Workshop in Law, Philosophy, and Political Theory
Spring Semester 2024 – Cross-Sectional Course: Law 210.2B, Political Science 211, & Philosophy 290-9
All sessions for Spring 2024 will be held in person in room 141 Law Building on Fridays from 12:10 pm-2:00 pm (until 3:00 pm for enrolled students only). Papers for upcoming talks are available to download in the table below. Alternatively, copies of papers may be requested by contacting Jennifer McBride at jrmcbride@berkeley.edu.
The full Spring 2024 workshop schedule is available for download here.
Course Description:
A workshop for presenting and discussing work in progress in moral, political, and legal theory. The central aim is to provide an opportunity for students to engage with philosophers, political theorists, and legal scholars working on normative questions. Another aim is to bring together people from different disciplines who have strong normative interests or who speak to issues of potential interest to philosophers and political theorists.
The theme for the Spring 2024 workshop is “Intelligence: Human, Animal, Artificial,” and we will host scholars working in Philosophy, Biology, Psychology, Law, and Engineering. Our underlying concern will be the normative implications of different ideas of what intelligence is and can do.
This semester the workshop is co-taught by Christopher Kutz and Josh Cohen.
Format: for the first two hours, a student will lead off with a 15-minute comment on the presenter’s paper and the presenter will have 5-10 minutes to respond before we open up the discussion to the group. The first two hours will be open to non-enrolled students and faculty. For the third hour, the guest presenter will continue the discussion with students enrolled in the course. Enrolled students must serve as a discussant for at least one presenter’s work in progress and write three short response papers as well as a final paper of 15-20 pages.
The course is cross-listed with the Philosophy and Political Science Departments.
Zoom is available for those who cannot attend in person.
Zoom link to join: https://berkeley.zoom.us/j/93865200649(opens in a new tab)
| Jan. 12 |
Introduction (Enrolled Students Only) |
Instructors: Professor Josh Cohen joshua_cohen@apple.com |
| Jan. 19 | Ruth Chang(opens in a new tab), Philosophy, Oxford University, Weinstein Fellow |
Does AI Design Rest on a Mistake? |
| Jan. 26 | Jessica Riskin(opens in a new tab), History of Science, Stanford University & Marcus Feldman(opens in a new tab), Biology, Stanford University |
Intelligence versus Reductionism: Why Biology is Not Destiny A Sort of Buzzing Inside My Head |
| Feb. 2 | Melanie Mitchell(opens in a new tab), Cognitive Science, Santa Fe Institute |
The Debate Over Understanding in AI’s Large Language Models Why AI is Harder Than We Think |
| Feb. 9 | Alison Gopnik(opens in a new tab), Psychology, University of California, Berkeley |
Transmission Versus Truth, Imitation Versus Innovation: What Children Can Do That Large Language and Language-and-Vision Models Cannot (Yet) |
| Feb. 16 | Josh Tenenbaum(opens in a new tab), Cognitive Science, MIT |
Reverse-Engineering the Self Background Reading: From Word Models to World Models (suggested pages 1-18) |
| Feb. 23 | Michael Tomasello(opens in a new tab), Psychology & Neuroscience, Duke University |
How to Build a Normative Creature |
| Mar. 1 |
Yoshua Bengio(opens in a new tab), Cognitive Science, Université de Montréal (Please note Professor Bengio will be participating via Zoom) |
Discussion Title: Subjective Experience as a Side Effect and Implications for AI Rights and AI Safety Papers: Subjective Experience, AI Consciousness and Associated Risks Sources of Richness and Ineffability for Phenomenally Conscious States |
| Mar. 8 | Sydney Levine(opens in a new tab), Psychology, Research Scientist, Allen Institute |
Resource-Rational Contractualism: A Triple Theory of Moral Cognition |
| Mar. 15 | Deborah Hellman(opens in a new tab), Law, University of Virginia |
Algorithmic Fairness Suggested Background Reading: The Algorithmic Leviathan: Arbitrariness, Fairness, and Opportunity in Algorithmic Decision-Making Systems |
| Mar. 22 |
Richard Tuck(opens in a new tab), Government, Harvard University, Weinstein Fellow |
Hobbes and Weber on the Jury |
| Mar. 29 |
Spring Break – No Workshop |
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| Apr. 5 | Terrence Deacon(opens in a new tab), Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley | On Human (Symbolic) Nature: How the Word Became Flesh |
| Apr. 12 | Jan Engelmann(opens in a new tab), Psychology, University of California, Berkeley |
The Phylogenetic and Ontogenetic Origins of Evidence-Responsiveness |
| Apr. 19 | Closing Session / Enrolled Students Only / No Guest Speaker | |