Already being touted as the “long-awaited conference on the Self,” Ted and John’s Excellent Adventure is already headed toward its port. Not Gosport, this time, but The Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York. In the aftermath of our 2007 cancellation, and the flush of success of our second Emergence Conference in 2008, IRAS has decided to do the experiment of trying another conference venue – and at another time to boot. We will be at Chautauqua trying a new, earlier summer time in an earlier week, June 20-27, in the hope that we can extend our appeal to those whose later summer commitments have regularly forbidden it, as well as those whose summer confidence schedule can better accommodate this time.
Chautauqua has us right before the start of their regular season. The Chautauqua Institution is excited to develop a symbiosis with IRAS, the goals of which are right up the alley of the historical Chautauqua Institution, which has a visibility and prominence that can only benefit the Science/Religion dialogue more broadly. They have a professional staff that has been doing what we do for over 100 years. The Athanaeum Hotel, which will be the center of our activities, offers great support and comfort in a delightful natural lake setting in western New York State. The Chautauqua Institution’s facilities are modern, extensive, and sophisticated: check out www.ciweb.org.
We are also stretching in another way, riding the wave of The Human Dimension of Emergence, we are extending ourselves well into the Human Sciences, expanding our niche in the physical and natural sciences, even further than we did in 2008. As the opening paragraph of our conference statement makes clear: “Concepts of individual autonomy and responsibility underlie much of the thought, institutions and ways of living in modern societies. Yet they are shot through with complexity and contradiction, and may be problematic for a flourishing human future.” In the wake of the Beijing Olympics, public attention to the differences between individualistic and collectivist cultures, and a national economic crisis likely not unrelated to what Teske has referred to as “toxic individuality,” and upon which our conference questions have direct bearing, I think we are “spot on.”
What is the value of our historical and cultural individualism on the practices of a democracy, of our ethics, of our spirituality? How do the particular operations of capitalism or even of our specific form of rationality depend upon it? Where does it come from, how does it develop and what are the alternatives? How is it embedded within or at tension with community, or even with the broader ecological crisis? What is the relationship with human freedom, human happiness, or any of the goals and purposes long sustained by our religious traditions?
Our goals as organizers also include trying to retain adaptations of many of our beloved IRAS traditions, and extend our community to a wider world. We will keep our morning chapel traditions, optionally and comfortably engaged, as are all of our events. We are overjoyed to have our own (and Baton Rouge’s) Michael Cavanaugh, Esq. to serve as our Chaplain. The communal meals, porch conversations (there are also great verandas, even with identical rocking chairs), and extended engagement of our speakers with each other and with conference attendees will continue to be a central component. We’ll continue with our educational and age-stratified children’s program, and even use as many of the same staff as we can. Our program of music and art will not only continue but, we hope, be enhanced by the facilities at Chautauqua specifically designed for such purposes. Recreational facilities abound, including boating, bicycling, and a much wider range of facilities for things like swimming, tennis, and other exercise. OF COURSE there is ice cream, and snack bar facilities, and a bookstore, but there is also a movie theater and a library, as well as plenty of open common space, so we hope that the facilities (daily showers, plenty of private bathrooms), and the views of a beautiful lake will make up for the lack of ocean vistas. The community of Chautauqua may mean that our retreat is not so isolated, but neither is it a bustling urban center, and it is quite self-contained, with the safety, and even better support for aging members those to which we are accustomed. It was, at least in part, the excitement and promise of both the facilities and the people at Chautauqua that helped decide us, when our own Ted and John, along with old hand Karl Peters, took a road trip to Chautauqua at the end of May. This place really is just incredible, as generations of Chautauquans will attest, and we invite you to be part of it with us. We will have afternoon workshops, have extgended our deadline for Abstracts to May 1, http://www.iras.org/Site/Poster%20Sessions.html. There will be a daily newsletter, and of course there will be a happy hour, with impromptu music (we already have both some old and new folks identified). And there will be dancing!
Our community will be welcoming many new participants, with whom we will share our traditions and from whom we hope to incorporate some of theirs. The molten core as always, is our honored group of invited speakers.
Anindita Balslev, a Hindu philosopher from Denmark, with a strong interest in inter-religious dialogue, whose correspondence with Richard Rorty was published as Cultural Otherness, .will talk about the importance of the individual in Hindu scripture, and the concept of the “I,” the human individual, from her newest book. She was recommended by Larry Fagg, spoke at Star Island in 1988, and has been working on compassion with Sol Katz. She will also be bringing her husband, a Mathematician at Arhus University in Denmark.
Amy Banks, a private-practice psychiatrist directing advanced training at the Jean Baker Miller Institute at the Wellesley Centers for Women, involved in Mutuality Theory and Practice, and Relational/Cultural theory, co-editor of The Complete Guide to Mental Health for Women, will address the neurobiology of human relationship. You can also check out the website of the Jean Baker Miller Institute: www.jbmti.org. Amy’s family, including her children, sound excited to come.
Philip Carey, author of Augustine’s Invention of the Inner Self, is Scholarf in Residence at the Templeton Honors College at Eastern University in St. David’s, PA. A Yale doctorate, he has done courses on the Philosophy of Religion as well as the History of Christina Theology for The Teaching Company. Dr. Phil will bring his canoe.
Anne Foerst, a theologian and computer scientist at St. Bonaventure University, in Chautauqua’s back yard, who has worked on COG and KISMET projects at the MIT AI labs, author of God and the Machine: What Robots Teach Us about Humanity and God, will address the implications of embodied intelligence, and embodied community. A real pistol, Anne has been at a number of Science/Religion venues; John faced off with her at joint talks at Union Theological in NY.
Ken Gergen, one of John’s intellectual heroes since reading his “Social psychology as history” as an undergraduate, is one of the leaders of the interdisciplinary development of social constructionsim, author of a number of books, including The Saturated Self. He is currently emeritus at Swarthmore. John brought him to his College as a speaker as part of a college-wide colloquium on “individuality and community,” so he was high on our list. He will bring his wife Mary, a scholar in her own right.
Lene Arnett Jensen teaches in the Psychology Department at Clark University (John’s doctoral alma mater), got her doctorate under Rick Shweder and Don Browning at the University of Chicago, and worked with Robert Bellah as a postdoctoral fellow in sociology at Berkeley. She co-authored Immigrant Civic Engagement, and New Horizons in Developmental Theory and Research, and is Editor-in-Chief of New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development. She does research addressing cultural identity development, takes a “cultural-developmental” approach to moral reasoning, and has addressed the role of religion and spirituality for both migration and morality. Lene will also bring her guitar-playing husband Jeff Jensen Arnett (also a researcher on “emerging adulthood” ), and their twins, Paris and Miles.
Alicia Juarrero, a philosopher from Prince George Community College who appointed to the National Council on the Humanities. She lectured and published on action theory in The Review of Metaphysics and The Texas Law Review, and is author of Dynamics in Action. She will look at the temporal and contextual embedding of intentionality as a complex adaptive system. This woman is fascinating, a good speaker, and a great human being, with whom John connected at conference on Complexity in Cancun; she jumped at the chance, having had contact in DC with, yes, Larry Fagg. She just edited a volume of historical readings with Carl Rubino on Emergence, Complexity, and Self-Organization: Precursors and Prototypes.
Steve Winter, director, until recently, of legal studies at Wayne State University Law School, author of A Clearing in the Forest, which reconsiders questions of law and legal theory with respect to developments in cognitive theory. He is currently working on the effects of consumer culture on democracy, and will address the conditions affecting democratic self-governance. Recommended by Alicia, Ted had solid contact with Steve on legal issues. Steve will also bring his wife and three teenage children.
Werner DeBondt, director of the Center for Behavioral Finance at DePaul University in Chicago, studies the psychology of investors and financial markets, examining key concepts of bounded rationality. He has written for the Journal of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies, the European Economic Review, and the American Economic Review. He has taught at Cornll, and at universities in Belgium, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and Sweden.
Finally, co-organizer Ted Laurenson, our current President, a corporate and securities lawyer with McDermott Will & Emery in New York, co-organizer of a previous Star Island conference on Human Sexuality, and author of articles for Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science will give an orienting overview; John Teske, our Immediate Past President, a psychologist from Elizabethtown College, and frequent contributor to Zygon and to Studies in Science and Theology, will likely also talk on something like “The Mind Between Us: Extended Minds and Recoupled Individualism.”
Can you imagine what a conference we will have with speakers like these, engaging ourselves and each other. We’re really doing it, on the banks of Chautauqua Lake, the end of this next June, family and leisure friendly, but full of intellectual fire. http://www.iras.org/Site/Conference.html.