Fragments to Agents: Subjective Materialism & Complex Systems w/Michael Abramson

We are pleased to have a special presenter who needs no introduction to our group: a highly respected member of our community, Michael Abramson. For those who don't know, Michael has spent a career modeling and analyzing systems at different levels, including working on projects for NASA. In this special event, he will present his ideas on what he calls subjective materialism, a view that treats subjective experience as central while also trying to reconcile it with the existence of objective reality. Taking Russellian monism seriously as a starting point, the talk will explore how this framework might help connect several major themes, including self-organization, evolution, consciousness, and knowledge.

In his own words:
"My area of expertise is system modeling and simulation. The folks like me are usually interested in systems' behavior and not in their feelings. We can say sometimes that a particle "feels" the force, but only metaphorically. Yet we know that at least some systems, such as humans and animals, really feel something, and for us this subjective experience seems very real. How to reconcile this reality with the reality of physical and chemical processes in our brains? This seems so difficult to do that this is known as "The Hard Problem of Consciousness." It looks like physics just doesn't have a place for something like subjective experience. Or does it?

In this talk I'm going to discuss a radical idea (which I'd call "subjective materialism") that can make the hard problem of consciousness almost trivial, but may also have profound implications for how we see the world and ourselves, how we trust science and other people, and what kind of moral choices we have."

Join us for the talk and discussion:
This event will count as a proper chapter in our ongoing "Fragments to Agents" series, but we welcome newcomers along with veterans of the series.

I encourage all to attend with an open mind, and the curiosity to ask the big questions that too often go ignored.