Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University. The author of Know How, Languages in Context, Knowledge and Practical Interests and How Propaganda Works also writes for publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Review, The Guardian and Project Syndicate. He is currently working with David Beaver on the forthcoming book Politics of Language: An Essay in Non-Ideal Theory, and during his stay as IWM Visiting Fellow, on Fascism as a Social Kind together with Susanna Siegel.

Marci Shore, Associate Professor at the Department of History at Yale University and IWM Visiting Fellow, will introduce the speaker and moderate the discussion.

Today, however, such "physical courage", as it is called, tends to be depreciated in favor of "moral courage", defined by Sidgwick as a readiness to “face the pains and dangers of social disapproval in the performance of what one believes to be one’s duty”.

Why did this shift occur, and what is its significance for the future of courage? These were the questions Skidelsky addressed in his talk.

Edward Skidelsky, University of Exeter, co-author of How Much is Enough? Money and the Good Life.

Commentator: Aner Barzilay, independent researcher and Visiting Fellow at the IWM.

Introduction: Ludger Hagedorn, Permanent Fellow at the IWM.

As we move into a world in which algorithms, robots, and avatars play an ever-increasing role, we need to better understand the nature of AI and its implications for human agency. Helga Nowotny argues that at the heart of our trust in AI lies a paradox: we leverage AI to increase control over the future and uncertainty, while at the same time the performativity of AI, the power it has to make us act in the ways it predicts, reduces our agency over the future.

These developments also challenge the narrative of progress, which played such a central role in modernity and is based on the hubris of total control. We are now moving into an era where this control is limited as AI monitors our actions, posing the threat of surveillance, but also offering the opportunity to reappropriate control and transform it into care.

Helga Nowotny is one of the most prominent scholars in science studies worldwide, an area that counted Yehuda Elkana as one of its pioneers and promoters. For several decades Helga Nowotny has been one of the most influential institution builders in European higher education and research. She has worked with European intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations and bodies, such as the European Science Foundation, governmental agencies in several countries of East and West as well as independent organizations and committees of scholars. She has taken part in or directly led, the design and establishment of innovative new institutions, such as the European Research Council, Collegium Budapest or Central European University.

The Yehuda Elkana Fellow’s activities are held in partnership with Bard College through the Open Society University Network and supported by a grant from the Open Society Foundations.

The Center’s work is guided by social philosophy and oriented towards the project of a critical theory of society. It also draws from the specific resources the humanities have to offer. “Democracy” is then not only understood as a form of government, nor is “capitalism” understood as a mere economic formation. Instead, both are treated in a broad sense as a complex ensemble of social institutions and practices or as socio-cultural life forms.

Based on the programme of the early Critical Theory, the task of the Center can be described as follows: By giving society a space for reflection and by fathoming possible courses of action, the analysis of crises is the “theoretical side of the practical process of emancipation.”

Iyad Rahwan is director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, where he founded and leads the Center for Humans and Machines. He is also an honorary professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Technische Universität Berlin. Until June 2020, he was an Associate Professor of Media Arts & Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Rahwan holds a PhD in Information Systems (Artificial Intelligence) from the University of Melbourne, Australia. His work lies at the intersection of computer science and human behavior, with a focus on collective intelligence, large-scale cooperation, and the societal impact of artificial intelligence and social media. In addition to various journal articles, Iyad Rahwan is co-author of the study Reply to: Life and death decisions of autonomous vehicles and together with Jean-François Bonnefon he published the paper Machine Thinking, Fast and Slow (both 2020).

The event will be held in English.

Aaron Ben-Ze'ev is professor of philosophy at the University of Haifa (Israel), of which he was president for many years; research in social philosophy, perception theory, and everyday psychology; numerous publications on the historical and contemporary politics of emotions, including "Love Online: Emotions on the Internet" (2004), "The Logic of Emotions. A Critique of Emotional Intelligence" (2009), "The Arc of Love. How Our Romantic Lives Change over Time" (2019).

Die Einwahldaten werden nach der Anmeldung übermittelt. Oxford University Press 2020 Veranstalter: Forschungsverbund "Normative Ordnungen" der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Leibniz-Institut für Medienforschung | Hans-Bredow-Institut, Sustainable Computing Lab, WU Wien, Humboldt-Institut für Internet und Gesellschaft (HIIG) und Oxford University Press

The goal of this talk is not to claim that plants are intelligent or that plant sentience (if it exists) is of the same kind as human consciousness. Neither taking for granted that plants are intelligent and/or sentient, nor dismissing the possibility that they are, I shall argue that the time is ripe to cast the problem in a scientifically tractable manner. The goal is to invite constructive debate, and to scrutinize established objections and thinking vetoes to better understand the challenges of plant science. Paco Calvo is a Professor of Philosophy of Science, and Principal Investigator of MINTLab (Minimal Intelligence Lab) at the University of Murcia (Spain). He specialized in the philosophy of cognitive science courtesy of a Fulbright scholarship in the late 1990s (University of California, San Diego), and received a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Glasgow (UK) in 2000. His research interests range broadly within the cognitive sciences, with special emphasis on ecological psychology, embodied cognitive science, and plant intelligence.

Jan Sowa is an Associate Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw. From January to June 2020 he is a Visiting Fellow at the IWM.

Mit: Dr. Linda Monsees (Autorin, Postdoktorandin am Exzellenzcluster "Die Herausbildung normativer Ordnungen"), Prof. Peter Burgess (Professor and Chair of Geopolitics of Risk at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris) und Prof. Dr. Nicole Deitelhoff (Direktorin des Leibniz-Instituts Hessische Stiftung Friedens- und Konfliktforschung, Principal Investigator des Exzellenzclusters "Die Herausbildung normativer Ordnungen", Professorin für Internationale Beziehungen und Theorien globaler Ordnungen der Goethe-Universität)

William J. Burns is president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of The Back Channel: A Memoir of American Diplomacy and the Case for its Renewal (Random House, 2019). He retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in 2014 after a thirty-three-year diplomatic career. He holds the highest rank in the Foreign Service, career ambassador, and is only the second serving career diplomat in history to become deputy secretary of state. Prior to his tenure as deputy secretary, Ambassador Burns served from 2008 to 2011 as undersecretary for political affairs. He was ambassador to Russia from 2005 to 2008, assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs from 2001 to 2005, and ambassador to Jordan from 1998 to 2001. Ambassador Burns earned a bachelor’s degree in history from La Salle University and master’s and doctoral degrees in international relations from Oxford University, where he studied as a Marshall Scholar. He and his wife, Lisa, have two daughters.