Choice & Inference

Michael Ley has updated the DBLP website. The beta version is here.

The Volkswagen Foundation’s Herrenhausen Conference on the topic of “(Digital) Humanities Revisited – Challenges and Opportunities in the Digital Age” will take place from December 5-7, 2013 in Hanover, Germany.

In times of digitization, internet, and mobile communication, the humanities can build on new, empirically driven methods to gain new insights. But what are the implications of this mode of knowledge production for the various disciplines subsumed under the term humanities, their methods and research objects, and for the role the humanities should and could play in society? We would be delighted if you joined the discussion – please save the date and the event in your calendar. Confirmed speakers include:

Gregory Ralph Crane, University Leipzig / Iryna Gurevych, Technical University Darmstadt / Lawrence Lessig, Harvard Law School / Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, University of Oxford / Lev Manovich, City University of New York / Jeffrey Schnapp, Harvard University /  Eleanor Selfridge-Field, Stanford University

You can find more information on the conference in the attached flyer and under www.volkswagenstiftung.de/digitalhumanities

We cordially invite early career researchers to participate in our event. Therefore, the Volkswagen Foundation offers Travel Grants for young researchers who wish to attend the conference. The deadline for application is August 15, 2013. For more information on the application process, please visit www.volkswagenstiftung.de/digitalhumanities

Is the human brain an elaborate organic computer? Since the time of the earliest electronic computers, some have imagined that with sufficiently robust memory, processing speed, and programming, a functioning human brain can be replicated in silicon. Others disagree, arguing that central to the workings of the brain are inherently non-computational processes. Do we differ from complex computer algorithms? Are there essential features of the physical make-up and workings of a brain that will prevent us from creating a machine that thinks? And if we should succeed in constructing a computer that claims to be sentient, how would we know if it really is?

As part of the World Science Festival’s Big Ideas series, a panal discussion entitled “Architects of the Mind: A Blueprint for the Human Brain,” featuring

• Douglas Fields
• Kristen Harris
• Murray Shanahan
• Gregory Wheeler
• Bill Weir, moderator

was recorded on May 31, 2013, at The Kaye Playhouse at Hunter College, New York City.

The World Science Festival’s signature event is an annual celebration and exploration of science, which aims to cultivate a general public informed by science, inspired by its wonder, convinced of its value, and prepared to engage with its implications for the future.

This year’s festival featured 50 events over 5 days, including 10 premier events that were broadcast live online. Below are video links to five philosophically themed programs

• The Whispering Mind: The Enduring Conundrum of Consciousness, with Mélanie Boly, Kristof Koch, Colin McGinn, and Nicholas Schiff. Moderated by Terry Moran.
• Architects of the Mind: A Blueprint for the Human Brain, with Douglas Fields, Kristen Harris, Murray Shanahan, and Gregory Wheeler. Moderated by Bill Weir.
• Infinity, with Raphael Bousso, Philip Clayton, Steven Strogatz, Hugh Woodin. Moderated by Keith Devlin.
• Multiverse: One or Many?, with Andreas Albrecht, Alan Guth, Andrei Linde, and Neil Turok. Moderated by John Hockenberry.
• A Matter of Time, with Paul Davies, Craig Callender, Tim Maudlin, Max Tegmark. Moderated by Ira Flato.

Cross-posted at Certain Doubts