Two years ago, Brook A. Ziporyn, AB’86, was invited to give a presentation about Daoism to a group of scientists and artificial intelligence researchers. To his surprise, this two-hour talk sparked an ongoing conversation about the nature of consciousness with people far outside his own field.
This topic “is not in my wheelhouse at all,” says Ziporyn, Mircea Eliade Professor of Chinese Religion, Philosophy, and Comparative Thought in the Divinity School and the College.
His scholarship primarily focuses on ancient and medieval Chinese religion and philosophy. Yet, he says, “those conversations really changed my perspective on my work.”
Eventually, they inspired him to return to a long-simmering project, a cross-cultural inquiry into the themes of death, time, and perception.
Artificial intelligence has made philosophical debates about consciousness feel newly relevant. But, in fact, many cultural conversations and constructs have always been “downstream from philosophy,” as Ziporyn puts it.
“Philosophical premises, assumptions, and conclusions filter down,” he says. “They get embedded in language and are applied to politics, and to how science as a method is conceived, and to how the technological results of scientific discovery come to be understood, applied, and used.”
It’s the only place I’ve ever taught where you can assign one hundred pages, two hundred pages, and whatever you assign, they will actually read it.
Much of the time, these long-run implications of philosophical investigation aren’t front of mind for Ziporyn.
“I deal with ancient medieval texts, and I think about them, and then I try to understand and explain them,” he says. And although he’s enjoyed his recent engagement with other disciplines, “I’d be content to just argue with Sinologists about how to resolve logical issues in early Chinese texts.”
He sees training the next generation of scholars to argue with as one of his most important tasks. “To the extent I have worldly ambitions, it would be that,” he says. “There’s a desire to make sure it’s possible to continue working in this vein.”
And his students are ready to take the mantle. At both the undergraduate and graduate level, “the University of Chicago has amazing students,” Ziporyn says. “It’s the only place I’ve ever taught where you can assign one hundred pages, two hundred pages, and whatever you assign, they will actually read it.” And in class, “you will be able to delve pretty deeply.”
The University of Chicago’s broader culture supports Ziporyn’s desire to conduct close investigations of complex topics.
“Freedom and independence of thought are clearly prized at this institution,” he says. “That means there’s an incredible diversity of views, often very sharply opposed. The support for so many varied, yet equally deep inquiries is going on simultaneously; there’s not a distinctive mark of the University of Chicago, except for its unwavering support for intellectual inquiry wherever it may lead.”