Public Lectures
Naomi Oreskes: Merchants of Doubt: Using History and Philosophy of Science to Understand the Climate Change Debate
Great Hall - Somerville House Somerville House, Western University, London, Ontario, CanadaABSTRACT On vital issues such as genetically-modified foods and climate change, having correct scientific knowledge is vital for making good public policy. How does philosophy help us understand science? How strong is the scientific consensus about climate change, and the effects our species has on it? Naomi Oreskes, co-author of the award-winning book Merchants of [...]
Robert DiSalle: Gravity, Geometry, and Philosophy: 100 Years in Einstein’s Universe
Wolf Performance Hall - Central Library 251 Dundas St, London, Ontario, CanadaOne hundred years ago, in November 1915, Albert Einstein achieved his long-sought theory of gravitation: the General Theory of Relativity. In developing the General Theory, Einstein brought together ideas from philosophy, mathematics, and physics, to create a remarkable new conception of gravity, space, and time. His work is a model of the engagement between philosophy [...]
Elisabeth Lloyd: The Orgasm Wars
ABSTRACT There has been a fierce battle occurring among people who explain the evolution of human female orgasm, about its evolutionary origins and nature. The core issue is that the female orgasm presents an evolutionary puzzle. Unlike the male orgasm, female orgasm is not associated with any increase in fertility or reproductive success. Several types [...]
Peter Singer: The Most Good You Can Do: How Effective Altruism is Changing Ideas About Living Ethically
Great Hall - Somerville House Somerville House, Western University, London, Ontario, CanadaABSTRACT Effective altruism is built upon the simple but profound idea that living a fully ethical life involves doing the "most good you can do." Such a life requires an unsentimental view of charitable giving: to be a worthy recipient of our support, an organization must be able to demonstrate that it will do more [...]
Peter Singer: Animal Liberation, Forty Years On
Great Hall - Somerville House Somerville House, Western University, London, Ontario, CanadaABSTRACT 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 period, and what progress has been made towards the changes in our treatment of animals that the book advocates. SPEAKER [...]
Evan Fraser: Food in 2050: The Challenge of Feeding 9 Billion
Wolf Performance Hall - Central Library 251 Dundas St, London, Ontario, CanadaABSTRACT Creating food systems capable of sustainably, equitably, and nutritiously feeding 9 billion people while dealing with climate change is one of the 21st century’s “Grand Challenges”. Meeting this challenge is about more than just producing enough - indeed, we already produce enough for everyone, but more than a billion are overweight while almost a [...]
Cordelia Fine: Let Toys Be Toys: The Science and Ethics of Gendered Toy Marketing
Wolf Performance Hall - Central Library 251 Dundas St, London, Ontario, CanadaABSTRACT The gendered marketing of toys is under considerable scrutiny, with consumer-led campaigns against it invariably giving rise to vigorous debates. Critics argue that gendered toy marketing is socially and developmentally harmful; defenders see it as reflecting and responding to boys’ and girls’ fundamentally different interests. In this talk, based on work co-authored with Charles [...]
Cordelia Fine: The myth of the Lehman Sisters? Sex, testosterone, and financial risk-taking
Room 100 - Physics and Astronomy Building Physics and Astronomy Building, Western University, London, Ontario, CanadaABSTRACT There is growing scientific interest in the role of testosterone in financial risk-taking – a topic of considerable public interest too, with suggestions that there is “too much testosterone on Wall Street”. Both research and debate is often grounded in an implicit model in which testosterone is presumed to be the proximal mechanism underlying [...]
Andrew Light: What Happened in Paris? How Differentiation Evolved to Create a Global Climate Agreement.
Room 2202 - Spencer Engineering Building Spencer Engineering Building, Western University, London, Ontario, CanadaABSTRACT Last December, after twenty years of apparent incremental progress, over 190 countries meeting under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change managed to create what promises to be a lasting international climate agreement. Debates continue however over whether the greenhouse gas mitigation commitments that parties brought to the table in [...]
Aimee van Wynsberghe: Robot Ethics: What is it and why should we care?
Stevenson & Hunt Room A - Central Library 251 Dundas St, London, Ontario, CanadaABSTRACT The 21st century is predicted to be the century of service robots. Service robots differ from factory robots in that they function in unstructured and unpredictable human environments and will even co-operate with humans. They can already be found in: neighbourhood stores for greeting us; hospitals to help with surgeries, rehabilitation, or for the [...]
Aimee van Wynsberghe: The Ethics of Ethical Robots
Room 2202 - Spencer Engineering Building Spencer Engineering Building, Western University, London, Ontario, CanadaABSTRACT Robots are no longer fuel for the imagination of science fiction writers; they are now a part of our personal and professional lives and will become increasingly so in the years to come. They are already a part of surgical procedures and are delivering sheets and medications throughout the hospital. They are becoming a [...]
Alison Gopnik: The Gardener and the Carpenter: What developmental science tells us about relations between parents and children.
Wolf Performance Hall - Central Library 251 Dundas St, London, Ontario, CanadaIn this Rotman Lecture, co-sponsored with Western Alumni and the London Public Library, renowned author Alison Gopnik asks us to think about parenting as a relationship. ABSTRACT Caring deeply about our children is part of what makes us human. Yet the thing we call "parenting" is a surprisingly new invention. In the past thirty years, [...]
Julian Savulescu: The Science and Ethics of Human Enhancement
Room 106 - Physics and Astronomy Building 1151 Richmond Street, London, Ontario, CanadaABSTRACT Scandal after scandal has revealed that sport has been experimenting with human enhancement on a massive scale. These are among the most high-profile cases. But in fact human enhancement technologies influence all aspects of life. From students and professionals taking modafinil to enhance cognition, focus and drive, to evidence that SSRIs (anti-depressants) affect moral [...]
Lisa Feldman Barrett – Emotions: Facts vs. Fictions
Wolf Performance Hall - Central Library 251 Dundas St, London, Ontario, CanadaThe 2019 Rotman Lecture will be delivered by Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, professor of psychology at Northeastern University, and author of "How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain". She delivered the 2017 TED Talk, "You aren’t at the mercy of your emotions -- your brain creates them”, which was among the top [...]
CANCELLED: Samir Okasha — Evolution, Altruism and Selfishness
Wolf Performance Hall - Central Library 251 Dundas St, London, Ontario, CanadaEVENT CANCELLED DUE TO THE EVOLVING COVID-19 SITUATION. PLEASE VISIT COVID-19 INFORMATION FOR THE CAMPUS COMMUNITY FOR MORE INFORMATION. Are animals altruistic? From eusocial animals like ants & bees, to well-documented cases of humpback whales rescuing seals from orcas, there are numerous examples of what looks like altruism in nature. Among many bird and mammal [...]
Evan Thompson: Consciousness and Dreamless Sleep
Virtual (register for Zoom link)ABSTRACT New research suggests that deep and dreamless sleep may not be a blackout state in which consciousness is absent, but instead a state in which various kinds of conscious states may occur. This lecture will present an overview of current thinking about sleep and consciousness from the perspectives of cognitive neuroscience, the science [...]
Ann-Sophie Barwich – The Cinderella of the Senses: Smell as a Window into Mind and Brain
Room 1170 - Western Interdisciplinary Research Building Western Interdisciplinary Research Building, London, Ontario, CanadaJoin the Rotman Institute of Philosophy for a talk by Dr. Ann Sophie-Barwich related to her recent book, Smellosophy: What the Nose Tells the Mind (Harvard University Press, 2020). Pending changes due to the evolving COVID situation, this event is planned to be hybrid, with both in-person and virtual attendance options. Please see below [...]