SOCIETY OF CATHOLIC SCIENTISTSSecond Annual Conference

THE HUMAN MIND AND PHYSICALISM

June 8–10, 2018 • Washington, D.C.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTSFRIDAY, JUNE 8

5–9 p.m.Arrival and Registration

Heritage Hall, Father O’Connell Hall

8 p.m. Reception and Poster Session I

Heritage Hall, Father O’Connell Hall

SATURDAY, JUNE 97 a.m. Mass

St. Vincent de Paul Chapel

8 a.m. Breakfast

Great Room, Edward J. Pryzbyla University CenterEvents until 6 p.m. in this room.

8:45 a.m.Benediction

Cardinal Donald Wuerl, S.T.D.Archbishop of Washington, D.C.

Welcoming Remarks

Stephen M. Barr, Ph.D.President of the Society of Catholic Scientists

9 a.m.Keynote Lecture

“Arguments for the Immateriality of the Mind”Edward Feser, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Philosophy, Pasadena City College

10 a.m. Break

10:15 “The Role of the Observer in Quantum Mechanics”

Stephen M. Barr, Ph.D.Professor of Physics and Astronomy,

University of Delaware

10:45 p.m. Break

11 a.m.“Randomness in Quantum Phenomena”

Valerio Scarani, Ph.D.Principal Investigator, Center for Quantum Technologies,

National University of Singapore

12 p.m. Lunch

1:15 p.m.“Fifty Years Without Free Will”

Aaron Schurger, Ph.D.French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM)

2:15 p.m.Break

2:30 p.m.“On the Question of Whether the Mind Can Be Mechanized”

Peter Koellner, Ph.D.Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University

3:30 p.m.Break

3:45 p.m.“Inside the Brain, Inside the Earth:

The Work of Bl. Nicolaus Steno” Andrew A. Sicree, Ph.D.

Pennsylvania State University

4:15 p.m.“Integral Ecology as a Restoration of Man’s Proper Role in Creation” Kara D. Lamb, Ph.D.

Research Scientist, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Boulder, Colo.

4:45 p.m.Break

5 p.m.St. Albert Award Lecture

Title TBAJuan Martín Maldacena, Ph.D.

Carl P. Feinberg Professor of Theoretical Physics, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, N.J.

6 p.m.Cocktails

Heritage Hall, Father O’Connell Hall

6:30 p.m.Dinner

Heritage Hall, Father O’Connell Hall

8 p.m.Organ Concert

Peter Latona, D.M.A.Director of Music

Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception

SUNDAY, JUNE 108 a.m.

Conference MassSt. Vincent’s Chapel

9 a.m.Breakfast

Great Room, Pryzbyla CenterAll events on Sunday in Pryzbyla Center Great Room.

9:45 a.m.“Poetic Naturalism Versus Non-Physical Reality”

Michael B. Dennin, Ph.D.Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Vice Provost

for Teaching and Learning, University of California, Irvine

10:15 a.m.“The Freedom of the Physical World: Are You a Machine?”

Craig S. Lent, Ph.D.Frank M. Freimann Chair Professor of Engineering and

Professor of Physics, University of Notre Dame

10:45 a.m.“Mind First: Why the Decoherence Program

Entails Copenhagen Interpretation”Javier Sánchez-Cañizares, Ph.D.

Professor, University of Navarra

11:15 a.m.Poster Session II

12:15 p.m.Lunch

1 p.m.Membership Meeting

2:15 p.m. Conference Ends

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIESStephen M. Barr Stephen M. Barr is Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Delaware and Director of its Bartol Research Institute. His area of research is theoretical particle physics and cosmology. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1978. He was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2011 “for his original contributions to grand unified theories, CP violation and baryogenesis.” He is the author of Modern Physics and Ancient Faith and The Believing Scientist: Essays on Science and Religion. He is President of the Society of Catholic Scientists.

Michael B. Dennin Michael B. Dennin is Professor of Physics & Astronomy, Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning, and Dean, Division of Undergraduate Education, at the University of California at Irvine. His area of research is experimental condensed matter physics, especially of systems that are driven out of equilibrium and model systems for biological membranes. He received his Ph.D. in 1995 from UC Santa Barbara, and is the recipient of many awards at UCI including the Outstanding/Inspirational Professor within School of Physical Sciences (1999), the Research Innovation Award (1999), the Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Fostering Undergraduate Research (2000), and the UCI Academic Senate Distinguished Faculty Award for Teaching (2007). He is the author of Divine Science: Finding Reason at the Heart of Faith (2015).

Edward Feser Edward Feser is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Pasadena City College. He has been a Visiting Assistant Professor at Loyola Marymount University and a Visiting Scholar at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at Bowling Green State University. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of California at Santa Barbara, an M.A. in religion from the Claremont Graduate School, and a B.A. in philosophy and religious studies from the California State University at Fullerton. He is the author of many books, including On Nozick; Philosophy

of Mind; Locke; The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism; Aquinas; Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction; Neo-Scholastic Essays; and Five Proofs of the Existence of God; is co-author of By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment; and editor of The Cambridge Companion to Hayek and Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics.

Peter Koellner Peter Koellner is Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. from MIT in 2003. His main areas of research are mathematical logic, specifically set theory, and philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of physics, analytic philosophy, and philosophy of language. In 2008, he was awarded a Kurt Gödel Centenary Research Prize Fellowship. Currently, he serves on the American Philosophical Association’s Advisory Committee to the Eastern Division Program Committee in the area of Logic.

Kara D. Lamb Kara D. Lamb is a Research Scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colo. She received her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Chicago in 2015, where she studied cirrus cloud microphysics. Her current research focuses on understanding the optical properties and atmospheric lifetime of black carbon aerosol using observations from aircraft field campaigns and laboratory studies. Black carbon is an important short-lived climate forcer that contributes large uncertainties to our understanding of the climate system.

Craig S. Lent Craig S. Lent is the Frank M. Freimann Chair Professor of Engineering and Concurrent Professor of Physics at the University of Notre Dame. He received his Ph.D. in Solid State Physics in 1984 from the University of Minnesota. His field of research is in quantum devices and molecular-scale devices. The current research of his group focusses on the fundamental theoretical limits imposed by physics on computing devices. For the past several years his group has been investigating these questions in the context of a new transistor-less paradigm known as Quantum-dot Cellular Automata (QCA), developed at Notre Dame and now the subject of research worldwide.

Juan Martín Maldacena Juan Martín Maldacena is the Carl P. Feinberg Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. He received his Ph.D. in Physics in 1996 from Princeton University. His work focuses on quantum gravity, string theory, and quantum field theory. Among his many discoveries is the “AdS/CFT correspondence” between quantum gravity and quantum field theories, which has greatly advanced theoretical understanding of both. The 1997 paper in which he proposed this correspondence is the most cited paper in the history of theoretical particle physics. Among the awards he has received are the Fundamental Physics Prize (2012); the Pomeranchuk Prize (2012); the Dirac Prize and Medal of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (2008); the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics of American Institute of Physics and American Physical Society (2007); the Edward A. Bouchet Award of the American Physical Society (2004); the Pius XI Medal (2002); the Sackler Prize in Physics (2000); and UNESCO’s Javed Husain Prize for Young Scientists (1999).

Javier Sánchez-Cañizares Javier Sánchez-Cañizares is Professor in the Science, Reason and Faith group (CRYF) at the University of Navarra. He received a Ph.D. in Physics in 1999 from the Autonomous University of Madrid and in Theology in 2005 from the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. He has published in the areas of experimental condensed matter physics, foundations of quantum mechanics, philosophy of science, science and religion, and theology.

Valerio Scarani Valerio Scarani is principal investigator at the Centre for Quantum Technologies and Professor at the National University of Singapore. He received a Ph.D. in physics in 2000 from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), working on NMR studies of magnetic nanostructures. From 2000 to 2007, he worked with Nicolas Gisin at the University of Geneva, becoming a leader in the fields of quantum information, quantum cryptography and Bell non-locality. He has pioneered “device-independent certification.”

Aaron Schurger Aaron Schurger is principal investigator (chargé de recherche 1) with the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research (INSERM), based at the NeuroSpin Research Center near Paris. His research focuses on the neural signatures of subjective experience and the neural antecedents of self-initiated movement. He received Ph.D. in psychology and neuroscience at Princeton University. After that he worked as a postdoc at the NeuroSpin research center in France and at the EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland. In 2013 Schurger was awarded the William James Prize from the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC) and in 2015 was awarded the BMI-Kaloy prize from the Kaloy Foundation for his 2012 work on the role of spontaneous fluctuations in brain activity in self-initiated movement. In 2015, Schurger was awarded a grant from the European Research Council (ERC) to investigate spontaneous voluntary movement: how decisions-to-act emerge in the brain in the absence of an external imperative.

Andrew A. Sicree Andrew A. Sicree received his Ph.D. in Geochemistry and Mineralogy from Pennsylvania State University in 1999. He currently teaches as an adjunct faculty member at Penn State University’s main campus, Penn State Harrisburg, St. Francis University (in Loretto, Pa.), Harrisburg Area Community College, and Penn Highlands Community College. Previously, he was director and curator of Penn State University’s mineral museum, and has worked at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, the Savannah River National Lab in South Carolina and Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico. He started the African Book Project: an on-going effort which has sent about 100,000 used books to “book-poor” nations in Africa and has worked as a volunteer lecturer, teaching computers at Strathmore University in Nairobi, Kenya.

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