ORAR / TIMETABLE

WHY SELF-REFLECTION? An Evolutionary Puzzle

de | oct. 24, 2019 | Anunturi, Conferinte

RADU J. BOGDAN

Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science

Tulane University, New Orleans; University of Bucharest

Director, the Open Mind Master program in cognitive science, University of Bucharest

will lecture on

WHY SELF-REFLECTION? An Evolutionary Puzzle

Tuesday, November 19, 17.00 – 20.00

Amfiteatrul Titu Maiorescu, Facultatea de Filosofie

Splaiul Independentei 204

For all we know, a self-reflective mind is not present in any other animal species, including nonhuman primates and possibly archaic humans, and is also absent human children before the age of four to five. All these other species handle their existential challenges very well without self-reflecting. The reasons for and the adaptive value of self-reflection in just one species are neither obvious nor easily explained. To add to the mystery, the evolution of self-reflection, possibly rather recent, possibly rather speedy and in only one species, ours, appears to violate the normally incremental, frugal, tinkering and across-species work of natural selection. So, why did a self-reflective mind evolve, for what reasons and how, out of which mental resources, and why only in modern humans? From some new perspectives, this lecture will venture a few evolutionary answers to these difficult questions.

The 8th edition of the Bucharest Colloquium in Early Modern Science

de | oct. 21, 2019 | Anunturi, Avizier studenti, Conferinte, Scoala Doctorala

The Emergence of Mathematical Physics in the Context of Experimental Philosophy

ICUB Humanities & Department of Theoretical Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, October 30th – November 1st, 2019

Invited Speakers: Philip Beeley (University of Oxford), Robert Goulding (University of Notre Dame), Andrew Janiak (Duke University), Sébastien Maronne (University of Toulouse), Carla Rita Palmerino (Radboud University Nijmegen), Friedrich Steinle (Technical University Berlin).

As we all know, early modern science came to the world dressed up in mathematical vestments. Much has been said about the shape and colours of these clothes. Traditional grand narratives of the “mathematization of nature” or “mechanization of the world picture” have gradually dissolved into more fine-grained and localized historiographical categories such as “forms of mathematization”, “artisanal knowledge” or “experimental practices”. However, in all these framings, questions about how natural philosophy became amenable to mathematical treatment are still central to understanding the emergence of modern science.

The eighth edition of the Bucharest Colloquium in Early Modern Science aims to explore the diversity in methods, scopes, shapes and colours of some of the—well-known, and less well-known—projects of mathematization. It will focus, more precisely, on mathematical forms which have an experimental component. We aim to bring together scholars coming from different disciplines, thus cutting across the established divisions and traditional temporal delimitations.

The 8th edition of the Bucharest Colloquium in Early Modern Science will be organized, jointly, by the ICUB Humanities and the Department of Theoretical Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, and will mark the end of the research grant “The emergence of mathematical physics in the context of experimental philosophy” (2017-2019).

For any additional information, please contact Ovidiu Babeș (ovidiu.babes@icub.unibuc.ro)

The programme of the colloquium is available here.

Source:  https://icub.unibuc.ro/stec_event/bucharest-colloquium-in-early-modern-science-2019/