The Crossroads of Ideas program is again teaming up with the Institute for Research in the Humanities for their five-part lecture series that examines philosophical and scientific approaches to big topics, from free will to happiness to morality and more.
What is happiness and is it important? Happiness has become a “hot” research topic among scientists, who seek to quantify it, measure its relationship to wealth, and evaluate whether individuals are capable of accurate self-assessments of their own happiness. But we might also wonder more fundamentally what happiness is. Is it a mental state, like depression? Alternatively, is it a form of well-being, such as flourishing? If one were to be put into a machine that ensured you nothing but pleasurable experiences, could the life in such a machine be correctly described as happy? Scientists and philosophers have collaborated fruitfully on happiness precisely because they ask such very different questions about it. Join us on Tuesday, February 8, at 7:00 pm for an interdisciplinary conversation. This event will take place in person and live-streaming on Zoom.
Pelin Kesebir, an Honorary Fellow and Former Assistant Scientist at the Center for Healthy Minds and Valerie Tiberius, Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Minnesota will discuss this big question in part three of our five-part series.
Crossroads of Ideas events are free and open to the public.
Crossroads of Ideas is a public lecture series held monthly on Tuesday evenings during the academic year that addresses challenging and engaging social science topics such as politics, policy issues, ethics, public perceptions, law and science and society. The series is supported by the Morgridge Institute for Research, UW–Madison and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF). The media partner for Crossroads of Ideas is The Cap Times. Funding for the “Big Questions” series comes from the Burdick-Vary Fund at the Institute for Research in the Humanities and the College of Letters & Science.
Save these dates for more “Big Questions”:
- March 8, 2022: Crossroads of Ideas: What is free will?
- Philosopher Martha Gibson and scientist Tamar Kushnir
- April 5, 2022: Crossroads of Ideas: What is morality?
- Philosopher Russ Shafer-Landau and scientist Daniel Casasanto