Graduate and Post-Doctoral Conference: PPNB 2007

Philosophy of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Biology

Saturday 24 March 2007, 9:30 am —7:15 pm
The Orangery, Goldney Hall, Lower Clifton Hill, Clifton, University of Bristol
(www.goldneyhall.com)

Guest speakers

Prof Dan Sperber, Director of Research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Paris
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London

Registration: there are still a few places left. If you wish to attend the conference, please email the conference organiser, Zoe Drayson: phil-ppnb2007@bristol.ac.uk

Conference Schedule

From 9:30: coffee, available all morning

9:45-11:00: Guest speaker, Dan Sperber

Mindreading, comprehension, and epistemic vigilance in an evolutionary and developmental perspective.

11:00-11:15 coffee break

11:15-12:45: 1st block of parallel sessions

1. Direct realism and Disjunctivism
   1. James Genone, Berkeley
      Direct Realism and Perceptual Error
   2. Matthew Conduct, Durham
      Naïve Realism without Disjunctivism
2. Consciousness and its Modalities
   1. Malika Auvray, Antwerp and Oxford
      Enaction and sensory substitution
   2. Nicholas Shea, Oxford
      Using Phenomenal Concepts to Explain Away the Intuition of Distinctness
3. Modelling the Mind
   1. Vincenzo Fiore, Edinburgh
      Small, Hyper Mind
   2. Dave Cochran, St Andrews
      Access-consciousness as network structure in a system of fragmentable, recombinable multi-modal exemplars

12:45-1:30: lunch break

1:30-3:00 2nd block of parallel sessions

1. Consciousness, Action, and Two Visual Systems
   1. Julian Kiverstein, Edinburgh
      Do visual form agnosics have a conscious experience of shape?
   2. Dave Ward, Edinburgh
      Action, Perception and the Two Streams
2. Control and Agency
   1. Thor Grünbaum, Copenhagen
      Agency and Alienation
   2. Joshua Skewes, Aarhus
      Willing the inevitable: guidance control in cognitive neuroscience
3. Evolving Minds and Emotions
   1. Jonathan Grose, Bristol
      Honest vs Deceptive Emotional Displays
   2. Chris Haufe, Duke
      How Should Evolutionary Theory Constrain A Theory of Psychology?

3:15-4:45: 3rd block of parallel sessions

Simulation and the First Person
1. Komarine Romdenh-Romluc, Sheffield
   Simulation and Immunity to Error through Misidentification
2. Karen Shanton, Rutgers
   An investigation of first-person past mindreading
1. Consciousness, Natural and Synthetic
   1. David Carmel, UCL
      Consciousness in time: The temporal resolution of visual awareness
   2. David Gamez, Essex
      Analysing Artificial Systems for Consciousness
2. Perspective and Process
   1. Michael Madary, Bristol
      What specular highlights tell us about perceptual content
   2. Riccardo Manzotti, Milan
      A process and externalist approach to the conscious mind

4:45-5:15: tea break

5:15-6:30: Guest speaker, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore

The social brain.

6:30: wine reception

Background and Rationale

Following the success of PPNB 2005 in Oxford, the CONTACT project is hosting PPNB 2007 in Bristol and PPNB 2008 in Edinburgh.

We aim to bring together young researchers interested in mind-world relations, to address philosophical issues raised by empirical work in psychology, neuroscience, biology, and other life sciences.  Relevant topics include:  consciousness, perception, emotion, covert processing and related dissociations, ecological or embodied approaches to the mind, representation in neural networks, social cognition, motor control and voluntary action, simulation theory, evolutionary psychology, issues of group selection, the relation of thought to language, mental disorders, the evolution of language, animal minds, modularity, rationality, cognitive and biological issues concerning complexity or emergence, dynamic versus computational views of cognition, and so on.

We welcome participation and paper submissions by both philosophers and scientists; papers should be of a character suitable for interdisciplinary discussion.  Numbers will be limited to 60 to facilitate discussion.  Priority for places will be given to research students and those who completed doctoral work no earlier than 2002

Lunch, coffee/tea, and a glass of wine afterward will be provided for all participants.

There is a registration fee of £20; payment by cheque will be requested prior to the conference.

Please note: Those attending the conference will be expected to make their own arrangements for dinner and accommodation as needed.

Sponsors

CONTACT Bristol, a project on consciousness in interaction with natural and social environments, funded by an AHRC grant to Prof. Susan Hurley under the ESF CNCC initiative (http://www.media.unisi.it/cirg/contact)

McDonnell Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience, Oxford