Philosophy lecturer to appear alongside thrilling speaker line up at sell-out philosophy and arts festival
Dr Mazviita Chirimuuta will join a host of scholars, musicians and comedians at the HowTheLightGetsIn festival this weekend.
Established in 2008 and organised by the Institute of Art and Ideas, HowTheLightGetsIn is a philosophy and music festival that aims to "to get philosophy out of the academy and into people's lives" by bringing together philosophers, writers, academics, comedians and musicians for a festival of debate, talks, music, workshops, and late night parties.
Dr Chirimuuta whose research interests include Philosophy of computational neuroscience, Ernst Cassirer and the history of biology, Scientific realism and scientific understanding, will take part in two sessions over the three day event.
The Philosophy Salon, is described as a freewheeling roundtable discussion kicked off by the world’s leading thinkers on the biggest ideas. Mazviita will be joined by psychiatrist, writer, and former Oxford literary scholar Iain McGilchrist and writer, musician and philosopher Gary Lachman for a deep dive into the puzzle consciousness of the human brain and inner experience.
On Sunday morning Dr Chirimuuta, Joscha Bach, a cognitive scientist and AI researcher for MIT Media Lab and the Harvard Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, and Cory Doctorow, renowned science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger, will discuss The AI Enigma examining whether AI intelligence will replace human intelligence or if this is an apocalyptic fantasy and the AI era one of human abundance and prosperity?
I’m grateful to do research in an area of philosophy which very many other people are curious about. Iain McGilchrist is, like me, a neuroscientist turned philosopher and I often hear his work mentioned in conversations outside academia. I’ve been looking forward to joining in a conversation with him, and also with Joscha Bach where I get to play the role of the AI sceptic.