I am pleased to announce this call-for-papers for the first annual Philosophers' Cocoon Philosophy Conference (PCPC), which will be held at the University of Tampa from Friday October 18th-Sunday October 20th, 2013. This conference will be unique in several respects:

• Although attendance at the conference and participating as session chairs or commentators will be open to all members of the profession, paper presenters must be early-career philosophers — basically, anyone who doesn't have tenure (e.g. graduate students, post-docs, VAP, TT Assistant Profs, independent scholars, etc.)

• Due to the kinds of travel-funding issues that early-career philosophers often face, several paper sessions (the exact number of which will be determined later) will be reserved for Skype presentations in which the author will be projected, and field audience questions, in real time over the internet.

• Although commentators and audience members are encouraged to present objections to papers, a guiding aim of the conference will beconstructive criticism, i.e. helping authors to improve problems (e.g. by not only raising objections, but offering and discussing possible solutions).

• Because successfully navigating the publishing world is one of the most difficult capacities for early-career philosophers to develop, and typical conference-length papers are too short (3,000 words) to publish, we will welcome submissions the length of any typical journal article (20-30 pages double-spaced) — the aim being to help early-career philosophers develop full-length papers into publishable quality. As a rule of thumb, the longer the paper, the higher the standards for acceptance to the conference. Extremely long papers are discouraged.

• In order to defray costs of attendance (once again out of concern for the needs of early-career scholars), there will be no registration fee, and consequently no official banquet, snacks, etc. Tampa is awesome, and there are many affordable places to meet, eat, and congregate around the university.

• We hope to stream all talks live via the internet and, if time permits, take some audience questions from internet viewers by email. 

To submit a paper to present at the PCPC, please email the following to marvan@ut.edu by July 1, 2013: (1) a blinded (i.e. anonymized) paper, (2) a separate title page with the author's name, contract information, and brief paper abstract, and (3) a statement concerning whether you intend to attend the conference in person or only via Skype. Decision emails indicating whether your paper has been accepted will be sent out around August 1, 2013. Finally, please bear the following in mind:

1. In order to ensure that the conference is well-attended, there will be relatively few Skype sessions — so the probability that your paper will be accepted is higher should you state in your submission email that you can attend in person. 
2. Submission of a paper comprises a tacit agreement to serve as a commentator or session chair should your paper be accepted and you accept the invitation to present.

Here.

Kazimierz Dolny, Poland - August 19th to 23rd, 2013

 

Invited key-speakers

Steve Butterfill (Warwick)

Joel Krueger (Copenhagen)

Myriam Kyselo (San Sebastian)   

Tad Zawidzki (George Washington)

 

Call for papers 

The theme of the workshop is the significance of wide cognition – which is embodied, enacted, extended, embedded, and distributed cognition – for social intelligence.

Wide cognition has, over the last couple of decades, become more and more widespread in all areas of cognitive science – from neuroscience to cognitive psychology to cognitive linguistics to philosophy to computer science and robotics. Unlike traditional frameworks for cognitive science, these approaches do not explain cognitive phenomena solely in terms of the manipulation of (language-like) internal representations but stress that (1) minds can extend into the environment; (2) agents are cognitive insofar as they are embodied; (3) their cognitive scaffolding is enacted, or constructed, in an active fashion; (4) cognitive phenomena are always interactions with the environment; (5) and cognitive acts are often paradigmatically distributed among multiple agents. The workshop’s aim is to explore the relevance of this body of research for understanding social intelligence. In particular, its reliance on environmental design, bodily interaction, shared cognitive and symbolic tools, and complex schemas of collaboration.

The workshop will also feature discussion of a white paper of the topic that is being prepared in collaboration with the SINTELNET coordination network (sintelnet.eu).

 

Abstracts

Abstracts of less than 500 words will be accepted till May 30th. All submissions should be made through the easychair website. Abstracts will be evaluated on a first come basis so early submission is strongly encouraged in order to avoid missing out on available spots.

More info on Kazimierz workshops here.

The program of the Conference Perception and Concepts, organized by Jesse Prinz and myself, can be found there. This will be a fantastic conference.

Join us if you are around!

Edouard Machery

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Special issue of the Review of Philosophy and Psychology

Guest editor: Denis Perrin

Deadline for submissions: September 30, 2013

Theme: Episodic memory is a fundamental form of human memory, the hallmark of which is the reliving of past experiences as a result of mental time travel towards one’s own past. As such, it plays a basic role in personal identity, time consciousness, action, and the grounding of knowledge. In the field of psychology, current research programs have revived classical accounts of that cognitive ability, such as attributionalism or constructivism, relying on well-established defining features, such as mental time travel. They have also brought out new features of episodic memory that make it necessary to go beyond traditional accounts. Suffice it to mention the dependence of episodic memory on the segmentation of the flux of consciousness in events, or the role of episodic memory in episodic future thinking. Those advances foster current philosophical works on remembering, by providing new empirical data and theoretical frameworks that are likely to challenge existing conceptions. But they also call for a philosophical assessment, given that psychology itself draws on distinctively philosophical frameworks to account for the data (e.g. inferentialism or reflexivism). This special issue of the Review of Philosophy and Psychology, devoted to episodic memory, encourages contributions seeking to show how psychological studies of episodicity (be they cognitive, developmental, clinical or neurological) renew the philosophical approach to remembering, or putting forward new conceptual analyses aimed at criticizing or further developing the existing accounts of episodic memory in psychology.

Key questions:

The distinctive subjective experience proper to episodic memory, that is:

• how and why episodic memories are about the remembering subject;
• the subjective time of episodic navigation;
• the role played by semantic and procedural memories in the subjective experience of episodic memory.

The epistemology of episodic memory:

• the information contents provided by episodic memory, and how they differ from the contents of perception, imagination or semantic memories;
• the relation of episodic memory to truth and falsehood.

The functional roles of episodic memory with respect to:

• personal and social identity;
• knowledge and beliefs;
• action and reality monitoring;
• phylogenetic evolution and episodic future thought.

Guest authors:

• Dorothea Debus (University of York)
• Jordi Fernandez (University of Adelaide)
• Christoph Hoerl (University of Warwick)
• James Russell (University of Cambridge)

Important Dates:

• September 30, 2013: Submission deadline
  
• April 31, 2013: Target publication date
  

How to submit: Prospective authors should register at: www.editorialmanager.com/ropp to obtain a login and select Episodic memory as the article type. Manuscripts should be approximately 10,000 words and conform to the author guidelines available on the journal's website.

A special sesquicentmensial edition, compiled by Eric Schwitzgebel.

apologies for x-postings 

 

CFP: The Hard Problem of Consciousness, Special Issue of Topoi

In addition to the below CFP we are also seeking to expand our pool of reviewers for this issue. If you are available to review a paper please contact the guest editors named below.

Much work in the philosophy of consciousness begins with the premise that consciousness offers a uniquely Hard Problem. This premise can lead to radical speculative metaphysics such as pan-protopsychism (Chalmers) or epiphenomenal property dualism (early Jackson). It can also be used by researchers to justify ignoring advances in consciousness studies from other disciplines. However, not everyone agrees that consciousness poses a Hard Problem and instead offer explanations of consciousness in general (Clark, Dennett, Irvine, O'Brien and Opie, Prinz) or particular conscious experiences (G.Carruthers, de Vignemont, Frith and Hohwy). Given that the existence of a Hard Problem is controversial and that it is supposed to lead to radical metaphysical conclusions we would expect that advocates of the existence of a Hard Problem would have considerable arguments in favour of their view. Often, however, the nature of problem is treated as self-evident and not argued for, despite the controversy. In this issue we wish to ask what arguments, if any, can be put forward that consciousness really does pose a uniquely hard problem and how they fare in the face of conceptual and empirical scrutiny.

Additionally work in developing theories of consciousness has led to a proliferation of hypotheses regarding the nature of consciousness. These hypotheses are motivated by empirical discoveries in numerous fields such as attention (Prinz), psychophysics (Dennett, Clark) and delusions research or psychiatry more broadly (Frith and Hohwy). As these hypotheses are developed implications for how consciousness is to be characterised emerge.

These considerations suggest a variety of questions to be posed regarding the existence of a Hard Problem. Here are some (non-prescriptive examples):

Are there good a priori reasons to believe that consciousness offers a uniquely “Hard Problem” and so demands a radically different explanation to other mental phenomena?

Is the characterisation of consciousness as ‘Hard’ plausible in light of theoretical advances? If not how is the problem of consciousness to be characterised; i.e. what is the explanatory target of a theory of consciousness?

What do various empirical discoveries about consciousness tell us about the nature of the problem we are investigating? Is it plausible that consciousness poses a hard problem in light of discoveries in attention, psychophysics or any other research?

For this issue we are interested in papers which address the status of the Hard Problem as a characterisation of consciousness from a rigorous multi-disciplinary perspective. Contributions should be accessible to anyone within the broad (multi-disciplinary) field of consciousness studies. We are open to new empirical and theoretical advances that specially address the status of the Hard problem. The guiding question for the issue is only: is the characterisation of consciousness as posing a uniquely Hard Problem reasonable?

Deadline for initial submission of papers February 28 2014

Submissions must be made using Topoi’s online submission system at: http://www.editorialmanager.com/topo/

When submitting your paper, please make sure to select “S.I.: Hard problem of consciousness (Carruthers/Schier)” in the scroll-down menu for Article Type. In preparing your article for submission, follow the guidelines available from the journal website, http://www.springer.com/philosophy/journal/11245 , under Information for Guest Editors and Authors –> Manuscript Preparation. 

If you have any questions please contact the guest editors:

Glenn Carruthers: glenn.rj.carruthers@gmail.com

Elizabeth Schier: lizschier@gmail.com

 

Here:

President Obama on Tuesday will announce a broad new research initiative, starting with $100 million in 2014, to invent and refine new technologies to understand the human brain, senior administration officials said Monday.

A senior administration scientist compared the new initiative to the Human Genome Project, in that it is directed at a problem that has seemed insoluble up to now: the recording and mapping of brain circuits in action in an effort to “show how millions of brain cells interact.”

It is different, however, in that it has, as yet, no clearly defined goals or endpoint. Coming up with those goals will be up to the scientists involved and may take more than year.

...

As part of the initiative, the president will require a study of the ethical implications of these sorts of advances in neuroscience.

While news of the announcement has been greeted with enthusiasm by many researchers in fields as diverse as neuroscience, nanotechnology and computer science, there are skeptics.

“The underlying assumptions about ‘mapping the entire brain’ are very controversial,” said Donald Stein, a neuroscientist at Emory University in Atlanta. He said changes in brain chemistry were “not likely to be able to be imaged by the current technologies that these people are proposing.”

Emphasizing the development of technologies first, he said, is not a good approach. “I think the monies could be better spent by first figuring out what needs to be measured and then figuring out the most appropriate means to measure them.” he said. “In my mind, the technology ought to follow the concepts rather than the other way around.”

Sounds like an issue that philosophers should be funded to think about!

UPDATE: Here is an official press release.

Nicholas Humphrey and Galen Strawson take on the big questions in a debate hosted by the Institute of Art and Ideas .

The journal Synthese publishes a yearly issue on Neuroscience and Its Philosophy. In recent years, this has been perhaps the highest profile venue explicitly devoted to articles in the philosophy of neuroscience. For example, two papers published in the 2011 issue have already been anthologized.

The 2013 is mostly full but there is room for a couple more papers. If you want to make it into the 2013 issue, feel free to submit your best work at your earliest convenience!

Synthese has recently revised its policy on special issues. Accordingly, starting next year, all proposals for special issues have to be submitted every year to the editors in chief. I am glad to report that the editors in chief have just approved the 2014 issue, so the tradition will continue at least into next year.

Anyone doing good work in the philosophy of neuroscience should consider submitting their papers to Synthese's yearly issue on Neuroscience and Its Philosophy. An explicit option Neuroscience and Its Philosophy is available in Editorial Manager (Synthese's online submission system), which option can be selected when submitting a paper to Synthese. When you choose that option, I am in charge getting your paper refereed.

This is my first 'real' blog post, and before I begin, I'd like to thank John for inviting me to contribute to this blog (and apologize for the fact that it's taken me while to get around to doing so). Many thanks for giving me this opportunity!

I have recently published a review of Thomas Nagel's "Mind and Cosmos" in Science (if you're interested, it's in Science, 339 (6125), p. 1277), and as the word limit there was very restrictive (and given how much stir the book has caused), I thought I'd take this opportunity to say a bit more about what I think about the book and, more importantly, to hear about what others here think about it.

Most of the reviews of Nagel's book - especially those by philosophers - have been scathing. Now, as I said in my own review, I do think the book has several major flaws (more on those in a second). However, I am not sure it deserved quite the beating it received and I also don't think it is the most interesting (let alone charitable) approach to focus solely on the negative points of a book in a review. So while I was (and remain) critical in my own approach, I also tried to bring out the positive points in the book.

Perhaps a few words on the negative points first. I think several aspects of the book are rather weak; for instance, the fact that in the chapter on 'values' Nagel simply assumes moral realism, without providing any argument for it. He also doesn't do himself any favors when he combines (problematic) intuitions about the probability that consciousness and cognition could have evolved in the time span available with the philosophically rather more interesting issue of the (im-)possibility of reductionism. The former - which are regularly championed by proponents of 'intelligent design' (a movement which, despite his outspoken atheism, Nagel is sympathetic to, as he points out in the book) - don't lead to strong arguments and can, I think, be rather easily dismissed (as indeed most of the reviews of his book have done). For one thing, we are notoriously bad at judging probabilities and aside from his 'common sense' intuition Nagel does not in fact provide any arguments for the view that the evolution of consciousness and cognition was unlikely. Moreover, even if this could be shown, it is unclear what follows from it (after all, to say that an event was unlikely to occur is not to say that it was impossible, and I don't see why the former should lead one to reject an otherwise very strong theory, such as evolutionary theory). Further, his own sketch of an alternative, namely the introduction of teleological principles, remains unconvincing, not only because he doesn't say much about how we are to think about these principles, but also because they don't really seem to address what I ultimately take to be at the heart of his arguments - namely, the irreducibility of consciousness.

However, in focusing on the weaknesses, one fails to see that this main argument is actually very compelling, and that it needs a response (even if Nagel's own response disappoints). So what is this argument? Well, it's basically making the point that we are still lacking an understanding of the relation between the mind and brain. Consciousness doesn't seem to be reducible to any functions fulfilled by processes in the brain (because it is conceivable that these functions could be fulfilled in the absence of any phenomenal qualities). If so, according to Nagel, not only do we have a mind-brain or mind-body problem, but we also have a problem when it comes to explaining the evolution of consciousness. This problem is very different from any considerations relating to probabilities of mutations etc. (even though, frustratingly, Nagel himself doesn't do a very good job of keeping these two sets of problems apart). Rather, the problem consists in the fact that if consciousness necessarily remains outside the scope of the vocabulary of functionalism (or any other naturalistic theory), then it also remains outside the scope of evolutionary theory. While we might be able to explain why various cognitive functions that we take to be correlated with consciousness could have evolved, consciousness itself (due to the fact that it cannot be reduced to these functions) remains outside of the picture.

Now, none of this is particularly new or original, but given that we have recently witnessed several physicists (such as Stephen Hawking or Lawrence Krauss) argue that physics can explain everything, and given the general popularity of the view that there will ultimately be a 'physical theory of everything', I think Nagel is right to remind the general public (which is the target audience for this book) that there still is an 'explanatory gap' when it comes to consciousness, and that not everything can be explained in the terms of the physical sciences, after all.  So, as someone who is generally sympathetic to 'explanatory gap' type arguments, I am sympathetic to this point (even though, unlike Nagel, I wouldn't say that it implies that materialism is false, or, as he puts it, 'almost certainly false'. In fact, I take it to be one of the other main flaws of the book that it doesn't consider the possibility of a 'non-reductive materialism'.) I found it somewhat surprising that, as far as I can tell, hardly any of the other reviews focused on this issue, and that instead everyone tried very hard to dismiss Nagel's book as thoroughly as possible. I suspect this has something to do with the worry that the book will lend support to proponents of 'intelligent design', but I would find it problematic if because of this worry his arguments were given less credit than they deserve (especially since he makes it very clear that he is an atheist and that he isn't looking for or trying to support some theological solution to the problem he raises).

Anyway, I am really curious to hear what you all make of this. What are your thoughts?

Workshop on "What is cognition?" in Bochum, June 27-29, 2013

The workshop invites contributions exploring any and all issues that can move us toward an answer to the question, “what is cognition?”. Contributions are welcome to address a particular view already championed in the literature or bring forward original suggestions on how we might produce an adequate notion of cognition in philosophy and the cognitive sciences.

PhD-students and Post-Docs are invited to submit papers or posters. Master students are also invited to submit posters.

Paper submissions must be appropriate for short talks of 20 min. for a total 30 min session. Papers may not exceed 1500 words, including an abstract of 150 words.

Posters should be directly submitted or be described by an abstract of 500 words.

http://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/philosophy/cognition/call.html

*Submission deadline: May 1st , 2013*

LMU Munich, 14-16 November 2013

The conference invites proposals for talks that address the inter- or intratheoretic relations of specific theories or provide precise notions of such relations for the application in the sciences.

Submission Process

Please submit both a short abstract (max. 100 words) and an extended abstract (500-1000 words) through the automatic submission system by 15 May 2013. Please prepare your abstracts for blind review, and save your extended abstract as a PDF file.

The conference language is English.

http://www.reductionandemergenceinscience.philosophie.uni-muenchen.de/call_for_papers/index.html

xposted at idontknowwhatiam

all the best
Glenn

I'll be giving a talk on self-knowledge at the upcoming conference on implicit bias at the University of Sheffield, from April 19-21. It promises to be an excellent event, with keynote talks from Helen Beebee, Irene Blair, Paschal Sheeran, and Manuel Vargas, and several talks from people who should be familiar to readers of this blog.

Registration is open until April 10 at the latest — the conference is free to attend, but the organizers do request that all attendees register, in order to help plan meals and ensure that there will be sufficient space.

My student Mike Sigler collected these data and gave me permission to share them.

Brains people interested in representational and computational theories of mind will be interested in this talk by Frances Egan, which is coming out soon in Philosophical Studies. If you post questions or comments in the next week or so, Frances will try to respond to them.