A ≠ B → Taste & Discernment March 23rd, 2024 at 2:30PM Future Event Watch the video » Where life begins to distinguish the edible, the nutritious, the appealing, from the insipid, the poisonous, and the disgusting; this is where taste and discernment come into being. From a bag of Cheetos to Michelin 3-star fare we cover a lot of ground, yet financial means alone fails to account fully for the popularity of both ends of this culinary spectrum.… read more »
Discovering the What and the Wherefore: Scents and Sensibility April 13th, 2024 at 2:30PM EST Future Event As the first sense to engage the world “remotely”, beyond the boundary of an organism’s body, olfaction delivers news from “over there”. But whereas it adumbrates a space beyond, what kind of space, what sort of world does it proffer? Smell engages the world as a series of pathways laid out on gradients.… read more »
Striking a Chord: Hearing and Space April 27th, 2024 at 2:30PM Future Event Vibration sense is one component of touch. Refinements of this sense, and in some animals the emission of vibration – typically from the vocal cords – has evolved to echolocation, to clicks, grunts, roars and to speech. The vibration of one special membrane, the ear drum, creates that wonderful interface that enables us to appreciate and locate sounds in 3-dimensional space and to discern what the source of that sound is.… read more »
Synthetic Consciousness: Seeing and Believing May 11th, 2024 at 2:30PM EST Future Event “The Aleph was probably two to three centimeters in diameter, but universal space was contained inside it . . .” – JL Borges Our eyes move. They rove and they direct attention. Indeed, vision and our ability to focus attention more generally are intimately intertwined.… read more »