Calls for Conference Papers

Call for Posters: Collective Agency and Cooperation in Natural and Artificial Systems

2 weeks ago
by Mog in

Call for Posters
Collective Agency and Cooperation in Natural and Artificial Systems – International Conference at the University of Stuttgart
Organizer: Prof. Dr. Catrin Misselhorn
Date: July 22-24, 2013
Location: Internationale Begnungsstätte Eulenhof, Robert-Leicht-Str. 161, 70569 Stuttgart
Deadline: June 1

The Institute of Philosophy and the SimTech Cluster of Excellence at the University of Stuttgart invite doctoral and early career researchers to submit posters for presentation at the Collective Agency and Cooperation in Natural and Artificial Systems conference to be held at the University of Stuttgart between 22nd and 24th July 2013.

We are pleased to be able to offer four bursaries (up to 200 € for travel plus accommodation and conference dinner) to doctoral and early career researchers who have submitted their doctoral thesis within the last two years.

To apply please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words to Prof. Dr. Catrin Misselhorn (catrin.misselhorn@philo.uni-stuttgart.de) by June 1st.

For more information please visit the conference website:

http://www.uni-stuttgart.de/philo/termine/caac

Registration and contact: Prof. Dr. Catrin Misselhorn (catrin.misselhorn@philo.uni-stuttgart.de).

Call for posters & registration: Methods in studying social cognition

3 months ago
by Mog in

Call for Registration/Poster submission:

Methods in studying social cognition

April 3-5, 2013, Schloss Mickeln, Heinrich-Heine Universität Düsseldorf, Germany

The aim of this meeting is to bring together empirical scientists and philosophers to explore novel experimental methods of studying social cognition. In particular, the workshop hopes to gather researchers dedicated to developing empirical methods that go beyond the traditional Theory of Mind paradigms based on Theory Theory and/or Simulation Theory. Instead of these paradigms, which have largely focused on reflective and observational processes in social cognition, we want to focus on those paradigms that involve social interactions and allow for the study of the cognitive and affective processes underlying the interaction dynamics.

Please note: The capacity of the workshop is limited to 35 participants. Priority will therefore be given to those who are actively involved in relevant research and who will present a poster. Details on poster submission can be found below.

Confirmed Speakers:
- Alan Fiske (Department of Anthropology, UCLA)
- Berna Guroglu (Brain & Development Lab, Leiden University)
- Ivana Konvalinka (Center for Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Aarhus)
- Josef Parnas (Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen)
- Erik Rietveld (Department of Philosophy, Academic Medical Center, University of Amsterdam).
- Jan Slaby (Department of Philosophy, Free University Berlin)
- Bert Timmermans (Social Cognition Section, School of Psychology, University of Aberdeen)

Registration/Poster submission:
If you would like to present a poster at the workshop please submit a short abstract of no more then 500 words to Wouter van den Bos (wvdbos@stanford.edu) by February 21st. If you would like to attend the workshop without presenting a poster please send an e mail to the above address, indicating how your research is relevant to the topic of the workshop. Successful applicants will be sent an invitation to attend by February 28th.

We regret that we cannot subsidize travel or accommodation for poster presenters. However, there will be no conference fee and you will be invited to the dinner on Thursday.

For up to date information please visit our website: http://social-interaction.eu/

The 6th AISB Symposium on Computing and Philosophy: The Scandal of Computation – What is Computation?

4 months ago
by Mario in
April 2 – 5th 2013
University of Exeter, Exeter, UK


SYMPOSIUM OVERVIEW

 

What is computation? Society builds and uses millions of computers each year so at first sight the answer seems trivial. A computer is merely a general purpose, typically electronic device, that can be programmed to carry out a finite set of arithmetic or logical operations. These days they announce their ubiquity to the world in phones, desktop devices, washing machines, even lawn mowers.

 

Historically, however, the etymology of the word (from the OED) informs us that the notion of computation was identified with the action of humans who make calculations, often with the aid of calculating machines. In the 1940s this definition was refined with that of an “effective method” (a procedure that reduces the solution of problems to a series of rote steps which is bound to give the correct answer in finite time for all possible inputs), to yield the notion of the algorithm an effective method for calculating the values of a function and the notion of the effective calculability of functions with an effective method (algorithmic solution). In this way, the notion of computation came to be identified with the actions [steps] carried out by [automated] computers to produce definite outputs [in finite time]. This notion frames computation in terms of an agent, which raises the questions of what computation is per se – merely the dynamics of information flow? And in this scenario, how can computational data be meaningful? How can meaningful data acquire truth-values?

 

For a long time our ideas about computations (or about the underlying computational models) were more or less rigid, fixed, established in the middle of the twentieth century. In the centre there was the model of a classical Turing machine, with its scenario of a finite computation defining a fixed mapping from the inputs to the outputs. The computations of Turing machines served as a means for defining the complexity of computations, the notion of the universality of computations, and the notion of computability (historically, the lastly mentioned three notions should have been listed in a reversed order). Nevertheless, with the advent of modern computing technologies, networking, and advances in physics and biology, has emerged the ideas that computation is a far broader, far more common, and more complex phenomenon than that modelled by Turing machines. It has been increasingly more difficult to see newly emerging models of computations through the optics of Turing machine computations. Examples include biologically inspired models—such as neural nets, DNA computing, self-assembled structures, molecular computers, cognitive computing, brain computing, swarm computing, etc., or physically inspired models, such as quantum computing, relativistic computers, hyper-computers, and, last but not least, “technologically enabled” models, with the prominent example of the Internet, but also various (also mobile) networks.

 

In this symposium we hope to address these and other key issues related to the “scandal of computation”.

 

 

TOPICS OF INTEREST (including, but not limited to)

1. CORE PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES: Questions of ontology and epistemology

i. WHAT IS COMPUTATION?
Does computation (the unfolding process of a computational system) define a natural kind? If so how to differentiate the computational from the non-computational?


ii. COMPUTATION AS AN OBSERVER RELATIVE PHENOMENON
Computation as an observer relative phenomenon (cf. Searle); does a rock implement every input-less FSA (Putnam)?

iii. A DIGITAL ONTOLOGY
Digital ontology’ (Zuse), “the nature of the physical universe is ultimately discrete”; cf. Kant’s distinction – from the antinomies of pure reason – of “simple parts” and no simple parts; the discrete and the analogue.
iv. PAN-COMPUTATIONALISM
Is the evolution of the universe computable as the output of an algorithm? I.e. is the temporal evolution of a state of the universe a digital informational process akin to what goes on in the circuitry of a computer?

2. SOME COMPUTATIONAL-PHILOSOPHICAL ISSUES: Computation in machines and computation in nature; Turing versus non-Turing computation
i. COMPUTATION IN NATURE
Investigating the difference between formal models of physical and biological systems and physical/biological reality-in-itself and the implication(s) for theory of mind / cognition.
- The study of ‘computation’ using natural processes / entities (i.e. machines not exclusively based on [man-made] silicon-based architectures).
- What is the underlying nature of such natural [physical/biological] computational processes? I.e. are the laws of natural processes computational at their very core OR merely contingently computational because the mathematical language we use to express them is biased towards being computational?

ii. FORMAL THEORIES OF NON-TURING MODELS OF COMPUTATION
Investigating the philosophical implications of non-Turing computability for the  philosophy of science/physics and the philosophy of mind.
- Questions regarding the ultimate nature of causality and its relationship to computational (both TM and non-TM) models and implications for philosophy of physics/science and the philosophy of mind.
- Bio-hybrid [Animat] ‘computational’ systems (aka A-Machines); the phenomenology of A-Machines; the putative TM/non-TM computational capacity of A-Machines.
SUBMISSION AND PUBLICATION DETAILS

Submissions must be full papers and should be sent via EasyChair: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aisb13cp

Text editor templates from a previous convention can be found at: http://www.aisb.org.uk/convention/aisb08/download.html

We request that submitted papers are limited to eight pages. Each paper will receive at least two reviews. Selected papers will be published in the general proceedings of the AISB Convention, with the proviso that at least ONE author attends the symposium in order to present the paper and participate in general symposium activities.

IMPORTANT DATES

i. Full paper submission deadline: 14 January 2013
ii. Notification of acceptance/rejection decisions: 11 February 2013
iii. Final versions of accepted papers (Camera ready copy): 4 March 2013
iv. Convention: 2-5 April 2013 [symposium dates tbc]

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Please note that there will be separate proceedings for each symposium, produced before the convention. Each delegate will receive a memory stick containing the proceedings of all the symposia. In previous years there have been awards for the best student paper, and limited student bursaries. These details will be circulated as and when they become available. Authors of a selection of the best papers will be invited to submit an extended version of the work to a journal special issue.

SYMPOSIUM ORGANISERS

Symposium Chair: Prof. Mark Bishop, Department of Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK.
email:                     m.bishop@gold.ac.uk
tel:                            +44 (0) 207 078 5048
web page:            <http://www.gold.ac.uk/computing/staff/m-bishop/>

Symposium Executive-Officer and OC member: Dr. Yasemin J. Erden, CBET, St Mary’s University College, Twickenham, UK.
email:                     erdenyj@smuc.ac.uk
tel:                            +44 (0) 208 224 4250
web page:            <http://www.smuc.ac.uk/tph/staff/yasemin-j-erden.htm>

Symposium OC member: Prof. Slawomir J Nasuto, School of Systems Engineering, University of Reading, Reading, UK.
email:                     s.j.nasuto@reading.ac.uk
tel:                            +44 (0) 118 378 6701
web page:            <http://www.reading.ac.uk/sse/about/staff/s-j-nasuto.aspx>

Symposium OC member: Prof. Jiri Wiedermann, Institute of Computer Science, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Pod Vodarenskou vezi 2, 182 07 Praha 8, Czech Republic.
email:                     jiri.wiedermann@cs.cas.cz
tel:                            +420 266 053 520
web page:            <www.cs.cas.cas/~wieder>

Symposium OC member: Dr. Stephen Rainey, Researcher Facultés Universitaires Notre Dames de la Paix, Faculté d’Informatique, Rue de Grandgagnage 21, Namur, Belgium
email:                     stiofan.orian@gmail.com
tel:                            +32 471 88 26 02
web page:            <http://fundp.academia.edu/StephenRainey>

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE

 

Dr Ron Chrisley (University of Sussex, UK)
Prof. S. Barry Cooper (University of Leeds, UK)
Prof. José Félix Costa (IST Technical University of Lisbon, PT)
Prof. George F. R. Ellis (University of Cape Town, SA)
Dr Peter beim Graben (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, DE)
Prof. Yuri Gurevich (Microsoft Research, USA)
Dr Phyllis Illari (University College London, UK)
Dr Robert W. Kentridge (Durham University, UK)
Prof. Jan van Leeuwen (Universiteit Utrecht, NL)
Prof. Matthias Scheutz (Tufts University, USA)
Prof. Oron Shagrir (The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, IL)
Prof. Hava T. Siegelmann (University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA)
Dr Mariarosaria Taddeo (University of Hertfordshire, UK)
Mario Villalobos (The University of Edinburgh, UK)

CFP: AISB Workshop on Sensorimotor Theories of Perception

10 months ago
by David Silverman in , ,

Event: AISB Workshop on Sensorimotor Theories of Perception
Date: September 26 2012
City: London, UK
Location: Ben Pimlott Building, Goldsmiths, University of London, New Cross, London, UK

Introduction
This workshop aims to provide an insight into the contemporary state of sensorimotor theories and their place in modern cognitive science. Particular focus will be given to J.K. O’Regan and Noë’s 2001 paper “A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness”, including how both authors’ work has since developed and diverged.

An overarching aim will be to describe how sensorimotor accounts relate to enactive accounts: whether they are synonymous, compatible, or even mutually exclusive.

We invite comparisons of the strengths and critiques of sensorimotor accounts as compared to more established, and more radical theories. We seek to clarify the scope of sensorimotor theories, the subjects over which they provide the greatest explanations

Example Topics of Interest

  • How an enactive approach compares to a sensorimotor approach.
  • The “hard” problems solved or introduced by assuming a sensorimotor stance.
  • How various Sensorimotor theories compare with each other and competing theories.
  • Whether a sensorimotor approach commits one to a certain philosophy of mind.
  • The most influential existing projects that assume a sensorimotor stance.
  • How sensory substitution experiments and sensorimotor theory may inform each others’ development.
  • How sensorimotor accounts may inform developments in artificial intelligence and cognitive science.
  • How to explain sensorimotor “mastery”, and the relation between “understanding”, “skill” and “knowledge”.
  • The role or need for perceptual “content” and internal representations.
  • The relation between perception and action; between “knowing how to act” and “knowing what would happen if you did act”.

Any other topics related to sensorimotor theory will also be welcomed.

Event
We intend to provide an early avenue for informal exposition of views on the historical and contemporary context of sensorimotor theories. We invite scholars and students to submit a 250-500 word abstract for oral presentation and subsequent round table discussion.

Registration
Registration is free to members of the AISB [aisb.org.uk] and otherwise equal to the cost of membership which will be processed as a membership application unless explicitly requested. AISB Membership costs are available at http://www.aisb.org.uk/about/join

Venue
Goldsmiths, University of London is located in the heart of London, under five minutes’ walk from New Cross and New Cross Gate train stations. These stations are both served by National Rail trains and the London Overground Network. Trains run from Charing Cross, Waterloo East, Cannon Street and London Bridge. Journey time is roughly 10-15 minutes.

Further travel information and directions can be found at:

http://www.gold.ac.uk/find-us/trainlondonovergroundtube/

Submission
Deadline for submissions is 12th September, 2012 (two weeks prior to the event). Email abstracts to Andrew Martin at ma901am@gold.ac.uk, they will be contemplated but not submitted to formal peer review. Accepted speakers will be notified by 19th September, 2012 (one week prior to the event).

CoMiC: Graduate Conference in Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science

10 months ago
by Mark Sprevak in ,

in association with the 6th Mind Network Meeting

12-13 October 2012
University of Edinburgh

The CoMiC is an opportunity for current graduate students working in Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science to present their work to an interdisciplinary audience, to meet other fellow students and to participate in the 6th Mind Network Meeting.

The graduate presentations will take place on Friday 12th October, and the 6th Mind Network meeting will take place on Saturday 13th. Speakers and participants are encouraged to attend both events.

Speakers

We are pleased to announce that our keynote speaker for the CoMiC will be:

  • Tim Bayne (University of Oxford)

The confirmed speakers for the Mind Network Meeting will be:

  • Frederique de Vignemont (Institute Jean-Nicod – Paris)
  • Liz Irvine (University of Tübingen – Germany)
  • Ian Philips (UCL)

Submission Guidelines

We invite graduate students to submit papers in Philosophy of Mind and Cognition. All submissions will be subjected to a blind refereeing procedure.

  • The papers should not exceed 3,000 words (including footnotes but excluding reference bibliography).

  • Please put “Conference Paper Submission” as the subject of your email,

  • Please include in a separate document a cover sheet containing your name, departmental affiliation, email address, contact telephone number, the title of your paper and 3-7 key words.

Papers (.doc or .pdf formats) should be sent by email to: R.V.J.Stoeckle-Schobel@sms.ed.ac.uk

Important Dates

Deadline for Submission: 13th of August 2012
Notification of Acceptance: beginning of September 2012

For all enquiries, please email: F.M.Rossi@sms.ed.ac.uk

Organizing Committee:

Francesca Micol Rossi (event coordinator), Mario Villalobos, Andrea Polonioli, Robert O’Shaughnessy, David Statham, Ashleigh Louise Watson, Koosha Eghbal Ketabchi, Richard Stöckle-Schobel

1st International Krakow Conference in Cognitive Science: Consciousness and Volition

11 months ago
by Boleslaw Czarnecki in , ,

CFP – extended deadline – 31 May 2012

 

27-29 September 2012, Kraków, Poland

Principal topics include: mental acts of volition, perception, memory, qualia, emotions, as well as their neurophysiological and physical foundations. For further information please view our conference homepage at cognitivescience.eu. An extended announcement is also available here.

Call for papers

The conference organisers cordially invite prospective participants to submit original proposals for consideration. For a 30-minute presentation, we accept a 450-600 word abstract. All abstracts should be prepared for blind review and submitted through: http://www.cognitivescience.eu/index.php?s=registration.

The deadline for applications is 31 May 2012.

CFP: Intuitions, Experiments and Philosophy

11 months ago
by James Andow in

3rd Workshop of the Experimental Philosophy Group UK, 8-9th September 2012, University of Nottingham

Deadline for Submission: 7th July 2012

Experimental Philosophy Group UK invites the submission of 500-word abstracts for 45-minute presentations or poster presentations on the subject of ‘Intuitions, Experiments and Philosophy’ for their upcoming workshop. Keynote presentations will be given by Shaun Nichols (University of Arizona) and Simone Schnall (University of Cambridge).

The following is a list of suggested types of content and possible topics:

  • Presentations of new experimental work
  • Non-experimental papers
  • The role/relevance of empirical findings in philosophy
  • The role/relevance of intuition in philosophy
  • The empirical investigation of intuitions
  • Proposals for new experimental work
  • Expert intuitions
  • The nature of philosophical intuition
  • Philosophical implications of gender, cultural or other demographic difference in intuition
  • Methodological issues raised by experimental philosophy

All high-quality submissions considered. Submissions encouraged from all levels of academia. 500-word abstracts to be sent as PDF or Word documents to experimentalphilosophyuk@gmail.com by 7th July 2012. Subject line of email should read “SUBMISSION [YOUR NAME]”. In the body of the email please state your name, affiliation and in which category (presentation or poster) you wish your submission to be considered. Submissions for presentations that are unsuccessful will be automatically considered for poster presentation. Presenters should be prepared to obtain funding from their home department, or to fund themselves.

Workshop Organisers: Bryony Pierce (Bristol), Robin Scaife (Sheffield) and James Andow (Nottingham)

https://sites.google.com/site/experimentalphilosophygroupuk/

The workshop is generously supported by the Mind Association, and the Department of Philosophy and Graduate School of the University of Nottingham.

The Turing Centenary Conference

1 year ago
by Mark Sprevak in , ,

June 22-25, 2012
Manchester, UK

Second announcement, call for submissions and call for participation.

Features:

  1. Ten Turing Award winners, a Templeton Award winner and Garry Kasparov as invited speakers
  2. GBP 20,000 worth best paper award program, including GBP 5,000 best paper award
  3. Two panels and two public lectures
  4. Turing Fellowship award ceremony
  5. Computer chess programme
  6. Competition of programs proving theorems
  7. and many more …

For more details please check http://www.turing100.manchester.ac.uk/

Note that the registration is now open.

Speakers

Confirmed invited speakers:

  • Fred Brooks (University of North Carolina)
  • Rodney Brooks (MIT)
  • Vint Cerf (Google)
  • Ed Clarke (Carnegie Mellon University)
  • Jack Copeland (University of Canterbury, New Zealand)
  • George Francis Rayner Ellis (University of Cape Town)
  • David Ferrucci (IBM)
  • Tony Hoare (Microsoft Research)
  • Garry Kasparov (Kasparov Chess Foundation)
  • Samuel Klein (Wikipedia)
  • Don Knuth (Stanford University)
  • Yuri Matiyasevich (Institute of Mathematics, St. Petersburg)
  • Hans Meinhardt (Max-Planck Institute for Developmental Biology)
  • Roger Penrose (University of Oxford)
  • Adi Shamir (Weizmann Institute of Science)
  • Michael Rabin (Harvard University)
  • Leslie Valiant (Harvard University)
  • Manuela M. Veloso (Carnegie Mellon University)
  • Andrew Yao (Tsinghua University)

Confirmed panel speakers:

  • Ron Brachman (Yahoo Labs)
  • Steve Furber (The University of Manchester)
  • Carole Goble (The University of Manchester)
  • Pat Hayes (Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, Pensacola)
  • Bertrand Meyer (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology)
  • Moshe Vardi (Rice University)

Submissions:

The Turing Centenary Conference will include invited talks and a poster session. Submissions are sought in several areas of computer science, mathematics and biology.

Submissions of two kinds are welcome:

  • Regular papers
  • Research reports

All submitted papers must be in the PDF format and between 3 and 15 pages long. All submissions will be evaluated by the programme committee. Submission is through the EasyChair system, https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=turing100.

Regular papers must include original work not submitted before or during the Turing-100 reviewing period to any other event with published proceedings or a journal. All submitted regular papers will be considered eligible for the best paper awards.

Research reports can contain work in progress and/or be based on previously submitted work. They will not be eligible for the best paper awards.

Submissions are welcome in all areas of computer science, mathematics
and biology listed below:

  • computation theory
  • logic in computation
  • artificial intelligence
  • social aspects of computation
  • models of computation
  • program analysis
  • mathematics of evolution and emergence
  • knowledge processing
  • natural language processing
  • cryptography
  • machine learning
  • cognitive science
  • mathematical biology

The submission deadline is April 16. All submissions will be evaluated by the programme committee. Authors will be notified by acceptance or rejection on or before May 1st. At least one author of every accepted paper must register for the conference, attend it and present the paper at the poster session. All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings and available at the conference. The instructions on preparing final versions for the proceedings will appear on the Turing-100 Web site.

A subset of accepted regular papers will be selected by the programme committee for the second round of reviewing. The authors of the selected papers will be invited to submit revised versions of their papers by May 16. The programme committee will make decisions on best paper awards by June 14. All papers receiving the award will be published in a book dedicated to the conference and published after the conference. This book will also contain some papers by invited and panel speakers.

In the case of doubts about the relevance of your paper to the conference and for all other queries please contact programme chair Andrei Voronkov at andrei@voronkov.com.

See http://www.turing100.manchester.ac.uk/index.php/submission for more details.

Best Paper Awards:

A subset of poster session submissions will be selected as candidates for best paper awards:

  • The best paper award of GBP 5,000
  • The best young researcher best paper award of GBP 3,000
  • The second best paper award of GBP 2,500
  • The second best young researcher best paper award of GBP 1,500
  • Sixteen (16) awards of GBP 500 each

See http://www.turing100.manchester.ac.uk/index.php/submission/bestpaper for more details.

Registration:

The number of participants is limited. Register early to avoid disappointment! To register, access https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=turing100 and click on “Registration”.

Registration fees

All fees are in Pound Sterling.

early (on or before May 3):

  • Student £280
  • Regular £380

late (May 4 or later):

  • Student £330
  • Regular £450

To qualify for a student registration you must be a full-time student on June 23, 2012.

The registration fees include

  • Attendance of sessions
  • Conference reception
  • Conference dinner
  • Coffee breaks and lunches
  • Poster session proceedings

There will be a travel support programme for students and attendees from countries where getting funding for travel is hardly possible.

For more details about registration check http://www.turing100.manchester.ac.uk/index.php/registration

Dates:

  • April 16: Poster session submission deadline
  • May 1: Poster session notification and selection of
  • candidates for awards
  • May 15: Final versions of poster session papers
  • May 16: Submission of full versions of papers selected for awards
  • June 14: Best paper award decisions
  • June 22-25: Conference
  • July 15: Final versions of papers selected for awards

Chairs:

Honorary Chairs:

  • Rodney Brooks (MIT)
  • Roger Penrose (Oxford)

Conference Chairs:

  • Matthias Baaz (Vienna University of Technology)
  • Andrei Voronkov (The University of Manchester)

Turing Fellowships Chair:

  • Barry Cooper (University of Leeds)

Theorem Proving Competition Chair:

  • Geoff Sutcliffe (University of Miami)

Programme Chair:

  • Andrei Voronkov (The University of Manchester)

Perceptual Ephemera

1 year ago
by Clare Mac Cumhaill in , ,

Conference Announcement and Call for Papers

Perceptual Ephemera

University of Geneva

24th/25th September 2012

Call for Papers:

When considering the objects of perception, many philosophers have been tempted to place their theoretical focus primarily, if not exclusively, on opaque, material objects, what J.L. Austin once described as “moderate-sized specimens of dry goods” – tables, chairs, pens and so on. Call such objects ‘canonical’ objects of perception. Yet, as Austin also noted, it hardly meshes with our naïve take on our perceptual lives to suppose that this is all we perceive. “Does the ordinary man believe that what he perceives is (always) something like furniture?” Of course not. Rather we take ourselves to perceive, in addition, and for example: flames, soap-bubbles, glimmers, highlights, reflections, echoes, shivers, atmospheric phenomena like rainbows and mirages, shadows, after-images, voices, constellations, and arguably too affordances and values. Call such entities non-canonical objects of perception. This conference aims to open discussion on such less canonical objects and, in particular, those objects the mereological, topological, material and temporal profile of which marks them out as, loosely speaking, ‘ephemeral’.

Unlike material objects, ‘ephemeral’ objects are those whose autonomous existence in the world has, for various reasons, seemed more difficult to vouchsafe, perhaps because they are ontologically dependent in some way (as shadows are on their casters), typically short-lived (soap-bubbles, flames), or more critically, because they appear in someway mind-dependent (as constellations do, or in a somewhat different way mirages, reflections and echoes). The goal of the conference is to isolate peculiar challenges that such objects hold for standard philosophical theories of perception.

Papers that treat any one (or family) of such phenomena are welcomed. As a guideline, the following philosophical questions might also be considered:

How should we individuate non-canonical and ephemeral objects of perception? Are some such objects intensionally individuated – that is, do they depend, for their individuation, on the presence, in the subject, of some mental attitude or state? If so, must a theorist advocating a thin view of perceptual content (for example) rule out certain putatively non-canonical or ephemeral objects as admissible objects of perception?  Must a theorist advancing a relational theory of perception likewise rule out as admissible any intensionally individuated non-canonical object? Do non-canonical and ephemeral objects have particularity? Are they particulars in a Strawsonian sense?  How does a representational theory of perception reconcile the inefficaciousness of certain perceptual ephemera with the possibility of their being perceived? How can a subject be perceptually related to an ephemeral object? How do empirical treatments of non-perceptual objects of perception mesh with such philosophical accounts?

Papers are also welcomed on the ephemeral in art, as well as in the history of ideas.

Keynote

  • Roy Sorensen (Washington University)

Invited Speakers and Discussants

  • István Aranyosi (Bilkent University)
  • Roberto Casati (Institut Jean Nicod)
  • Thomas Crowther (Heythrop College)
  • Martine Nida-Rümelin (University of Fribourg)
  • Matthew Nudds (University of Edinburgh)

Submission Details

  • Extended abstracts of no more than 1000 words should be prepared for blind review – specify on a separate page name, affiliation and e-mail address.
  • Submit as a .pdf, .doc or .rtf attachment to clare.maccumhaill@unige.ch by 1st June, 2012. Please put ‘Conference Paper Submission’ as the subject of your email.
  • An acknowledgment of reception will be sent.
  • Each speaker will be allowed a maximum of 45 minutes for presentation and 45 minutes for discussion.
  • Successful applicants will be notified by 20st June, 2012.
  • A maximum of eight papers will be accepted.
  • Speaker accommodation costs will be covered.
  • It is envisaged that the proceedings of the conference will be published in an edited volume. Authors should thereby be aware that, if selected, their manuscript should not be under consideration for publication elsewhere.

The organisers kindly wish to acknowledge the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF (CRSI11_127488)).

Experience, Action and the Metaphysics of Time

1 year ago
by Mark Sprevak in ,

26th June 2012
Durham University

Keynote speakers:

  • Robin Le Poidevin (Leeds)
  • Barry Dainton (Liverpool)
  • David Cockburn (University of Wales, Trinity Saint David)

The debate between proponents of the A-theory and the B-theory is a familiar one, conducted across a range of metaphysical issues (truthmakers, propositions, change). Our everyday experiences, such as of perceiving, acting, and undergoing emotions, clearly involve both a temporal dimension and an awareness of time. But do the different kinds of experience support either metaphysical theory of time?

For instance, for an action to be rational, it often requires a tensed awareness of certain facts (that the meeting is about to start now; that I am late for it). Many emotions seem to have a temporal orientation, in that they are only appropriate as regards events in the past (grief) or future (fear). Our perception of things and events, as opposed to imagining or remembering them, is often thought to have a present-tensed aspect. And the flowing of experiences through time itself seems to require a sense of what is happening at this present moment.

In each of these cases it can be asked if this experience can only be explained by appeal to irreducibly tensed facts, or if it can be accounted for by a tenseless theory. Although these issues have been previously discussed, the matter remains unsettled and we believe it deserves renewed consideration in light of advances in the theories of action, emotion, perception and the self (for example, the increased recognition of the variety of ways in which an emotion can be taken to be appropriate or not).

We are looking for papers in any of the above areas, or on any topics which relate to the overall conference theme, especially those that recognise how advances made in other areas of philosophy can inform the metaphysics of time or vice versa.

Papers will be 30 minutes in length.

Please send abstracts of up to 500 words to either Olley Pearson (f.o.c.pearson@durham.ac.uk) or Donnchadh O’Conaill () by March 16th 2012.

Decisions on speakers will be made within two weeks of this date.

A website for the conference can be found at: http://www.dur.ac.uk/f.o.c.pearson/EAMT.htm

Sponsored by Durham University Department of Philosophy.

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