Lectures start promptly at 7:30PM
and are held on the 2nd and 4th Tuesdays of each month September 2021
through May 2022. Our Fall meetings will begin with Zoom only for
September and October. Depending on the Covid situation, we may
go to live meetings in January. Links to the Zoom sessions are
posted below the abstract
of each talk
9-14-2021 Consciousness
Rob McKellar, Ph.D.
“Consciousness is everything you
experience. It is the tune stuck in your
head, the sweetness of chocolate mousse, the throbbing pain of a toothache, the
fierce love for your child and the bitter knowledge that eventually all
feelings will end.” – Christoff Koch
This talk will consider the astonishing little
theater presented in our heads, seemingly encompassing the limits of reality
for each of us, and thus, perhaps, in a metaphysical sense, truly defining the
limits of everything.
The word “consciousness” has a
range of meanings. Neuroscience has come
a long way toward helping us understand consciousness as defined as: higher
intelligence, information access, and self-awareness. Neuroscience also has
given us a picture of the human brain as a myriad of specialized areas--
modules of unconscious parallel processing—that somehow erupt into a storm of
brain-wide synchronization and other events that correlate with
consciousness. What is the purpose of
these events and how do they give rise to the experience of consciousness? In recent years, the burgeoning field of
artificial intelligence, as inspired and informed by living neural networks,
has led to computers that beat chess masters and quiz masters and drive cars;
but can we ever expect computers to be conscious like us? Consciousness, defined as sentience,
especially with reference to those peculiar, personal, subjective phenomena
(qualia), which we humans all claim to experience, but deny for computers,
zombies, plants, and lower animals, is a profound mystery. This has been called the “hard problem of
consciousness” by philosopher David Chalmers.
A multitude of philosophers from
before Plato and Aristotle through Galileo, Hobbs, Kant, Spinoza, Leibnitz,
Locke, Hume, and James up through Wittgenstein, Ryle, and Dennett, have
advanced theories of consciousness.
Among these philosophers, Descartes is notable-- identified with the
notion of the presence of an immaterial mind in a material body-- the theory of
Mind-Body Dualism. But Mind-Body Dualism
has the problem of explaining how these material and immaterial substances can interact. Consequently, this discomfort with Dualism
and the lure of the successes of science has led most modern thinkers to
embrace some form of Material Monism which holds that the mind is somehow just
something yet to be elucidated by neuroscience or cognitive science. But in the
end, Materialist philosophers (other than those who “explain away” or dismiss
consciousness as a mere epiphenomenon) remain stymied by the phenomena of
qualia and the “hard problem of consciousness.”
Quantum mechanics informs us that
there is a role for the observer in collapsing wave functions and that quantum
entangled particles can be linked mysteriously across the vastness of the
universe. Emergence Theory concerns how
unexpected properties can emerge from collections of apparently simpler units,
for example, how the wetness of water emerges from hydrogen and oxygen atoms or
how the startling properties of living organisms emerge from the laws of
chemistry and physics. So, is
consciousness, possibly, an intrinsic, fundamental property of everything in
the universe (Panpsychism) which then emerges in Integrated Information Systems
(Integrated Information Theory) or from metacognitive looping and recursion?
This talk will introduce but cannot
fully develop this broad and complicated topic.
Consequently, a glossary and bibliography will be provided for further
exploration and discussion.
View the talk by clicking the link below:
9-28-2021 Reason, Emotion, and the Compassionate Revolution
Daniel Levine,
Ph.D., UTA
This talk is a summary of my recent book Healing
the Reason-Emotion Split. The themes of the book are: (1) the
cultural construct of reason and emotion as opposites is not supported by
science; (2) this construct is harmful to society; and (3) the results from
neuroscience and psychology can suggest ways of healing the split between
reason and emotion for the benefit of society. The book includes reviews
of relevant findings in neuroscience and experimental psychology; a review of
historical movements including the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the 1960s
counterculture; and recommendations for combining the best of these historical
movements in ways supported by what we know about the brain and mind.
View the talk by clicking the link below:
Passcode: 2B8^*p2e
10-12-2021 A Local Response for Emerging Threats to Democracy
Clint Eubanks
Technology affects our lives more and more every day.
What is the future of American democracy in a system that trusts computer
networks with the voting data that is so fundamental to our American
liberties? Come explore the modern challenges facing our free society in
the 21st century and add to the discussion about how to preserve our national
heritage of individual freedom and civic duty during an age of technological
and cultural upheaval.
View the talk by clicking the link below:
Passcode: 0Wjv2Z^3
10-26-2021 Life, Mortality, and Evolution
Paul Tobolowsky, M.D.
Why
does this "best of all possible worlds" contain mortality? Relatively
short individual life spans create opportunities that lead to better
adaptation for species. Long life spans lock individuals into old
non-competitive forms. Although tragic at a personal level, mortality
has benefits for species that enrich life in general and make it worth
living.
View the talk by clicking the link below:
Passcode: =N?K36Wu
11-9-2021 Emerging Models of Religious Universalism or "Are the Brahmins Winning the Battle for Credibility?"
Robert Hunt, Ph.D.
I’ll
explore how the values of diversity and human dignity are emerging as
the marks of a credible religion, augmenting or even displacing a focus
on reason and evidence.
View or listen to this session by clicking the link below:
11-23-2021 A History of the ADHD Mind
Bryan Rigg, Ph.D.
Throughout
most of Homo sapiens existence, the Hunter or ADHD type of mind ensured
survival. The development of agriculture around 10,000 years ago
changed how populations grew and what genes were passed on. The
new type of Farmer brain became dominant to the present. This lecture
will examine the evolution and the differences between the two dominant
forms of brains in the human population, the Hunter or ADHD and the
Farmer or nonADHD types.
Viewthe talk by clicking the link below:
12-14-2021 Should All Speech be Protected?
David Pruessner, J.D.
The
United States is one of the few major nations that legally protects
public speech that expresses hatred toward groups, even if based on
race, religion, or sexual orientation. We will explore the
question of whether all speech should be protected, including “speech”
via actions, such as cross burnings, protests, and picketing. We
will also explore the question of who truly regulates speech: the
government or private owners of property and corporations?
View or listen to this session by clicking the link below:
Video: David Pruessner 2021-12-14