Andy Clark in Bristol:

Prof. Clark (Philosophy, Edinburgh) will visit Bristol March 22-24. There will be 2 events on March 23:

11-12:30 Informal discussion of sensorimotor skills and perceptual experience with Profs. Clark and Hurley.
Venue: Philosophy Common Room
Background reading:
Clark: Cognitive complexity and the sensorimotor frontier.
Hurley: Varieties of Externalism.

4-6 Research Seminar by Prof. Clark (we'll go for drinks and dinner afterward, as usual):
Venue Philosophy Common Room.
Title: What Reaching Teaches
Abstract: What is the role of conscious visual experience in the control and guidance of human behaviour? According to some recent treatments, the role is surprisingly indirect. Conscious visual experience, on these accounts, serves the formation of plans and the selection of action types and targets, while the control of 'on-line' visually guided action proceeds via a quasi-independent non-conscious route. In response to such claims, critics have suggested that the notions of control and guidance invoked are unacceptably vague, and that refinement and clarification undermine any vision of dramatic dissociation between visual experience and the control of visuomotor action. I show that refining and clarifying these key notions leaves the original argument intact. The exercise serves, however, to highlight an important complex of considerations concerning the relations between control, conceptualization, personal agency, and experience. Better understanding these relations is, I suggest, an important source of insights concerning both the construction of agency and the nature of phenomenal experience.

Prof. Clark will also participate in the PPNB Graduate/Post-doc conference on March 24.