WHAT IS HUMAN? is an interdisciplinary humanities and sciences initiative at the Center for the Humanities in the College of Letters and Science, supported by the Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Fund of the University of Wisconsin Foundation. The initiative aims to break down what C.P. Snow called a "Two Cultures" division between the humanities and the sciences by creating a new interdisciplinary network and learning community, as well as a new public intellectual dynamic. The initiative fosters collaborative research partnerships across the disciplines. It also explores collaborative scientific and humanistic strategies and resources for funding and project development.
What Is Human?
Collaborative Theory and Practice in Humanistic and Scientific Research
A Symposium by the Center for the Humanities
University of Wisconsin-Madison
March 5, 2008 | Friedrick Center
CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
WHAT is human? (Does consciousness make us human? If so, what kind of consciousness? How does it differ from that of primates or even non-primates? Do cultures and communities make us human? Is it useful to think of the human as a community of microbes?) What philosophical problems, such as essentialism, are associated with the range of possible formulations of the question of the human, and how can we update the philosophical parameters of such investigation?
WHERE is human? (How can we culturally diversify our understanding of the ways that scientific traditions in different parts of the world and different historical eras have incorporated reference to the human-or not--into their paradigms?)
WHEN is human? (Are biological and social life coterminous? At what point of evolution does the primate become human, and what is the basis for that distinction? How are contemporary debates informed by "anthropodenial"-self-definition away from the primate? What is the "posthuman"? Is there a crisis in the human at the start of this new millennium? When did the idea of the human become a key organizing trope in the sciences, and at what point did it diverge from concepts of the human in the humanities, and why?)
What is INhuman? (What ethical responsibilities are associated with human consciousness, community, etc.? Why do we qualify as "inhuman" phenomena performed by humans?) What is NOT human? (How do chimeras, clones, modified, and engineered humans present new testing criteria for the identification of the human, and for the values associated with hybridity?)
