Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Being Human 2012 - Videos


I was able to see a few of the presentations Saturday morning before we hit the road, including the Thomas Metzinger talk. Great stuff - FORA.tv hosted the free video feed and you can still view them online for free. Enjoy!

Being Human Conference, 2012
We live at the dawn of a scientific revolution. Every day brings new findings from a broad range of disciplines – behavioral economics, cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, social anthropology, philosophy – that promise to overthrow long-held biases and stories about what it means to be human.

The coming decades will bring a shift in our worldview as fundamental as any in the past five hundred years. As we use the tools of science to explore the nature of humanity, we are learning more and more about how our brains function and what motivates our behavior, built-in biases and blind spots.

These fresh insights are interesting scientifically, but they also evoke significant questions about our lived experience. These perspectives challenge our basic assumptions of who we are, both as individuals and as a society.

Being Human: Reflection & Poem 2

To see more about each speaker, follow the link to the "Speakers" page and click on the "Read more" tabs after each name.

Speakers

Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D.

Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D.

Founder and Chair, Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Richard J. Davidson is the William James and Vilas Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, Director of the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior and the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience, Founder and Chair and the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, Waisman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.


Peter Baumann

Peter Baumann

Author and Founder, The Baumann Foundation

Peter Baumann was born in 1953 in Berlin, Germany. After joining the musical group Tangerine Dream in 1971, he toured with the band worldwide and recorded multiple Gold records until 1981. Mr. Baumann moved to New York in 1982 and founded the record company, Private Music. He served as CEO of Private Music until 1994 when the company was sold ...

David Eagleman, Ph.D.

David Eagleman, Ph.D.

Neuroscientist, Professor of Neuroscience and Psychiatry, Baylor College of Medicine

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist, New York Times best selling author and Guggenheim Fellow who holds joint appointments in the Departments of Neuroscience and Psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. Dr. Eagleman’s areas of research include time perception, vision, synesthesia, and the intersection of neuroscience with the legal system.

Paul Ekman, Ph.D.

Paul Ekman, Ph.D.

Manager, Paul Ekman Group, LLC

Paul Ekman's research on facial expression and body movement began in 1954, as the subject of his Master’s thesis in 1955 and his first publication in 1957. In his early work, his approach to nonverbal behavior showed his training in personality. Over the next decade, a social psychological and cross-cultural emphasis characterized his work, with a growing interest in an evolutionary and semiotic frame of reference. In addition to his basic research on emotion and its expression, he has, for the last thirty years, also been studying deceit.

Anne Harrington, Ph.D.

Anne Harrington, Ph.D.

Professor of the History of Science, Harvard University

Anne Harrington is Professor and former Chair of the History of Science at Harvard University, specializing in the history of psychiatry, neuroscience, and the other mind and behavioral sciences. Professor Harrington received her Ph.D. in the History of Science from Oxford University, and has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine in London, and the University of Freiburg in Germany. For six years, she co-directed Harvard's Mind, Brain, and Behavior Initiative.

Jane Hirshfield

Jane Hirshfield

Prize-winning International Poet, Translator, and Essayist

Jane Hirshfield’s poetry speaks to the central issues of human existence—desire and loss, impermanence and beauty, the many dimensions of our connection with others and the wider community of creatures and objects with which we share our lives. Demonstrating with quiet authority what it means to awaken into the full capacities of attention, her work sets forth a hard-won affirmation of our human fate.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D.

Professor of Medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical School, and Founder, Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. is Professor of Medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and founder of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society and of its world-renown Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Clinic. He is the author of numerous best-selling books that have been translated into over 30 languages. Dr. Kabat-Zinn received his Ph.D. in molecular biology from MIT in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate, Salvador Luria, MD.

Beau Lotto, Ph.D.

Beau Lotto, Ph.D.

Neuroscientist and Artist, Founder of Lottolab Studio

Beau Lotto is founder of Lottolab, a hybrid art studio and science lab. With glowing, interactive sculpture - and good, old-fashioned peer-reviewed research - he's illuminating the mysteries of the brain's visual system.

Hazel Markus, Ph.D.

Hazel Markus, Ph.D.

Davis-Brack Professor in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University

Hazel Rose Markus is the Davis-Brack Professor in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Her research examines how the self regulates behavior and how the self is shaped by the social world. This work shows how the self-system organizes perception, reasoning and memory and reveals the constructive role of the self throughout the life course.

Thomas Metzinger, Ph.D.

Thomas Metzinger, Ph.D.

Professor of Theoretical Philosophy, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Thomas Metzinger is currently Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and an Adjunct Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Study (FIAS). He is also Director of the Neuroethics Research Unit in Mainz and Director of the MIND Group at the FIAS.

V.S. Ramachandran, Ph.D.

V.S. Ramachandran, Ph.D.

Director, Center for Brain and Cognition, University of California-San Diego

V.S. Ramachandran is a neurologist best known for his work in the fields of behavioral neurology and psychophysics. He is currently the Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego. He is also the author of several books including Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind (1998) and The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientists Quest for What Makes Us Human (2010).

Gelek Rimpoche

Gelek Rimpoche

Founder, Jewel Heart, Tibetan Buddhist Center

Born in Lhasa, Tibet in 1939, Kyabje Gelek Rimpoche was recognized as an incarnate lama at the age of four. Among the last generation of lamas educated in Drepung Monastery before the Communist Chinese invasion of Tibet, Gelek Rimpoche was forced to flee to India in 1959. He later edited and printed over 170 volumes of rare Tibetan manuscripts that would have otherwise been lost to humanity. He was director of Tibet House in Delhi, India and a radio host at All India Radio. He conducted over 1000 interviews in compiling an oral history of the fall of Tibet.

Laurie Santos, Ph.D.

Laurie Santos, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Psychology, Yale University

Laurie Santos is an associate professor of psychology at Yale University and the director of Yale University’s Comparative Cognition Laboratory. Laurie received her B.A. in Psychology and Biology from Harvard University and her PhD in Psychology from Harvard.

Tiffany Shlain

Tiffany Shlain

Filmmaker

Honored by Newsweek as one of the "Women Shaping the 21st Century," Tiffany Shlain is a filmmaker, founder of the Webby Awards, and cofounder of the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences. A celebrated thinker and catalyst, Tiffany is known for her ability to illuminate complex ideas in culture, science, technology, and life through her unique films, dynamic talks, and projects.

Tami Simon

Tami Simon

Founder and Publisher, Sounds True

Tami Simon is the Founder and Publisher of Sounds True, an independent multimedia publishing company based in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1985, the company’s mission is to inspire and support personal transformation and spiritual awakening.


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