Bioethics Public Lecture w/Joshua Knobe (Yale) February 3, 2012

Joshua Knobe
Associate Professor, Program in Cognitive Science and Department of Philosophy
Yale University

'Seeing a Person as a Body'

Friday, February 3, 2012
5 Washington Place
Room 101 Auditorium

4:00-6:00 pm
Reception to follow.
RSVP required

It has sometimes been suggested that thinking of a person in terms of her body leads us to a kind of 'objectification' -- a tendency to treat that person almost as a physical object and not as a human being with a mind. I present a series of new experimental studies that point to a more complex picture. It does appear that seeing a person as a body leads to a decreased tendency to ascribe certain kinds of psychological states (self-control and planning), but the data also suggests that seeing a person as a body actually leads to an increased tendency to ascribe other kinds of states (emotion and sensation). In short, seeing a person as a body does not appear to be leading to objectification as traditionally conceived but rather to a kind of 'animalization' -- a tendency to treat a person as though she had only those parts of the mind that we ordinarily associate with animality.

Official Website: http://bioethics.as.nyu.edu/object/bioethics.events.20120203.knobe