Synopsis of YHouse Luncheon 2/15/18
Presenter: Hayden Kee (Ph.D. Candidate in Philosophy at Fordham University) Title: Phenomenological Naturalism and the Metaphysics of Consciousness Abstract: (At the Start Hayden said that he had made substantial changes to his presentation since submitting the abstract, so his focus will be different.) “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.”
The revised question that Hayden chose to discuss is, “What does consciousness Do (make happen) in Nature?” He is trained in Phenomenology, and in Phenomenology you are told not to ask what consciousness does as a natural phenomenon. That is because that puts consciousness in the material world, a thing among other things. And that can restrict exploring it (the thing itself) as a natural phenomenon....
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Having a strong conviction can be very helpful in creating great clarity. But at some point, the initial conviction can get in the way, cramping our style, and closing the door to even greater clarity. In science, initial conviction is necessary . . .
By Piet Hut
YHouse was honored to host Robbert Dijkgraaf and Pia de Jong in Caveat, the new stage place for playful, intelligent nightlife, in our monthly series Chasing Consciousness. They shared with us their stories of the double career that each of them has followed, and they reflected on how those four stories run through their shared lives.
By Piet Hut
Five hundred years ago, we lived in a world where the stars were thought and felt to be "beyond" the world of us mortals. And two hundred years ago, at least in Europe, humans were considered to be "beyond" animals, a species separately created. These distinctions dropped away . . .
By Piet Hut
A video of our most recent Chasing Consciousness event is now available on our YouTube channel: Imagination in Science and Art
The event featured the following speakers, each of whom spoke of their experience with the topic at hand before engaging in a brief on-stage dialog, which was followed by an extensive conversation with the audience.
Robbert Dijkgraaf, Director and Leon Levy Professor of the Institute for Advanced Study since 2012, is a mathematical physicist who has made significant contributions to string theory and the advancement of science education. He is President of the InterAcademy Partnership, a past President of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a distinguished public policy adviser and advocate for science and the arts. For his contributions to science, he has received the Spinoza Prize, the highest scientific award in the Netherlands, and has been named a Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. He is also a trained artist, writer, and popular lecturer.
Pia de Jong is an award-winning Dutch writer who moved with her family to Princeton in 2012. Her most recent book is Saving Charlotte: A Mother and the Power of Intuition. "Simply a beautiful book, impossible to put down, clear as a jewel and flawless in its depths"—Richard Preston. Pia writes a weekly column in the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad about her life in the USA. She is a regular contributor to The Washington Post.
Last week I met Josh Tenenbaum again, a brilliant AI researcher at MIT. We've only met four times, but at each encounter there was a mutual recognition of a deep resonance in our outlook on world and mind. Josh straddles many fields . . .
By Piet Hut
Thinking places a central role in our life, and we think in terms of stories, whether as fiction or nonfiction. Can we go beyond stories, or is our sense of self part of the stories we are living out? Is there even a there there beyond our stories?
By Piet Hut
We never see the world 'as it is'. We always see the world through the lens of the stories we tell ourselves about the world, and about ourselves. And the self we think we are is part of the stories that emerge from the same source that our experienced world emerges.
By Piet Hut
What would it be like, if all forms of human knowledge would be given a chance to be heard, in a respectful and serious way? And what would it take, to allow the full diversity of ways of knowing to come to the fore, letting a thousand flowers bloom . . .
By Piet Hut
The world appears in our mind, and it makes sense to assume that our mind is inherently connected to our body which is part of the world. When we ask "what contains what?" a sensible answer is: "our mind is contained in the world, but we use our mind to access the world, so the experienced world . . .
By Piet Hut
Synopsis of Christoph Salge’s 11/16/17 YHouse Luncheon Talk
Presenter: Christoph Salge (New York University / University of Hertfordshire)
Title: A Short Introduction to Empowerment – an Information Theoretic, Intrinsic Motivation
Present: Olaf Witkowski, Ed Turner, Piet Hut, Michael Solomon, Stephen Lin, Renzo Comoletti, Christoph Salge.
Abstract: “Empowerment is a formalization of how much an agent is in control of its own perceivable future. This is captured by the channel capacity from an agent’s actuators to an agent’s sensor at a later point in time. In this short presentation, I will briefly introduce the formalism and idea behind empowerment. I will outline how empowerment relates to the concept of intrinsic motivation and show some recent applications that demonstrate the range of behaviors that can be created in different scenarios. In particular, I will talk about recent work looking at coupled empowerment maximisation in a human-AI system – and how this can be used to define some core companion duties.”
Christoph introduced himself as now working at NYU’s Game Computation Group. He stated his goal for this talk is to introduce Empowerment and formalism....
In physics, whenever we confront a new problem, we ask ourselves the question of time scales. Typically, different processes operate at quite different time scales, but occasionally time scales cross. That's when things get really interesting, as in "may you live in interesting times."
By Piet Hut
Synopsis of YHouse Luncheon Talk 10/5/2017 by Smitha Vishveshwara
Title: Pathless Journey
On Thursdays at noon Yhouse holds a lunch meeting at the Institute of Advanced Study, in Princeton. The format is a 15 minute informal talk by a speaker followed by a longer open-ended discussion among the participants, triggered by, but not necessarily confined to, the topic of the talk. In order to share I am posting a synopsis of the weekly meetings.
Preliminary Abstract: "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 title of Smitha’s presentation was inspired by her quoting philosopher and educator J. Krishnamurti, ‘Truth is a Pathless Land’. ....
Steam engines use energy to power motion, and computers use energy to power calculations. The invention of steam engines gave rise to the theory of thermodynamics, where entropy growth describes loss of information. What will the invention of computers give rise to? Whatever it will be . . .
By Piet Hut
Workshop name: "Naturalizing Phenomenology": Is this the way to proceed?
Date: November 10-11, 2017
Place: Hunter College (first day) and WeWork Park South (second day)
Organizer: Yuko Ishihara (Tokyo Institute of Technology / Institute for Advanced Study / YHouse)
How can phenomenology contribute to the study of consciousness today? This is the underlying question of the YHouse Phenomenology Group, a group of philosophers and scientists interested in exploring the potentials of phenomenology. Here “phenomenology” designates the philosophical enterprise initiated by Edmund Husserl in the beginning of the twentieth century. According to Husserl and many other phenomenologists, phenomenology is a scientific discipline which studies the nature of consciousness. If this is true, then how does it differ from other scientific studies of consciousness such as psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience? Furthermore, if phenomenology is to collaborate with the other sciences, how should we understand the nature of this collaboration?
Last week, I pointed out how we are born in the present, live in the present and will die in the present. Even though we experience our own virtual reality creation, in the form of our mental constructs of a past and a future, those are current constructs based on current memories and anticipations. This does not necessarily mean . . .
By Piet Hut
What happens when a bio-physicist, a sociologist, and a physicist come under the same roof to discuss the reality of our awareness and the pathways to our consciousness? Well, the audience witnesses a melting pot of ideas that leaves them more enlightened, present and grounded.
![[#34] Clarity and Conviction](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/585711b3ebbd1a051da20b4d/1520115484895-6DBYM3B5QRSDJGY5DZWO/eagle_PNG1223.png)
![[#33] Imagination and Curiosity in Science and Art: Robbert Dijkgraaf and Pia de Jong](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/585711b3ebbd1a051da20b4d/1519572170502-GO45PSJLCX0A1QCV8UGV/robbert-pia.jpg)
![[#32] There is no Beyond, since there is Nothing but Beyond](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/585711b3ebbd1a051da20b4d/1518355160826-3EJS9EE1FVJ263D14O7C/Cat.jpg)
![[#31] Partners in Mischief: Meeting Josh Tenenbaum](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/585711b3ebbd1a051da20b4d/1517934519989-PBIZJODX6WQK6Q0561US/roger-klein.jpg)
![[#30] Beyond Stories - Can We Go There, and is There a There There?](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/585711b3ebbd1a051da20b4d/1517750776040-0O6W91TJ26VWHZAFEE03/17546615860_6863578781_b.jpg)
![[#29] The Stories we Tell, we who are Told by Stories](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/585711b3ebbd1a051da20b4d/1517167374266-BZPE1AU6SEJW6LJL3L3N/wayang-stories.jpg)
![[#28] What Would It Be Like?](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/585711b3ebbd1a051da20b4d/1516537109811-04M5147NUKFGWY2GJQ86/blommenveld.jpg)
![[#27] World and Mind: What Contains What?](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/585711b3ebbd1a051da20b4d/1514873902323-EXVZBZXBCNP4BZQTAVH1/Russian-Doll-660x360.jpg)
![[#26] A Challenge for Humanity: Time Scale Crossing](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/585711b3ebbd1a051da20b4d/1514607581388-LP99JF8EQIBP0GCHSQUG/time+crossing.jpg)
![[#25] Toward a Science of Computer Architecture](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/585711b3ebbd1a051da20b4d/1514445825240-X7FQ1BSBAJF4M12FZI4N/g4full-clipped.jpg)
![[#24] The Presence of the Present](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/585711b3ebbd1a051da20b4d/1514014251464-D2THUXIEJVFQR5QAWMJ0/Eyes_of_a_child_in_the_letter_hole.jpg)
