The Scholl Lecture Series
The Scholl Lecture is an annual public talk supported by a generous gift from Thomas H. Scholl. Scholl graduated from Purdue in 1970 with a degree in philosophy and went on to a highly distinguished career as an entrepreneur and investor in the high-tech industry.
What, if anything, should we do, now, about catastrophic AI risk?
Seth Lazar
3 April 2024
The recent acceleration in public understanding of AI capabilities has been matched by growing concern about its potentially catastrophic, even existential risks. From presidents and industry leaders, to policy wonks and 'thought leaders', the alarm about AI risks has been sounded—and the public is taking notice. Meanwhile, five (perhaps six) of the seven most valuable companies globally are pursuing Artificial General Intelligence, the very technology viewed by many as posing such risks. This cognitive dissonance raises questions: How should we think about catastrophic AI risk? And what, if anything, should we do?
I will argue we must differentiate between risks posed by existing AI systems and their incremental improvements, and those contingent on a significant scientific breakthrough. We should prioritize the former not due to their greater stakes, but because understanding a technology is a prerequisite for mitigating its risks without incurring excessive costs. While we should not dismiss the risks posed by hypothetical future AI systems, our most prudent approach is to cultivate resilient institutions and adaptable research communities that can evolve as our knowledge expands.
Is This God's Country? Religion and Democracy in America
Robert Audi (Notre Dame)
23 March 2023
This talk opens with some indications of why many people consider America a religious nation and why most who do also view America as (at least until recent decades) a broadly Christian nation. One question this view raises is what it means for a nation to be religious. Another question is how a democracy abiding by our Constitution, which, in its first amendment, separates church and state, can adequately protect both freedom of religion, say to pray visibly in public schools, and (as some would put it) freedom from religion, say freedom from having the Pledge of Allegiance (which describes America as “under God”) serve as a normal part of certain school functions. A third question is how religious and non-religious citizens alike can function as “who they are” in civil society without creating conflicts that weaken us as a nation. No simple formula will be proposed as answering these questions, but there will be several ideas that can contribute to constructive discussion on controversial matters of widespread concern in America today. Some of these are connected with the “culture wars,” and one aim of the talk is to contribute to resources for rational discussion of divisive moral issues.
City of Idiots
Agnes Callard (University of Chicago)
14 October 2022
Attitudes of the Heart
Stephen Darwall (Yale)
10 October 2019
Blame, resentment, and guilt are much discussed by philosophers as paradigm instances of what P. F. Strawson called “reactive attitudes.” Unlike other critical responses, these attitudes have a distinctive connection to holding others (and ourselves) answerable for complying with justified demands and expectations from a second-personal perspective of implicit address. But Strawson also gave various nondeontic examples, including love, gratitude, and “hurt feelings.” In this lecture, I consider what these nondeontic examples have in common and what makes them reactive attitudes. All reactive attitudes, I argue, implicitly call for reciprocation and/or respond to a prior call. But whereas the deontic cases involve expectation, the nondeontic cases are, or respond to, implicit invitations. Deontic reactive attitudes are “attitudes of the will” in that they are implicitly addressed will-to-will. By contrast, the nondeontic attitudes I shall discuss are addressed heart-to-heart; they are (second-personal) attitudes of the heart.
Some Thoughts on Time, Totality and Transcendence
Jenann Ismael (Columbia)
17 October 2018
The problem of fatalism was around long before relativity, but gained affirmation in many peoples minds from Relativity. Relativistic theories confront us with a vision of the universe from a temporally transcendent standpoint, i.e., one that treats time as an internal parameter in the universe composed of events. The problem of determinism also had some early precedents, but received a precise expression with the provision of the Newtonian deterministic equations of motion. On the face of it, these seem like different problems: one has to do with time, the other with laws. And it seems that one can be a fatalist without being a determinist, and one can worry about determinism without being moved by the fatalist arguments. I will point out a connection between these two problems by linking determinism to totality and totality to transcendence. And I will look at what that connection can teach us about the nature of both problems.