Patrick Shin at Harvard Law School

On Tuesday, the HLS Student Association for Law and Mind Sciences (SALMS) is hosting a talk by Suffolk Law professor Patrick Shin entitled “Unconscious Bias and the Legal Concept of Discrimination.”

Professor Shin is a professor of law at Suffolk University Law School. He conducts research into the meaning and value of diversity in antidiscrimination law. He has applied psychology to real-world problems of employment discrimination law.

Professor Shin will be speaking in Austin East from 12:00 – 1:00 p.m.

Free burritos will be provided! For more information, e-mail salms@law.harvard.edu.

Ray Jackendoff at Harvard Law School

On Monday, the HLS Student Association for Law and Mind Sciences (SALMS) is hosting a talk by Tufts psychology professor Ray Jackendoff entitled “The Natural Logic of Morals and Laws.”

Ray Jackendoff received his Ph.D. in linguistics from MIT in 1969.  His research centers around the system of meaning in natural language, how it is related to the human conceptual system, and how it is expressed linguistically.  This has led him to a cognitive approach to traditional philosophical issues of inference and reference, embodied in his theory of Conceptual Semantics.  In developing this approach, he has worked on the conceptualization of space, on the relationship between language, perception, and consciousness, and, most recently, on the conceptualization of such socially grounded concepts as value, morality, fairness, and obligations.  In addition, in exploring how concepts are expressed in language, he has developed new models of the architecture of the human language faculty and its evolution.

Professor Jackendoff will be speaking in Pound 10o from 12:00 – 1:00 p.m.

Free burritos will be provided! For more information, e-mail salms@law.harvard.edu.

Register Now for the 2011 Conference

The time to register for the Fifth Law and Mind Sciences Conference, “The Psychology of Inequality,” is upon us.

The conference will be held on February 26, 2011 at Harvard Law School. To register, click on the image above or here for the online registration.

For more information about the conference, click here.

Register Now for the 2011 Conference

The Fifth Law and Mind Sciences Conference: “The Psychology of Inequality”

At this year’s conference, leading social scientists and legal scholars will present and discuss their research regarding the  psychological causes and consequences of social inequality.

The conference will be held on February 26, 2011 at Harvard Law School.  To register for the conference, click on the image above or here for the online registration.

For more information about the conference, click here.

Dr. Z. on Dr. Phil

Heroic Imagination in Action, December 9, 2010.

Situationist Contributor, Phil Zimbardo will co-host the DR. PHIL TV show, on: Thursday, Dec. 9, 2010 (for local airing times, see www.drphil.com).

This program continues an earlier show (Oct. 25, 2010) that focused on The Lucifer Effect, understanding how good people can turn evil, and centered on the issue of obedience to authority.

The new show builds upon that theme by adding demonstrations of bullying by girls in groups, and the power of group dynamics and social trust as revealed in the recent “Bling Ring” Hollywood thefts. Millions of dollars worth of celebrity jewelry and clothing were stolen by a group of young girls, as described by one guest.

The final component shifts focus to understand how “bad kids” can turn good and even act heroically. A former member of a criminal gang in Los Angeles describes his motives for joining the gang, its illegal activities, being shot at, arrested, and his final transformation. He describes going beyond just quitting the gang to work at preventing others from joining destructive gangs, and helping them escape from gang life. In a dramatic highlight, this young man says,  “I am putting my life in danger just being here (on this public show).” His actions, like those of others like him, are heroic because of the high personal costs/risks entailed in engaging in such socially-focused service.

Dr. Phil ends the show with laudatory comments about how such actions are part of what is being investigated and encouraged by the Heroic Imagination Project (HIP), encouraging his audience to visit the web site (here).

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The HIP research team is now investigating the nature of such transformations of the psychology of enmity and violence into the psychology of compassion and heroic action through detailed interviews with dozens of  “heroic, former gang members.”

For a sample of related Situationist posts, see “Situationist Phil Zimbardo Takes Over the Dr. Phil Show,” “The Devil You Know . . .,” and “From Heavens to Hells to Heroes – Part II.”

Dan Dennett – “Free Will, Responsibility, and the Brain”

For a sample of related Situationist posts, see “Dan Dennett at Harvard Law on ‘Free Will, Responsibility, and the Brain’,” “Interview with Professor Joshua Greene,” “Daniel Dennett on the Situation of our Brain,” “Dan Dennett on our Interior Situation,” “Bargh and Baumeister and the Free Will Debate,” “Bargh and Baumeister and the Free Will Debate – Part II,” “The Death of Free Will and the Rise of Cheating,” “Clarence Darrow on the Situation of Crime and Criminals,” “Person X Situation X System Dynamics,” “Situation” Trumps “Disposition” – Part I & Part II,” “The (Unconscious) Situation of our Consciousness – Part I, Part II, Part III, & Part IV” and “Coalition of the Will-less.”

Nalini Ambady at Harvard Law School

On Tuesday the HLS Student Association for Law and Mind Sciences (SALMS) is hosting a talk by Tufts psychology professor Nalini Ambady entitled “Nonverbal Behavior: Accuracy and Contagion.”

Professor Ambady is a Neubauer Faculty Fellow and professor at Tufts University.  Her research focuses on interpersonal perception and communication, particularly in relation to the accuracy of judgments, the influence of personal and social identities on cognition and performance, and the mechanisms of nonverbal and cross-cultural communication.  She has received accolades for her research into the ways that people can perceive others’ sexual identity and political affiliation from photos of their faces.

Professor Ambady will be speaking in Pound 107 from 12:00 – 1:00 p.m.

Free bagels will be provided! For more information, e-mail salms@law.harvard.edu.

Adam Kolber at Harvard Law School

On Tuesday, November 2nd, the HLS Student Association for Law and Mind Sciences (SALMS) and HLS Ethics, Law, and Biotechnology group are hosting a talk by Brooklyn Law School professor Adam Kolber entitled “Freedom of Memory.”

Professor Kolber teaches a variety of subjects at Brooklyn Law School, including bioethics and “law and the brain” courses. He is a respected expert in the field of neuroethics, and is the founder of the Neuroethics & Law Blog. Professor Kolber is frequently quoted in major news publications for his views regarding the ways that legal punishment should be influenced by modern advances in human understanding of the brain’s reactions to punishment.

Professor Kolber will be speaking in Pound 107.   Free bagels will be provided!

For more information, e-mail salms@law.harvard.edu.

Fifth Annual PLMS Conference – Save the Date

The Fifth  Conference on Law and Mind Sciences, tentatively titled “The Psychology of Inequality,” is now being planned for Febuary 26, 2011 at Harvard Law School.  More details will be announced soon.

You can learn more about our previous conferences here.

Dan Kahan at Harvard Law School

On Monday, October 18th, the HLS Student Association for Law and Mind Sciences (SALMS) and the American Constitution Society (ACS) are hosting a talk by Yale professor Dan Kahan entitled “The Laws of Cultural Cognition, and the Cultural Cognition of Law.

Professor Kahan is the Elizabeth K. Dollard Professor of Law at Yale Law School.  A graduate of Harvard Law School, Professor Kahan clerked for both for Justice Thurgood Marshall and Judge Harry T. Edwards of the District of Columbia Circuit United States Court of Appeals.

Professor Kahan is well-known for his work in the area of cultural cognition, or the study of how people assess the degree of risk in a given situation based on their culturally engrained concepts of good behavior.  He leads the Cultural Cognition Project, which researches the history and impact of this phenomenon along with its mechanistic underpinnings.  His work has had a profound impact upon criminal legal scholarship, particularly in relation to his theory that shame-based penalties should be implemented in criminal law.

Professor Kahan will be speaking in Austin North. Lunch will be provided!

For more information, e-mail salms@law.harvard.edu.

To review a collection of Situationist posts about cultural cognition, click here.

Drazen Prelect at Harvard Law

On Tuesday, October 12th, the HLS Student Association for Law and Mind Sciences (SALMS) is hosting a talk by MIT professor Drazen Prelec entitled Neuroeconomics.

Professor Prelec works in the departments of Economics and Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT.  His research and publications have explored the insights that cognitive science can offer into the ways that the human mind makes economic decisions.  His influential work has helped to found the nascent field of neuroeconomics.

Professor Drelec will be speaking in Pound 107. Free snacks will be provided!

For more information, e-mail salms@law.harvard.edu.

Like the Situationist? Tell the ABA!

The American Bar Association Journal is compiling its list of the 100 best legal blogs . . . or, blawgs, as they are referred to in the “biz.”

If you enjoy following the Situationist, consider telling the editors here.  As they explain, “Editors make the final decisions about what’s included in the Blawg 100; this isn’t a scenario in which the blawgs that receive the most amici are the ones that make the list.”

Comments are being collected until the end of the month.

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To read what others have said about The Situationist, click here.

This Year’s SALMS Speaker Series.

Mark your calendar! The list of speakers for the 2010-2011 academic year has been posted on the SALMS (Student Association for Law and Mind Sciences) website.

The current list of speakers is as follows:

• Jim Sidanius
• Daniel Dennett
• Drazen Prelec
• Dan Kahan [Situationist Contributor]
• Sam Sommers
• Nalini Ambady
• Patrick Shin
• John Jost [Situationist Contributor]

For details click here.

The Future of Embodied Cogntion

I have just returned from the fabulous Barnard Interdisciplinary Workshop on Embodiment. The three-day workshop, funded by the National Science Foundation, brought together 23 experts from across the cognitive sciences and humanities—including George Lakoff, Larry Barsalou, and Vittorio Gallese—to plan and discuss the future of the rapidly growing field.

I was lucky enough to participate as a representative from legal academia and I must say that I am more convinced than ever that embodiment research is set to revolutionize a number of disciplines both inside the mind sciences and without.

In the coming weeks, I hope to bring more new work from embodied cognition to the Situationist, so find those soft slippers, put the tea kettle on, and sit back in a comfy chair . . .

* * *

For a sample of previous Situationist posts on the topic, click on “The Embodied Situation of Metaphors” and the links it contains.

Elena Kagan’s Situation

In today’s New York Times, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Katharine Q. Seelye and Lisa W. Foderaro  have an illuminating biography of Supreme Court Nominee (and Situationist friend and supporter) Elena Kagan. Here are the opening paragraphs of that story.

* * *

She was a creature of Manhattan’s liberal, intellectual Upper West Side — a smart, witty girl who was bold enough at 13 to challenge her family’s rabbi over her bat mitzvah, cocky (or perhaps prescient) enough at 17 to pose for her high school yearbook in a judge’s robe with a gavel and a quotation from Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court justice, underneath.

She was the razor-sharp newspaper editor and history major at Princeton who examined American socialism, and the Supreme Court clerk for a legal giant, Thurgood Marshall, who nicknamed her “Shorty.” She was the reformed teenage smoker who confessed to the occasional cigar as she fought Big Tobacco for the Clinton administration, and the literature lover who reread Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” every year.

She was the opera-loving, poker-playing, glass-ceiling-shattering first woman to be dean of Harvard Law School, where she reached out to conservatives (she once held a dinner to honor Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia) and healed bitter rifts on the faculty with gestures as simple as offering professors free lunch, just to get them talking.

Elena Kagan has been all of these things, charting a careful and, some might say, calculated path — never revealing too much of herself, never going too far out on a political limb — that has led her to the spot she occupies today: the first female solicitor general of the United States, who won confirmation with the support of some important Republicans, and now, at 50, President Obama’s nominee for the United States Supreme Court.

* * *

The entire story is here.   Congratulations to Elena.

To read a sample of related Situationist posts, see “Martha Minow Named Dean of Harvard Law School,” “The Situation of Harvard Law Students” “Hanson’s Chair Lecture on Situationism,” “The News Situation of Judge Sotomayor’s Nomination,” and “The Situation of Judicial Activism.”

The State of Shareholder Power in the Situation of Citizens United

Who is speaking when a corporation talks? Can a corporation represent all of its shareholders and workers in political speech? How will corporations decide who to represent?  In “Corporate Governance Redux in the Light of Citizens United,” Robert A.G. Monks will detail  the history of corporate personhood and how this case relates to corporate governance.

* * *

Come hear Mr. Monks, shareholder activist, author, corporate governance advisor, and HLS alum, for a lunch-time discussion of the state of shareholder power after Citizens United (04/22/10).  The talk will be held in Austin West at Harvard Law School (12pm-1pm).  Lunch will be provided.

MBB Distinguished Lectures with Michael Gazzaniga

Harvard Mind, Brain & Behavior will hold its 2010 Distinguished Lecture Series this week, featuring three evening lectures with Dr. Michael Gazzaniga, psychology professor and director of the SAGE Center for the Study of Mind at the University of California Santa Barbara. All three events look interesting, and the final event has particular relevance to law and mind sciences. All events will be held in Harvard’s Yenching Auditorium, 2 Divinity Ave, Cambridge, MA.

• Tuesday, April 20, 4 to 6 pm
  Building the Parallel Distributed Brain, How Do We Know?
  From Hebb, Lashley, and Sperry, and through modern research, the basics of brain organization are reviewed at both the cellular and neurological level, including a personal history of split-brain research that all lead up to the view of a parallel and distributed brain. Post-talk commentary by Professor Albert Galaburda (Neurology / HMS).

• Wednesday, April 21, 4 to 6 pm
  Automatic Brains, Interpretive Minds
  With a massively parallel and distributed and automatic brain, how is it we believe we experience a unified conscious life? How does the sense of psychological unity become established and how does it work in the brain? Post-talk commentary by Professor Güven Güzeldere (Philosophy / FAS).

• Thursday, April 22, 4 to 6 pm
  Feeling Free in a Mechanistic World: Where the Brain Meets the Law
  The idea of determinism and mechanism rings out from every quarter of science and society. What does this mean for the concept of personal responsibility and how might ideas on the issue impact our ideas of justice and the law? Post-talk commentary by Professor Joshua Greene (Psychology / FAS).

2010 Law and Mind Sciences Conference

The 2010 Conference on Law and Mind Sciences

“Moral Biology? How should developments in mind sciences and behavioral biology alter our understanding of law and morality?”

When: Thursday, April 15, 2010, at 5:30 p.m.
Where: Harvard Law School, Austin Hall, West Classroom

Free and Open to the Public

This panel discussion will examine how developments in evolutionary biology and the mind sciences should inform law, philosophy, and economics, focusing on subjects such as punishment, responsibility, racism, addiction, and cooperation. Participants will include:

• I. Glenn Cohen
• Joshua Greene
• William Fitzpatrick
• Adina Roskies
• Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
• Thomas Scanlon

Co-sponsored by The Project on Law and Mind Sciences at Harvard Law School, The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, the Gruter Institute, the Harvard Program on Ethics and Health, and the MacArthur Law and Neuroscience Project.

More specifics regarding participants, materials, and the conference agenda can be found here.

2010 Mind Science Conference at Harvard Law School

On April 15 and 16, The Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, The Project on Law and Mind Sciences at Harvard Law School, the Harvard Program on Ethics and Health, the Gruter Institute, and the MacArthur Law and Neuroscience Project, will be holding a two-day conference entitled “Moral Biology?: What Can Biology and the Mind Sciences Teach Us about Law and Morality?”

The conference will examine what relevance developments in the mind sciences and evolutionary biology may have for moral and legal reasoning about responsibility, punishment, racism, cooperation, and addiction.

The event features a public panel open to all (taking place on Thursday April 15 at 5:30 PM at Harvard Law School) as well as several closed-door sessions.

There may be a very small number of spaces available for additional participants for the closed portions of the conference.  If you are interested in one of those spaces, please email Kathy Paras, kparas@law.harvard.edu with a sentence or two describing why the conference would be a good fit for your work and interests.  (Assuming space is available, there is no charge for attending.)

Here is the tentative agenda for the conference:

Thursday, April 15:

8:30am:  Opening remarks

9:00-10:30am: What Does Moral Biology Have to Say about Responsibility and Judgment?

Moderator: Dan Brock

Panelists:

• Nita Farahany
• Stephen Morse
• Amanda Pustilnik
• Don Braman

10:30-10:45: Break

10:45am:  Mind Sciences and Punishment

Moderator: Jon Hanson

Panelists:

• Avani Sood
• Kurt Gray
• Mark Alicke
• Fiery Cushman

12:15pm:  Lunch –  On Your Own

1:30-3:00pm:  Addiction/Intervention Paradigm

Moderator: Stephen Morse

Panelists

• Stephen Hyman
• Richard Bonnie
• Rita Goldstein

3:00-4:45pm: Discussions/Break-out, wrap up, Experimental, Experiential

5:30pm: Public Event at Harvard Law School, Austin West

Moral Biology? What Can Biology and the mind Sciences Teach Us About Law and Morality?

Moderator: I. Glenn Cohen

Panelists:

• Joshua Greene
• William Fitzpatrick
• Walter Sinnot-Armstrong
• Adina Roskies

Respondent: Tim Scanlon

7:15pm  Public Reception Austin Corridor

Friday, April 16

9:00am-10:30am: Biology and Cooperation

Moderator: Yochai Benkler

Panelists:

• Oliver Goodenough
• David Rand
• Kevin McCabe

10:30-10:50: Break

10:50-12:20pm: Mind Sciences and Racism

Moderator: Jon Hanson

Panelists:

• Nilanjana (Buju) Dasgupta
• Nalini Ambady
• Valerie Purdie-Vaughns
• Curtis Hardin

12:20pm Conference Close

Joshua Greene To Speak at Harvard Law School

On Thursday, April 1st, the HLS Student Association for Law and Mind Sciences (SALMS) and the Harvard Graduate Mind, Brain, and Behavior (MBB) Steering Committee are hosting a talk by Joshua Greene called “Moral Cognition and the Law.”

Joshua Greene is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at Harvard University. He studies emotion and reason in moral judgment using behavioral experiments, functional neuroimaging (fMRI), and other neuroscientific methods.  The goal of his research is to understand how moral judgments are shaped by automatic processes, such as emotional gut reactions, and controlled cognitive processes, such as reasoning and self-control.

The event will take place in Pound 101 at Harvard Law School, from 12:00 – 1:00 p.m.

Free Burritos! For more information, e-mail salms@law.harvard.edu.

For a sample of Situationist discussing Professor Greene’s scholarship, see “The Interior Situation of Honesty (and Dishonesty),” “Moral Psychology Primer,” “Law & the Brain,” “Pinker on the Situation of Morality,” “The Science of Morality,” and “Your Brain and Morality.”