Peter D. Hershock, director of the Asian studies development program at the East-West Center in Honolulu, will use Buddhist conceptual resources to cover topics such as artificial intelligence and global population growth in two upcoming lectures at Linfield College.
Hershock will present two lectures March 18-19 as part of the annual Walter Powell Philosophy Lecture series at Linfield. He will present “Valuing Intelligence: Buddhist Reflection on the Attention Economy and Artificial Intelligence” on Monday, March 18, and “Climate and Compassion: Buddhist Contribution to an Ethics of Intergenerational Justice” on Tuesday, March 19. Both talks will be held at 7 p.m. in Jonasson Hall, located in Melrose Hall at Linfield.
In his first lecture, Hershock will use Buddhist conceptual resources to assess how the emerging global attention economy and the confluence of big data, machine learning and artificial intelligence are reshaping the human experience. The talk will consider who we need to be present as in order to resist the allure of digital sirens and direct the intelligence revolution toward a truly equitable and ethical re-centering of the human.
The second lecture will address the world’s urban population growth in the last decade. This talk builds on recent efforts to craft an ethics of global justice around the “social emotion” of compassion, making use of Buddhist conceptual resources to delink justice from fictions of equality and conceive it, instead, as a dynamic function of relationally-achieved equity and diversity.
Hershock holds a Ph.D. in Asian and comparative philosophy from the University of Hawaii. He has authored or edited more than a dozen books on Buddhism, Asian philosophy and contemporary issues, including: “Liberating Intimacy: Enlightenment and Social Virtuosity in Ch’an Buddhism,” “Reinventing the Wheel: A Buddhist Response to the Information Age,” “Chan Buddhism,” “Buddhism in the Public Sphere: Reorienting Global Interdependence,” “Valuing Diversity: Buddhist Reflection on Realizing a More Equitable Global Future,” “Public Zen, Personal Zen: A Buddhist Introduction” and “Philosophies of Place: An Intercultural Conversation.” His current research, initiated as a 2017-2018 Fellow of the Berggruen Institute in China, focuses on the personal and societal impacts of the attention economy and artificial intelligence.
The Walter Powell-Linfield College Annual Philosophy Lectureship is in recognition of a generous gift from Michael Powell in honor of his father. Walter Powell founded Powell’s Bookstore in Portland, the largest private bookstore in the United States. Frank Nelson, Linfield College professor emeritus of philosophy, established the lecture series.
The event is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the Department of Philosophy and Program for Liberal Arts and Civic Engagement (PLACE). For information, contact Jesús Ilundáin at jilunda@linfield.edu or 503-883-2362.
