Werner Reichardt Centrum für Integrative Neurowissenschaften (CIN)

Philosophy & Neuroscience

The Games of the Brain: Adventures in Philosophy and Neuroscience

We are pleased to announce a lecture and seminar series on Philosophy and Neuroscience at the Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Tübingen. The series is titled "The Games of the Brain: Adventures in Philosophy and Neuroscience" and is run by Kirsten Volz, Group Leader in the Neural Basis of Intuition at the CIN, Hong Yu Wong, Group Leader in the Philosophy of Neuroscience at the CIN, Sabine Döring, Professor of Practical Philosophy at Universität Tübingen, and Axel Lindner, Group Leader of the Neurobiology of Decision Lab, Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research.

The series had its debut in 2011 with a lecture on Heuristic Decision Making by Gerd Gigerenzer, and has since grown from a lecture to a full-blown workshop/seminar series.

Short lecture announcements from the early time of "Games of the Brain" have been collated in one place.

Philosophy & Neuroscience: Past Events

Lecture: Johannes Roessler (Warwick): The Manifest Image of Perceptual Knowledge

CIN Games of the Brain Talk

May 17, 2017: 18:15-19:45

Johannes Roessler (Warwick): 'The Manifest Image of Perceptual Knowledge'

Location: Alte Burse

Organization:

  • Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience

Reseach Group: Philosophy of Neuroscience

Contact: Prof. Dr. Hong Yu Wong

Lecture: Thor Grünbaum (Copenhagen): Forgetting Intentions, Desires, and Beliefs

CIN Games of the Brain Talk

May 16, 2017: 16:45-18:00

Thor Grünbaum (Copenhagen): ‘Forgetting intentions, desires, and beliefs’

Location: Alte Burse, Hölderlinzimmer

Organization:

  • Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience

Reseach Group: Philosophy of Neuroscience

Contact: Prof. Dr. Hong Yu Wong

Workshop: CIN PONS Summer Research Forum 2017

CIN Games of the Brain Talk

May 16, 2017 - 10:00 to: May 17, 2017 - 19:45

CIN PONS Summer Research Forum 2017

Venue: Hölderlinzimmer, Alte Burse, Bursagasse 1, Tübingen 72070

May 16, 2017 (Tuesday)

10.00 – 11.00 Tobias Wilsch ‘Causality and Normativity’
11.00 – 12.00 Eva Maria Düringer ‘Beyond Attitude and Feeling: a Compound Based Hedonism’
12.00 – 13.30 Lunch (Stern)
13.30 – 14.00 Christian Stegemann (CIN) ‘Representation in Connectionist Models’
14.00 – 15.00 Chiara Brozzo (CIN) ‘How is Skilled Action Possible?’
15.00 – 15.30 Coffee break
15.30 – 16.30 Hong Yu Wong (CIN) ‘Embodiment’
16.30 – 16.45 Coffee break
16.45 – 18.00 CIN Games of the Brain Lecture: Thor Grünbaum (Copenhagen) ‘Forgetting intentions, desires, and beliefs’

May 17, 2017 (Wednesday)

10.00 – 11.00 Jean Moritz Müller (Bonn) ‘Attitudes, Reasons and Formal Objects’
11.00 – 12.00 Krisztina Orbán (CIN) ‘Self-directed Action First’
12.00 – 13.30 Lunch (Stern)
13.30 – 14.30 Ana Laura Edelhoff ‘Priority for Aristotle’
14.30 – 15.00 Coffee break
15.00 – 16.00 Roberta Locatelli (CIN) ‘Observational Properties as Superficial’
16.00 – 18.15 Break
18.15 – 19.45 CIN Games of the Brain Lecture: Johannes Roessler (Warwick) @ Raum X ‘The manifest image of perceptual knowledge’

Location: Hölderlinzimmer, Alte Burse, Bursagasse 1, Tübingen 72070

Organization:

  • Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience

Reseach Group: Philosophy of Neuroscience

Contact: Prof. Dr. Hong Yu Wong

Lecture: Prof. Dr. Stephen Butterfill (Warwick): On the Developmental Origins of Knowledge of Physical Objects

CIN Games of the Brain Talk

February 8, 2017: 18:15-19:45

Prof. Dr. Stephen Butterfill (Warwick): "On the Developmental Origins of Knowledge of Physical Objects"

Location: Bursagasse 1, Tübingen

Organization:

  • Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience

Reseach Group: Philosophy of Neuroscience

Contact: Prof. Dr. Hong Yu Wong

Download the poster as a PDF file here

Lecture: Prof. Dr. Ophelia Deroy (Munich): Sensory Correspondences and the Signature of Intuitions

CIN Games of the Brain Talk

February 1, 2017: 18:15-19:45

Prof. Dr. Ophelia Deroy (Munich): "Sensory correspondences and the signature of intuitions"

Abstract: Psychologists and philosophers have been interested in a wide variety of intuitions: Moral intuitions, intuitive or naive knowledge about the natural world, linguistic and logical intuitions - which people from the same culture, or even across the globe, happen to share. In this talk, i will focus on a new kind of intuitions, which has been studied under a variety of labels, whereby people agree on apparently arbitrary matches between sensory elements, such as brightness and pitch, words and shapes, colours and tastes, etc. (see Deroy & Spence, 2016 ; Spence, 2011 for reviews).

In this talk, I will discuss the status of these intuitions, and argue that they oblige us to refine the generally accepted equivalence between intuitions and system 1 processes. I propose to focus on the distinctive feelings of arbitrariness and confidence that these intuitions present themselves with instead, and suggest to link this signature of intuitions to their incapacity to fit with the conceptual and rational constraints that usually bear on reflective justifications

Location: Bursagasse 1, Tübingen

Organization:

  • Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience

Reseach Group: Philosophy of Neuroscience

Contact: Prof. Dr. Hong Yu Wong

Download the poster as a PDF file here

Workshop: Interoception, Emotion, and Embodiment (Day 2)

December 6, 2016: 10:00 - 13:15

The CIN Philosophy of Neuroscience Group (PONS) would like to invite you to join us for an interdisciplinary workshop on

Interoception, Emotion, and Embodiment

5-6th December 2016. The workshop will explore the role that internal bodily information plays in emotion, its regulation and disruption, and related disorders of body perception.

Monday 5th December (Hertie Seminar Room, Uni Kliniken Berg)

14.15
Set up/coffee

14.30-15.30
Mog Stapleton (Centre for Integrative Neuroscience)
“Interoception and the Anorexia Anxiety”

15.30-16.15
Simone Mölbert (Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics)
“Multimodal body representation of obese children and adolescents before and after weight-loss treatment in comparison to normal-weight children”

16.15-17.15
Anne Thaler (Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics)
“Investigating the influence of own body size on self-body perception and the perception of bodies of others.”

18.00-19.30:
Sarah Garfinkel (Brighton & Sussex Medical School)
“Interoception and Embodied Emotion”
Keynote/MoKo Talk – find more information here

Tuesday 6th December (Max Planck Seminar Room, Max Planck Haus)

10.00
Set up/coffee

10.15-11.15
Birgit Derntl (Centre for Integrative Neuroscience)
“Emotional regulation at work in the healthy and depressed brain”

11.15-12.15
Katrin Giel (Universitätsklinikum Tübingen)
“Impulsivity and emotion regulation across the weight spectrum”

12.15-13.15
Betty Mohler (Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics)
“Virtual Reality and Embodiment”

-----

Workshop organised by:
Mog Stapleton (Philosophy of Neuroscience Group, Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Tuebingen)
Chiara Brozzo (Space and Body Perception Group, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics)

Location: Max Planck Seminar Room, Max Planck Haus

Organization:

  • Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience

Reseach Group: Philosophy of Neuroscience

Contact: Prof. Dr. Hong Yu Wong

Workshop: Interoception, Emotion, and Embodiment (Day 1)

December 6, 2016: 10:00 - 13:15

The CIN Philosophy of Neuroscience Group (PONS) would like to invite you to join us for an interdisciplinary workshop on

Interoception, Emotion, and Embodiment

5-6th December 2016. The workshop will explore the role that internal bodily information plays in emotion, its regulation and disruption, and related disorders of body perception.

Monday 5th December (Hertie Seminar Room, Uni Kliniken Berg)

14.15
Set up/coffee

14.30-15.30
Mog Stapleton (Centre for Integrative Neuroscience)
“Interoception and the Anorexia Anxiety”

15.30-16.15
Simone Mölbert (Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics)
“Multimodal body representation of obese children and adolescents before and after weight-loss treatment in comparison to normal-weight children”

16.15-17.15
Anne Thaler (Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics)
“Investigating the influence of own body size on self-body perception and the perception of bodies of others.”

18.00-19.30:
Sarah Garfinkel (Brighton & Sussex Medical School)
“Interoception and Embodied Emotion”
Keynote/MoKo Talk – find more information here

Tuesday 6th December (Max Planck Seminar Room, Max Planck Haus)

10.00
Set up/coffee

10.15-11.15
Birgit Derntl (Centre for Integrative Neuroscience)
“Emotional regulation at work in the healthy and depressed brain”

11.15-12.15
Katrin Giel (Universitätsklinikum Tübingen)
“Impulsivity and emotion regulation across the weight spectrum”

12.15-13.15
Betty Mohler (Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics)
“Virtual Reality and Embodiment”

-----

Workshop organised by:
Mog Stapleton (Philosophy of Neuroscience Group, Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Tuebingen)
Chiara Brozzo (Space and Body Perception Group, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics)

Location: Max Planck Seminar Room, Max Planck Haus

Organization:

  • Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience

Reseach Group: Philosophy of Neuroscience

Contact: Prof. Dr. Hong Yu Wong

Workshop: Games of the Brain – Introspection, Consciousness, and Cognitive Science

CIN Games of the Brain Talk

June 20, 2016 - 14:00 to June 21, 2016 - 17:00

INTROSPECTION, CONSCIOUSNESS, AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE

A workshop with Wayne Wu (Carnegie Mellon)

June 20-21, 2016
University of Tuebingen

This workshop will focus on topics in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, especially introspection and consciousness. The workshop will revolve around a detailed discussion of three chapters from Wayne Wu's manuscript on introspection. Wayne Wu is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University and Associate Director of the Centre for the Neural Basis of Cognition. Issues to be covered include: introspection, consciousness, attention, control, and self-knowledge.

Public Talk: June 20, 2016, 6 pm

Workshop: June 20-21, 2016 (registration required)

VENUE:
DZNE Building
Otfried-Müller-Straße 23
72076 Tübingen
Bus stop: Uni-Kliniken Berg

SCHEDULE:
Monday 20th June: DZNE Building

14.00-16.00: Paper 1: 'What introspection of perception is, as a psychological capacity’
Commentator: Katia Samoilova (CIN)

18.00-19.30: Public Talk by Wayne Wu: 'Neuroscience, Consciousness and Schizophrenia’
Abstract: What will a neuroscientific explanation of phenomenal consciousness look like? Given that consciousness is perennially shrouded in mystery, I begin with the conceptual challenges the task of neural explanation of consciousness raises, discussing several salient cases in the empirical literature. This leads to articulating clear explanatory and methodological principles that can regiment empirical work. These principles are then applied to current understanding of the positive symptoms of schizophrenia such as passivity phenomena, thought insertion, and in particular, auditory verbal hallucination understood as abnormal forms of consciousness. I criticize a common, perhaps the standard, account of these symptoms, and draw on my principles to suggest how we can move forward and understand consciousness in these cases.

Tuesday 21st June: DZNE Building

10.00-12.00: Paper 2: 'On blur and how introspection works there’
Commentators: Krisztina Orban (CIN) and Mog Stapleton (CIN)

15.00-17.00: Paper 3: 'On introspection, AVH in schizophrenia, and how to explain hallucination’
Commentator: Gregor Hochstetter (CIN)

The format of the workshop (except for the final talk) is pre-read. A commentator will open each session with a 15 min commentary, followed by open discussion with Prof. Wu.

REGISTRATION:
The public talk at 18.00 on 20th June is open to all and no registration is required.
Attendance at the workshop is free, but registration is required. Registered participants will be given access to the chapters of the manuscript discussed. Participants are committed to reading the chapters that will be discussed in advance. If you would like to attend the workshop, please write to action.in.tuebingen@gmail.com with your institutional affiliation, status, and a few sentences explaining your interest in attending.

We gratefully acknowledge funding from the DFG through the DFG Excellence Cluster, the Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience (CIN) at the University of Tübingen

Organised by the CIN Philosophy of Neuroscience Group (PONS), University of Tübingen

Location: DZNE Building, Otfried-Müller-Straße 23, 72076 Tübingen

Organization:

  • Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience

Reseach Group: Philosophy of Neuroscience

Contact: Prof. Dr. Hong Yu Wong

Workshop: Games of the Brain – Sensory Interactions: Multisensory Perception and Awareness

CIN Games of the Brain Talk

May 10, 2016 - 09:30 to May 11, 2016 - 19:45

This workshop will focus on topics in the philosophy of perception with a special focus on mutlimodality. It will revolve around discussion of chapters from Casey O’Callaghan’s two forthcoming monographs on multimodal and crossmodal perception, Beyond Vision and Sensory Interactions. Casey O’Callaghan is Associate Professor of Philosophy in the Philosophy Department and the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology program at Washington University, St Louis.

VENUE:
Forum Scientiarum
Doblerstraße 33
72074 Tuebingen

SCHEDULE:
May 10, 2016

9.30 – 11.15  “Enhancement through Coordination”
Commentators: Chiara Brozzo (MPI) and Mog Stapleton (CIN)

11.15 – 11.30  Break

11.30 – 13.15 “Sensory Interactions”
Commentator: Katia Samoilova (CIN)

13.15 – 14.30 Lunch break

14.30 – 16.15 “Against Hearing Meanings”
Commentator: Elvira di Bona (Jerusalem)

16.15 – 16.45  Break

16.45 – 18.30 “Intermodal Binding Awareness”
Commentator: Alisa Mandrigin (Warwick)

May 11, 2016

10.30 – 12.30 “The Multisensory Character of Perception”
Commentator: Matt Nudds (Warwick)

12.30 – 14.00 Lunch break

14.00 – 16.00 “Senses”
Commentator: Krisztina Orban (CIN)

16.00 – 18.00 Break

18.15 – 19.45  Talk by Casey O’Callaghan
"Psychological Taxonomy for Multisensory Perception”(Location:  Room X, Burse, Bursagasse 1, Tuebingen)

WORKSHOP FORMAT
The format of the workshop (except for the final talk) is PRE-READ.
Participants are committed to reading the chapters that will be discussed in advance. A commentator will open each session with a 15 min commentary, followed by open discussion with Prof O'Callaghan.

Location: Forum Scientiarum, Doblerstr. 33, 72074 Tuebingen

Organization:

  • Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience

Workshop: Games of the Brain - Brentano Lectures on the Philosophy of Psychology with M. G. F. Martin

July 6, 2015 - 09:15 to July 8, 2016 - 15:30

Franz Brentano is the founding father of modern philosophy of mind and psychology, and one of the pioneers of empirically informed theorising about the mind. Brentano has special connection to Tübingen, as it was the place where he made his first steps as a philosopher writing his PhD. The Brentano Lectures are held in honour of Franz Brentano to foster the exchange between philosophy and psychology

The First Brentano Lectures on the Philosophy of Psychology will be given by Prof. M. G. F. Martin (UCL / UCL Berkeley). Alongside the Brentano Lecturer, the workshop will feature the following invited speakers: Prof. Matthew Nudds (Warwick), Prof. Susanna Schellenberg (Rutgers), and Prof. Matthew Soteriou (Warwick).

Location: Fürstenzimmer, Schloss Hohentübingen

Organization:

  • Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience

Download the program as a PDF here

Workshop: Games of the Brain - Perception and Reasoning with Susanna Siegel

CIN Games of the Brain Talk

March 26, 2015 - 10:00 to March 27, 2015 - 19:30

The Philosophy of Neuroscience Group (CIN) cordially invites you to attend the Workshop on Perception and Reasoning with Susanna Siegel on 26-27 March, 2015. The workshop will take place at the Burse, Raum X. There will be presentations on Susanna Siegel's work throughout both days, while Paul Snowdon and Susanna Siegel will give a keynote lecture at the end of each day (18.00).

For further information please contact: kateryna.samoilovaspam prevention@gmail.com

Day 1 (Thursday 26th  March)

10am    Keith Wilson (Glasgow), “Do visual experiences have contents?”
 
11am    Ivan Ivanov (Warwick), “From property-awareness to representation”
 
12-2pm  Lunch
 
2pm    Michael Madary (Mainz), “Anticipation and variation in visual content”
 
3pm    Elvira Di Bona (Berlin and Turin), “Timbre as a high-level property of auditory perception”
 
4-4:30pm  Break
 
4:30pm  Gregor Hochstetter (CIN), “Perceiving affordances”
 
6pm     Keynote Lecture: Paul Snowdon, “Perception and Content”
 
8pm    Dinner


Day 2 (Friday 27th  March)
 
10am    Zoe Jenkin (Harvard), “The epistemic costs and benefits of perceptual learning”
 
11am    Katia Samoilova (CIN), “Is cognitive penetration ever good?”
 
12-2pm  Lunch
 
2pm    Cat Wade (Edinburgh), “Predictive coding, epistemic downgrade and accessing the world”
 
3pm    Chelsea Richardson (UNL), “Understanding the role of cognitive penetration in social justice”
 
4-4:30pm  Break
 
4:30pm  Laura Perez (Harvard), “Social features and visual phenomenology”
 
6pm     Keynote Lecture: Susanna Siegel, “Evaluative Perception”
 
8pm    Dinner

Location: Burse, Raum X (Bursagasse 1, 72070 Tübingen)

Organization:

  • Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience

Workshops: Games of the Brain - Personal and Sub-personal Explanation with Prof. Rüdiger Bittner

CIN Games of the Brain Talk

January 28, 2015 - 14:00 to January 29, 2015 - 17:00

Wednesday, 28th January 2015 | 2pm - 5pm | Forum Scientiarum (Doblerstr. 33, Tübingen)
Thursday, 29th January 2015 | 10.30am - 1.30pm & 2pm - 5pm | CIN Seminar Room (on level 3, Otfried-Müller-Str. 25, Tübingen)

This workshop will examine the relation between personal and sub-personal explanations through revisiting classical texts on this topic by Dennett, McDowell, Hornsby, Ryle, Davies, and others, and by examining the kinds of explanations linking personal level phenomena with sub-personal mechanisms and constraints in recent philosophy of mind and action (e.g. the work of Burge, Campbell, Peacocke and Wu).

Our guest, Prof. Rüdiger Bittner, is emeritus of the University of Bielefeld. He received his PhD in 1970 from the University of Heidelberg. Later he taught at the University of Hildesheim, Princeton and Yale, among others. Since 1991 he is professor at the University of Bielefeld. His work focusses on Kant's concept of dialectics, moral philosophy, action theory and aesthetics.

On Wednesday, Jan 28th, 6pm c.t., Prof Bittner will give a public talk on "Desiring". The talk will take place at Philosophisches Seminar, Raum X, Bursagasse 1, Tübingen.

Everyone interested in the topic is welcome.

Location: CIN Seminar Room (on level 3, Otfried-Müller-Str. 25, Tübingen)

Organization:

  • Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience

Workshop: Games of the Brain - Naturalizing Agency

CIN Games of the Brain Talk

December 13, 2014: 09:30-18:30

In recent years action theory has undergone a rapid development. Philosophers have begun naturalising action by connecting work in philosophy of action with research in neuroscience and psychology, in particular with motor cognition. This workshop brings together four leading figures of the debate to discuss their most recent work - Stephen Butterfill (Warwick), Corrado Sinigaglia (Milan), Wayne Wu (Carnegie Mellon), and Hong Yu Wong (Tübingen). The workshop focusses on topics such as joint actions, intentions in action and motor representations, the role of perception and attention for action, and bodily awareness.

Programme

  • 9.30 - 10.45 Hong Yu Wong (CIN): "Agency as a Motor Capacity"
  • 11.15 - 12.30 Wayne Wu (Carnegie Mellon): "Intention and Action: causation, knowledge, phenomenology"
  • Lunch
  • 2.00 - 3.15 Alex D. Morgan (CIN): "Constancies: Towards an Integrated Perspective"
  • 3.30 - 4.45 Corrado Sinigaglia (Milan): "On a Puzzle about Relations between Thought, Experience and the Motoric"
  • 5.15 - 6.30 Stephen Butterfill (Warwick): "Naturalising Joint Actions"

Everyone interested in the topic is welcome.

Location: Hörsaal Forum Scientiarum (Doblerstr. 33, 72074 Tübingen)

Organization:

  • Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience

Lecture: Timothy O’Connor: ‘Two Concepts of Emergence’

CIN Games of the Brain Talk

November 27, 2013: 18:15

CIN Games of the Brain and Forum Philosophicum jointly present:

Timothy O’Connor: 'Two Concepts of Emergence'

"The correlated terms "emergence" and "reduction" are used in several ways in contemporary discussions ranging from complex systems theory to philosophy of mind, a fact that engenders confusion or talking at cross- purposes. I try to bring greater clarity to this discussion by reflecting on John Conway's cellular automaton.

The Game of Life and simple variations on it. We may think of such variants as toy models of our own world that, owing to their simplicity, enable us to see quite clearly, in general terms, two importantly distinct ways (’weak’ and ‘strong’) in which organized macroscopic phenomena might emerge from underlying microphysical processes. Strong emergence is of greater significance to meta- physics and philosophy of mind; it is also commonly deemed implausible. I close by suggesting that typical reasons for this evidential judgment are unconvincing."

Location: Philosophisches Seminar Burse, Bursagasse 1, 72070 Tübingen

Organization:

  • Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience
  • University of Tübingen

Download the poster as a PDF here

Lecture: Games of the Brain - 2011 to 2012 (collated)

CIN Games of the Brain Talk

Find a full list from the early days of "Games of the Brain" here: lectures from 2011 to 2012.

 

July 17 2012 4 - 6pm

"Optogenetics and Maker's Knowledge"

CIN seminar room (3rd floor FIN building)

Prof. Carl Craver, University of Washington, St Louis

 

January 13, 2012 3 - 5:30 pm

"How to improve Referees´Calls: Judgment and Decision Making in Sports From a Social Cognition and an Embodiment Perspective"
Lecture Hall Max Planck House, Spemannstrasse 36, Tübingen

 

Henning Plessner, Lecturer in Philosophy, King's College London
Markus Raab, German Sport University, Cologne

 

 

November 30, 2011 6 - 7:30 pm

"Judgement in Trolley Problems"
Raum X, Burse, Bursagasse 1, Tübingen
Dr Natalie Gold, Lecturer in Philosophy, King's College London

 

 

November 25, 2011 2 - 5:30 pm

Workshop: "A Taste of Flavour"
CIN Seminar Room, CIN, Paul Ehrlich Str. 17, Tuebingen 72076
Prof Charles Spence
Dr Ophelia Deroy
Prof Barry C. Smith

 

 

July 5, 2011 10 - 12 am

 

"Does Neuroscience make Philosophy Irrelevant?"
CIN Seminar Room, CIN, Paul Ehrlich Str. 17, Tuebingen 72076
Liz Irvine
Anders Nes

Liz Irvine (Edinburgh) "Evaluating ‘mental’ concepts: The role of scientific practice"
Taking seriously the goal of integrating philosophical, psychological and neuroscientific work entails that concepts at all of these levels of analysis should be open to revision. This revision is the natural result of the research heuristics found in interdisciplinary integrative research, such as the role played by dissociation methods in testing and generating frameworks to interpret dissociated phenomena, the role played by identity statements in highlighting inconsistencies between the ‘identified’ concepts and generating new research questions (e.g. McCauley & Bechtel, 2001), and the role of experimental interventions in exploring causal structure, mechanisms, and (perhaps) natural kinds (Woodward, 2008, Craver, 2007, Boyd, 1999). By considering several case studies I will argue that contemporary cognitive and computational neuroscience show how major changes are needed in the way we describe and categorise ‘mental’ phenomena. These sometimes radical changes are entirely to expected from progressive interdisciplinary research, and I will argue that they should be taken seriously not only by scientists working with these concepts, but also by those working in philosophy of mind.

Anders Nes (CSMN Oslo) "Can there be entirely unconscious agents? The case of decorticated rats and cats"
Most philosophers and neuroscientists these days accept that some goal-directed actions are unconscious, with examples ranging from unusual neurological syndromes to everyday automatisms. However, such unconscious actions often seem to be either abnormal for the agents in question, or else (as in the case of many automatisms) to be carried out in pursuit of a more over-arching goal that is consciously pursued. Such examples of unconscious action do not, then, directly refute the thesis that there cannot be agents all of whose goal-directed agency is unconscious. In this talk, I first sharpen the version of the thesis I will be focusing on, viz. one that invokes a broadly 'accessibility' notion of consciousness, and then note some lines of thought implicit or explicit in the philosophy of mind in its favour. I go on to observe that decorticated rats and cats, i.e. animals whose cerebral cortex has been removed, engage in what arguably should be recognised as goal-directed action. These animals thus leave us with one of two options: either reject the target thesis, or accept the view, currently controversial in neuroscience, that consciousness, in the relevant 'accessibility' sense, at least sometimes is realised entirely at subcortical levels.

 

 

May 26, 2011 11 am

 

For the first seminar, we are very pleased to announce that we will have Gerd Gigerenzer, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. His lecture entlitled "Heuristic Decision Making" will take place on May 26 at 11 am.

 

Organization:

  • Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience