Sign up for our awesome New York Tech Events weekly email newsletter.     EVENT DETAILS Rationality, long considered a distinctive characteristic of the human mind, provides us with the capacity for understanding & discernment, as well as the ability to introduce order into our thoughts by allowing us to form higher-order volitions, adopt values, establish priorities, & achieve a level of consistency in our actions across time. The ancient Socratic ideal of the "examined life" in pursuit of truth & justice relied on a definition of human nature that was to be cultivated in a systematic way. If the key to fully realizing our humanity lies in the cultivation of our minds, what ethical principles & practices in modern life can help our minds to flourish? How can reason be blended with emotion to nurture a more ethical life? In this regard, experimental psychology & neuroscientific research may have much to teach us, as might the age-old wisdom traditions. Psychologist & neurobiologist Richard Davidson, classics scholar Edith Hall, & psychologist Dacher Keltner analyze how reason & the mind can facilitate ethical development. Reception to follow.