March 23, 2024 · ▶ Video
A =/= B -> Taste & Discernment
This roundtable explored how taste and discernment evolved from basic survival mechanisms to refined aesthetic judgment. The discussion examined the sensory biology of taste, the...
Paul Breslin, Jerrold Levinson, John McQuaid, Nils Noren, Danielle Reed
March 9, 2024 · ▶ Video
Touch as the Ur-Sense: From Presence to Poesy
The roundtable examines touch as fundamental to sensation and sentience. It explores how sentience itself derives from feeling, and investigates the physical and neurological...
Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee, Andrea Gadberry, Pascal Massie, Yalda Moayedi, Sushma Subramanian
February 24, 2024 · ▶ Video
The Effects of Media
What are the effects of media today? What exactly is 'social' about social media? How do media shape reality? Are developments in AI changing media as we understand communications...
Daniel Czitrom, Paula McDowell, Erica Robles-Anderson, Anna Shechtman, R. John Williams
February 10, 2024 · ▶ Video
Covid and Literature
This roundtable examined literature created during the COVID-19 pandemic. The event featured discussions of works including "Fractured: Covid 19 -- Memento Mori vs. Memento...
Simon Critchley, Richard Deming, Eric Klinenberg, Daphne Merkin, Maria G. Pisano
October 21, 2023 · ▶ Video
Permanence and Impermanence of Mathematical Concepts
The roundtable examines how mathematical concepts have evolved throughout history. Starting with the concept of "five," it traces how humanity's understanding of numbers has...
Michael Harris, Barry Mazur, Nathalie Sinclair, Alma Steingart, Jared Weinstein
September 23, 2023 · ▶ Video
Emotion
The roundtable explores fundamental questions about human emotion. "What is human life without emotion?" It examines how emotion has shaped human history and culture across...
Mabel Berezin, Katherine Elkins, Rob Hopkins, Joseph LeDoux, Rosalind Picard
April 22, 2023 · ▶ Video
Shakespeare Forever
The date of this Round Table is not a coincidence: William Shakespeare was born on or about April 23, 1564, and he died on April 23, 1616. This is a particularly auspicious year...
Carl Cofield, Jeff Dolven, David Scott Kastan, Rhodri Lewis, Sophie McIntosh
April 8, 2023 · ▶ Video
Life Beyond Earth: When and How Will it be Found?
Astrobiology examines potential life throughout the universe using Earth-based biological understanding. Since 1995, astronomers have identified over 5,300 exoplanets, with...
Chris Impey, Lisa Kaltenegger, David Kipping, Rebecca Oppenheimer, Sara Seager
March 18, 2023 · ▶ Video
The Techne of Memory
The roundtable explores fundamental questions about memory: "What is memory? How does it determine our experience and identity?" The panel examines memory as a process occurring...
Victoria Loustalot, Sam McDougle, Daniela Schiller, Viviane Silvera, R. John Williams
February 11, 2023 · ▶ Video
The Body and Psychosis
The roundtable explored how "4E Cognition" frames thought and behavior as "embodied, embedded, enactive & extended," drawing on philosophers like Merleau-Ponty and Heidegger. It...
Elias Dakwar, George Denfield, Vittorio Gallese, Siri Hustvedt, Gail Weiss
November 19, 2022 · ▶ Video
Living in Difficult Times
The roundtable addressed contemporary crises including pandemic impacts on life expectancy (particularly affecting Black and Hispanic Americans), increased homelessness, climate...
Jon Chun, Katherine Elkins, Farzad Mahootian, Edward Tenner, Steven Wein, R. John Williams
October 16, 2022 · ▶ Video
Coding and the New Human Phenotype: Are Natural Language Generators for Real?
The program GPT-3 can create language that gives the impression that it is thinking. What will our interaction with robots of greater and greater verbal agility mean in the near...
Ned Block, Kyunghyun Cho, Katherine Elkins, Noah Giansiracusa, Francesca Rossi, Dennis Yi Tenen
October 16, 2022 · ▶ Video
Coding and the New Human Phenotype: Is the Universe a Metaverse?
The panel explored the concept that "we have been living in a sort of metaverse all along." The discussion centered on the notion that the Universe functions as "one giant...
Emily Adlam, David Chalmers, Elias Dakwar, Christopher Fuchs, Sylvester James Gates
October 15, 2022, 10:00 AM EST · ▶ Video
Coding and the New Phenotype: In Search for Lost Time
The roundtable explores "how we discover codes, bearers of meaning, and how we reconstruct that meaning in archeology & paleoanthropology, in psychoanalysis, and in neuroscience...
György Buzsáki, Michael Novacek, Karen B. Stern, David Sulzer, Marc Van De Mieroop
October 15, 2022 · ▶ Video
Coding and the Human Phenotype: Manipulated Perception? Fakery, Authenticity, and the Birth of NFTs
The event explores "what counts as true and how we might know the truth in the age of coding." It addresses misinformation, knowledge decentralization, and challenges in...
Laura Edelson, Andrew Guess, Susana Martinez-Conde, Yotam Ophir
October 15, 2022 · ▶ Video
Coding and the New Human Phenotype: Coding, Fiction, Metafiction -- the Parcellation of What Isn't There
The humanities examine idea manipulation. Ideas can be encoded, metabolized, and drive cultural evolution. The session explores roles cultural memes -- facts, factoids, or fiction...
Peter A. Gloor, Mark Hansen, Yonina Hoffman, Jonathan Kramnick, Nikos Salingaros
April 30, 2022 · ▶ Video
Metaphysics
Physics examines Nature's fundamental properties; metaphysics investigates what must necessarily follow from those properties. For centuries, metaphysics provided the organizing...
Harald Atmanspacher, Elizabeth Barnes, Hans Halvorson, Gregg Jaeger, Arkady Plotnitsky
March 12, 2022 · ▶ Video
Psychedelics
The roundtable explores how psychedelics -- substances that "manifest the mind" -- alter cognition, perception, emotion, and behavior. The discussion covers historical use in...
Patricia Dailey, Elias Dakwar, Neşe Devenot, Alex Kwan, Stephen Ross