MacArthur Fellow Patricia Churchland speaks Thursday at MSU
Contact: Karyn Brown
Photo by: submitted
STARKVILLE, Miss.--A nationally renowned California-based authority on philosophy and neuroscience will close the 2014-15 Institute for the Humanities Lecture Series at Mississippi State.
"The Brains Behind Morality" is the title of Patricia Smith Churchland's Thursday [April 16] presentation. Open to all, the program begins at 3:30 p.m. in McCool Hall's Taylor Auditorium.
The lecture series is sponsored each school year by the university's College of Arts and Sciences and its Institute for the Humanities.
A professor emerita of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, and adjunct professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, Churchland was honored in 1991 with a MacArthur Fellowship--commonly known as the "Genius Grant"--and, in 2008, the Rossi Prize for neuroscience.
A former president of both the American Philosophical Association and Society for Philosophy and Psychology, she has devoted more than three decades to the study of relationships between neuroscience and philosophy.
Will Hay, humanities institute director, said her research explores the world of scientific developments regarding consciousness, the self, free will and ethics, among other areas.
Chruchland is the author and co-author of several books. Most recent releases include "Touching a Nerve" (2013, W.W. Norton and Co.), described as an exploration "in a personal way what is both scary and appealing about understanding our brains," and "Braintrust: What neuroscience tells us about Morality" (2011, Princeton University Press), which narrows in on morality and the social brain.
"Neurophilosophy," "Brain-Wise," "The Computational Brain" and "On The Contrary" are her earlier works.
For more information on Churchland's campus visit, contact Hay at www.ih.msstate.edu or whay@history.msstate.edu.
Information about the College of Arts and Sciences, MSU's largest academic unit, is available at www.cas.msstate.edu. For other details about it or the humanities institute, contact Karyn Brown, communication director, at 662-325-7952 or kbrown@deanas.msstate.edu.
MSU, Mississippi's flagship research university, is online at www.msstate.edu, facebook.com/msstate, instagram.com/msstate and twitter.com/msstate.