The CNC will be hosting 2 upcoming evening public lectures in our series, FUTURE TENSE, where world-class speakers discuss topics around themes of neuroscience, AI and how society may roll with developments in these fields. Stage discussions are followed by a gathering over drinks and snacks. Previous speakers include science fiction writers, filmmakers, scientists, philosophers and technologists. This quarter we are thrilled to host the philosopher of science, Justin Smith-Ruiu, and technology commentator and science fiction author, Cory Doctorow. Please distribute!
October 22, 7pm, Foege Auditorium, S-060.
Justin Smith-Ruiu: How to survive death: Moral personhood and the limits of the continuity-of-consciousness argument
Philosophers habitually speak of consciousness-uploading and self-uploading as if these were the same thing. In so doing they take for granted the correctness of a broadly Lockean account of personal identity, according to which I remain the same person from moment to moment, or perhaps someday from eon to eon, in virtue of the continuity of conscious memory. Woody Allen, too, was following in Locke’s footsteps when he joked: “I do not want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen, I want to live on in my apartment.” But is ongoing temporal duration from a distinct node of subjective experience really the only way to keep on being a person? Cross-cultural considerations show that many human groups make use of extremely low-tech devices for personhood-uploading —effigies, story-boards, tree-trunks—, and they hardly expect these objects, after the transfer of the deceased kin’s identity into them, to pass the Turing test or to display any observable signs of consciousness at all. “Yes, but they’re just imagining things,” you’ll say. Fair enough, but perhaps we are as well. If we are ever going to succeed at exploiting substrate-neutrality to evade or postpone mortality, it will be necessary not only to follow the right roadmap towards whole-brain emulation in effecting a high-fidelity transfer of consciousness from one substrate to another. It will also be necessary to examine our longstanding presumption, these days proliferated almost entirely without argument, that personhood and consciousness are identical. In this talk I will make a first stab at just such an examination, drawing in particular on the work of Bostrom, Chalmers, Parfit, and Charles Taylor, as well as on what I take to be salient examples of radically different conceptions of personhood from the ethnographic and historical record of human representations of reality and of our place in it.
Bio: Justin Smith-Ruiu, Ph.D, is a professor of history and philosophy of science at the Université Paris Cité and author of the substack, The Hinternet. His research interests span post-structuralism, early modern philosophy, language and cognition, the history and philosophy of biology, and the history and philosophy of anthropology. He has particularly focused on Leibniz (“Divine Machines: Leibnitz and the sciences of life”). Justin is an acute social commentator, and has published a number of broader topic books including “The Internet is Not What You Think It Is”, and “Irrationality: A history of the dark side of reason”, as well as thoughtful pieces about contemporary life and generational shifts in magazines such as Harper’s. His upcoming book, “On drugs”, describes experiences with psilocybin and his thoughts on what can be learned from these experiences for the philosopher (NYT Review of Books, Sept 21, 2025).
December 4, 7pm, Samuel E. Kelly Ethnic Cultural Center
Cory Doctorow: The Reverse-Centaur’s Guide to Criticizing AI
AI can’t do your job, but an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that fails to do your job. Being a smart AI critic requires that you distinguish between these two cases, because otherwise, you’re just gonna help that fast-talking sales person to put you on the breadline and screw over everyone who relies on your work.
Bio: Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist. He is the author of dozens of books, most recently ENSHITTIFICATION: WHY EVERYTHING SUDDENLY GOT WORSE AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT (nonfiction); and the novels PICKS AND SHOVELS and THE BEZZLE (followups to RED TEAM BLUES). Other notable books include the solarpunk novels WALKAWAY and THE LOST CAUSE; the tech policy books THE INTERNET CON and CHOKEPOINT CAPITALISM; and the internationally bestselling YA LITTLE BROTHER series; and the picture book POESY THE MONSTER SLAYER. He maintains a daily blog at Pluralistic.net. He works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is an AD White Professor at Cornell University; an MIT Media Lab Research Affiliate; a Visiting Professor of Computer Science at Open University; a Visiting Professor of Practice at the University of North Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science. He co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in Los Angeles. In 2020, he was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame. In 2022, he earned the Sir Arthur Clarke Imagination in Service to Society Awardee for lifetime achievement. In 2024, the Media Ecology Association awarded him the Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity. York University (Canada) made him an Honorary Doctor of Laws; and the Open University (UK) made him an Honorary Doctor of Computer Science.