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

Speaker: Eiko Ikegami (New School for Social Research)

Abstract: My talk will be a partial report of the product of an unexpected research detour, an eye opening that formed me to go beyond my taken-for-granted perception and feeling as a “neuro-typical,” a term an autistic person might use to describe me. It was through an accidental encounter with the intense world of autistic adults that my eyes were opened, in an unusual meeting place, on the corners and streets of virtual neighborhoods in Second Life. This was a puzzling phenomenon. Autistic people are known to have various difficulties in communicating with others. But in a virtual world, they formed a long-lasting self-support group where they meet for two hours every week, for the last six or seven years. The first-person narratives of autistic experiences are different from our social and academic conceptions of people with Autistic Spectrum Disorder. I will discuss what I have learned by observing avatars on the spectrum for the last five years, which reminds me of Rashomon, a classic Japanese movie by Kurosawa.

Participants:

  • David Fergusson, New College in the University of Edinburgh
  • Michael Solomon, RWJ Barnabas University Hospital & Medical Society of New Jersey
  • Olaf Witkowski, Earth-Life Science Institute
  • Jeff Ames, Rutgers University
  • Monica Manolescu, University of Strasbourg
  • Nicolaas Rupke, Institute for Advanced Study
  • Susan Schneider, The University of Connecticut
  • Ayako Fukui, Araya Brain Imaging Tokyo
  • Yuko Ishihara, University of Copenhagen
  • Piet Hut, Institute for Advanced Study
  • Eiko Ikegami, New School of Social Research

Thursday, February 16, 12:30 p.m.
Institute for Advanced Study, 1 Einstein Drive, West Building Seminar Room, 2nd floor
Host by the Program in Interdisciplinary Studies