Professor Stephen Grimm’s students are exploring that question and others in their Philosophy of Human Nature course this semester.

“What we’re really trying to figure out is whether AI could replicate human nature and whether in the future, [when]we’ll be living among AI—whether or not AI is going to be used to help us or harm us,” said Sarah Kidwai, a first-year student at Fordham College at Rose Hill who is majoring in chemistry.

Using Philosophical Skills to Unpack AI

The course includes some required texts, such as works by Plato and Aristotle, as well as other materials that are left up to the instructor each semester.

Grimm said that he thought students would enjoy the chance to dive into AI. He assigned them several current research articles, including “The curious case of uncurious creation” by Lindsay Brainard, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama, published in the journal Inquiry this fall. Brainard defined creativity as something that requires the maker to have both agency and curiosity, which, she wrote, are two things that current AI models do not have.

In early October, students worked in groups to put this definition to the test. They discussed tasks such as a bird building a nest or a student writing a research paper, and had to make an argument as to why they were or weren’t creative. They then compared their responses to Brainard’s definition of creativity and examined a larger question: Can AI be considered creative?

Grimm initially asked the class this question, and almost all said no, based on Brainard’s definition. But then he cited examples, such as a working paper out of the Wharton School of Business’ Mack Institute, which found that “ChatGPT can generate higher quality business innovation ideas than MBA students.”

“I didn’t think that AI could be creative, but now, I’m starting to think maybe,” Kidwai said. “On TV, there’d be an episode where robots take over [and]it sounds kind of crazy, but I feel like there is a potential for something like that.”

For Aidan Nanquil, who is a first-year student at Fordham College at Rose Hill majoring in philosophy, studying a current issue like AI in this discipline was a new experience.

“I really only studied ancient, medieval, modern [philosophy], so starting off a philosophy class with AI and the philosophy of artificial intelligence—I was so unprepared because there were so many different things to consider, so many different questions,” he said, adding that he liked that the class was different than other philosophy courses.

Examining Human Understanding

Grimm said that he hoped the students would learn how to approach challenging topics like AI in a philosophical way—”just trying to probe as deeply as possible about human understanding and human consciousness.”

Many of the students said that the course opened their eyes to how much AI could impact society.

Lauren McNamara, a first-year Fordham College at Rose Hill student majoring in biology, said she wondered how the job market would change as she prepares to enter the workforce.

“Is the job I’m going to go into going to be available when I get there, especially after all my training?” she said.

But while some said that they were scared of the consequences, Nanquil said that he enjoyed getting to dive into these big picture questions.

“A big part of why I love this class is because I want to figure out what makes us essentially human,” he said. “Philosophy, for me, is still important, because it’s about figuring out what makes us unique and sharing that humanity with each other.”

The program, which focused on students from the Bronx, particularly those from underserved communities, was made possible through a $300,000 Knowledge in Freedom Grant from the Teagle Foundation.

Stephen Grimm, Ph.D., who served as the director of the program, said he gave the students three pieces of advice throughout the program: Be curious, be humble, and be ambitious.

“And I’m pleased to say that it happened wonderfully,” he said during the graduation ceremony that included the students’ families. “My biggest hope is that in 15 to 20 years, one of these students will be standing here, will be directing this seminar.”

First-Time Philosophers

For many of the high school students in the program, this was the first time they had ever studied philosophy.

“I didn’t really know much about it, and now that I do, it’s something I am considering majoring or minoring in,” said Newone Samuels, a rising senior at St. Catherine’s Academy. “It gave me a new way of thinking. I’m very open minded on certain different situations now.”

She added with a laugh that her favorite philosopher is Socrates because she loves “how he sees life and how he deals with situations in his own way.”

Oscar Massey, a rising senior at Cardinal Hayes, said that he saw pretty quickly how he could utilize the critical thinking and debate skills he has learned from philosophy.

“Studying philosophy made me realize that although I didn’t know philosophy itself, I actually practice philosophy in everyday life,” he said. “If I’m talking about sports or video games, everybody has a little debate sometimes, so it was really cool to be able to understand and to learn from some of the greatest philosophers.”

Jaydee Cantos, a rising senior at Bronx Latin, said that she felt like the program pushed her to expand her mind and to do things she wasn’t always comfortable with, such as speaking out during class.

“I was kind of already open-minded, but with the philosophy class, it made me more open minded to look at everybody’s perspective and not be biased,” she said. “And even with this program in general, it puts you out of your comfort zone to meet a whole bunch of different people. In high school, you need that to make connections.”

Program Day to Day

The three-week program included a mix of academic, social, and college-prep components. Students lived on the Rose Hill campus at Loyola Hall during the week. During the day, they took philosophy classes with Grimm and other professors, including Vita Emery, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow.

“For me, one of the coolest things was we would have discussions in the classroom, and then if I went to lunch with them, or later in the afternoon, they would still be talking about some of the debates we had,” Emery said. “They would be using [philosophy]to prove points to each other and that was really cool to see that they were having fun in the classroom, which is the point. They’re having fun learning.”

In the afternoons, they worked with four Fordham students who served as resident teaching assistants (RTAs). The RTAs helped them not only with their class assignments, but also with proofing resumes, filling out job and college applications, and understanding college life.

“We conducted small groups where people shared their feelings, discussed affirmations about themselves and their personal goals, and talked to us about college,” said Suzan Juncaj, a rising Fordham College at Rose Hill junior, majoring in international studies and minoring in French. “They have a lot of questions as high schoolers, and for some of them, we’re their only mentors who have college experience.”

Laura Rodriguez, a rising junior in Fordham College at Rose Hill who is majoring in psychology and minoring in philosophy, emphasized that Grimm chose residential teaching assistants not only based on their studies and their mentoring experience, but also on whether they had similar backgrounds to the students in the program. This helped create meaningful relationships, she said.

“One thing I think Dr. Grimm did really was getting RTAs that were originally from the Bronx or from the New York area,” she said. “I think that really helped us connect with them more fluently, and especially with most of us being minorities and them being minorities—if they see people who look like them they’re more inclined to relate to us.”

There were also field trips to local institutions, such as the New York Public Library, and guest speakers that included other professors from different disciplines as well as representatives from the Office of Undergraduate Admission.

“The most impactful thing from [the guest speaker sessions]was definitely the mentoring—we got to meet a lot of professors on campus,” said Joshua Persaud, a rising senior at Cardinal Spellman, adding that it pushed the students to think about what they’d like to major in.

In the evenings, the students had the chance to socialize, both with each other and students from other schools, including students from a Columbia summer program who they beat in a kickball game on Eddies Parade.

Lessons Carried Forward

The high school students said that the program helped them not only gain philosophical and academic experiences, but friendships and a sense of what college could be like.

“You get to make new friends, and experience things differently, and have fun on campus,” Samuels said. “I’m still the same person, but staying here has given me a sense of freedom and I feel like I’m definitely going to be ready for college.”

Layla Mayorga, a second-year Ph.D. student in philosophy at Fordham, who served as a graduate student mentor for the program, said that she hoped they learned from this experience.

“They’re first-generation [students], so I think it’s a good experience to know what college life is, and what it is to read college materials, and that it’s not that different from high school, and that philosophy is always everywhere.” she said.

But the high schoolers weren’t the only ones who had takeaways from the program. Nazeath Emama, a 2022 Fordham College at Rose Hill graduate who majored in math and anthropology and will be continuing her studies at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, served as a resident teaching assistant for the program and said that she loved getting to connect with the students.

“The kids call us older siblings, like big sister, big brother type vibes,” said Emama, who did a similar program at Columbia while she was in high school. “I really appreciate that they said that we were like their siblings, because those are people that you look up to, those are people you ask actual questions to without being fearful of getting judged.”

Fordham’s Stephen Grimm, Ph.D., professor of philosophy, was awarded the three-year, $300,000 grant in November 2021 to launch the program, titled “Visions of the Good in the Bronx,” that aims to work with students from the borough, particularly those who are underserved or might not have access to the same resources as their peers. Following the summer session, the students will also have access to a year-long mentoring program.

What Makes a Good Life?

The program aims to have the students contemplate what they think would make for a good life.

“We’re trying to think about the kind of lives we want to lead,” Grimm said. “We have this vision of what makes for a good life and what things are more important in that life and what things are less important.”

For some people, honor is the most important thing, Grimm explained, while others prioritize wealth or friendship.

“What we’re going to do in this seminar is look at what different philosophers, different traditions, different cultures have said about the good life.” Grimm said. “And what’s their vision of the good? So we’re going to look through ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, ancient Chinese philosophy, the Enlightenment, all the way up to 20th-century figures like Martin Luther King, Jr.”

The target group of high school juniors should be underserved and first-generation college students from the Bronx, Grimm said, for whom “the whole college application process could be quite intimidating.”

Helping Students Find Their Voice

Layla Mayorga, a first-year Ph.D. student in philosophy, who will serve as a graduate student mentor in the program, said she is especially interested in using this seminar to help first-generation and other underserved students find their voice.

“The skill that I would like to see them (gain) is not to be afraid to speak up for themselves, especially as first-gen (students),” she said. “Because I know as first-gen, a lot of us are just afraid to talk—afraid to talk to the teacher or proctor—and I feel like in college that would be an essential skill so they can actually get the answer rather than just leaving the class and just wondering.”

The program will run for three weeks and be structured so students spend most of those three weeks at Fordham, staying on campus during the week and heading home on the weekends.

Each day, the students will have seminar classes in the morning taught by Grimm and Vita Emery, Ph.D., a postdoctoral teaching fellow who received her Ph.D. at Fordham in 2021. In the afternoon, there will be teacher assistant sessions where Fordham undergraduate students—who will be overseen by Mayorga—will do work with the students that supplements the seminars. Students will be given time every day to complete their readings as well as time to get help with their writing skills. There will also be a few field trips during the program, he said.

Grimm said he, Emery, and Mayorga met with the instructors of a similar program at Columbia, called Freedom and Citizenship, to help establish this model.

Emery, who will be serving as the program coordinator, said that she was excited to help the students explore these bigger questions.

‘Doing Philosophy’ Without Realizing It

“I love teaching and I love having conversations with students,” she said. “I think people are doing philosophy a lot of the time and they don’t realize it. And so when you have those moments where students are like, ‘oh wait, I’ve been asking this question for years. I just hadn’t put it quite in these terms’—that’s a very exciting moment.”

The goal is for students to walk away from the program with philosophical skills that can help them in life as well as reading and writing skills that can help them in their next steps, Grimm said.

“I think just wrestling with these big questions about what constitutes a good life, and what we owe to each other as people, is inherently worth doing,” he said. “Teagle has a special concern for citizenship and thinks that wrestling with these classic (philosophy) texts—or as they call them transformative texts—is really important for a democracy.”

A Glimpse of College Life

There will also be some college prep resources to help make the college admissions process a bit less intimidating, including help with college essays. After the seminar is complete, the students will also receive letters of recommendation, which they can use for their college applications.

Mayorga said that she also hopes that this gives the high school students a chance to really “see what college life is like” instead of having a vague picture in their minds.

“A lot of them grow up with the idea that they will never actually attend college—I was one of them,” Mayorga said. “They don’t actually know what their life is going to be. … If we show them there’s opportunity, there’s actually a choice in your life—it will be very helpful. It will open their eyes.”

Applications are currently open until March 25 for high school juniors in the Bronx.

The two-week summer institute will take place in 2018 on the Wesleyan campus, with some two-dozen members of faculty from institutions around the nation invited to participate. Grimm said the seminar will encourage university faculty to offer their students practical courses in everyday philosophy, rooted in intellectual rigor.

“There’s been a dumbing down of some of these ancient traditions; if it’s not an ad on the subway, it’s [the word]‘mindfulness,’” said Grimm. “We’re all overwhelmed by technology, and it’s hard to find space to reflect, breathe, and find perspective. The ancient traditions have insight into how to avoid being swept along with the affairs of the day.”

Grimm said the institute is part of an ongoing revival of interest in “philosophy as a way of life,” which “is grounded in our basic human desire to live well.”

“We’ve always had to desire to live well,” he said. “Maybe for some people it is tied to traditional sources of advice, like religious sources.”

He said he finds that the various religious philosophies—from Stoicism to Buddhism to Confucianism to Existentialism—complement his beliefs as a Christian.

“But even if you were coming at the ‘way of life’ approach with no commitments or religious beliefs, these are still fascinating ways on how to deal with things like technology, which has practically been weaponized through the constant texting, emailing, and social media,” he said. “Each of us needs time to step back and analyze these things thoughtfully, and learn how to train our attention on what’s important in life.”

He said that without an understanding of the various ways of reasoning, any philosophy could be imposed.
“If you don’t choose it, the culture will do that for you,” he said.

An integral part of the Fordham core curriculum, philosophy also plays a much larger role in one’s career, said Grimm, whose own groundbreaking research on understanding earned Fordham its largest-ever humanities grant.

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Philosopher Earns Fordham’s Largest Humanities Award, a $3.56 Million Templeton Grant

In May, Stephen R. Grimm, Ph.D., professor of philosophy, embarked on a trip to China to teach and lecture on his area of expertise—the philosophy of understanding. The trip began as a single invitation to be the 2017 Liu Boming Lecturer in the Philosophy Department at Nanjing University. Xingming Hu, Ph.D., Grimm’s former doctoral student and now a faculty member in the department, made the initial recommendation to his department vice chair, who invited Grimm.

As Grimm had made an impression, Hu, GSAS ’15, also contacted his colleagues specializing in epistemology and teaching philosophy at other top universities in China to see if they would be interested in hosting Grimm as well.

As it turned out, they were.

From one lecture, to eight

“They know of Grimm’s work on understanding, so they were interested in inviting him to give a talk at their home departments,” said Hu of his higher education colleagues.

Grimm’s one engagement grew into eight separate lectures, delivered over the course of a three-week period. He also taught six classes in four different cities and five universities, several of which are among China’s “Ivy League,” the C9 League.

Among those philosophy departments that hosted Grimm and promoted his lectures, talks, and workshops, were Nanjing University, Peking University, Renmin University, Xiamen University, and East China Normal University.

Grimm was previously the recipient of a $4.3 million grant that funded a three-year comprehensive study on the nature of human understanding, the largest arts and sciences grant to ever be received by a member of Fordham’s faculty.

He describes his scholarship in the study of understanding as emerging from two questions. First, what does it take to understand the natural world, or some part of it? Second, how does understanding human beings differ from understanding the natural world? Grimm holds that his answer to these questions—that the two types of understanding are quite distinct—is a controversial one in philosophy and the sciences.

“In my view, since human thoughts and desires are structured by values—or what we care about—this makes grasping or understanding other human beings more complex than understanding the natural world,” said Grimm. “In some sense, we need to take on the perspective of other human beings—their cares and concerns—if we want to understand them. And this sort of ‘perspective taking’ is simply not needed when it comes to understanding physical systems involving atoms or stars, for example.”

Though most of his lectures in China focused on understanding, Grimm also had the opportunity to teach six two-hour classes to a group of 14 undergraduate students at Nanjing. The course, “Philosophy as a Way of Life,” was on a theme that Grimm has previously taught to undergraduates at Fordham.

A curiosity about other cultures

Though the English-language expertise of the Chinese students varied, Grimm said they were “clearly insightful about the material, and had a deep desire to engage with Western philosophy.”

“They were deeply curious to learn about other cultures,” said Grimm. “And very optimistic about the future.” Such optimism, he said, is not as common among 21^st-century Americans.

In the end, Grimm said his main takeaways from the trip were both cultural and professional, citing a gained appreciation for Chinese culture and new relationships with Chinese scholars, which he hopes to continue in the future.

“One of my goals is to host an annual conference in New York that will bring together Chinese and American epistemologists, to exchange ideas about our work,” said Grimm. “The Chinese philosophers to whom I suggested this idea were extremely enthusiastic about it, and I am sure I can generate enthusiasm in the idea among U.S. philosophers too.

“Such an exchange would help to put Fordham on the map of Chinese students and professors, which would be a boon to Fordham’s international reputation.”

—Rebecca Sinski, FCRH ’17

The University Research Council presented the Outstanding Externally Funded Research Awards (OEFRA) to recognize the high quality and impact of sponsored research within the last three years and its enhancement of Fordham’s reputation—both nationally and globally.

Honorees in five separate categories included:

Sciences: Silvia C. Finnemann, Ph.D., professor of biology

Since joining Fordham University in 2008, Finnemann has secured over $3.65 million in grants from the National Institute of Health, the Beckman Initiative for Macular Research and the Retinal Stem Cell Consortium of New York State for her research on healthy eye function and age-related changes to eye cell function. These grants enable her to support a thriving laboratory where she has a team of graduate and undergraduate students and post-doctoral researchers.

Social Sciences: Celia B. Fisher, Ph.D., The Marie Ward Doty University Chair in Ethics and professor of psychology

Fisher has earned 12 major research awards and over $11 million from federal agencies over the past 20 years for her work in HIV and substance abuse prevention and research ethics. Recent awards have come from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities.

Humanities: Stephen R. Grimm, Ph.D., professor of philosophy

Grimm was awarded $4.5 million by the John Templeton Foundation and the Henry Luce Foundation to lead a three-year interdisciplinary initiative called “Varieties of Understanding: New Perspectives from Psychology, Philosophy, and Theology.” His grant is the largest externally funded research award in the humanities in Fordham’s history.

Interdisciplinary Research: Jennifer L. Gordon, professor of law

With grants from the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundation, Gordon pursued a three-year initiative to combat abuse and trafficking of Mexican migrant workers recruited to work in the United States. Partnering with the Mexican human rights organization ProDESC, she has developed a transnational pilot program set to launch this year to implement recommendations that have arisen from her research.

Junior Faculty Research: Marc N. Conte, Ph.D., assistant professor of economics

Conte received nearly $500,000 from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, a division of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture. In collaboration with a researcher from the University of Nebraska, he is using the grant to study how behavioral economics can improve auctions that induce farmers to set aside land for conservation and biodiversity.

In opening the ceremony, Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, lauded the honorees for the fearless inquiry of their academic research, particularly at a time when truth and wisdom are being devalued in our society.

“Research is at the center of the academic enterprise,” he said, “enriching not only the Fordham community, but the community of the United States and of the world.”

Organized by the Office of Research and the University Research Council and sponsored by the Bronx Science Consortium, the daylong event also included grant education workshops, a forum of university researchers, and a keynote address by Dr. Walter L. Goldschmidts, Ph.D., vice president and executive director of the Office of Sponsored Programs at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

-Nina Heidig

Stephen R. Grimm, Ph.D., professor of philosophy, receiving the Undergraduate Teaching in the Humanities award;

Kirsten Swinth, Ph.D., associate professor of history, receiving the Undergraduate Teaching in the Social Sciences award;

Rolf Ryham, Ph.D., associate professor of mathematics, receiving the Undergraduate Teaching in Science and Mathematics award; and

Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Ph.D., the Thomas F. X. and Theresa Mullarkey Chair in Literature, receiving the Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching.

The event was sponsored by the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Fordham College at Rose Hill, and Fordham College at Lincoln Center (FCLC), and was hosted by Robert Grimes, S.J., dean of FCLC.

Funded by a $4.2 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation, the Varieties of Understanding project came to a close on June 24 with the capstone conference drawing multidisciplinary international scholars to the Lincoln Center campus. The three-year project has underwritten research in the fields of philosophy, psychology, and theology on the question of how we understand the world.

The scholars who participated in the project have collectively generated significant research in their respective fields, Grimm said. Ten books were accepted or published by major printing presses, including Oxford University Press and Harvard University Press, and 52 journal articles were published or accepted in journals, including Nous, Cognition, Child Development, Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Faith and Philosophy, and Philosophical Studies—with more than 40 more articles currently under review.

“We have helped found a new field of inquiry, the study of understanding,” said Grimm. “This vibrant new field has led to more inquiry, more discussions, more debates, all of which are helping to increase our understanding of understanding itself.”

Grimm produced four papers for the project and will continue his research this fall as a visiting fellow at Clare Hall at the University of Cambridge. Among his research interests are two different kinds of understanding: one by which we “grasp” the world, and another that the world presents to us.

“One of the capstone speakers, Jennifer Gosetti-Ferencei, said that you read well when you let the novel or the poem grasp you—you’re not trying to grasp it or tinker with it. You’re being receptive to it, looking to see what it is pointing out to you,” Grimm said.

“There are some kinds of knowledge that we ‘grasp,’ such as the causal structure of the world. But then there are things like literary understanding that is more receptive and attentive. That’s a different kind of understanding.”

The Limits of Understanding

Pulitzer prize-winning novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson’s plenary talk, “How We Talk!” cautioned against becoming overconfident in our capacity to understand. She focused on academia’s use of scrupulously precise and reductionistic language, which she said gives an air of communicating truth.

Language, though, is “complex and endlessly open to new complications,” she said, “more like a brilliant companion of humanity than its creation.”

“It’s like living with a creature, like a cat or something. You begin to find out it has its own ways of operating, that you can’t coerce it or control it,” she said. “We know language is alive, because it can be lifeless. It dies in captivity.”

Language is taken captive when academia—particularly social sciences, Robinson said—clings to jargon for the sake of being precise. Often, that precision becomes conflated with truth, leading us to overestimate just how much we actually understand about a given subject. Respecting the complexity and vitality of language keeps us intellectually humble, she said.

A Multi-University Effort

The $3.56 million Templeton grant and more than $640,000 in supplemental funds were used to distribute approximately $2.6 million in subawards to fund new research on the psychology, theology, and philosophy of understanding. Twenty projects were selected from nearly 400 proposals.

Tania Lombrozo, PhD, associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley; Michael Strevens, PhD, professor of philosophy at New York University; and Gordon Graham, PhD, the Henry Luce III Professor of Philosophy and the Arts at Princeton Theological Seminary directed the distribution of awards for psychology, philosophy, and theology, respectively.

Lombrozo directed empirical and theoretical research out of her Concepts and Cognition Lab at the University of California, Berkeley on the psychology of human understanding. Her team conducted a survey of how people generally view the ability of science to understand. Most people, the team found, believe that science is limited to empirical data.

In other words, science is useful for elucidating the world around us, but it fails when it comes to explaining phenomena such as romantic love or religious beliefs.

For a full description of the project, visit the Varieties of Understanding website.

First, learn a philosophy; then, become it.

“The course gets back to the ancient idea of philosophy as a way to live well,” said Grimm, PhD, an associate professor of philosophy. “To learn these ideas properly, you can’t just sit in a classroom and talk about it for 50 minutes to an hour and think it will set it. Philosophy is a practice that you incorporate into your life.”

The “practice” Grimm had in mind was a three-day experiment in which students adopted one of five philosophies they learned in class: Stoicism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism, or Ignatian spirituality. The students were then tasked with living according to the principles of their chosen philosophy, engaging in everything from meditation to veganism to total emotional detachment (depending on the philosophy).

At the end of the three days, students reflected on the extent to which the philosophies were compatible—or not—with their lifestyles as college students.

“I also asked the students what they might take with them from this assignment to draw on 30 years from now,” Grimm said. “All of them were able to find something…that had been absent from their lives or had gone missing. They said the assignment helped to bring them back to things they cared about.”

The assignment also elicited a creative side that hadn’t surfaced inside the lecture hall: Two-thirds of the class produced short videos.

“[They] were just brilliant… I couldn’t be more impressed with them as students and with how seriously they engaged in the course,” Grimm said.

Student Robert Denault, who spent three days as a Buddhist, said practicing his chosen philosophy had immediate, positive effects on his life.

“The one thing I wanted out of this was a new way to calm myself down in moments of stress,” said Denault, who graduated last week from Fordham College at Rose Hill. “I’m so grateful I found one. I slept better, I woke up less stress, and I had better dreams during this entire project.”

Others said they became conscious of what in their lives needed improvement.

“I need to be more mindful of my yin and my yang—that balance I need to strike in my life,” said FCRH rising junior Keighly Baron, who practiced Daoism, an Eastern philosophy that emphasizes living in harmony with the Dao, or “the way.”

“I am so much more active than I am passive. I almost never say no to anything. I take on way more than I should. And I feel it.”

Students said that even those ideas they struggled with proved enlightening.

“One routine that was unusual for me was the attempt to rid myself of emotion altogether,” said Abigail David, who graduated last week from the Gabelli School of Business. David adopted Stoicism, an ancient Greek philosophy that counsels self-control and equanimity as protection against turbulent emotions.

“To combat emotion, I tried to keep levelheaded in dealing with regular occurrences between roommates or friends, but I often felt in doing so that I was coming off as standoffish or disinterested… After three days of practice I determined my life is substantially impacted if I fail to embrace natural emotions.”

Grimm said the students found that embodying different philosophies helped them to attend better to their present situations, rather than to their anxiety about past or future.

“I hope what they gain from this is an appreciation of what’s truly important in life and of the skills they have within themselves to cope with adversity and achieve more happiness, wellbeing, and tranquility,” Grimm said.

For Timothy Shriver, an educator, author, entrepreneur, and chairman of the Special Olympics, the mental health crisis affecting so many young people cannot be ignored by the institutions of higher education where they study.The solution lies not in teaching students to do more, but in teaching them to do less, said Shriver. In fact, it is in teaching them to do nothing—that is, to engage in contemplative practices such as mindfulness meditation and sitting in silence as a means of gaining greater self-awareness.

On April 27 at Fordham Law School, Shriver shared his views on implementing contemplative practices into higher education in conversation with faculty members, administrators, students, members of the Jesuit community, and other invited guests. The event was sponsored by Fordham’s Center on Religion and Culture.

Joined by his wife, Linda, and their daughter, Caroline, a freshman at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, Shriver extolled the experience of silence as a means through which one can combat depression and anxiety by encountering the true self and coming to self-acceptance.

“The silence that has come to us from contemplative practice can be . . . a source of direct experience of one’s goodness,” he said.

“The primary vector of discovery is of your own self judgment. And when you finally start to unmask your own judgment, you get to the point where you can see a little more clearly.”

Shriver addressed the fact that though so many religious traditions have contemplative practices at their root, these techniques are rarely offered as a means of coping with day-to-day problems.

“If we are looking at people who are so hungry for a sense of their own beauty and goodness, why is it that we haven’t created a developmental path using the resources of our religious traditions, translating them into contemporary practice to allow young people to access them?” he asked.

Fordham community members agreed with Shriver that there is a great hunger among students for classes and experiences that help them connect with their inner selves.

Father Jose-Luis Salazar, SJ, executive director of Campus Ministry, said that all of the retreat programs offered each year are overbooked.

Stephen Grimm, PhD, associate professor of philosophy who teaches a course called Philosophy as a Way of Life, said that it filled up “in seconds.”

For Shriver, who has a master’s degree in religion and religious education, a doctoral degree in education, and who worked for 15 years in the New Haven, Connecticut, public school system, the benefits of contemplative practice are clear.

“All the data suggests that integrating ‘the pause’—whatever we want to call it—increases academic achievement, decreases psychopathology, and increases positives states and satisfaction across the board,” he said.

Shriver’s book, Fully Alive: Discovering What Matters Most (Crichton 2014), recounts his own spiritual journey and his work with the Special Olympics.

–Nina Heidig

The Varieties of Understanding Midpoint Conference is the first of two gatherings in a three-year interdisciplinary project that sponsors research into the various ways in which human beings understand the world.

Stephen R. Grimm, PhD, an associate professor of philosophy, received a $3.56 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation and supplemental funds totaling more than $640,000 to launch the project, which focuses on the fields of psychology, philosophy, and theology.

“Aristotle says in Metaphysics that we’re interested in not just how things stand in the world, but why they stand the way they do,” Grimm said at the conference’s opening, held at the Lincoln Center campus.

“This desire to have ‘why’ questions answered is at the root of human understanding… Einstein tells us that scientific work is driven by ‘the irresistible desire to understand the secrets of nature.’ [Philosopher] Wilfrid Sellars says philosophy is driven by a desire to understand how ‘things’ in the broadest possible sense of the term ‘hang together.’”

Knowing more, understanding less

Understanding is something beyond knowledge, Grimm said. He offered the example of a Jeopardy! game: A person may be able to memorize many facts about the category American Civil War—for instance, when and where the war began, how many casualties resulted, and how slavery and states’ rights factored into the conflict.

However, if this person fails to see how these various data relate to each other as part of the whole phenomenon of the Civil War, then it seems he knows a lot about the Civil War without actually understanding it.

“The question is, what else is needed to transform Jeopardy! knowledge into understanding?” said Grimm, a philosopher who specializes in epistemology. “Understanding has been described as a feeling of some kind—a feeling of insight, like an ‘aha’ or a ‘eureka’… But what actually happens in the mind when we move from knowing a list of propositions about a topic to understanding it? What is that feeling an indication of?”

This question is especially relevant in the age of Big Data and the Internet, he said. Google has made acquiring information simple. Having greater access to data, however, does not necessarily mean that we understand more about the world.

Although we may be learning more, said Grimm, we may be “losing our ability to appreciate the deep connections about these various bits of information.”

“We know more, but we understand less.”

The grant was used to distribute approximately $2.6 million in subawards to fund new research on the psychology, philosophy, and theology of understanding. Twenty projects were selected from nearly 400 proposals to receive awards.

The eclectic group of international scholars—comprised of both world-renowned figures and up-and-coming young scholars—are presenting their initial findings over the course of the three-day midpoint conference.

Project topics include: a psychological study of why people are prone to believe an explanation that is complicated, whether or not it is correct; a cross-cultural inquiry into religious understanding; and a philosophical discussion of whether there can be different kinds or degrees of understanding.

In June of 2016, the award recipients will reconvene at the Lincoln Center campus and present their final research results at a capstone conference.

Tania Lombrozo, PhD, associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley; Michael Strevens, PhD, professor of philosophy at New York University; and Gordon Graham, PhD, the Henry Luce III Professor of Philosophy and the Arts at Princeton Theological Seminary directed the distribution of awards for psychology, philosophy, and theology, respectively.

As part of the project, Lombrozo has been directing empirical and theoretical research out of her Concepts and Cognition Lab at the University of California, Berkeley on the nature of human understanding. She offered some of her initial findings at the opening of the midpoint conference.

For a full description of the project, visit the Varieties of Understanding website.