The Committee on Science Studies provides a space for scholars to generate critical crosstalk on such themes. Seminar participants exchange ideas, share work in progress, and forge professional ties across disciplinary lines that rarely get crossed.

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2015–2016 Seminar: Animals, Humans, and Machines

Much research on mind and behavior focuses on human beings, but many have recognized that there is great value in studying other kinds of beings both as entities of interest in their own right, or to gain perspective on human minds.  This includes the study of non-human animals, as well as new kinds of agency that are emerging through technology.  In this seminar, we will focus on issues pertaining to different kinds of minds.

The seminar will address the following:

• Cognitive ethology
• Animal consciousness
• Signaling behavior
• Human/animal relations
• Comparative psychology
• Human uniqueness
• Machine intelligence
• Transhuman minds
• Attitudes towards animals and machines
• Animal research