PULLMAN – Daniel C. Dennett, Austin B. Fletcher professor of phosophy and co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, will deliver WSU’s annual Potter Memorial Lecture and Philip C. Holland Lecture as a joint event at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 11, in Todd Auditorium.
This event is free and open to the public.
Dennett will present “From Animal to Person: How Cultural Evolution Builds Human Minds.”
Dennett’s interdisciplinary study of the mind and intelligence connects philosophy with the fields of psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, anthropology, computer science and biology in a pursuit to answer questions about human essence and origin.
The author of “Breaking the Spell” (2006), “Freedom Evolves” (2003) and “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea” (1995), Dennett has received numerous awards for his scholarship including two Guggenheim fellowships, a Fulbright fellowship and a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavioral Science. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1987.
The Potter Memorial Lecture is sponsored by the WSU Department of Philosophy and has been presented by such prominent philosophers as Simon Blackburn, Noam Chomsky, Patricia Smith Churchland, Antony Flew, Harry Frankfurt, Huston Smith, Bas van Fraassen, Gregory Vlastos and Bernard Williams.
A live videoconference of this presentation on the Riverpoint Campus in the Academic Center room 20 at 600 N Riverpoint Blvd., Spokane.
The annual Philip C. Holland Lecture is sponsored by the WSU Office of the Provost and funded through an endowment established in the will of Ernest O. Holland, president of Washington State College from 1916 to 1944.
