Consciousness Club #36: Literature and the Problem of Other Minds

Speaker: Erik Hoel (Tufts University)

Abstract: What is the purpose of fictional stories? Why are humans attracted to reading about or watching events that never happened? As the mediums we use to tell stories shifts (such as from novels to TV) what do we lose, and what do we gain? Some have offered explanations to these questions by hypothesizing that forms like literature build empathy, or, as David Foster Wallace put it, are a "cure for loneliness." But what if saying the purpose of fictions is entertainment, loneliness, or even empathy training, is selling fictional stories short? Drawing from contemporary evolutionary biology, the neuroscience of dreams, and philosophy of mind, I propose an answer to these questions that reveals how irreplaceable the novel is in our culture, and how much will be lost should it lose its grip as a medium.

Entrance is free. Eventbrite registration is required. Click here to register.

Our format this season 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

Our format this season 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

Presenter: Brian P. McLaughlin (Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science; Director, Rutgers Cognitive Science Center)

Abstract: A number of AI researchers are predicting that there will be sentient robots with human-level intelligence or greater within the next thirty or so years. If this prediction is correct, we face enormously difficult moral and social issues. Status as a moral agent or moral patient depends only on mental abilities. Sentient robots would have moral rights, and so should have legal rights to protect them. Moreover, the sale of robots with intelligence even approaching human-level intelligence would be slavery. There is a tsunami of humanoid robots soon to enter our lives. I argue, however, that the prediction that sentient robots with human-level intelligence will soon be here is based, in part, on a false behaviorist assumption about mentality. Although the tsunami will bring a flood of difficult moral and social issues in its wake, robots rights is not among them. The robots will be devoid of mentality. They could be damaged or destroyed, but neither harmed nor wronged.

Want to know what quantum computing really is? Could a quantum computer actually outstrip all known digital computers and build a better AI? Can a quantum computer become conscious? Who knows how to write algorithms for a quantum machine? What is quantum mechanics anyway and why is it such a beautiful headache?

Join acclaimed science journalist and author George Musser and YHouse co-founder and scientist Caleb Scharf as they struggle and sweat over these questions and more. If you've ever wanted a beginner’s guide to quantum physics, quantum computers, and one possible future for AI then this is your lucky evening! Get your wavefunction over to Caveat.

YHouse President Piet Hut joins in conversation with prominent Buddhist teacher Loch Kelly. Will include a brief meditation.

Speaker: Hayden Kee

Abstract: To what extent do we require a phenomenological level of description to adequately grasp the behavior of non-human organisms? At one extreme, some versions of autopoietic enactivism endorse a strong phenomenological life-mind continuity thesis, maintaining that wherever we find life, we find also a mind exhibiting the same basic phenomenal interiority as human experience. In this talk, I will argue that this broad application of phenomenological concepts to all living beings, including ones believed to lack sentience, introduces a fateful equivocation into the phenomenological idiom, which is designed to describe sentient experience. But this terminological clarification serves to bring into focus an underlying ontological and methodological issue: autopoietic enactivism (along with other approaches to naturalized phenomenology) is radically incomplete in the absence of a foundational (meta)physics of consciousness.

Speaker: Dr. Katsunori Miyahara (Harvard University/Rikkyo University)

Abstract:
I plead for the introduction of the perspective of philosophical phenomenology into recent neuroscientific studies of consciousness. Since its origin in the mid-19th century, psychology developed in two diverging directions, namely, as descriptive psychology and as experimental psychology. Phenomenology as a philosophical discipline initiated by Edmund Husserl is a direct descendent of the descriptive psychology of Franz Brentano. Cognitive neuroscience is a distant offspring of the early experimental psychologists including Wilhelm Wundt. Because in part of this historical background, the perspective of phenomenology remains largely ignored (with some notable exceptions) in the burgeoning sciences of consciousness. I think this is unfortunate.

After presenting a brief overview of Husserlian phenomenology and its historical origin, in this talk, I will illustrate how the absence of the phenomenological perspective can mislead scientific investigations of consciousness by taking the experimental use of the psychological phenomenon of binocular rivalry as a central example.

Speaker: Jonathan C. Gold (Princeton University)

Drawing upon (but not dwelling in) my work in Buddhist philosophy, I propose that the Buddhist doctrines of the two truths and the three natures can be understood as expressing and formalizing Occam’s Razor. This provides us with articulate tools to challenge reification of abstract entities and to privilege, always, pragmatic assessments as the defining criteria of reality. When we turn to the nature of consciousness, then, questions around illusionism and the requirements of satisfactory explanations can be made sharper by adopting the strict epistemic modesty that a Buddhist critique entails. 

Smitha Vishveshwara (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

The Universe at the quantum and cosmic scales instills wonder and exercises physical laws quite foreign to the human scale. Here, I share my three interconnected collaborative ventures that explore these two awe-inspiring realms through the arts. One concerns the writing of a popular book on quantum physics and Einstein's relativity in the format of letters between father and daughter. Another relates to science-art creations stemming from an interdisciplinary course,  Where the Arts meets Physics. The third involves devising a performance piece entitled Quantum-Cosmic Journeys. 

The Rubin Museum of Art, New York, NY