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Forthcoming Conference
“PERSONS AND THEIR BRAINS”
CONFERENCE REGISTRATION AND CALL FOR PAPERS:
11-14 July 2012, St Anne’s College, Oxford
Organised by the Ian Ramsey Centre, University of Oxford
www.ianramseycentre.ox.ac.uk
Email: irc.admin@theology.ox.ac.uk
Please kindly note that this is an academic conference. The conference includes
both strongly anti-theist as well as strongly theist speakers, with the aim of promoting insightful dialogue regarding
issues of common human interest.
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PLENARY SPEAKERS
Simon Blackburn
A.C. Grayling
Peter Hacker
Iain McGilchrist
David Papineau
Sally Satel
Roger Scruton
Raymond Tallis
BACKGROUND
It is now over 20 years since Churchland’s book Neurophilosophy was published, and in its wake whole disciplines have sprung into being, proudly sporting the prefix
‘neuro-’ by way of attaching themselves to Churchland’s banner. We have entered a new period in which philosophy,
among a substantial community of its practitioners, might be seen as the handmaiden of neuroscience, whose role
is to remove the obstacles that have been laid in the path of scientific advance by popular prejudice and superstitious
ways of thinking. Brain imaging techniques, which enable us to allocate mental functions to precise cortical areas,
and in some cases to establish the neural pathways through which information is processed and decisions formed,
have cast doubt on the reality of human freedom, have revised the description of reason and its place in human
nature, and caused many people to suspect the validity of the old distinctions of kind, which separated person
from animal, animal from machine and the free agent from the conditioned organism. In addition, the more we learn
about the brain and its functions, the more do people wonder whether our old ways of managing our lives and resolving
our conflicts — the ways of moral judgment, legal process and the imparting of virtue — are the best ways, and
whether there might be more direct forms of intervention that would take us more speedily, more reliably and perhaps
more kindly to the right result.
These developments appear to sit uneasily with the traditional concept of the person, a central concern of philosophy
since at least the early Middle Ages. From infancy each of us singles out persons from the rest of our environment
as recipients of love, affection, anger and forgiveness. We face them eye-to-eye and I- to-Thou, believing each
person to be a centre of self-conscious reflection who responds to reasons, who makes decisions, and whose life
forms a continuous narrative in which individual identity is maintained from moment to moment and from year to
year. Are we then justified in treating the traditional attributes of persons, such as self-identity, thought, free will and consciousness, simply as “folk
psychological” concepts to be revised in a physically reductionistic manner, or can developments
in neuroscience be interpreted within alternative philosophical frameworks? Furthermore, what are the broader implications
for new first, second and third-personal understanding in moral judgment, in the law, in religion, politics and
the arts?
The purpose of this conference is to discuss and debate these developments from a variety of perspectives, to examine
the relevance of neuroscience both to philosophy and to the other humanities of the post-Enlightenment university,
and to confront the intellectual issues that surround the emergence of what might reasonably be called a ‘neuroculture’.
REGISTRATION
All those wishing to attend the conference are invited to register via:
Oxford University online shop
http://www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk/browse/product.asp?compid=1&modid=1&catid=1256
The registration fee includes simple lunch, tea and coffee for each day.
ACCOMMODATION AND MEALS
There are two options:
(1) Book a room at St Anne’s College, Oxford, arriving Wed 11 July, departing Sunday 15 July in the morning. This
option includes the cost of all the dinners during the conference.
http://www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk/browse/product.asp?compid=1&modid=1&catid=1254
(2) Purchase individual dinners only, without accommodation.
http://www.oxforduniversitystores.co.uk/browse/product.asp?compid=1&modid=1&catid=1255
SHORT PAPERS
Short papers are also invited on topics directly relevant to the conference themes, to be delivered in parallel
sessions of 30 minutes duration (20 minutes for the paper, 10 minutes for discussion).
Those wishing to contribute a paper should submit a title, a 200 word abstract, and institutional affiliation,
by email to the Ian Ramsey Centre administrator, Sarah Retz:
irc.admin@theology.ox.ac.uk
with the subject line “Persons and their Brains Abstract.”
Closing Date for Abstract submissions: Friday 3rd February,
2012.
Notification of accepted papers will take place by the end of February 2012.
This Version: 8th December 2011
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