Video of David Chalmer’s lecture, Spatial Experience and Virtual Reality, has been posted on the Rotman Institute of Philosophy YouTube channel. Do virtual reality devices such as the Oculus Rift produce the illusion of an external reality? Or do they produce non-illusory experiences of a virtual reality? Chalmers addressed this question by starting with an [...]
by Craig Fox A popular picture of scientific revolutions, such as Einstein’s overthrow of Newtonian physics, paints them as involving something like a gestalt shift; they involve a sudden reorientation of the perspective through which we see the world. The perspective through which scientists see the world is a more or less loose set of [...]
Remaining videos from the The Gravity and Geometry: Centenary Perspectives on General Relativity conference have been posted to the Rotman YouTube channel. The following videos are now included in the playlist: Lee Smolin, Perimeter Institute The Identity of the Indiscernible as a Physical Principle [embedyt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyBxRonlmvo[/embedyt] Marco Giovanelli, Einstein Papers Project "What is truth?" Einstein on [...]
The Gravity and Geometry: Centenary Perspectives on General Relativity conference was held this past June, here at Western. Participants presented physical, philosophical, and historical reflections on Einstein’s theory of gravity and space-time geometry, its development over the past century, and its future prospects. Invited speakers at the conference included John Norton, Kaća Bradonjić, and Carla [...]
Video of Peter Singer’s lecture, Animal Liberation, Forty Years On, has been posted on the Rotman Institute of Philosophy YouTube channel. 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 [...]
Video of Peter Singer's lecture, The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically, has been posted on the Rotman Institute of Philosophy YouTube channel. Effective altruism is built upon the simple but profound idea that living a fully ethical life involves doing the “most good you can do.” [...]
by Anthony Skelton In the Sunday edition of the Toronto Star, an article entitled, "Are Peter Singer’s ideas too dangerous to hear?", details some of the controversy around Singer’s ideas, and includes me as an interviewee. Peter Singer is one of the most important practical moralists of our time. In a career spanning more than [...]
For most of us, animal rights are a political afterthought. Even if we regard them as important, our concern for the rights of animals is unlikely to supersede our concern for the rights of people. In part, the hierarchy of concerns that many of us use to prioritize our attention and actions is motivated by [...]
Video of the lecture by Ursula Martin has been uploaded onto the Rotman YouTube channel, completing the ACMES playlist. ACMES (Algorithms and Complexity in Mathematics, Epistemology and Science) was a multidisciplinary conference that focused on a combination of the science of reliability and uncertainty quantification with conceptual and foundational issues concerning reliability in the application [...]
A new event page has been created for the September 19th author-meets-critics event with Katarzyna de Lazai-Radek and Peter Singer, discussing their book, "The Point of View of the Universe: Sidgwick and Contemporary Ethics”. Other presenters at the book symposium will be Thomas Hurka (Toronto), Jennifer Hawkins (Duke), Anthony Skelton (Western), and David Phillips (Houston). [...]
