Portraits from Series II of ‘A First Brush with Philosophy’
About this event
Is it right to save your friend over a stranger? If the bedrock of morality is impartiality and love is essential partial (and favouring) – is Love immoral? When you are dreaming are you also sleeping? What if you are lucidly dreaming – aware that you are in a dreamworld and communicating with a sleep scientist in the ‘real’ world – are you dreaming and awake? Solve the puzzles with an expert guide – book your seat today.
How to participate (and get your portrait painted):
(1) Choose one of two puzzles ‘Is Love Moral’ or ‘Awake or Dreaming?’
(2) Sit back and relax while we map you to your perfect expert and portrait artist.
(3) Come to Bush House, read a 5 minute primer and then meet your expert to unpack the puzzle for 15 minutes….while your artist captures your a-ha moment.
What is ‘euphoria’ and, perhaps more intriguingly, what is it for? On one account it is a sense of perfect harmony, individuality, and purity, accompanied by a feeling of extreme wellbeing that connects us to the heavenly realm. On another, it’s an exquisite dissimulation of the self.
But what does this really mean and how might the paintings in the National Gallery help us understand it and its relevance to our lives today? And how are artists representing euphoria in contemporary work?
Philosopher, journalist and the author of over 20 books Julian Baggini is joined by Joachim Aufderheide, Reader in Philosophy, King’s College London; Vanessa Brassey, co-director of the Centre for Philosophy and Art; Siobhán Jolley, the Ahmanson Fellow in Religion and Art at the National Gallery; and artist Sikelela Owen to debate these questions.
Joachim Aufderheide is a Reader in the Philosophy Department at King’s College London. He specialises in ancient Greek philosophy, but has a serious side-interest in Buddhist philosophy. Two questions in particular have held his attention: What role does pleasure play in a good life? And what contribution does contemplation make to a life lived well? He has published on Plato’s and Aristotle’s answers to these questions, but also enjoys tracing them through the history of philosophy.
Dr Julian Baggini is the author, co-author or editor of over 20 books including ‘The Godless Gospel’, ‘How The World Thinks’, ‘The Virtues of the Table’ and ‘The Ego Trick’ (all Granta), ‘The Edge of Reason’ (Yale University Press) and, most recently, ‘The Great Guide: What David Hume Can Teach Us about Being Human and Living Well’ (Princeton University Press). He has been Academic Director of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, and is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Kent.
Vanessa Brassey is co-Director of the Centre for Philosophy and Art at Kings College London. The Centre is a major multi-disciplinary initiative whose aim is to bring together academics, artists, curators and gallerists to explore the connections between philosophy, theory and the visual arts. As well as an academic philosopher, she is a figurative painter whose work explores emotion and perception.
Siobhán Jolley is the Ahmanson Fellow in Religion and Art at the National Gallery. She completed her PhD at the University of Manchester in 2021. Her broad research interests include the work of female artists, the reception of biblical women and the New Testament, and feminist approaches. She has taught at the University of Manchester, Liverpool Hope University and Cliff College in Religions and Theology and Art History and Cultural Practices.
Sikelela Owen is an artist who lives and works in London. Her work is made up predominately of loose figure paintings, drawings, and prints of friends, family, and people of interest. She holds a PG Diploma from the Royal Academy Schools and her work was featured in the 2015 Thames and Hudson publication ‘100 Painters of Tomorrow’. Owen has exhibited nationally and internationally, was an Abbey Fellow at the British School at Rome in 2019 and she has worked with the charity Hospital Rooms.
Actor Lloyd Owen (Elendil in the The Rings of Power, now streaming on Amazon Prime) and author Andy West will be testing their philosophical intuitions with Maria Alvarez and Adrian Alsmith … and you are invited to watch, listen, and capture their a-ha moments (with a free drawing lesson from celebrated portrait artist Robin Lee Hall).
Ticket are free (but limited) and include a starter drawing materials pack. Open to all students. Book your tickets here
About ‘A Celebrity Brush with Philosophy’
Join us to have a go at capturing a portrait of our famous sitters in conversation – suitable for the total novice (and the expert) in both portraits and philosophy.
Our celebs will be puzzling over whether love is moral, and how we can know whether we’re awake or dreaming in our inaugural ” A First Celebrity Brush with Philosophy“. We are delighted to welcome Lloyd Owen (starring in Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, now streaming on Amazon Prime) in discussion with Professor Maria Alvarez to unpick some puzzles about love, the slip between sleep and wakefulness, and his interest in philosophy while Robin Lee Hall (Royal Society of Portrait Artists) helps you capture his a-ha moment. We are also delighted to welcome Andy West (break-out author of The Life Inside) talking about the his experience teaching philosophy in prisons, the links between love and morality, and why we’re not in the Matrix after all, in discussion with Dr Adrian Alsmith while Robin continues to guide us to draw out their thoughts…. 30 places available. Bring your drawing materials (paper, pencils and/or charcoal)
More about our Celebrities Andy West is the author of The life Inside: A Memoir of Prison, Family and Philosophy (Picador 2022). His writing has been published in The Guardian, Aeon, 3AM Magazine, Huck and Litro He is philosopher in residence at HMP Brixton in London.
Lloyd Owen is an actor, pond swimmer, intermittent cyclist and sometimes get paid for shouting in the evenings. He is currently starring as Elendil in the The Rings of Power, now streaming on Amazon Prime. This event is a collaboration between Philosophy at King’s College London, The Centre for Philosophy and Arts (based at King’s College London), and Culture @ King’s College London. With thanks for the generous support offered by Lloyd Owen and Andy West.
Many visitors strolling around the National Gallery savour the washed evening light, pinkly flowering across the still water in Monet’s masterpiece Water Lilies in Setting Sun. Some linger just a bit longer…and unleash something deeper from that pond. A sense of regret…
Regrets may be painful or bittersweet. They can be ethically loaded or merely a question of ‘what if?’. But above all they can be understood as a mix of reminiscence and grief over things that we have done or have failed to do.
Speakers include Vanessa Brassey, lecturer and co-director of the Centre for Philosophy and Art, Andy West, author of ‘The Life Inside: A Memoir of Prison, Family and Philosophy’, author and arts journalist Chloë Ashby, and Sacha Golob, Reader in Philosophy, King’s College London.
Colette Olive, PhD Candidate and Administrator for the centre for Philosophy and Art . (And occasional ‘ClapperBoarder’.)
Making the Films at The National Gallery
Getting to visit the National Gallery after hours felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity. I felt like I was having a more personal encounter with the paintings. As a member of staff accompanying us put it, the paintings felt more present. The motion sensor lights would periodically go off and we needed to do a lot of dancing to keep them on! The inconsistent lighting made the paintings feel more dynamic. Watching Vanessa and Sacha bring out elements in the paintings I’ve never noticed before gave me a new perspective on the works. join us at our upcoming event ‘The Pleasures of Regret‘ learn more about these paintings too!
Mathilde Victoria Prietzel Nielsen (she/her)President of King’s College London Philosophy Society Undergraduate at King’s College London Department of Philosophy
Mathilde stars with the crew in the adspot for ‘The Pleasures of Regret’
We were summoned at the Prêt across the National Gallery to meet each other, get fuel, a run-through of the plan, and role assignments. I was to be the checker, that is, to keep track of which shots we had done and which we hadn’t (this was not done sequentially!). Other roles included clapper (the wooden board, not hands), extra set of ears, extra set of eyes, prompter/stylist, equipment gather-carrier-set-upper. Once the roles had been assigned we went to the gallery to be let into the gloriously silent halls to get our badges (so as to not get hand-cuffed for wandering the halls at night) before going through the galleries to our first shot, and I must say: Monet, Picasso, and the rest of the gang makes a whole other experience when not diffused by the usual museum buzz.
Though not required, you intuitively lower your eyes, widen your gaze, and raise eyebrows to communicate to and agree with the others that this is not the usual museum experience – it is of course far better.
That is, it is better when you are together with your crew or for the first 150 meters walking alone.
Around 160 you start wondering whether you’re lost and, if so, whom to call on. Cézanne? Raphael? As a team, our main job turned out to be how to keep the lights on whilst keeping the sound off: light sensors required us to keep walking about when filming in order to keep the light on, but it happens that wooden floors may squeak, so we caught ourselves in quite the dilemma (a suitable environment for philosophers, sure). The dilemma we solved with a fusion of modern dance and loss of shoes. The night we rounded off with a communal, laugh, stretch, and yawn.
The centre for Philosophy and Arts (KCL) are delighted to announce a new series of events exploring the relationship between art and our emotions. The series launches at The National Gallery with a film, panel discussion, and Q&A on regret. Reserve your free zoom seat here and join Vanessa Brassey from King’s College London, Andy West, author of ‘The Life Inside: A Memoir of Prison, Family and Philosophy’, and author and arts journalist Chloë Ashby. The event will be chaired by Sacha Golob, King’s College London.
So, what will we be discussing?
Regrets may be painful or bittersweet. They can be ethically loaded or merely a plaintive ‘perhaps’. Perhaps you could’ve been a contender; loved more kindly; been more philanthropic; or sold your bitcoin before December?
This means that regret is an aromatic concoction of nostalgia, reminiscing and grief with gentle top notes of longing. We will be thinking about the ways it can also be intensely and weirdly pleasurable. And how pictures help us to understand this, on their own special way.
The Art & Emotion series. Free (but pre-registration required). Make sure you get your seat.
In collaboration with and hosted by The National Gallery London.
UPDATE: We are delighted to announce that chairing our talk will be Robin Carpenter, who is the Senior Research Data Governance Manager at the London Medical Imaging & AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare!
Special Legal-Themed Panel Discussion on Stereotyping and Medical AI
Jointly Organized by the Yeoh Tiong Lay Centre for Politics, Philosophy & Law, The London Medical Imaging & AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare& the Philosophy & Medicine Project
Panellists:
Dr. Jonathan Gingerich (KCL)
Lecturer in the Philosophy of Law at theYeoh Tiong Lay Centre for Politics, Philosophy & Law
Dr. Reuben Binns (Oxford)
Associate Professor of Human Centred Computing
Prof. Georgi Gardiner (Tennessee)
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Prof. David Papineau (KCL)
Professor of Philosophy of Science
Chair:
Robin Carpenter (The London Medical Imaging & AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare)
Understanding “statistical stereotyping” as forming beliefs about individuals on the basis of statistical generalizations about the groups to which the individuals belong, can it be legally problematic to statistically stereotype patients in medicine, either when these beliefs are formed by medical AI/artificial agents or by medical professionals? In this Special Legal-Themed Panel Discussion, we’ll hear from relevant experts in law, computer science, and philosophy on this and related questions around the legal aspects of stereotyping in medicine, by both human and artificial agents.
* For those unable to attend these colloquia, please feel free to register for our events in order to be notified once recordings of previous colloquia become available! You can also subscribe to the Philosophy & Medicine Project’s newsletter here, or follow us on Twitter or Facebook. Follow the YTL Centre at King’s on Twitter here and the London Medical Imaging & AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare here. Previous colloquia will also be posted to the Philosophy & Medicine Project’s YouTube channel.
The aim of this fortnightly colloquium series on Stereotyping and Medical AI is to explore philosophical and in particular ethical and epistemological issues around stereotyping in medicine, with a specific focus on the use of artificial intelligence in health contexts. We are particularly interested in whether medical AI that uses statistical data to generate predictions about individual patients can be said to “stereotype” patients, and whether we should draw the same ethical and epistemic conclusions about stereotyping by artificial agents as we do about stereotyping by human agents, i.e., medical professionals.
Other questions we are interested in exploring as part of this series include but are not limited to the following:
How should we understand “stereotyping” in medical contexts?
What is the relationship between stereotyping and bias, including algorithmic bias (and how should we understand “bias” in different contexts?)?
Why does stereotyping in medicine often seem less morally or epistemically problematic than stereotyping in other domains, such as in legal, criminal, financial, educational, etc., domains? Might beliefs about biological racial realism in the medical context explain this asymmetry?
When and why might it be wrong for medical professionals to stereotype their patients? And when and why might it be wrong for medical AI, i.e. artificial agents, to stereotype patients?
How do (medical) AI beliefs relate to the beliefs of human agents, particularly with respect to agents’ moral responsibility for their beliefs?
Can non-evidential or non-truth-related considerations be relevant with respect to what beliefs medical professionals or medical AI ought to hold? Is there moral or pragmatic encroachment on AI beliefs or on the beliefs of medical professionals?
What are potential consequences of either patients or doctors being stereotyped by doctors or by medical AI in medicine? Can, for example, patients be doxastically wronged by doctors or AI in virtue of being stereotyped by them?
We will be tackling these topics through a series of online colloquia hosted by the Sowerby Philosophy and Medicine Project at King’s College London. The colloquium series will feature a variety contributors from across the disciplinary spectrum. We hope to ensure a discursive format with time set aside for discussion and Q&A by the audience. This event is open to the public and all are very welcome.
Our working line-up for the remainder of this summer series is as follows, with a few additional speakers and details to be confirmed:
June 17 Professor Erin Beeghly (Utah), “Stereotyping and Prejudice: The Problem of Statistical Stereotyping”
July 1 Dr. Kathleen Creel, (HAI, EIS, Stanford) “Let’s Ask the Patient: Stereotypes, Personalization, and Risk in Medical AI” (recording linked)
July 15 Dr. Annette Zimmermann (York, Harvard), “ “Structural Injustice, Doxastic Negligence, and Medical AI”
July 22 Dr. William McNeill (Southampton), “Neural Networks and Explanatory Opacity” (recording linked)
July 29Special Legal-Themed Panel Discussion: Dr. Jonathan Gingerich (KCL), Dr. Reuben Binns (Oxford), Prof. Georgi Gardiner (Tennessee), Prof. David Papineau (KCL), Chair: Robin Carpenter (The London Medical Imaging & AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare) (link to register)
August 12 Professor Zoë Johnson King (USC) & Professor Boris Babic (Toronto), “Algorithmic Fairness and Resentment”
August 26 Speakers TBC
September 2 Dr. Geoff Keeling (HAI, LCFI, Google)
September 9 Professor Rima Basu (Claremont McKenna)
All best wishes, and we very much hope you can join us!
The Organizers (Dr. Jonathan Gingerich, Robin Carpenter, Professor Elselijn Kingma, Dr. Winnie Ma, and Eveliina Ilola)
The aim of this fortnightly colloquium series on Stereotyping and Medical AI is to explore philosophical and in particular ethical and epistemological issues around stereotyping in medicine, with a specific focus on the use of artificial intelligence in health contexts. We are particularly interested in whether medical AI that uses statistical data to generate predictions about individual patients can be said to “stereotype” patients, and whether we should draw the same ethical and epistemic conclusions about stereotyping by artificial agents as we do about stereotyping by human agents, i.e., medical professionals.
Other questions we are interested in exploring as part of this series include but are not limited to the following:
How should we understand “stereotyping” in medical contexts?
What is the relationship between stereotyping and bias, including algorithmic bias (and how should we understand “bias” in different contexts?)?
Why does stereotyping in medicine often seem less morally or epistemically problematic than stereotyping in other domains, such as in legal, criminal, financial, educational, etc., domains? Might beliefs about biological racial realism in the medical context explain this asymmetry?
When and why might it be wrong for medical professionals to stereotype their patients? And when and why might it be wrong for medical AI, i.e. artificial agents, to stereotype patients?
How do (medical) AI beliefs relate to the beliefs of human agents, particularly with respect to agents’ moral responsibility for their beliefs?
Can non-evidential or non-truth-related considerations be relevant with respect to what beliefs medical professionals or medical AI ought to hold? Is there moral or pragmatic encroachment on AI beliefs or on the beliefs of medical professionals?
What are potential consequences of either patients or doctors being stereotyped by doctors or by medical AI in medicine? Can, for example, patients be doxastically wronged by doctors or AI in virtue of being stereotyped by them?
We will be tackling these topics through a series of online colloquia hosted by the Sowerby Philosophy and Medicine Project at King’s College London. The colloquium series will feature a variety contributors from across the disciplinary spectrum. We hope to ensure a discursive format with time set aside for discussion and Q&A by the audience. This event is open to the public and all are welcome.
To find out more about this series, please visit the Philosophy & Medicine Project’s website: https://www.philosophyandmedicine.org/summer-series. Our next colloquium in the series will be a Special Legal-Themed Panel Discussion chaired by a member of the London Medical Imaging & AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare, and featuring our very own Professor David Papineau and Dr. Jonathan Gingerich (which you can register for here)!
Our working line-up for the summer series is as follows, with a few additional speakers and details to be confirmed:
June 17 Professor Erin Beeghly (Utah), “Stereotyping and Prejudice: The Problem of Statistical Stereotyping”
July 1 Dr. Kathleen Creel, (HAI, EIS, Stanford) “Let’s Ask the Patient: Stereotypes, Personalization, and Risk in Medical AI” (recording linked)
July 15 Dr. Annette Zimmermann (York, Harvard), “ “Structural Injustice, Doxastic Negligence, and Medical AI”
July 22 Dr. William McNeill (Southampton), “Neural Networks and Explanatory Opacity” (recording linked)
July 29Special Legal-Themed Panel Discussion: Dr. Jonathan Gingerich (KCL), Dr. Reuben Binns (Oxford), Prof. Georgi Gardiner (Tennessee), Prof. David Papineau (KCL), Chair: Robin Carpenter (The London Medical Imaging & AI Centre for Value Based Healthcare) (link to register)
August 12 Professor Zoë Johnson King (USC) & Professor Boris Babic (Toronto), “Algorithmic Fairness and Resentment”
August 26 Speakers TBC
September 2 Dr. Geoff Keeling (HAI, LCFI, Google)
September 9 Professor Rima Basu (Claremont McKenna)
To be notified about upcoming colloquia in the series and other Project events, you can subscribe to the Philosophy & Medicine Project’s newsletter here, or follow us on Twitter or Facebook. Previous colloquia will also be posted to the Philosophy & Medicine Project’s website and YouTube channel. (And for those unable to attend these colloquia, please feel free to register for our events in order to be notified once recordings of previous colloquia become available!)
King's Philosophy 