Rotman Lectures
Naomi Oreskes: Merchants of Doubt: Using History and Philosophy of Science to Understand the Climate Change Debate
Great Hall - Somerville House Somerville House, Western University, London, Ontario, CanadaABSTRACT On vital issues such as genetically-modified foods and climate change, having correct scientific knowledge is vital for making good public policy. How does philosophy help us understand science? How strong is the scientific consensus about climate change, and the effects our species has on it? Naomi Oreskes, co-author of the award-winning book Merchants of [...]
Elisabeth Lloyd: The Orgasm Wars
ABSTRACT There has been a fierce battle occurring among people who explain the evolution of human female orgasm, about its evolutionary origins and nature. The core issue is that the female orgasm presents an evolutionary puzzle. Unlike the male orgasm, female orgasm is not associated with any increase in fertility or reproductive success. Several types [...]
Peter Singer: The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically
Great Hall - Somerville House Somerville House, Western University, London, Ontario, CanadaABSTRACT Effective altruism is built upon the simple but profound idea that living a fully ethical life involves doing the "most good you can do." Such a life requires an unsentimental view of charitable giving: to be a worthy recipient of our support, an organization must be able to demonstrate that it will do more [...]
Peter Singer: Animal Liberation, Forty Years On
Great Hall - Somerville House Somerville House, Western University, London, Ontario, CanadaABSTRACT Peter Singer's Animal Liberation, often credited with starting the modern animal rights movement, was first published in September 1975. In this lecture, the author assesses how well the argument has stood up over that period, and what progress has been made towards the changes in our treatment of animals that the book advocates. SPEAKER [...]
Cordelia Fine: Let Toys Be Toys: The Science and Ethics of Gendered Toy Marketing
Wolf Performance Hall - Central Library 251 Dundas St, London, Ontario, CanadaABSTRACT The gendered marketing of toys is under considerable scrutiny, with consumer-led campaigns against it invariably giving rise to vigorous debates. Critics argue that gendered toy marketing is socially and developmentally harmful; defenders see it as reflecting and responding to boys’ and girls’ fundamentally different interests. In this talk, based on work co-authored with Charles [...]
Alison Gopnik: The Gardener and the Carpenter: What developmental science tells us about relations between parents and children.
Wolf Performance Hall - Central Library 251 Dundas St, London, Ontario, CanadaIn this Rotman Lecture, co-sponsored with Western Alumni and the London Public Library, renowned author Alison Gopnik asks us to think about parenting as a relationship. ABSTRACT Caring deeply about our children is part of what makes us human. Yet the thing we call "parenting" is a surprisingly new invention. In the past thirty years, [...]
Lisa Feldman Barrett – Emotions: Facts vs. Fictions
Wolf Performance Hall - Central Library 251 Dundas St, London, Ontario, CanadaThe 2019 Rotman Lecture will be delivered by Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, professor of psychology at Northeastern University, and author of "How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain". She delivered the 2017 TED Talk, "You aren’t at the mercy of your emotions -- your brain creates them”, which was among the top [...]
Evan Thompson: Consciousness and Dreamless Sleep
Virtual (register for Zoom link)ABSTRACT New research suggests that deep and dreamless sleep may not be a blackout state in which consciousness is absent, but instead a state in which various kinds of conscious states may occur. This lecture will present an overview of current thinking about sleep and consciousness from the perspectives of cognitive neuroscience, the science [...]
Charles Ling: Turing Test, Chinese Room, AGI, and GPTs
Room 4190 - Western Interdisciplinary Research Building Western Interdisciplinary Research Building, Room 4190, London, Ontario, CanadaAbstract: With the rapid development of large language models such as GPTs, many fundamental and philosophical issues of intelligence and the human mind can be re-visited. In this talk, I will explore these related topics to foster potential collaboration between different disciplines. Register to Attend Turing Test, Chinese Room, AGI, and GPTs Speaker [...]