Events

Workshop Series ‘Self-Consciousness & Kinds of Self’

8 months ago
by Thomas Jacobi in

WORKSHOP II – 5 & 6 November
———————————————-

(see also Workshop I: 8 — 9 Oct , and Workshop III: 3 — 4 December)

Organised by: Department of Philosophy, University of Fribourg, Avenue de l’Europe 20, Switzerland

http://lettres.unifr.ch/fr/philosophie/philosophie/offredtudes.html

Co-Sponsored by: Olaf Blanke, Laboratory of Neuroscience, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

SPEAKERS
The Affective Self

  • Jan Slaby, Dept. of Philosophy, Free University Berlin, Berlin, Germany
  • John Lambie, Dept. of Psychology, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, UK

Personal Identity

  • Eric Olson, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

The Dualistic Self

  • Martine Nida-Rümelin, Dept. of Philosophy, Fribourg University, Switzerland

Self-Knowledge in Agency

  • Lucy O’Brien, Dept. of Philosophy, University College London, London, UK

Everyone welcome | No Registration fee

All enquiries to: thomas.jacobi@unifr.ch

-> For a detailed schedule and the workshop poster, please see:
http://www.philosophie.ch/events/single.php?action=date&eventid=923&month=11&year=2012

VENUE

Salon des Professeurs, Room 2113, Misericorde, Avenue de l’Europe 20, Fribourg, Switzerland

(half-way between first & second floor, by the staircase, same level as cafeteria) http://www.unifr.ch/map/de/misericorde.php

INTRODUCTION

‘Considered as a unitary object, the self is full of apparent contradictions. It is simultaneously physical and mental, public and private, directly perceived and incorrectly imagined, universal and culture-specific’ (p. 35). ‘[These different aspects or selves] are all experienced, though perhaps not all with the same quality of consciousness. And they are all valued (…)’.

Neisser, U. (1988) Five kinds of Self-Knowledge, Phil. Psychol. 1, 35 – 59 (p. 36)

The question of what self-consciousness, and, more specifically, the sense of self might amount to has been at the very centre of inquiries into the human condition across different ages, cultures and academic disciplines. The answers that have emerged in the past not only revealed different theoretical and practical approaches towards the self, depending on what was assumed that we are aware of in self-consciousness, but also importantly indicated that, in being self-conscious, we take ourselves to be aware of sometimes radically different aspects of the self or indeed of altogether distinct selves.

In these interdisciplinary workshops that draw on sources from philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience, we want to explore how self-consciousness, understood broadly, intimates to us these different aspects of the particular self or kind of self we seemingly are and how these diverse self-related elements (or ‘selves’) not only form a unified whole, if they do, but also how the related conceptions of the self integrate with our general theories and assumptions about the world.

To this end, we will be discussing, inter alia, the phenomenology of self-experience; the (dis)unity of the self; self and agency; biological & evolutionary roots of the self; the emotional/affective self; the idea of a minimal self; the self and the brain; the conceptual versus non-conceptual content of self-consciousness; the embodied self; the first-person versus third-person perspective; the psychopathology of the self; the dualistic nature of the self; the problem of self-knowledge; multi-sensory integration and body awareness; the persistence of the self through time; and prospects for a unified theory of self-consciousness and the self.

Participants in the workshops will have an opportunity to acquire a comprehensive understanding of the diverse aspects surrounding the problem of self-consciousness and the self. Being able to discuss core issues with leading experts in philosophy, psychology and neuroscience will alert participants to the challenges and opportunities in this line of research and will, furthermore, demonstrate to them theoretical and practical strategies of how successful theories of self-consciousness and the self can be formulated.

The organisers wish to acknowledge the kind support of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF 101115-140203 / 1)

Turing’s 100th Birthday Party at King’s College, Cambridge — ACE2012

1 year ago
by Mark Sprevak in

15th & 16th June 2012
King’s College, Cambridge

Turing’s 100th Birthday Party celebrating his life and work will be held at King’s College, Cambridge—Turing’s beloved intellectual home.

Speakers include leading broadcasters and experts on Turing, as well as members of the Turing family and others who knew him personally—pioneers of computing who worked alongside him, building and programming the first computers as well as investigating his mathematical theory of how living matter grows.

Codebreaker Jerry Roberts, one of Turing’s last surviving wartime colleagues from Station X, will give the King’s College Turing Centenary Lecture followed by a movie about the Bletchley Park codebreakers.

There will be lectures on Turing’s contributions to: the Second World War, the development of our technological society, Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Life, the theory and practice of computing, and the understanding of the human mind.

Turing’s 100th Birthday Party coincides with the major Turing Centenary congress in Cambridge, allowing guests to attend both events if they wish.

For more information about the event, please go to: http://sites.google.com/site/turingace2012/

Speakers

  • Sir John Dermot Turing
  • Jon Agar
  • Margaret Boden, OBE
  • Martin Campbell-Kelly
  • Brian Carpenter
  • Jack Copeland
  • Daniel Dennett
  • Robert Doran
  • William Newman
  • Teresa Numerico
  • Brian Oakley
  • Brian Randell
  • Bernard Richards
  • Jerry Roberts
  • Simon Singh
  • Doron Swade
  • Stephen Wolfram
  • Michael Woodger

Registration

Please register early, places are limited. To register, please visit: http://sites.google.com/site/turingace2012/registration

Transport and accommodation

For information about how to arrive in King’s College, and places to stay, please visit: http://sites.google.com/site/turingace2012/hotels

Organisers

Turing 100th Birthday Party is being organised by Jack Copeland (jack.copeland@canterbury.ac.nz) and Mark Sprevak (mark.sprevak@ed.ac.uk).

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)

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.

Workshop: Should a Science of Cognition use First-Person Methods?

1 year ago
by Liz Irvine in ,

Should a Science of Cognition use First-Person Methods?

 

Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Tuebingen

June 15-16, 2012

Workshop: Call for commentators

 

Part of the Games of the Brain workshop series:

http://www.cin.uni-tuebingen.de/events/cin-lectures.php

 

The use of first person methods in cognitive science has followed several cycles of acceptance and rejection. Arguments both for and against their use often refer to methodological considerations: either the role of first-person methods as providing essential scientific evidence, or the inherent problems in collecting and interpreting such data.

The aim of this workshop is to focus directly on the methodological questions surrounding first-person methods, by addressing them from the different viewpoints across cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science. In particular, philosophy of science offers a relatively untapped resource for investigating questions about measurement and operationalization, so has much to offer current debates on this subject.

The workshop will focus on the following sorts of questions:

 

- Are there scientific paradigms or areas of research for which first-person data is essential?

- Does first-person data differ from other scientific data? If so, how? (E.g. is it really private or incorrigible?)

- Are there specific problems associated with collecting first-person data compared with other scientific data? (E.g. response bias, demand characteristics)

- Given these problems, how should first-person data be collected and interpreted? (E.g. methods for reducing response bias, experimental design)

- What, if anything, can be learned from older debates about the use of first-person methods (e.g. against introspection)?

- Do these methodological problems raise further questions about how we should talk about first-person states? (E.g. are there phenomenal facts?)

 

Speakers:

Dr. Uljana Feest, (Technische Universitat, Berlin)

Dr. Liz Irvine, (CIN, University of Tuebingen)

Dr. Matt Longo (Birkbeck, University of London)

Prof. Tony Marcel (University of Hertfordshire)

Prof. Thomas Metzinger (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz)

Prof. Gualtiero Piccinini (University of Missouri, St. Louis)

Prof. Jonathan Schooler (University of California, Santa Barbara)

 

If you would like to give a commentary, please send a CV, and a response to the title of the workshop (max. 200 words), to firstpersonmethods@googlemail.com by March 30th.

Registration is free, but space is limited, so if you would like to attend the workshop, please also email firstpersonmethods@googlemail.com

Details of the workshop will be updated here soon: http://www.rationalagency.uni-tuebingen.de/

Rudolf Carnap Lectures 2012

1 year ago
by Mark Sprevak in ,

May 31st – June 2nd, 2012
Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany)

Ned Block & Susan Carey: Attention and Concepts

Call for Papers

We invite graduate students to submit high quality papers related to the themes of the Carnap-Lectures. We also accept papers that are loosely attached to these topics, but still remain in the area of philosophy of mind or developmental psychology. Four selected papers will be presented during a workshop with Susan Carey and Ned Block. Submissions (full papers, no longer than 3000 words) should be sent electronically to Nike Zohm (nike.zohm@rub.de) before April 15th, 2012.

Tentative Schedule

Thursday May 31st

  • 10.15-12.15 Lecture 1: Susan Carey: The Origin of Concepts: A Case Study of Natural Number

  • 15-17.15 Lecture 2: Ned Block: How the nature of attention can decide among the major theories of perception

  • 18.15-20.00 Public Evening Lecture 3: Ned Block: How iconic memory shows that consciousness is fundamentally different from cognition

Friday 1st of June

  • 10.15-13.30 Graduate presentations

  • 15.15-17.15 Lecture 4: Ned Block: Insights about what we see from crowded perception

Saturday 2nd of June

  • 10.15-12.15 Lecture 5: Susan Carey: Core Cognition of the Social World

For more information see: http://www.rub.de/philosophy/carnaplectures

Organization

Prof. Dr. Tobias Schlicht, Prof. Dr. Albert Newen
Institut für Philosophie II
Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Universitätsstr. 150, GA3
44780 Bochum

Minds, Bodies, and Problems

1 year ago
by Mark Sprevak in ,

7-8 June, 2012
Bilkent University, Ankara

High-quality submissions are invited on the many aspects of the mind-body problem.

Some suggested topics include: naturalistic/physicalistic reduction of intentionality and/or phenomenal consciousness, the potential constitutive role of the body in mental states, the extended mind hypothesis, the potential conceptual role of the Peripheral Nervous System in the characterization of mental states/processes, body and mental causation, body/brain and free will, consciousness related topics in neuro- and bio-ethics, potential novel philosophical implications of focusing on less studied sense modalities: olfaction, proprioception, interoception, kinesthesia, etc.

Self-standing papers are preferred rather than papers responding to/commenting on another paper or book. Each talk will be 45 minutes long, including Q&A.

Keynote speakers:

  • Prof. Murat Aydede (University of British Columbia)

  • Prof. David Chalmers (Australian National University/New York University)

  • Prof. Tim Crane (Cambridge University)

  • Prof. Katalin Farkas (Central European University)

  • Prof. Shaun Gallagher (U. of Memphis/U. of Hertfordshire)

Interested speakers should submit an extended abstract (500-1000 words) by uploading it to the system to be found on the website of the conference: http://minds.bilkent.edu.tr/

Submissions will be blindly refereed by a group of people comprising some of the keynote speakers, some of the faculty members of the Department of Philosophy at Bilkent University, and some members of the Turkish philosophical community.

We will select 8-10 speakers based on the submitted abstracts, and every effort is made to publish the final versions of the papers in an edited volume. The criteria of selection are both the perceived quality of the papers and the maximization of the conference’s overall diversity as far as the topics are concerned.

Abstract submission deadline: 15 January, 2012.
Expected date of a decision: 1 March, 2012.

Organizer: Dr. István Aranyosi (Bilkent University)

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