophy (specifically the “Phenomenological” tradition), the tools of Neuroscience are increasingly being applied to questions of Architecture as well. Through this multidisciplinary exchange we hope to deepen our understanding of spatial experience, and how it informs the physical and virtual spaces we design.

Event Speakers

  • Nitzan Bartov, Designer at Meta Reality Labs Research
  • Anjan Chatterjee, Professor of Neurology, Psychology, and Architecture at the University of Pennsylvania
  • Steven Holl, Professor of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University
  • Moderated by Paul Linton, Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience and Fellow of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America at Columbia University

Event Information

Free and open to the public. Registration is required via Eventbrite. Online attendees will receive a Zoom link from Eventbrite. Please email presidentialscholars@columbia.edu with any questions.

This event is hosted by the Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience as part of the Seminars in Society and Neuroscience series. Co-sponsored by the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America and the Zuckerman Institute at Columbia University.

The Center for Science and Society makes every reasonable effort to accommodate individuals with disabilities. If you require disability accommodations to attend a Center for Science and Society event, please contact us at scienceandsociety@columbia.edu or (212) 854-0666 at least 10 days in advance of the event. For more information, please visit the campus accessibility webpage.

Nov
30
Thu
Matthew Boyle (University of Chicago) @ 716 Philosophy Hall
Nov 30 @ 4:10 pm – 6:00 pm

Matthew Boyle works on topics in the philosophy of mind and on some issues in the history of philosophy. In the former area, he has been especially concerned with the question of how we know our own minds and with debates about the scope and limits of such knowledge. He is presently at work on a book called The Significance of Self-Consciousness (under contract with Oxford University Press) on the distinction between rational and nonrational minds, the connection between rationality and the capacity for first-person awareness of one’s own cognitive activity, and the continuing relevance of these topics to contemporary debates in philosophy and psychology.

Mar
6
Wed
An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence: Thinking with Machines from Descartes to the Digital Age @ East Gallery, Maison Française
Mar 6 @ 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm

David Bates, in conversation with Stefanos Geroulano and Joanna Stalnaker

We imagine that we are both in control of and controlled by our bodies—autonomous and yet automatic. This entanglement, according to David W. Bates, emerged in the seventeenth century when humans first built and compared themselves with machines. Reading varied thinkers from Descartes to Kant to Turing, Bates reveals how time and time again technological developments offered new ways to imagine how the body’s automaticity worked alongside the mind’s autonomy. Tracing these evolving lines of thought, David Bates discusses his new book, An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence, which offers a new theorization of the human as a being that is dependent on technology and produces itself as an artificial automaton without a natural, outside origin.
David Bates is Professor of Rhetoric at the University of California Berkeley. His research focuses on the history of legal and political ideas, and the relationship between technology, science, and the history of human cognition.

Stefanos Geroulanos is the Director of the Remarque Institute and Professor of European Intellectual History at NYU. He usually writes about concepts that weave together modern understandings of time, the human, and the body. His new book is a history of the concepts, images, and sciences of human origins since 1770, forthcoming from Liveright Press as The Invention of Prehistory: Empire, Violence, and Our Obsession with Human Origins in 2024.

Joanna Stalnaker is Professor of French at Columbia. She works on Enlightenment philosophy and literature, with a recent interest in how women shaped the Enlightenment. Her new book, The Rest Is Silence: Enlightenment Philosophers Facing Death, will be published by Yale University Press in the Walpole series.