Public Dialogues

YHouse continues its program of lectures, events, and conversations on exciting and provocative topics at a number of venues around New York City.

Consciousness Club NYC

YHouse invites you to the Consciousness Club, a study group to promote broadly transdisciplinary discussions on the neural and computational bases of consciousness, and how these concepts can be applied to other fields of interest. Our weekly meetings are for you if you are into awareness, science, technology, philosophy, art, and design.

For more information and meeting schedule, check out our Facebook page, or tune in to our Twitter updates.

Although the meetings are open to all, we encourage technical and scientific discussions for this series of meetings.

Cognition Lunch Salon

YHouse continues to organize informal Lunch Salon events hosted by the Program in Interdisciplinary Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study, 1 Einstein Drive, Princeton, N.J., West Building Seminar Room, 2nd floor. The format is an informal chat, followed by longer open-ended discussions among the participants, on the topic of consciousness and cognition. This event is by invitation only. To request an invitation, please email us at info@yhousenyc.org

  • Institute of Advanced Study (map)
  • 1 Einstein Drive
  • Princeton, NJ, 08540
  • United States

3/21/18 UPDATE: Due to poor weather conditions, Selmer Bringsjord will not be able to attend this gathering (stay tuned for a rescheduling of his presentation). Instead, we will host an open-ended discussion.

////

Cognition Lunch Salon: Is Poe’s Detective Dupin Conscious? And If So, to What Degree? (Answers: Yes; a Very High Degree.)

Presenter: Selmer Bringsjord (Director of the Rensselaer AI & Reasoning Laboratory)

Abstract: Panpsychism, let’s grant, is roughly the view that all the physical stuff in our world is conscious. This view seems to imply that a lot of things are conscious. After all, a lot of physical things exist!—people, pebbles, electrons, meteorites, politicians, umbrellas, llamas... ad indefinitum. On some versions of panpsychism, even some non-physical but existing things are conscious (e.g., you, if you’re a non-physical thing). Yet our view on and theory of consciousness casts an even wider net, for it counts Detective C. Auguste Dupin as not only conscious, but very conscious—and the great sleuth doesn’t even exist: he’s the creation of Edgar Allen Poe, and purely fictional. We explain why Dupin is indeed conscious, and why—on the \Lambda (as opposed to Tononi’s \Phi) measuring system of the degree of consciousness enjoyed by a being—he’s highly so. We also explain (with demos) that some of the artificial agents and robots in our lab are conscious as well, as are some of the fictional machines we’ve conceived, but not yet built.

This event is by invitation only. To request an invitation, please email us at info@yhousenyc.org