Speakers:
Laurie Santos, PhD, Professor of Psychology, Yale University
Rebecca Saxe, PhD, Professor, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Additional speakers forthcoming.
This event is free and open to the public. Reception to follow.
This event is part of the Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience, Seminars in Society and Neuroscience series.
The extraordinary power of music to communicate complex emotions and thoughts has fascinated scholars for centuries. Music taps into cognitive mechanisms that govern our daily interactions with the world, such as expectations and violations of these expectations, and appears to have much in common with language. In addition, music plays social and ethical functions that can be understood from philosophical, historical, and cultural perspectives.
Join us for a discussion with three renowned scholars from the humanities and cognitive science who will show how these modes of inquiry bear on each other – and explain what makes music mean.
Speakers:
David Huron, Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor, School of Music & Center for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Ohio State University
Aniruddh D. Patel, Professor of Psychology, Tufts University
Elizabeth Tolbert, Professor of Musicology, Peabody Institute, Johns Hopkins University
Moderators:
Andrew Goldman, Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience, Columbia University
Jacqueline Gottlieb, Professor of Neuroscience, Columbia University
The event is co-sponsored by the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies and Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience. Free and open to the public.
This event explores the conceptual force of metaphors in neuroscience. How do metaphors shape how we think and communicate? How are they represented in the brain? To answer these questions, this event engages with the everyday persistence of these rhetorical tools by examining scientific studies of metaphor use and metaphors in scientific discourse. Featuring perspectives from neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, and philosophy, our speakers probe the distinction between metaphors and models that emerge from thinking and reasoning. These models are further taken up in different social and political circumstances and are used to describe a range of phenomenon from mental health to climate change that articulate and obscure our efforts to make sense of the world.
Speakers:
Dedre Genter, Director of Cognitive Science Program, Northwestern University
Stephen Flusberg, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Purchase College, SUNY
Respondent:
Stephen Casper, Associate Professor of History, Clarkson University
Additional speakers to be announced shortly.
The brain is often compared to a computer. But the two are not as similar as one would think. Computers process information whereas the brain interrogates and explores. It seeks information from the environment with a purpose—to answer a question, solve a problem or make a decision. Neuroscience has made great advances in our understanding of how the brain makes decisions, why some are speedy and some are slower and more deliberative. Decisions matter for all animals. For humans, they hold the key to thought, ideation and creative expression. What was once the purview of psychology and philosophy is now a staple of biomedical science. And by elucidating the underlying neural mechanisms that make all this possible, Dr. Shadlen hopes to identify new strategies to confront the neurological and psychiatric disorders that impair cognitive function.
Dr. Shadlen argues that the brain follows simple rules to make both simple and complex decisions. To test this, he studies the brain’s parietal cortex, which helps the brain make sense of what we see in order to guide our behaviors. With implications for medicine, his research could shed light on why people with damage to the parietal cortex have trouble with various skills, such as understanding numbers. It could also lead to new ways to treat the effects of this damage.
Speaker: Michael N. Shadlen, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Neuroscience and Principal Investigator at Columbia’s Zuckerman Institute.
RSVP by Wednesday, January 31, 2018 Registration is required via EventBrite; Seating is first come, first served. This lecture will also be live streamed on February 7, 2018.
For more information about this event, please contact the Zuckerman Institute at zuckermaninstitute@columbia.edu
This talk is part of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Brain Insight Lecture series, offered free to the public to enhance understanding of the biology of the mind and the complexity of human behavior. The lectures are hosted by Columbia’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.
What constitutes evidence is rarely self-evident. We need theories to make sense of evidence—to transform patterns of physical occurrences into something meaningful, i.e., data. This relationship between theory and evidence is often at least partially opaque, particularly in a field like neuroscience that often aims to use physical evidence to characterize mental, and in some cases social, events. Neuroscience navigates this relationship by purporting to offer mechanistic descriptions of “how” mental processes operate. Yet, this inquiry relies on theoretical assumptions that are not fully tethered to data. Neuroscience can certainly generate predictions from theories that have practical implications and link them with mechanistic knowledge of the physical (e.g., anatomy and physiology). But changing the basis of our assumptions can change the kinds of questions we ask and how we interpret experimental findings. So, exactly what kind of knowledge does neuroscience offer? How independent is it from psychology? How do we navigate this potential divide, particularly in cases in which we would want to use neuroscience to characterize constructs that are heavily influenced by theoretical priors?
This event addresses this question from a range of perspectives in neurology, psychiatry, philosophy, and economics. We consider the relationship between theory and evidence by exploring how practitioners, theorists, and experimentalists negotiate the multiple dimensions of evidence in neuroscience.
Speakers:
Peter Bearman, Jonathan R. Cole Professor of the Social Sciences, Columbia University
Suzanne Goh, Co-Founder & Chief Medical Officer, Cortica
Moderator:
Aniruddha Das, Associate Professor of Neuroscience, Columbia University
More speakers to be confirmed soon.
Free and open to the public, but RSVP is required via Eventbrite. This event is part of the Seminars in Society and Neuroscience series.
Psychopathy is a mental disorder closely associated with marked emotional dysfunctions, limited capacity for moral judgments, recidivistic offending, and poor treatment outcome. Considering its peculiar characteristics, the status of psychopathy in the field of law raises several disputes. While current criminal law holds psychopaths fully responsible and punishable for their misbehavior, some scholars argue that psychopathy is a condition that may severely compromise an individual’s moral agency and capacity for rationality. As such, it should be included among the potential excusing or mitigating factors for criminal responsibility and punishment. This argument finds additional support in the body of studies from neurocriminology showing that people who suffer from psychopathy exhibit (often severe) reduced functioning in the socio-emotional brain regions that are now known to be significantly involved in moral decision-making and prosocial behavior. The insights into the neurobiological roots of psychopathy seem to challenge even more the perennial dilemmas that have occupied the minds of legal scholars and philosophers for many years: Are psychopaths “bad” or “mad” (or both)? And how should criminal law and the justice system deal with them? This seminar aims to examine these issues and explore other contentious arguments about the status of psychopathy in the field law.
Three leading experts in neurocriminology, law, and philosophy will discuss recent neuroscientific findings in psychopathy research. The speakers will consider how these findings might contribute to the reconsideration of the responsibility of psychopathic offenders and how criminal justice should optimally respond to individuals suffering from such a controversial disorder.
Speakers:
Stephen J. Morse; Ferdinand Wakeman Hubbell Professor of Law; Professor of Psychology and Law in Psychiatry; Associate Director, Center for Neuroscience & Society; University of Pennsylvania Law School
Adrian Raine; Richard Perry University Professor, University of Pennsylvania
Katrina L. Sifferd; Professor and Chair of Philosophy, Elmhurst College
Free and open to the public, but RSVP is required via Eventbrite. This event is part of the Seminars in Society and Neuroscience series.
The Eastern Study Group of the NAKS invites submissions for its 15th annual meeting to take place at Columbia University on Friday and Saturday, May 4–5, 2018. Our host this year is Professor Patricia Kitcher.
Keynote Speakers:
Stephen Engstrom (Pitt)
Paul Guyer (Brown)
Submissions of detailed abstracts (1,000 words) or papers (no more than 5,000 words, including notes and references) should be prepared for blind review as PDF files. Please include a word count at the end of your abstract or paper. Please supply contact information in a separate file. If you are a graduate student, please indicate this in your contact information.
The selection committee welcomes contributions on all topics of Kantian scholarship (contemporary or historically oriented), including discussions of Kant’s immediate predecessors and successors. Reading time is limited to 30 minutes, followed by 30 minutes of discussion. The best graduate student paper will receive a $200 stipend and be eligible for the Markus Herz Prize. Women, minorities, and graduate students are encouraged to submit.
Papers already read or accepted at other NAKS study groups or meetings may not be submitted. Presenters must be members of NAKS in good standing.
Papers will be posted in the “members only” section of the NAKS website and circulated in advance among participants, who are expected to have read them at the time of the conference.
ENAKS receives support from NAKS and host universities. Earlier programs are available on our website: http://word.emerson.edu/enaks/
For questions about ENAKS or the upcoming meeting, please contact Kate Moran (kmoran@brandeis.edu).
Submission Deadline: January 15, 2018
Time: May 4–5, 2018
Place: Columbia University
Please send all abstracts electronically to Kate Moran, kmoran@brandeis.edu
At the core of Kantian liberalism is a conception of the independent autonomous subject. On the other hand, the most central and distinguishing feature of Buddhist philosophy is the doctrine of no-self. It thus seems that Buddhists should reject Kantian liberalism. My larger project develops the connections between Buddhist perfectionism, liberalism, and principles of justice. In this paper, I focus on Buddhist and Kantian conceptions of self-constitution, but my ultimate concern is the significance of the doctrine of no-self to theories of justice.
Buddhists need some conception of a minimal self to account for the karmic-continuity of persons and also to provide an adequate account of the subjectivity of experience. I argue that we should reject the (Abhidharma) reductionist view of the self as a mere fiction that is reducible to its simpler and more basic parts. As is often noted, the Buddhist reductionist approach is similar to Derek Parfit’s view. Parfit also argues that there is no deep metaphysical self and that relations of personal identity are reducible to relations of psychological connectedness and causal continuity in a series of experiences. Christine Korsgaard has responded to Parfit’s reductionist view by developing a non-metaphysical account of Kantian agency and self-constitution. I argue that the Buddhist doctrine of no-self is consistent with a more minimal, non-substantial, emergent, view of the self. This approach, which is more fully developed by Evan Thomson, Matthew MacKenzie, Georges Dreyfus, and others, is surprisingly similar to Korsgaard’s practical conception of the self. As a result, the non-reductionist Buddhist approach is also not vulnerable to Korsgaard’s objection to reductionist views. In addition, I argue that the process of self-constitution is embedded in a recursive nexus of dependent origination, and reject Korsgaard’s conception of the independent autonomous subject, which she refers to as “over and above” its ends. In short, a Buddhist can accept Korsgaard’s basic account of self-constitution but nonetheless reject the Kantian idea of the independent autonomous subject. For Buddhists, the Kantian autonomous subject is instead part of the “primal confusion” that projects a reified subject-other division on experience. This confusion is the source of existential suffering, anxiety and stress, which characterizes too much of the human condition. The goal is to transcend the Kantian subject and internalize the pervasive interdependence of persons. Instead of the autonomous self, Buddhism embraces a perfectionist ideal, of a non-egocentric reorientation and re-constitution of the self.
Buddhists thus have reason to reject Kantian liberalism, if it is based on the autonomy and independence of persons. In his shift to Political Liberalism, John Rawls recasts the conception of the person, as “a self-originating source of valid claims,” and emphasizes that this conception is restricted to the political domain. It is part of a narrow conception of the “moral powers” of a free and equal citizen; it is not a metaphysical conception or comprehensive ideal. I conclude by exploring the contrast between Buddhist Perfectionism and Political Liberalism.
With a Response From:
Carol Rovane (Columbia University)
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Also, please visit our website:
http://www.cbs.columbia.edu/cscp/
Co-Chairs
Professor Jonathan Gold
Associate Professor, Princeton University, Department of Religion
Professor Hagop Sarkissian
Associate Professor, The City University of New York, Baruch College | Graduate Center, Department of Philosophy
hagop.sarkissian@baruch.cuny.edu
Rapporteur
Jay Ramesh
Speakers:
Amanda Pustilnik, Professor of Law, University of Maryland
Tor Wager, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Colorado Boulder
Moderators:
Federica Coppola, Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience, Columbia University
Lan Li, Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience, Columbia University
We will provide additional information as soon as possible.
Free and open to the public, but RSVP is required via Eventbrite. This event is part of the Seminars in Society and Neuroscience series.
Columbia Fall 2018 Colloquium Series
Laura Franklin-Hall (New York University)
Reception to follow
Thursday, November 15th, 2018
Simona Aimar (UCL)
Title: TBA
4:10 PM – 6:00 PM, 716 Philosophy Hall
Reception to follow