This week week we turn our page to explore the relationship between the mind and the body. The materialist say there isn’t a mind, only a material brain. Is this true? And if this is so, how do we explain our fear of speaking in public, for example, and the causal relationship of ‘butterflies’ in our belly. There is much more to said on this and curious to hear what you have to say.
Please read Mind Body Problem
Please remember to bring $3 for the Setauket Neighborhood house.
When we tell the history of philosophy, we tend to focus on a handful of great men – Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes… The stories we tell are false in the same ways that all Great Man histories are false. But what have we lost by ignoring women’s philosophical thinking in particular? How different would philosophy look today if we paid better attention to the female philosophers of the past?
Coming up on Thursday, April 27th at 7:00 P.M., Christia Mercer (Columbia University) joins us to help answer those questions. Here’s a bit more about the talk in Dr. Mercer’s own words:
How Women Changed the Course of Philosophy, 1300-1700
In this lecture, Professor Christia Mercer explores ideas drawn from medieval Europe’s most innovative women and shows how their views about self-knowledge, cognition, and truth laid the groundwork for early modern philosophy. She concludes with a call to rethink philosophy’s past in light of these women’s long-ignored innovations.
As usual, we meet at the central branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.
Tell your coworkers/students/Facebook friends! Bring a date! Bring (a mental representation of) your favorite female philosopher!
See you there, I hope!
more BKPP:
5/18 – Chris Lebron on the philosophy of Black Lives Matter @ the Dweck Center // 7:00 P.M.
12/13 – Susanna Siegel on perception and rationality @ the Dweck Center // 7:30 P.M.
An original collection of lauded philosopher Galen Strawson’s writings on the self and consciousness, naturalism and pan-psychism.
Galen Strawson might be described as the Montaigne of modern philosophers, endlessly curious, enormously erudite, unafraid of strange, difficult, and provocative propositions, and able to describe them clearly–in other words, he is a true essayist. Strawson also shares with Montaigne a particular fascination with the elastic and elusive nature of the self and of consciousness. Of the essays collected here, “A Fallacy of Our Age” (an inspiration for Vendela Vida’s novel Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name) takes issue with the commencement-address cliche that life is a story. Strawson questions whether it is desirable or even meaningful to think about life that way. “The Sense of the Self” offers an alternative account, in part personal, of how a distinct sense of self is not at all incompatible with a sense of the self as discontinuous, leading Strawson to a position that he sees as in some ways Buddhist. “Real Naturalism” argues that a fully naturalist account of consciousness supports a belief in the immanence of consciousness in nature as a whole (also known as panpsychism), while in the final essay Strawson offers a vivid account of coming of age in the 1960s.
Drawing on literature and life as much as on philosophy, this is a book that prompts both argument and wonder.
Galen Strawson is a writer and professor of philosophy. He has published seven books of philosophy and is currently the President’s Chair in Philosophy at the University of Texas, Austin.
Brooklyn Public Philosophers is excited to announce a new program that we’ve put together for the fall! In addition to the Philosophy in the Library speaker series (stay tuned), we’re also starting a philosophy screening and discussion series that I’m calling Onscreen until I come up with a better name.
On Saturday, September 15th at 1:00 PM at the Flatbush Library (22 Linden Blvd.), we’ll be screening Ex Machina, a very good, very creepy movie about hubris, relationships, and what it takes to have a mind. Ian Olasov (CUNY), a.k.a. the person writing this post, will lead a brief discussion of it afterwards.
The screening is free. There will be free popcorn. It will be fun.
Einstein once remarked, “Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” Indeed, discovering the true nature of reality may ultimately hinge on grasping the nature and essence of human understanding. What are the fundamental elements or building blocks of human understanding? And how will superintelligent machines challenge our ideas about cognition, reality, and the limits of human understanding?
The 21st century has seen rapid advancements in the realm of artificial intelligence, or AI, which aims to generate a synthetic capacity to mimic and even surpass human knowledge. But beyond the creation of programs that detect statistical patterns in vast data sets, it remains to be seen whether AI can formalize the basic elements of human understanding into a system of rules that could then be applied in computer programs. Such “knowledge engineering” would constitute a significant breakthrough, enabling machines to share some of our cognitive abilities rather than merely imitating the results of our thinking. These advancements in AI may ultimately force us to confront more profound questions about what it means to be human.
Logician/mathematician Roger Antonsen and computer science pioneer Barbara J. Grosz join Steve Paulson to break down the fundamental elements of human understanding and analyze what lies ahead on the horizon of AI.
*Reception to follow
This event is part of the Conversations on the Nature of Reality series.
Moderated by journalist Steve Paulson, Executive Producer of Wisconsin Public Radio’s To the Best of Our Knowledge, this three-part series at the New York Academy of Sciences brings together leading scientists and thinkers to explore the fundamental nature of reality through the lens of personal experience and scientific inquiry.
To learn more about each lecture and to purchase tickets, click on the links below.
- The Mystery of Our Mathematical Universe, Wednesday, October 10, 2018
- Human Cognition and the AI Revolution, Thursday, December 6, 2018
- Reality is Not As it Seems, Thursday, February 7, 2019
Pregnancy is something that affects all of us: Many of us are, have been, or will be, pregnant; and each and every one of us is the result of a pregnancy. But there remain deep and important questions about pregnancy that are yet to be answered.
What is it to be pregnant? How can we understand the complex relationship between the fetus and the mother? What are the myths and assumptions that surround the phenomenon of pregnancy? Should we challenge the medical and paternalistic interpretations of pregnancy? Are our current dominant understandings of and cultural scripts about pregnancy harmful?
Two philosophers discuss these issues regarding pregnancy through a phenomenological and metaphysical lens.
Suki Finn is a Doctor of Philosophy, working as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Philosophy Department at the University of Southampton in the UK, on the ERC funded project ‘Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy‘. Suki is currently embarking on a Visiting Research Scholarship at New York University to continue her work on the metaphysics of pregnancy, and she also researches in the areas of metametaphysics and the philosophy of logic. Suki’s research has been published in various academic journals, books, and the popular online magazine Aeon. Her publications can be viewed on Academia or PhilPeople. Suki is also on the Executive Committee for the Society for Women in Philosophy UK, and on the Council for the Royal Institute of Philosophy.
Jennifer Scuro, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the College of New Rochelle in New York and has been recently elected to the governing board of the Cultural Studies Association. She is the author of Addressing Ableism: Philosophical Questions via Disability Studies(Lexington Books, Oct 2017) and The Pregnancy ≠ Childbearing Project: A Phenomenology of Miscarriage, (Rowman & Littlefield International, Feb 2017) a (autobio)graphic novel and feminist phenomenological analysis of pregnant embodiment, miscarriage and the labor of grief. The original tracework art from her graphic novel on miscarriage has been exhibited in several cities with the award-winning arts organization, The ART of Infertility.
This event is co-sponsored by the Gotham Philosophical Society and the CUNY Academy for the Humanities and Sciences. Admission is free and open to the public.
Wednesday, December 19, 2018 at 6:30pm, in the Martin E. Segal Theater
CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Avenue (at 34th Street) New York, New York 10016 (212) 817-7944 cunyacademy@gc.cuny.edu
In Philosophy in the Library, philosophers from around the world tackle the big questions. In February, we hear from Ethan Hallerman.
None of us today can avoid reflecting on the way our thoughts and habits relate to the tools we use, but interest in how technologies reshape us is both older and broader than contemporary concerns around privacy, distraction, addiction, and isolation. For the past hundred years, scholars have investigated the historical role of everyday technologies in making new forms of experience and senses of selfhood possible, from at least as early as the invention of writing. In recent years, philosophers have considered how our understanding of agency and mental states should be revised in light of the role that the technical environment plays in our basic activities. Here, we will look at how some models of the mind illuminate the results of the philosophy of technology to clarify the relationship between technology and the self.
Ethan Hallerman is a doctoral student in philosophy at Stony Brook University. He lives in New York where he prowls the sewers at night, looking for his father.
Despite remarkable strides across virtually all scientific disciplines, the nature of the relationship between our brain and our conscious experience—the “mind-body problem”—remains perhaps the greatest mystery confronting science today. Most neuroscientists currently believe that neural activity in the brain constitutes the foundation of our reality, and that consciousness emerges from the dynamics of complicated neural networks. Yet no scientific theory to date has been able to explain how the properties of such neurons or neural networks actually translates into our specific conscious experiences.
The prevalent view in cognitive science today is that we construct our perception of reality in real time. But could we be misinterpreting the content of our perceptual experiences? According to some cognitive scientists, what we perceive with our brain and our senses does not reflect the true nature of reality. Thus, while evolution has shaped our perceptions to guide adaptive behavior, they argue, it has not enabled us to perceive reality as it actually is. What are the implications of such a radical finding for our understanding of the mystery of consciousness? And how do we distinguish between “normal” and “abnormal” perceptual experiences?
Cognitive scientist Donald D. Hoffman and neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan join Steve Paulson to discuss the elusive quest to understand the fundamental nature of consciousness, and why our perception of reality is not necessarily what it seems.
*Reception to follow
This event is part of the Conversations on the Nature of Reality series.
Moderated by journalist Steve Paulson, Executive Producer of Wisconsin Public Radio’s To the Best of Our Knowledge, this three-part series at the New York Academy of Sciences brings together leading scientists and thinkers to explore the fundamental nature of reality through the lens of personal experience and scientific inquiry.
To learn more about each lecture and to purchase tickets, click on the links below.
- The Mystery of Our Mathematical Universe, Wednesday, October 10, 2018
- Human Cognition and the AI Revolution, Thursday, December 6, 2018
- Reality is Not As it Seems, Thursday, February 7, 2019
Join us for a conversation with Robin Wall Kimmerer as she helps us rethink, reimagine and, renarrate our relationship to the sacred and the natural world. Can the objective, data-driven approach of science be enriched by non-anthropocentric spiritual worldviews? As a botanist and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Dr. Kimmerer draws on both indigenous wisdom and scientific knowledge to enrich and animate our understanding of the natural world. This expansive way of seeing and relating to creation privileges regeneration and reciprocity, and offers novel solutions for ecological restoration and climate change resilience.
Dr. Kimmerer will be joined in conversation with Union faculty member John Thatamanil, and Geraldine Ann Patrick Encina, Scholar in Residence for Union’s Center for Earth Ethics.
RSVP Here
About Robin Wall Kimmerer:
Dr. Kimmerer is a mother, plant ecologist, writer and SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York. She serves as the founding Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment whose mission is to create programs which draw on the wisdom of both indigenous and scientific knowledge for our shared goals of sustainability. Her research interests include the role of traditional ecological knowledge in ecological restoration and the ecology of mosses. In collaboration with tribal partners, she and her students have an active research program in the ecology and restoration of plants of cultural significance to Native people. Read More.
About The Insight Project:
The Insight Project is a new multi-year program series that explores modern conceptions of theology and spirituality through a diverse array of thought-provoking lectures, screenings, performances, and on-stage conversations. Click HERE to learn more.