Podcasts about playfair library hall

Baroness Onora O’Neill presents a special Gifford Lecture in Memory of Professor Susan Manning (1953-2013), entitled 'From Toleration to Freedom of Expression'. This lecture is part of the University's Gifford Lecture series. For more than a century, the Gifford Lectures have enabled scholars to advance theological and philosophical thought. Recorded on 28 October 2013 at the University of Edinburgh's Playfair Library Hall.

Professor Terry Eagleton's Gifford Lecture - The God Debate. Recorded 1 March, 2010 at the Playfair Library Hall, the University of Edinburgh. Audio version. In his lecture, Professor Eagleton asks "Why has God suddenly reappeared in intellectual debate? His lecture attempts to put these contentions in the broader political context of the so-called 'war on terror'.

The sixth in a series of Gifford Lectures by Professor Michael Gazzaniga. Recorded 22 October, 2009 at the Playfair Library Hall, the University of Edinburgh. Audio version.

The fith in a series of Gifford Lectures by Professor Michael Gazzaniga. Recorded 20 October, 2009 at the Playfair Library Hall, the University of Edinburgh. Audio version.

The fourth in a series of Gifford Lectures by Professor Michael Gazzaniga. Recorded 19 October, 2009 at the Playfair Library Hall, the University of Edinburgh. Audio version.

The third in a series of Gifford Lectures by Professor Michael Gazzaniga. Recorded 15 October, 2009 at the Playfair Library Hall, the University of Edinburgh. The interpreter is the device we humans enjoy that provides us with the capacity to see the meanings behind patterns of our emotions, behavior and thoughts. This concept is central to understanding the relationship between our brain and our strong sense of self. In a way, it is the device that liberates us from our automatic ways spelled out in Lecture 1 and 2. The interpreter constructs the sense that there is a “me” arising out of the ongoing neuronal chatter in the brain and making all of life’s moment-to-moment decisions. Our compelling sense of being a unified self armed with volition, deployable attention and self-control is the handiwork of the interpreter, for it brings coherence to a brain that is actually a vastly parallel and distributed system. This view stands in contrast to much neuroscientific theorizing or existential musing about our unified, coherent nature. In most models of brain and cognitive mechanism, one can identify, as Marvin Minsky once said, the box that makes all the decisions. Yet if modern neuroscience has taught us anything, it has taught us, as I said in Lecture 2, that our brain is a highly parallel and distributed system with literally millions of decisions being made simultaneously. There is simply no place within this sort of architecture from which a single decision system could operate. Instead, this parallel processing is producing an organism that looks like a self-motivated, morally coherent, decision-making and conscious entity. Indeed, understanding how it works will emerge from understanding the workings of the interpreter and the brain that enables it. Moreover, this understanding will allow us to rid ourselves of the homunculus problem once and for all, while, perhaps paradoxically, setting the stage for why you are to be held responsible for all of your actions.

The second in a series of Gifford Lectures by Professor Michael Gazzaniga. Recorded 13 October, 2009 at the Playfair Library Hall, the University of Edinburgh. Our brains are organised in such a fashion that very little of the processing, which is to say neural work, goes on in our conscious minds. Any simple act, such as pointing to your nose, involves forming the desire to touch your nose, planning a motor response, gathering information about the location of your nose, calculating in a flash if you want to bring attention to your nose and so on. All that information is gathered and processed and leads to the desired action, and yet little or none of it is done consciously. Even more daunting is the fact that how the brain accomplishes such a simple task is utterly beyond scientific understanding at this point in time. While textbooks are full of knowledge about the specific neurons involved - the areas in the brain that are active during such specific actions and even areas known to be active with intention to act - no one knows how it actually works.

The first in a series of Gifford Lectures by Professor Michael Gazzaniga. Recorded 12 October, 2009 at the Playfair Library Hall, the University of Edinburgh. What do we need to know about the human brain in order to discuss the weighty questions of free will, mental causation, morals, ethics, and the law? To understand anything from a biologic perspective we must place this effort in an evolutionary context, consider the nature of the organ that allows us to be asking these questions, and to the extent that we are able, determine how it works. The fundamental point that emerges out of this analysis is that much complexity is built into the brain and not just passed along as accumulated cultural behavior and knowledge from one generation to the next. It is this built-in complexity that enables us to discover the keys to how, ultimately, the mind constrains the brain and not the other way around. We will appreciate that our automatic brains are structured complex systems with particular skill sets and that ultimately our “I” story - the story of our own personal, phenomenal consciousness - is embodied in the brain’s network systems and not in outside forces compelling the brain into action."

The story behind Beethoven's masterful 'Hammerklavier' sonata, which will be performed by Rudolf Buchbinder at the Playfair Library Hall on Tuesday 10 August.

Listen to darkly complex story behind Beethoven's iconic 'Moonlight' sonata, which will be performed by Rudolf Buchbinder at the Playfair Library Hall on Sunday 9 August.

Listen to the history behind Beethoven's powerful 'Waldstein' sonata, which will be performed by Rudolf Buchbinder at the Playfair Library Hall on Tuesday 18 August.

Wonder at the tangled history of Beethoven's perplexing later piano sonatas, which will be performed in their entirety by Rudolf Buchbinder, throughout August at the Playfair Library Hall.