Student Association for Law and Mind Sciences

Video: Mind Sciences & the Election with Ryan Enos

karissa — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 20:56:55 +0000

SALMS hosted Ryan Enos at Harvard Law School on October 11, 2012, for a talk entitled “Mitt Romney Is Really, Really Good Looking: Do Attractiveness and Other Trivial Things Affect Elections?” The talk was part of the Mind Sciences & the Election series, which was cosponsored by American Constitution Society, HLS Republicans, HLS Democrats, and the Black Law Students Association. Click the link below to watch the video – enjoy!

Ryan Enos video

Video: Mind Sciences & the Election with George Marcus

karissa — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 02:20:53 +0000

SALMS hosted George Marcus at Harvard Law School on October 4, 2012, titled “Conventional Wisdoms Versus Affective Intelligence: How Elections Are Really Won and Lost.” The talk was part of the Mind Sciences & the Election series, which is cosponsored by American Constitution Society, HLS Republicans, HLS Democrats, and the Black Law Students Association. Click the link below to watch the video – enjoy!

George Marcus video

Video: Daria Roithmayr at SALMS: “The Evolution of Legal Punishment”

karissa — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 02:13:36 +0000

SALMS hosted Daria Roithmayr at Harvard Law School on April 2, 2012 for a talk titled “The Evolution of Legal Punishment.” Click the link below to watch the video – enjoy!

Daria Roithmayr video

Video: Paul Bloom at SALMS: “Do Babies Have a Sense of Morality and Justice? Is Kindness Genetic or Learned?”

karissa — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 02:10:15 +0000

SALMS hosted Paul Bloom at Harvard Law School on February 20, 2012 for a talk titled “Do Babies Have a Sense of Morality and Justice? Is Kindness Genetic or Learned?” Click the link below to watch the video – enjoy!

Paul Bloom video

SALMS Announces Fall 2012 Schedule

karissa — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 01:25:27 +0000

SALMS is excited to announce its Speakers Series slate for Fall 2012. All of the following talks will take place at noon in Austin North unless otherwise noted.

Jon Hanson, Harvard Law School, “What Is ‘Law and Mind Sciences’ and Why Does It Matter?” – Monday, Sept. 24, Austin East
George Marcus, Williams College Political Science, “Conventional Wisdoms Versus Affective Intelligence: How Elections Are Really Won and Lost” — Thursday, Oct. 4
Ryan Enos, Harvard University Government, “Mitt Romney Is Really, Really Good Looking: Do Attractiveness and Other Trivial Things Affect Elections?” — Thursday, Oct. 11
Todd Rogers, Harvard Kennedy School, “The Psychology of the Politics of Politics” — Thursday, Oct. 18
Betsy Sinclair, University of Chicago Political Science, “The Social Citizen” — Thursday, Oct. 25
Joshua Buckholtz, Harvard Psychology, “Genetics, Neuroscience, and Crime: Science Fact and Science Fiction” — Friday, Nov. 30, WCC 1010

The four October events are part of a special speaker series, Mind Sciences & the Election, cosponsored by HLS Republicans, HLS Democrats, the American Constitution Society, and the Black Law Students Association.

MBB: Dennett, Greene, & Pinker – Friday 3pm

Harvard Law School — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:37:33 +0000

The Harvard Society for Mind, Brain and Behavior presents:

A Battle of Wills:

A discussion on free will, with professors Daniel Dennett, Joshua Greene, and Steven Pinker

What is free will? Do we have it? How can we coherently speak about it? How should ideas about free will impact our ideas of moral responsibility?

Join us for a symposium on these questions and more, featuring world-renowned professors of philosophy and psychology.

FRIDAY, APRIL 27, 2012

SCIENCE CENTER HALL B

3:00 PM – 4:45 PM

** Seating will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis **

Daniel Dennett is a University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy and the co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. His work has addressed consciousness, free will, evolution, and many other topics. He is the author of Consciousness Explained, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, The Mind’s I, and Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.

Joshua Greene is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He leads the Moral Cognition Lab, a group dedicated to the study of moral judgment and decision-making that has been profiled in Discover magazine. He is also the author of the forthcoming book The Moral Brain and How to Use it.

Steven Pinker is a Harvard College Professor and Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology. He conducts research on language and cognition, writes for publications such as the New York Times and Time, and is the author of eight books, including The Language Instinct, The Blank Slate, How The Mind Works, and, most recently, The Better Angels of Our Nature.

Join our event on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/361862500517838/

MBB Annual Distinguished Lecture Series – Patricia Kuhl – April 3 and 4

Harvard Law School — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 21:16:50 +0000

Dear MBB Friends,

We hope you will join us for the MBB Distinguished Lectures next Tuesday and Wednesday! These lectures are open to everyone, so please feel free to share this announcement with your department. And please feel free to post the attached flyer.

Patricia K. Kuhl, Ph.D.

Co-Director, Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences

University of Washington, Seattle, Washington

Tuesday, April 3

The Linguistic Genius of Infants: Early Learning and Brain Plasticity

Humans’ capacity for language has puzzled scholars for centuries, from the earliest philosophers of mind, to biologists, neuroscientists, and more recently engineers and computer scientists who want machines to crack the speech code. I will describe a model of the earliest phases of language growth that addresses the nature-nurture debate by delineating the contributions of both to the acquisition of human speech. The model’s unique solution lies in understanding that infants’ computational skills are fundamentally coupled to, in fact ‘gated’ by, the social brain. The data supporting this model lead to a new view of the neurobiological critical period for language acquisition. Understanding the interaction between biology and culture in human language acquisition will provide a key to understanding the human mind.

Post-talk commentary by Professor Jesse Snedeker

Wednesday, April 4

The Infant Brain: Using Neuroscience Tools to Measure Neurolearning

Infants are born with innate biases that provide a blueprint for learning. In the domain of language, powerful learning mechanisms allow children exposed to language to absorb the culture’s linguistic code in a short period following specifiable rules. The tools of modern neuroscience allow us to track neural signatures of learning, and identify biomarkers that show promise for the early identification of developmental disabilities such as autism and dyslexia, and suggest novel interventions. I will describe how new brain and behavioral measures predict children’s future development—and describe where these measures might take us. The findings are leading to technologies that may improve our ability to learn a second language at any age.

Post-talk commentary by Professor Takao Hensch

Both lectures start at 5pm

Science Center, Hall D

Lecture by Randolph Nesse on Evolutionary Medicine – Thursday

Harvard Law School — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 03:10:29 +0000

Evolutionary Medicine at 20: Not yet Mature, but on the Way

Lecture with Randolph Nesse

THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 6:00 PM

Randolph Nesse, Director of the Evolution & Human Adaptation Program at University of Michigan, is one of the nation’s foremost researchers in the emergent field of Darwinian medicine—the application of modern evolutionary theory to the understanding health and disease. Co-author of the influential book Why We Get Sick, Dr. Nesse is a leading proponent of the idea that evolutionary biology should be taught as one of the basic sciences in medical school education.

Free and open to the public, Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street. Free parking available in the 52 Oxford Street garage.

“Memory of the Future” seminar with Daniel Schacter – March 5 at 5:30

Harvard Law School — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 00:30:07 +0000

On top of SALMS hosting Jennifer Lerner at noon tomorrow (March 5), there’s an interesting, sort of wild sounding MBB talk at 5:30:

The Harvard Society for Mind, Brain, & Behavior (HSMBB) invites you to join in its first Academic Seminar Series with

Professor Daniel Schacter

Academic Seminar: “Memory of the Future”

Monday, March 5th (5:30-6:30pm)
Sever 109

“Memory is typically viewed as a process that is concerned with the past. One function of memory that has been largely overlooked until recently is its role in allowing individuals to imagine, envisage, or simulate possible future events. However, a rapidly growing number of recent studies show that imagining possible future events depends on much of the same cognitive and neural machinery as does remembering past events. The close linkage between remembering the past and imagining the future has potentially important implications for understanding the nature and function of memory that will be considered in this talk.” — Professor Schacter

Come learn about the complex nature of memory, get to know the leading researcher on memory, and enjoy some amazing food!

Hope to see you there!

Best,
Harvard Society of Mind, Brain, & Behavior (HSMBB)

William James Lecture Series: Ned Block – four talks

Harvard Law School — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 20:05:12 +0000

From Sean Kelly:

Dear All,

I am pleased to announce the resurrection of the William James Lectures, which will be given this year in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard for the first time since the 1980s. Our distinguished William James Lecturer during the spring semester is Visiting Professor Ned Block (NYU). Professor Block’s public lectures for the series will cover topics related to “Attention, Perception, and Consciousness.” In addition, Prof. Block is co-teaching Phil 157x, “Modularity: Proseminar,” with Susanna Siegel.

The William James Lectures comprise four public talks, and four smaller discussions. Each talk will be held in Emerson Hall, room 305 from 4-6 and followed by a reception in the Bechtel Room beginning at 6. At 7 pm, Professor Block will lead a discussion with graduate students. The discussion will last for about an hour. Refreshments will be available.

The lectures are as follows:

Thursday, February 23
Lecture 1: How empirical facts about attention transform traditional philosophical debates about the nature of perception.

Thursday, March 1
Lecture 2: Rich perception, sparse cognition

Thursday, March 8
Lecture 3: Consciousness, access and accessibility

Tuesday, March 20
Lecture 4: Is conscious perception more fine grained than attention and perceptual belief?

Please join me in welcoming Ned to the department, and in attending what I’m sure will be a thought-provoking and exciting set of talks.

Best,

Sean Kelly