The University of Edinburgh: The University of Edinburgh

Lecture 4: Silence transformed: the third Reformation 1500-1700

The noisiness of

Protestantism, particularly exacerbated by the end of monasticism,

unsuccessfully countered in the Church of Zürich but transcended first among

radical Reformers (especially Caspar Schwenckfeld and Sebastian Franck) and a

century later by the Society of Friends. The difficulties of contemplatives in the Counter-Reformation, where

activism was the characteristic of the new foundations of Jesuits and

Ursulines, and the problems faced by such revivals as the Discalced

Carmelites. The troubles of Madame Guyon

and Quietists.

Recorded 30 April 2012 at St Cecilia's Hall, Edinburgh.

Audio version.

Lecture 2: Catholic Christianity and the arrival of ascetism,

100-400

Counter-strands to silence

in the early Church, encouraged by its congregational worship and cult of

martyrdom, and the effect of gnostic Christianities in shaping what the

emerging Catholic Church decided to emphasise or ignore.The emergence of new positive theologies of

silence: negative theology and its sources in the Platonic tradition; the

development of asceticism in the mainstream Church in Syria from the second

century, and its possible sources: the place of silence in the development of

monasticism and eremetical life in Christianity.The importance of the remaking of monasticism

in Egypt; the vital role of a forgotten theologian, Evagrius Ponticus.

Recorded 24 April 2012 at St Cecilia's Hall, Edinburgh.

Audio version.

Silence in Christian History: the witness of Holmes' Dog

Lecture 1: Introduction. Voices and silence in Tanakh and Christian New Testament.

Professor Diarmaid MacCulloch presents his introductory lecture in our 2012 Gifford lecture series.

He discusses a change in

emphasis between the Hebrew Scripture (the Tanakh) and what Christians made of

what is arguably a minority positive strand in Judaic thinking on silence; we

survey the growth of a consciousness of silence, particularly in the cosmos, in

Jewish religion.We seek the voice of

Jesus to be heard behind the text of the New Testament, with his distinctive

use of silence and silences; the place of silence in the first Christian

attempts to understand the significance of Jesus Christ, and its relationship

to the formation of the Church.

Recorded Monday 23 April 2012 at St Cecilia's Hall, Edinburgh.

Audio version.

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown returns to his former university to give a talk on economics. The lecture argues that there is an alternative to a future of low growth and high unemployment; that the alternative is a future of jobs and justice.

Recorded 19 April 2011 at the McEwan Hall, Edinburgh.

Prof Patricia Churchland's Gifford Lecture - Recorded 11 May, 2010 at St Cecelia's Hall, The University of Edinburgh.

Self-caring neural circuitry embodies self-preservation values, and these are values in the most elemental sense. Whence caring for others?

Social problem-solving, including policy-making, is probably an instance of problem-solving more generally, and draws upon the capacity, prodigious in humans, to envision consequences of a planned action. In humans, it also draws upon the capacity for improving upon current practices and technologies.

Audio version.

Professor Terry Eagleton's Gifford Lecture - The God Debate. Recorded 1 March, 2010 at the Playfair Library Hall, the

University of Edinburgh. Audio version.

In his lecture, Professor Eagleton asks "Why has God suddenly reappeared in intellectual debate? His lecture attempts to put these contentions in the broader political context of the so-called 'war on terror'.

The sixth in a series of Gifford Lectures by Professor Michael Gazzaniga. Recorded 22 October, 2009 at the Playfair Library Hall, the University of Edinburgh. Audio version.

The fith in a series of Gifford Lectures by Professor Michael Gazzaniga. Recorded 20 October, 2009 at the Playfair Library Hall, the University of Edinburgh. Audio version.

The fourth in a series of Gifford Lectures by Professor Michael Gazzaniga. Recorded 19 October, 2009 at the Playfair Library Hall, the University of Edinburgh. Audio version.

The third in a series of Gifford Lectures by Professor Michael

Gazzaniga. Recorded 15 October, 2009 at the Playfair Library Hall, the

University of Edinburgh.

The interpreter is the device we humans enjoy that provides us with the

capacity to see the meanings behind patterns of our emotions, behavior

and thoughts.

This concept is central to understanding the relationship

between our brain and our strong sense of self. In a way, it is the

device that liberates us from our automatic ways spelled out in Lecture

1 and 2. The interpreter constructs the sense that there is a “me”

arising out of the ongoing neuronal chatter in the brain and making all

of life’s moment-to-moment decisions.

Our compelling sense of being a

unified self armed with volition, deployable attention and self-control

is the handiwork of the interpreter, for it brings coherence to a brain

that is actually a vastly parallel and distributed system. This view

stands in contrast to much neuroscientific theorizing or existential

musing about our unified, coherent nature.

In most models of brain and

cognitive mechanism, one can identify, as Marvin Minsky once said, the

box that makes all the decisions.

Yet if

modern neuroscience has taught us anything, it has taught us, as I said

in Lecture 2, that our brain is a highly parallel and distributed

system with literally millions of decisions being made simultaneously.

There is simply no place within this sort of architecture from which a

single decision system could operate. Instead, this parallel processing

is producing an organism that looks like a self-motivated, morally

coherent, decision-making and conscious entity. Indeed, understanding

how it works will emerge from understanding the workings of the

interpreter and the brain that enables it.

Moreover, this understanding

will allow us to rid ourselves of the homunculus problem once and for

all, while, perhaps paradoxically, setting the stage for why you are

to be held responsible for all of your actions.