Wilma Theater Presents Special ROCK 'N' ROLL Discussion 10/27

Philadelphia's The Wilma Theater will present Body and Soul in Rock 'n' Roll – a panel discussion exploring philosophy, the human mind, and conceptions of the self in conjunction with the theater's Philadelphia Premiere of the 2008 Tony® nominee for Best Play, Rock 'n' Roll, by Academy Award®-winner and four-time Tony Award®-winner Tom Stoppard. The Wilma welcomes an esteemed group of writers and thinkers including philosopher and neuroscientist Owen Flanagan (author of The Problem of the Soul and The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World), Robert Kurzban (director of Penn Laboratory for Experimental Evolutionary Psychology), and Joseph LeDoux (author of Synaptic Self and The Emotional Brain). The discussion will take place on Monday, October 27th at 7:30 P.M.

In Rock 'n' Roll, the character Max, a professor of Marxist Philosophy played by David Chandler, declares, "The brain is a biological machine for thinking…we could make one out of – beer cans" to which Eleanor, played by Kate Eastwood Norris, comments, "I am not my body. My body is nothing without me." The Wilma's panelists will present a provocative discussion exploring these ideas. Is the mind merely excitable neurons, an "amazing biological machine" that could be "made out of beer cans" if we understood the technology well enough? Or is it something more? Does the soul have a place in an age of breakthroughs in neuroscience and Artificial Intelligence? 

Directed by Wilma co-Artistic Director, Blanka Zizka, Rock 'n' Roll runs through this Sunday, October 26.  Symposia tickets are free for all Rock 'n' Roll ticket-holders, or $10. Seating is limited. For tickets, call the Box Office at (215) 546-7824 or email tickets@wilmatheater.org. The Wilma Theater is located at 265 S. Broad Street, Philadelphia. For more information, visit www.wilmatheater.org.

About the Panelists

Owen Flanagan (Ph.D. 1977, Boston University) has returned to teaching and research full time after serving as Chair of the Philosophy Department at Duke University from 1993-2000. Beyond Philosophy, Flanagan also holds appointments in Psychology and Neurobiology and is a Faculty Fellow in Cognitive Neuroscience. Prior to working at Duke, he served as Class of 1919 Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Wellesley College and has had visiting positions at Brandeis, Princeton, Harvard, and La Trobe in Australia as well as several fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities. From 1993 to 1994, Flanagan was President of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and in 1998 he was recipient of the Romanell National Phi Beta Kappa award, given annually to one American philosopher for distinguished contributions to philosophy and the public understanding of philosophy. In 1999, he was invited by the Mind and Life Institute to attend a small conference in Darhamsala, India with the Dalai Lama on the topic of "Destructive Emotions." Besides writing many articles, reviews, and contributions to colloquia, Flanagan has written multiple books including, The Problem of the Soul: Two Visions of Mind and How to Reconcile Them. He was awarded a Fulbright Research Award in 2001-2002 to study Buddhist and Hindu conceptions of the self.

Robert Kurzban received a Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of California in Santa Barbara. He established and is currently the director of the Pennsylvania Laboratory for Experimental Evolutionary Psychology and is now an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Pennsylvania. His interests include applying evolutionary approaches to cognition to a range of problems in social psychology. He was the first to analyze topics such as applications of evolutionary principles to experimental economics in order to understand the problem of getting people to cooperate. His research focuses on the nature of evolved cognitive adaptations for social life and the cognitive underpinnings of these processes. While doing this research he uses methods drawn from experimental economics and cognitive psychology.

Joseph LeDoux is a University Professor and Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science, and a member of the Center for Neural Science and Department of Psychology at NYU. His 1977 PhD is in Psychology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He was a postdoctoral fellow and then an Assistant Professor in the Department of Neurology at Cornell University Medical College. In 1989, he joined New York University. His work is focused on the brain mechanisms of emotion and memory. In addition to articles in scholarly journals, he is author of The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life and Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Fellow of the New York Academy of Science, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science, and the recipient of the 2005 Fyssen International Prize in Cognitive Science.

The Wilma Theater's Symposium Series is supported by The Wallace Foundation Excellence Award grant. The Wallace Foundation Excellence Awards were created to support exemplary arts organizations to pioneer effective practices to engage more people in high-value arts activities.

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