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.
The Causality in the Sciences conference series brings together philosophers and scientists to explore various aspects of causality. This 12th conference in the series will focus on the relationship between time and causality.
The conference will explore all facets of the relationship between time and causality across philosophy, computation, and specific scientific disciplines. Some key themes include: arrow of time * causal inference from time series data * role of time in causal perception and judgment * time and causal metaphysics * applications to longitudinal datasets
Abstracts should be no more than 500 words, submitted via easychair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=tacits2017
Important dates:
March 15 – Submission
April 15 – Notification of acceptance
Organizers: Samantha Kleinberg (Stevens), Michael Strevens (NYU)
Steering Committee: Phyllis Illari (UCL), Bert Leuridan (University of Antwerp), Julian Reiss, (Durham), Federica Russo (UvA), Erik Weber (Ghent) Jon Williamson (Kent)
In light of the chaos and fear caused for travel to the US by the possible immigration ban, and resulting calls to boycott US conferences, we have discussed whether we should go ahead with TaCits NY in June http://tacits.stevens.edu/. Given the work already put in by local organisers, and the fact that US academics would also appreciate support just now, we have decided to continue.
We are, however, very aware that some people may be unable or unwilling to travel to the conference. We ask that citizens of countries who wish to submit abstracts, but are potentially affected by the ban, get in touch with us, so that we can see whether it is possible to make any arrangements for some kind of remote access. We know that this is at best a half-solution, and apologise for that.
All the very best,
Causality in the Sciences steering committee
12/13 – Susanna Siegel on perception and rationality @ the Dweck Center // 7:30 P.M.
Beyond the Linear-Cyclical Distinction: The Nature of Maya Philosophy of Time
Since the early 20th century, anthropologists have distinguished two ways cultures can think about time. On the linear conception of time, everything happens only once, never to be repeated. On the cyclic conception of time, the world is made of a recurring cycle of events. This distinction has come to be a mainstay of categorizing Maya conceptions of time, even in much contemporary scholarship. I argue that the linear-cyclical distinction is problematic for understanding ancient Maya conceptions of time, that it is a problematic distinction in general, and that a better way of understanding the ancient Maya conception of time is in terms of the ritual connection between “deep time” and “human time”. Ancient Maya rituals concerning time are most accurately thought of in terms of the ritual expression and visualization of continual creation, rather than in terms of the cyclical renewal of time. Finally, I argue that focus on the human time-deep time distinction can help us better understand broader features of Maya metaphysics in areas such as the continuity of persons and objects through time.
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In his new book, Philosophy of the Ancient Maya: Lords of Time, Alexus McLeod (Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut) presents a pioneering study of the philosophical thought of the Maya. On Tuesday, February 13th at 7:30 PM, Dr. McLeod joins BPL Presents and Brooklyn Public Philosophers to discuss the Maya philosophy of time.
Love
is patient, it is kind, it is cruel, it is blind, it hurts, it heals, it is a sickness, it is the drug, it is like oxygen, it is all you need, it stinks, it is supreme, it is eternal, it fades, it is the answer, it is life.
Join us for a symposium on that which makes us human.
Thursday, February 15, 2018 at 8p.m. At Las Tapas Bar and Restaurant, 808 W 187th Street, New York, NY 10033. (Take the A Train) Admission is $15, which includes one complimentary tapa and drink. Reservations are recommended (646.590.0142)
Leo Glickman is a partner in Stoll, Glickman & Bellina, LLP. He has devoted his professional life of over two decades to holding the powerful accountable and obtaining justice for the underserved. As a civil rights litigator, he has successfully represented hundreds of people whose rights have been abused by police and correction officers. He has also upheld the rights of protestors, successfully litigating settlements for high-profile Occupy Wall Street participants.
Jane LeCroy is a poet, performance artist and educator who fronts the band The Icebergs and was a part of Sister Spit, the famed west coast women’s poetry troupe. Since 1997 Jane has been publishing student work and teaching writing, literature and performance to all ages through artist-in-the-schools organizations such as Teachers & Writers Collaborative and DreamYard, and as adjunct faculty at the university level. Her poetry book, Names was published by Booklyn as part of the award winning ABC chapbook series, purchased by the Library of Congress along with her braid! Signature Play, her multimedia book from Three Rooms Press, features a poem that was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Joseph S. Biehl, earned earned a B.A. in philosophy from St. John’s University and a Ph.D. from the Graduate School and University Center, CUNY. He has written on ethics, meta-ethics, and politics. He has taught philosophy in New York and in Cork, Ireland, and is a member of the Governing Board and former co-director of the Felician Institute for Ethics and Public Affairs. He is the founder and executive director of the Gotham Philosophical Society and Young Philosophers of New York.
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
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