The Gilbert Ryle Lecture Series - Peering Past the Limits of Philosophy

Event Details

• Monday, March 18, 2024
  5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
  Trent Student Centre 1.07 - EVENT SPACE
  Cost: Free
• Tuesday, March 19, 2024
  5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
  Trent Student Centre 1.07 - EVENT SPACE
  Cost: Free
• Wednesday, March 20, 2024
  5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
  Enwayaang Building, Room 106
  Cost: Free

More Information

Please save the date for the Ryle Lecture Series hosted by the Department of Philosophy. 

Eric Schwitzgebel has been a professor of philosophy at University of California, Riverside, since 1997.  He has published four books and over a hundred articles on a wide range of topics, including:

• the nature of belief (belief is more about walking the walk than talking the talk);
• theories of consciousness and introspection (he's skeptic about all theories and about all but the most obvious introspective reports);
• the relationship between moral reflection and moral behavior (especially the not-particularly-ethical behavior of ethics professors);
• robot rights (including what to do if we don't know whether our robots are conscious);
• philosophy of science fiction (including having published several weird short fictions of his own in leading SF venues).

His most recent book, forthcoming with Princeton University Press, is The Weirdness of the World.

---

The three talks will include:

• "Walking the Walk": Do ethicists have any particular obligation to live according to the norms they espouse?  Or instead, to paraphrase Max Scheler, can a sign point to Boston without needing to go there?
• "Falling in Love with Machines": People are starting to fall in love with Large Language Models.  If this becomes common, it will precipitate a social and moral crisis that our best ethical theories are radically unprepared to handle.
• "Intelligent Aliens Would Be Conscious; Intelligent Robots Maybe Not": If a naturally evolved alien species acts as if it's intelligent, the best explanation is probably that it has whatever it takes to be conscious.  However, if a robot acts as if it's intelligent, it might just be a mimic.

Refreshments will be available prior to the lectures. Question and answer section to follow each lecture.  

---

Community Speaker Series

Sharing knowledge is one of the ways Trent University gives back to our host communities and provides life long learning experiences to alumni. Each year, Trent offers open lectures featuring visiting faculty and experts, sharing ideas on subjects such as the Environment, Gender & Women's Studies, Business & Society, Chemistry, Cultural Studies, and Indigenous Studies. These talks are free and open to the Trent and broader communities. These lectures are made possible thanks to generous donor support.

Contact Info

Please direct any questions to alumni@trentu.ca