Friday, August 20, 2010
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Talal Asad on the History of the Idea of Humanity
Event Webpage: http://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/e...
The enormous academic interest in human rights is reflected in several excellent histories. Although there has been some disagreement over the origins of human rights, most scholars acknowledge their modern European provenance. In his talk, Talal Asad took it for granted that their origins do not make human rights inappropriate to non-European cultures. Through a discussion of two recent contributions -- John Headley's The Europeanization of the World; On the Origins of Human Rights and Democracy, and Lynn Hunt's Inventing Human Rights-- he explored two concepts generally regarded as central to human rights: "humanity" and "sympathy. This event was co-sponsored by the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Monday, August 2, 2010
The Intelligence of the Unconscious - University of California San Diego
- Partner:
- University of California San Diego
- Location:
- University of California San Diego La Jolla, CA
- Event Date:
- 02.08.08
- Speakers:
- Gerd Gigerenzer
- Summary
- Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious Acccording to the speaker, human beings tend to think of intelligence as a deliberate, conscious activity guided by the laws of logic. Yet, he argues, much of our mental life is unconscious, based on processes alien to logic: gut feelings, or intuitions. Dr. Gigerenzer argues that intuition is more than impulse and caprice; it has its own rationale. This can be described by fast and frugal heuristics, which exploit evolved abilities in the human brain. Heuristics ignore information and try to focus on the few important reasons. Says Gigerenzer: "More information, more time, even more thinking, are not always better, and less can be more." His talk is part of an ongoing series on "Behavioral, Social and Computational Sciences Seminars" organized by the UC San Diego division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), which aims to bring the benefits of computational science to disciplines that have largely been by-passed by the information-technology revolution until now. More information on this and other talks in the series can be found at http://bscs3.calit2.net. Gigerenzer, a leading expert and author on heuristics, won the AAAS Prize for the best article in the behavioral sciences. He is the author of Calculated Risks: How To Know When Numbers Deceive You, the German translation of which won the Scientific Book of the Year Prize in 2002. His books on heuristics include Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox, with Reinhard Selten, a Nobel laureate in economics - UCSD
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
The Extended Mind: Recent Experimental Evidence
Google Tech Talks
September 2, 2008
ABSTRACT
We have been brought up to believe that the mind is located inside the head. But there are good reasons for thinking that this view is too limited. Recent experimental results show that people can influence others at a distance just by looking at them, even if they look from behind and if all sensory clues are eliminated. And people's intentions can be detected by animals from miles away. The commonest kind of non-local interaction mental influence occurs in connection with telephone calls, where most people have had the experience of thinking of someone shortly before they ring. Controlled, randomized tests on telephone telepathy have given highly significant positive results. Research techniques have now been automated and experiments on telepathy are now being conducted through the internet and cell phones, enabling widespread participation.
Speaker: Rupert Sheldrake
Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D. is a biologist and author of more than 75 technical papers and ten books, the most recent being The Sense of Being Stared At. He studied at Cambridge and Harvard Universities, was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge and a Research Fellow of the Royal Society. He is currently Director of the Perrott-Warrick project, funded from Trinity College Cambridge.