Conference Schedule

Friday, April 24th

9:30-10:00 Breakfast Buffet

10:00-12:00 Alva Noe
"Attention and Consciousness"

12:00-1:30 Lunch Break

1:30-2:30 Saray Ayala (c: Prof. Walter Hopp)
"What Matters for Perceptual Consciousness? A (non) Empirical Question"

2:30-3:30 Sigrid Leyssen (Dr. Noah Goodman)
"Albert Michotte and the perception of causality. A historical and philosophical analysis of perceptual consciousness"

3:30-4:00 Coffee Break Served

4:00-5:00 Ben Young (c: Dr. John McGann)
"Stinking Consciousness"

5:00-6:00 Joel Gibson (c: Gabrielle Jackson)
"Why Cognitive Science Doesn't Need a Personal-Subpersonal Distinction"

7:00- Opening Reception at the BU Pub

Saturday, April 25th

9:30-10:00 Breakfast Buffet

10:00-12:00 Giulio Tononi
"An integrated information theory of consciousness"

12:00-1:30 Lunch Break

1:30-2:30 Markus Kneer (c: Prof. Judson Webb)
"Returning the Ticket: Towards a New Conception of Mental Time Travel"

2:30-3:30 Michele Merritt/Michael Thompson (c: Stephen Martin)
"Body-Conscious: Schemas, Images, and the Limits of Unmediated Representation"

3:30-4:00 Coffee Break Served

4:00-5:00 Alex Silk (c: Dr. Bryce Huebner)
"The Origins of Moral Judgement:Neuroethical Implications and Ethics Without (Deontological) Intuitions"

5:00-6:00 Caren Walker (c: Prof. Juliet Floyd)
"Investigating Children's Essentialist Beliefs in the Context of the Digital Age: The Case of Artificial Life"

9:00- Conference Dinner at the Elephant Walk

Abstracts

Alex Silk (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
"The Origins of Moral Judgement:Neuroethical Implications and Ethics Without (Deontological) Intuitions"
Although not conclusive, much recent evidence in cognitive neuroscience and psychology supports what has become known as the dual-process model of moral judgment. According to the dual-process model, human moral judgment is the result of dissociable psychological mechanisms and an affective system, and a "cognitive system" which often interact and can compete with one another. Since the dual-process model has become a prominent position in empirical moral psychology, I think it's worth examining possible philosophical implications from it, particularly regarding the normative status of our moral intuitions, deontology, and consequentialism. Because my primary interest is in examining possible normative implications of the dual-process model, first I'll only briefly and uncritically review the dual-process model's main theses and interpretation of the relevant scientific studies. Second, I'll articulate a metaethical constructivist account of the nature of normative reasons akin to Korsgaard's "Normativity as Reflectivity" theory. I'll then argue for the following conditional: if the neuroscientific and psychological facts are roughly as the dual-process model claims, then, in light of this theory of normativity and pace Korsgaard, we ought not assent to the claims of deontology. I'll conclude with several reflections on the normativity of consequentialism and the extent to which empirical considerations can properly debunk certain normative aspects of our lives.

Ben Young (CUNY)
"Stinking Consciousness"
Looking upon the different theories of consciousness, one becomes aware that something does not smell right. Olfaction has been neglected. The construction of neural models and philosophical theories of consciousness derive either from conceptual theorizing using our linguistic abilities, or from empirical evidence gleaned from studies of the visual system. Olfaction has been ignored far too long. This paper rectifies this by showing how the anatomical structure functional organization, and the sensory states of the olfactory system provide a novel starting point for theorizing about consciousness, which brings into doubt the current neuroscientific models of consciousness.

Caren Walker (Boston College)
"Investigating Children's Essentialist Beliefs in the Context of the Digital Age: The Case of Artificial Life"
The primary research interest motivating this project is in understanding how cultural artifacts and other products of human imagination shape cognitive development. Children today are growing up in a world in which computational objects and simulated life are ubiquitous to cultural experience. I am currently investigating whether the increasing predominance of digital interaction in the lives of children growing up in a culture of simulation has a causal impact on their conceptual development. In particular, I am assessing how exposure to artificial life and robotic technology may alter beliefs about what makes something human and shift the accepted boundary between biological non-biological entities. Within developmental psychology, some nativist-oriented researchers argue for universal folk theories of biology that develop independently of culture, while socio-cultural theorists underscore the strong role of environmental factors in shaping conceptual development. A better understanding of the developmental processes involved in interpreting the nature of computer-generated reality will help to clarify whether ontological concepts follow a universal trajectory or are fundamentally shaped by cultural experiences.

Joel Gibson (University of Maryland)
"Why Cognitive Science Doesn't Need a Personal-Subpersonal Distinction"
The personal-subpersonal distinction is used by many philosophers to mark the boundary between two kinds of psychology, folk and scientific, with the assumption that these radically differ both ontologically and methodologically. As Jennifer Hornsby points out, however, there are at least two non-equivalent forms of the distinction, a whole-part and an explanatory distinction. Neither of these, I argue, is suited to the task of cordoning off folk- from scientific psychology as an autonomous domain, as defenders of a personal-subpersonal distinction wish to do. On the one hand, the whole-part distinction fails to determine a boundary between folk and scientific psychology at the most plausible point, namely, the conscious-unconscious divide. On the other hand, the explanatory distinction "which Hornsby and Daniel Dennett both champion" preserves the autonomy of folk psychology only at the cost of seriously distorting the character of cognitive science. The personal-subpersonal distinction, I conclude, should be discarded.

Markus Kneer (Institut Jean Nicod/Princeton University)
"Returning the Ticket: Towards a New Conception of Mental Time Travel"
Mental Time Travel (MTT) is, roughly, an individual's capacity to project herself into the past or future by remembering or imagining first-personal experiences respectively. MTT is further presumed to have a concrete, distinct though dispersed neural correlate, and hence denotes a neuro-cognitive phenomenon. Opening with a brief sketch of the development and current state of the art, this essay pursues three central aims: Firstly, it constitutes a plea for more conceptual rigour on the cognitive side of the fence, so as to ensure that meaningful lessons can be drawn from neurological enquiry about MTT. Secondly, a partial conceptual qualification of the necessary requirements for MTT as traditionally conceived is proposed, as they seem vague, uninformative and arbitrary. Finally, a revised account of MTT is suggested, which aspires to include a variety of mental states so far not associated with MTT. MTT, as it is currently defined and investigated, I will argue, stands too heavily in the genealogical debt of research into episodic memory, and suffers from an astonishing neglect of considerations pertaining to the imagination.

Michele Merritt/Michael Thompson (University of South Florida)
"Body-Conscious: Schemas, Images, and the Limits of Unmediated Representation"
A detailed discussion of consciousness must have at its foundation an explanation of the "mineness" of conscious experience, and yet, it is precisely this subjectivity of consciousness that is at the root of some of the most protracted debates about its origin, neural correlates, and realizability. What an experience is like to me, has been cashed out in terms of token physicalism, wherein my experiences are tokens of a general mental type, but are still themselves physical phenomena, identical to brain states. On the other hand, qualia have been described from a more phenomenological level, such that what is of concern is not so much the specific brain processes which underlie conscious experience, but instead work tends toward describing how things show up, the hope being that these detailed descriptions will shed light on some of the shortcomings in cognitive neuroscience. Yet another approach, albeit one that has received less attention until recently, is to redirect the focus to embodiment itself as a dynamic and interactive process constitutive of consciousness, the idea being that were we to more fully understand how the body shapes and determines what it's like for me to have this and that experience, many of the standard consciousness polemics would dissipate.

Saray Ayala (Universitat Autonoma Barcelona/University of British Columbia)
"What Matters for Perceptual Consciousness? A (non) Empirical Question"
The Extended Substrate thesis claims that perceptual experience constitutively depends on outside-the-brain factors (Noe, 2004, 2007). There are two main ways in which this dependency can be understood. According to a radical reading, the fine-grained details of the sensorimotor routines by means of which we access to the perceived objects are said to be part of the minimal substrate of perceptual experience. It follows from this that differently embodied organisms necessarily inhabit different perceptual worlds. According to a moderate reading, however, the fine-grained details of an organism's body and sensorimotor profile are not a constraint on perceptual experience. It is an open empirical question whether every difference in embodiment makes a difference to the content and character of any conscious perceptual experience that ensues. According to the moderate reading, the defender of the radical extended alternative is not offering any evidence to decide this empirical question (Clark, 2008). My goal here is to show that there is no possibility of deciding this debate empirically. The allegedly empirical question is, in fact, not empirical at all: no empirical evidence could possibly refute the moderate reading because it already assumes that experience is multiply realizable.

Sigrid Leyssen (Eikones Institute/KU Leuven/Harvard University)
"Albert Michotte and the perception of causality. A historical and philosophical analysis of perceptual consciousness"
During the 1930’s and 40’s, in a small psychological laboratory installed in the philosophical faculty at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, observers were looking at a display in which they saw small coloured patches performing different combinations of movements and they were asked to report what they saw. These activities were part of experiments for the at the time very well received work on the impression of causality, done by Albert Michotte. In this paper, I explore the hypothesis that relates the rise of cinema with a paradigm shift in the thinking about perception that can be noticed in the early 20th century. Looking at Michotte’s work, how he developed his experimental phenomenology of perception, and how he made extensive use of moving images in his experiments, could provide a good case to trace ways in which cinema has influenced theories of perception.

Conference Committee

Carolyn Suchy-Dicey, President and Secretary
John Grey, Treasurer
Sean Lorenz, Room Bookings, Information Technology
Luke Jerzykiewicz, Information Technology, Advertising
Martina Poletti, Communications
Alenka Lovy Wheeler, Communications
Yoni Porat, Communications
Luciana Garbayo, Events
Ian Blaustein, Accommodations
Jason Webster, Refreshments
Marie Guillot, Advertising
Kristina Musholt, Advertising
Nadya Vasilyeva, Preparator (for Referee Process)

Daniel Dahlstrom, Faculty Advisor
Tian Yu Cao, Faculty Advisor
Juliet Floyd, Faculty Advisor
Walter Hopp, Faculty Advisor