The Center for Ethics and Values holds regular public forums focusing on significant ethics issues faced by researchers across the university, by students, and more broadly by society.
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Neuroscience, Freewill, and Moral Responsibility
February 27, 7 – 8:30 pm
UMBC Fine Arts Recital Hall
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Preregistration is recommended, but not required
Adina Roskies, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, with an appointment in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, UC Santa Barbara
Adina Roskies received a Ph.D from the University of California, San Diego in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science in 1995, a Ph.D. from MIT in philosophy in 2004, and an M.S.L. from Yale Law School in 2014. Prior to her work in philosophy she held a postdoctoral fellowship in cognitive neuroimaging at Washington University with Steven Petersen and Marcus Raichle, and from 1997-1999 was Senior Editor of the neuroscience journal Neuron. She taught at Dartmouth College from 2004-2023 and headed the Cognitive Science program there. Dr. Roskies has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Stanton Prize from the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, The Neuroethics Prize from the Italian Society of Neuroethics, a Mellon New Directions fellowship, and fellowships from the Princeton Center for Human Values and the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Philosophy of Science. Recent grants include awards from the NIH BRAIN Initiative and the Templeton Foundation. Dr. Roskies’ research interests lie at the intersection of philosophy and neuroscience, and include philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and ethics. She has coauthored a book with Stephen Morse, A Primer on Criminal Law and Neuroscience.
Aaron Schurger, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology and the Brain Institute, Chapman University
Aaron Schurger completed his undergraduate studies in computer science at Indiana University and then worked as a software consultant before going on to earn his PhD in psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University under the guidance of Jonathan D. Cohen and Anne Treisman. After that he joined the research team of Stanislas Dehaene at the Neurospin research center as a post-doc, and then as a senior researcher working with Olaf Blanke and José del R Millán at the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland. He went on to join the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM), as principal investigator based at the Neurospin research center near Paris. He is currently assistant professor in the Department of Psychology and the Brain Institute at Chapman University.
Schurger’s research focuses on the neural signatures of subjective experience and the neural antecedents of self-initiated movement. In 2013 Schurger was awarded the William James Prize from the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC) and in 2015 was awarded the BMI-Kaloy prize from the Kaloy Foundation for his work on the influence of spontaneous fluctuations in brain activity on self-initiated movement. In 2014 Schurger was awarded a Starting Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) to investigate spontaneous voluntary movement : how decisions-to-act emerge in the brain in the absence of an external imperative. Schurger’s work on conscious perception has focused on how the formation of stable patterns of brain activity might play a role in consolidating and transmitting neural information and might serve as a signature of conscious perception. Schurger uses a variety of techniques in his research including behavioral psychophysics, neuroimaging, computational modeling, machine learning, and brain-computer interfaces.
Moderated by Steve Yalowitz
Associate Professor of Philosophy, UMBC
Many thanks to our cosponsors: College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences; Dresher Center for the Humanities; Center for Social Science Scholarship; Department of Biology; Human Context of Science and Technology Program.
The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
Kathy Baxter, Principal Architect of Ethical AI Practice at Salesforce
As principal architect of ethical AI practice at Salesforce, Kathy develops research-informed best practice to educate Salesforce employees, customers, and the industry on the development of responsible AI. She collaborates and partners with external AI and ethics experts to continuously evolve Salesforce policies, practices, and products. Prior to Salesforce, she worked at Google, eBay, and Oracle in User Experience Research. She received her MS in Engineering Psychology and BS in Applied Psychology from the Georgia Institute of Technology. The second edition of her book, “Understanding your users,” was published in May 2015. You can read about her current research at einstein.ai/ethics.
David Danks, Professor of Data Science, Philosophy, & Policy, UC San Diego
One part of David Danks’ research examines the ethical, psychological, and policy issues around AI and robotics across multiple sectors. He also develops novel AI systems and computational cognitive models. Danks currently serves on multiple advisory boards, including the National AI Advisory Committee.
Gabriella Waters, Director of Operations and Director of the Cognitive and Neurodiversity AI Lab (CoNA) at the Center for Equitable AI & Machine Learning Systems, Morgan State University
Gabriella Waters is an artificial intelligence and machine learning researcher. She’s the Director of Operations and the Director of the Cognitive and Neurodiversity AI Lab (CoNA) at the Center for Equitable AI & Machine Learning Systems at Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD. She is a research associate at NIST in the AI Innovation Lab, where she leads AI testing and evaluation across three teams, and also serves as the Principal AI Scientist at the Propel Center, where she is also a professor of Culturally Relevant AI/ML Systems.
She is passionate about increasing the diversity of thought around technology and focuses on interdisciplinary collaborations to drive innovation, equity, explainability, transparency, and ethics in the development and application of AI tools. In her research, Gabriella is interested in studying the intersections between human neurobiology & learning, quantifying ethics & equity in AI/ML systems, neuro-symbolic architectures, and intelligent systems that make use of those foundations for improved human-computer synergy. She develops technology innovations, with an emphasis on support for neurodiverse populations.
Moderated by Blake Francis
Assistant Professor of Philosophy & Director of the Human Context of Science and Technology, UMBC
Many thanks to our cosponsors: College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences; Dresher Center for the Humanities; Center for Social Science Scholarship; Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering; Human Context of Science and Technology Program.
Existential Catastrophe and the Love of Humanity
The Evelyn Barker Memorial Lecture
May 8, 7 – 8:30 pm
UMBC Fine Arts Recital Hall
This event is part of the Dresher Center’s Humanities Forum
Click Here to Preregister
Preregistration is recommended, but not required
Samuel Scheffler, University Professor of Philosophy and Law, New York University
Samuel Scheffler works primarily in the areas of moral and political philosophy and the theory of value. His writings have addressed central questions in ethical theory, and he has also written on topics as diverse as equality, nationalism and cosmopolitanism, toleration, terrorism, immigration, tradition, and the moral significance of personal relationships. He is the author of seven books: The Rejection of Consequentialism, Human Morality, Boundaries and Allegiances, Equality and Tradition, Death and the Afterlife (Niko Kolodny ed.), Why Worry about Future Generations?, and, most recently, One Life to Lead: The Mysteries of Time and the Goods of Attachment.
Many thanks to our cosponsors: Dresher Center for the Humanities; Department of Geography and Environmental Systems; Human Context of Science and Technology Program.