Project Awarded: $30,000
There is a growing library of presentations, videos, and other resources about philosophy of neuroscience and neuroscience of philosophy available online, including SSNAP (ssnap.net), Neural Mechanisms Online (neuralmechanisms.org), and The Brains Blog (philosophyofbrains.com). Despite being freely accessible to a massive online audience, however most of the se resources do not have an introductory nature. Synchronous web-events organized by Neural Mechanisms Online, for instance, are entirely dedicated to advanced topics at the frontiers of the research in philosophy of neuroscience and neurophilosophy. There is little content for the uninitiated such as high school students and undergraduate majors in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, or for interested scholars with no specific training in philosophy of neuroscience. To fill this gap, our project will aim to deliver free, online, introductory video content for teachers and students of philosophy, neuroscience, and their intersections. This content will constitute the first introductory mini-course entirely devoted to philosophy of neuroscience and neurophilosophy. The course will cover six major topics. Each topic will include one main video lecture from a leading figure in philosophy and/or neuroscience introducing and discussing the research landscape. Additional learning material may include handouts an s suggested readings. To enhance outreach, we will also produce a short series of animated videos that direct viewers to the course. The requested funding will cover honoraria for scholars to record their footage and production costs (e.g., animations, video editing). The resulting material will be uploaded to a dedicated website of the project, as well as to popular venues for educational video content like YouTube in association with Neural Mechanisms Online and the Brains Blog. This will allow high school and college students to freely access neuroscience and philosophy earlier than they otherwise would find it and provide instructors with free, off-the-shelf material to create or update their own philosophy and neuroscience curricula. By providing a crash course for undergraduates and other scholars in the field, the project will expand the audience for online resources in the field. Lastly ,by fixing an interdisciplinary consensus on lexicon, concepts, and problems, the project seeks to establish a common ground for the interactions between philosophers and neuroscientists.
Zina Ward, PhD. Assistant Professor, Florida State University
Raphael Gerraty, PhD. Postdoctoral Fellow, Columbia University
Nick Byrd, PhD. Assistant Professor, Stevens Institute of Technology
Shadab Tabatabaeian, PhD Candidate, University of California, Merced
Fabrizio Calzavarini, PhD. Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Bergamo & LLC, Turin