Thursday, June 26, 2014

Upcoming Mandik Talk

Attention NYC-area cognitive philosophy types. Come see me jibber-jabber live and in person about vision science, illusions, Wilfrid Sellars, and bananas. I'm giving a talk, "The Myth of Color Sensations" at 2pm on Tuesday, July 1st at the CUNY Grad Center. For further spatiotemporal particulars, see this flier about the excellent talk series that David Rosenthal hosts: http://tinyurl.com/cstalks. My talk is based on my paper, "The Myth of Color Sensations, Or: How Not to See a Yellow Banana."

ABSTRACT: I argue against a class of philosophical views of color perception, especially insofar as such views posit the existence of color sensations. I argue against the need to posit such nonconceptual mental intermediaries between the stimulus and the eventual conceptualized perceptual judgment. Central to my arguments are considerations of certain color illusions. Such illusions are best explained by reference to high-level, conceptualized knowledge concerning e.g. object identity, likely lighting conditions, and material composition of the distal stimulus. Such explanations obviate the need to appeal to nonconceputal mental links in the causal chains eventuating in conceptualized color discriminations.

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Video discussion of my paper "Shit Happens"

My paper on the epistemology of conspiracy theories, "Shit Happens," is discussed in this video by YouTube user Maki Sierra:

Saturday, June 21, 2014

Friday, June 20, 2014

Video discussion of my paper "Representational Parts"

Check out this video discussion of my paper "Representational Parts" I co-authored with Rick Grush. The video comes from YouTube user Andrea Galvis Herrera:


Thursday, June 19, 2014

Video discussion of my paper "Evolving Artificial Minds and Brains"

Several YouTube users have recently uploaded discussions of my paper "Evolving Artificial Minds and Brains" (coauthored with Mike Collins and Alex Vereschagin).

From YouTube user SuperZ707:

Part 1:



Part 2:




From YouTube user Laura Garcia:




From YouTube user Diego Rodriguez:



Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Conscious-State Anti-Realism



A presentation related to my chapter in a forthcoming book about Daniel Dennett. "Conscious-State Anti-Realism" is to appear in Munoz-Suarez, C. and De Brigard, F. Content and Consciousness Revisited. Berlin: Springer. Read the chapter here: http://www.petemandik.com/philosophy/papers/csar.pdf

Color-Consciousness Conceptualism




A presentation related to my paper, "Color-Consciousness Conceptualism" which appeared in 2012 in the journal Consciousness and Cognition. Read the paper here: http://www.petemandik.com/philosophy/papers/ccc.pdf