Video Trailer for the 2015 spring semester of the SpaceTimeMind podcast

New Mandik Paper: What's It Like When Your Eyes Move?

Image source: Pete Mandik on flickr

Is there a distinctive visual phenomenology that accompanies saccadic eye movement? I suggest that there is none in my short piece "What's It Like When Your Eyes Move?" appearing starting today at the Brain's blog symposium on Wayne Wu's “Against Division: Consciousness, Information, and the Visual Streams.”

Here's an excerpt from my contribution:

On this alternative to Wu’s hypothesis, the best way to account for so-called spatial constancy is [...] instead of treating it as the appearance of an absence of motion, we treat it as an absence of an appearance of motion. So, back to my visual inspection of my yard, I see the chairs and the tree trunk, which involves, I presume, neural processes encoding relevant information concerning shape, location, and color, and during saccades I just don’t have any representations of those things as moving, which, I presume, is different from having representations of the things as not moving. 

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.

New Mandik Papers

I just put a bunch of new-ish papers of mine up on my publications page at my website, petemandik.com. And they're here, too. Check 'em out. 

1. The Myth of Color Sensations, Or: How Not to See a Yellow Banana. ms. 
2. Reflecting on Neural Self-reflection: The Churchlandish Introspection of Brain States. In Schwenkler, J. (ed.) Symposium on Paul Churchland's "Matter and Consciousness" (3rd ed., 2013), Brains: A Group Blog on Topics in the Philosophy and Science of Mind. 
3. Welcome To Infinity. ms. 
4. On Whether the Higher-Order Thought Theory of Consciousness Entails Cognitive Phenomenology, Or: What is it Like to Think that One Thinks that P? (with Richard Brown) (2012) Philosophical Topics. 40(2), 1-12.

Mandik Papers Files Updates

I've updated the files for several of the papers on my publications webpage. Here they are:

1. Mandik, Pete. (2011). Supervenience and Neuroscience. Synthese. 180 (3), 443-463. http://www.petemandik.com/philosophy/papers/sn.pdf 
2. Mandik, Pete. (2010). Swamp Mary’s Revenge: Deviant Phenomenal Knowledge and Physicalism. Philosophical Studies. 148 (2), 231-247. http://www.petemandik.com/philosophy/papers/swamp.pdf 
3. Mandik, Pete. (2010). Control Consciousness. Topics in Cognitive Science, 2 (4), 643-657. http://www.petemandik.com/philosophy/papers/cc.pdf 
4. Brook, Andrew and Mandik, Pete. (2007). The Philosophy and Neuroscience Movement. Analyse & Kritik 29(1): 3-23. http://www.petemandik.com/philosophy/papers/AK_Brook_Mandik_2007.pdf 
5. Mandik, Pete. (2006) The Introspectability of Brain States as Such. In: Keeley, Brian (ed.) Paul M. Churchland: Contemporary Philosophy in Focus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 66-87. http://www.petemandik.com/philosophy/papers/introspect.pdf 
6. Mandik, Pete. (2006). The Neurophilosophy of Consciousness. In: Velmans, Max and Schneider, Susan (eds.) The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. pp. 418-430 http://www.petemandik.com/philosophy/papers/neurophilconsc.pdf 
7. Mandik, Pete and Brook, Andrew. (2005). Introduction. In: Brook, Andrew and Akins, Kathleen (eds.) Cognition and the Brain: The Philosophy and Neuroscience Movement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1-24. http://www.petemandik.com/philosophy/papers/cbintro.pdf 

The electronic versions of published work made available here are for students and researchers seeking reprints or preprints. These are available for non-commercial scholarly and educational purposes only as is consistent with the established practices of "fair use." Any other uses of these works are not authorized by the author and may constitute violations of copyright.

New Mandik papers

I've got some new(-ish) papers up on my website now:

1. Mandik, Pete. (in press). Conscious-state Anti-realism. In: Munoz-Suarez, C. and De Brigard, F (eds.). Content and Consciousness Revisited. Berlin: Springer.
2. Mandik, Pete. (2013). What is Visual and Phenomenal but Concerns neither Hue nor Shade?. In R. Brown (Ed.), Consciousness Inside and Out: Phenomenology, Neuroscience, and the Nature of Experience, Studies in Brain and Mind 6, (pp. 219-227). London, Springer. DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-6001-1 1

Dennett Tweets

The actual real (pattern) Daniel Dennett is tweeting. Check out his tweets @danieldennett

Special issue on Embodied Social Cognition

Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. Volume 11 Number 4

In this issue:

Introduction to debates on embodied social cognition

Shannon Spaulding

Abstract    Full text HTML    Full text PDF

Implicit mindreading and embodied cognition

J. Robert Thompson

Abstract    Full text HTML    Full text PDF

On the role of social interaction in social cognition: a mechanistic alternative to enactivism

Mitchell Herschbach

Abstract    Full text HTML    Full text PDF

Unlikely allies: embodied social cognition and the intentional stance

Tadeusz Wieslaw Zawidzki

Abstract    Full text HTML    Full text PDF

Action, mindreading and embodied social cognition

Joshua Shepherd

Abstract    Full text HTML    Full text PDF

Embodying the False-Belief Tasks

Michael Wilby

Abstract    Full text HTML    Full text PDF

Dynamic Embodied Cognition

Leon C. de Bruin & Lena Kästner

Abstract    Full text HTML    Full text PDF

Mirror systems and simulation: a neo-empiricist interpretation

John Michael

Abstract    Full text HTML    Full text PDF

Reenactment: an embodied cognition approach to meaning and linguistic content

Sergeiy Sandler

Abstract    Full text HTML    Full text PDF

Gestural sense-making: hand gestures as intersubjective linguistic enactments

Elena Cuffari

Abstract    Full text HTML    Full text PDF

cfp: Fifth Online Consciousness Conference

I am pleased to announce the call for papers for the Fifth Online Consciousness Conference, which is scheduled for February 15-March 1, 2013.

Invited talk by Daniel C. Dennett, Tufts University

Special Session on Self-Consciousness organized by John Schwenkler, Mount St. Mary’s University. Invited participants include Katja Crone and Joel Smith. This session will also include two submitted talks by graduate students or recent PhDs. If you want your paper to be considered specifically for this special session please indicate so in your submission email.

Papers in any area of consciousness studies are welcome (construed widely so as to include philosophy of mind and philosophy of cognitive science, as well as the cognitive sciences) and should be roughly 3,000-4,000 words. Submissions made suitable for blind review should be sent to consciousnessonline@gmail.com by January 5th 2013.

For papers that are accepted, an audio/visual presentation (e.g. narrated powerpoint or video of talk) is strongly encouraged but not required.

Program Committee:
Richard Brown
David Chalmers
Adam Pautz
Susanna Siegel

For more information visit the conference website at http://consciousnessonline.com

Find Consciousness Online on Facebook!

9th International Symposium of Cognition, Logic and Communication

CALL FOR PAPERS

9th International Symposium of Cognition, Logic and Communication

PERCEPTION AND CONCEPTS 16-18 May 2013, Riga, Latvia.

INVITED ORGANIZERS: Edouard Machery (Pittsburgh) and Jesse Prinz (CUNY)

INVITED SPEAKERS include: Ruth Millikan (Connecticut), Fiona Macpherson (Glasgow), David Chalmers (ANU/NYU), Alex Byrne (MIT), Andy Clark (Edinburgh), Diane Pecher (Rotterdam), Ophelia Deroy (London), Rob Goldstone (Indiana), Pierre Jacob (Institut Jean Nicod), Casey O'Callaghan (Rice), Alva Noe (UC, Berkeley) 

We will be particularly interested in the following questions. To focus first on concepts, could it be that, when we entertain a concept in thought, we are in fact entertaining and manipulating perceptual representations? Are concepts entirely different from perceptual representations? Does acquiring a concept consist in abstracting a representation from one’s percepts? If not, what is the relation between percepts and concepts? To turn now to perception, can our perceptual experiences be influenced, or penetrated, by one’s concepts and beliefs? If so, what is the exact nature of the influence of higher cognition on perception? Does the content of perceptual experiences depend on which concepts which one has? Can one even perceive without concepts?

Submitted papers should have a maximum of 3000 words and should be accompanied by a 200 words abstract. All submitted papers should be PREPARED FOR BLIND REVIEW, and should be sent electronically with 'Paper Riga 2013' as a subject to: lapointe@mcmaster.ca

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION IS 15 JANUARY 2013. Authors will be notified in LATE JANUARY 2013.

Symposium proposal:

In addition to individual papers, the scientific committee will be considering proposals for symposia. Symposia should include a minimum of three and a maximum of four contributions. Submissions should be clearly identified with the heading “Symposium proposal” and include:1) The title of the symposium, 2) A brief description of the topic and its relevance to the conference (200 words), 3) The name, affiliation and academic status (student, lecturer, assistant professor, etc.) of each participant, 4) The title of each contribution as well as an extended 500-1000 word abstract. 5) The name, affiliation and academic status of the person who will be chairing the symposium. Symposium proposals should be sent electronically with 'Symposium Riga 2013' as a title to: lapointe@mcmaster.ca

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION IS 15 JANUARY 2013. Authors will be notified in LATE JANUARY 2013.

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience | Research Topics

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience | Research Topics

Examining Subjective Experience: Advances in Neurophenomenology

Hosted By:

Wendy Hasenkamp, Mind and Life Institute, USA 

Evan Thompson, University of Toronto, Canada 

Deadline for abstract submission: 12 Dec 2012

Deadline for full article submission: 17 Apr 2013

Mandik Blog Roundup, Sept. 2012 edition

Besides blogging here at Brain Hammer, I'm also blogologizing all over these bloggy bits of the blogosphere:

This Is Philosophy of Mind (http://tipom.blogspot.com)
A companion blog for the book This Is Philosophy of Mind: An Introduction by Pete Mandik, forthcoming from Wiley-Blackwell Publishers.

Alternate Minds (http://cogsciphi.blogspot.com)
Cognitive Science Fiction and Philosophy.

Punctate Mind (http://petemandik.tumblr.com)
Art snips.

CFP: SSPP 2013

Call for Philosophy Papers

The Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology announces a call for papers for its One Hundred and Fifth Annual Meeting, to be held February 28 – March 2, 2013 in Austin, TX. SSPP meetings feature concurrent programs in Philosophy and Psychology, as well as plenary sessions jointly sponsored by the Philosophy and Psychology Program Committees. The deadline for all submissions is October 15, 2012.

President’s Invited Speaker:

Patricia Smith Churchland
UC San Diego/Salk Institute, San Diego

Invited Speakers:

Austen Clark, University of Connecticut
Fred Dretske, Duke University
Michael Tye, University of Texas, Austin

Invited Symposia:

Epistemology of Perception
Jack Lyons
Susanna Siegel

Naturalism
Owen Flanagan
Steven Horst

New Perspectives on Type Identity
Alyssa Ney
Thomas Polger

Introspection & Self-Knowledge
Peter Carruthers
Brie Gertler
Eric Schwitzgebel

Attention! (Joint Symposium)
Marisa Carrasco
Robert Kentridge
Christopher Mole
Sebastian Watzl

Epistemic Paradoxes
Krista Lawlor
Roy Sorensen
Michael Veber

The Philosophy Program Committee encourages the submission of papers and symposium proposals. Their selection will be based on quality and relevance to Philosophy, Psychology, and other sciences of the mind. The aim of the committee is to present a program as balanced as the quality of submissions in each area permits.

Submissions exceeding 3,000 words will not be considered. Submissions should include a word count and an abstract of no more than 150 words. Self-reference should be deleted to permit blind reviewing. All papers submitted and presented should employ gender-neutral language. All submissions must be made using our online submission system at: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sspp2013

Under the Keywords section, in addition to descriptions of the submission, please include any of the following if they are applicable: To volunteer to be a session chair: ‘Chair.’ To comment on a paper: ‘Comment.’ To be considered for a Graduate Student Travel Award: ‘GSTA.’ To be considered for the Griffith Prize: ‘Griffith.’ For details and eligibility see: http://www.southernsociety.org/griffithaward.htm

Please direct Philosophy Program related questions to the Program Chair, Rik Hine at: rikhine@gmail.com

Live at The Local 269 | Space Clamps

New York neuro-rockers the Space Clamps have an album out collecting live recordings from a recent gig at the Local 269. Check it out here: Live at The Local 269 | Space Clamps. (The cover art is my painting, Alien Artifact.)

The Space Clamps, along with other members of the New York Consciousness Collective (including a band I'm in, Quiet Karate Reflex) are playing this Tuesday at the Local 269. Show starts at 8pm.

Call for Presentations: Envisioning Transhumanity

Envisioning Transhumanity

TEDx Del Mar
A Transhuman Studies Conference on the Future of Minds, Bodies and Societies
April 29th, 2012 at the Price Center Theater, University of California, San Diego
All Welcome (parking free)

Call for Presentations:
Abstracts due April 8th, Confirmation of Acceptance before April 11th.
We will discuss the promise and consequences of technologies which will augment and radically transform our minds, bodies, and cultures. These technologies range from visor cellphones, through more intimate cyborg interfaces, across biotech, and to in-silico life. Many see these transformations as inevitable outcomes of accelerating technological development and global market conditions. This conference aims to go deeper than the shiny veneer of hype, to investigate the scientific states-of-art, ethical and existential ramifications, and socio-economic consequences of human enhancement technologies. We are interested in both local short-term effects and broad, longer term questions.

Confirmed speakers include:
David Brin, PhD--Award winning science fiction author &
David Pearce--Philosopher and co-founder of Humanity+

We have many submissions, but are seeking more, and are taking suggestions for a panel discussion. Editors welcome all relevant submissions. If in doubt, submit. We are, however, especially interested in presentations on the following topics:
--Economics of human-enhancement: E.g. How will increases in productivity, new artificial variation in intelligence, new management techniques, the widespread use of avatars, and the distribution of enhancement technologies affect current and future financial markets and the world socio-economic condition?
--Bio-conservative arguments: E.g. What are the strongest arguments against human augmentation? Are there practical programs to prevent it? Are there risks overlooked?
--Guidance and activism: E.g. To what degree do the market forces driving transhuman change diverge from the ends we ought to desire? What are transhuman goals? How can we guide these transformations to optimize well-being and freedom?
--The near and current cyborg world: E.g. How effective is life-logging? How good are the best happiness, intelligence and fitness improvement apps? What is the current state and what are the prospects for physical and mental health enhancement technologies? What are the short term prospects for developing human potential and improving quality of life in San Diego for all groups, especially the worst-off?
--New technologies: E.g. What's next? What will be the order of development of human enhancement technologies, for much depends on this? What are the technical limits of augmentation? What are the limits and prospects for cognitive, emotive, and empathetic augmentation?
--Ethics and safety of particular technologies: E.g. What kinds of privacy rules should govern cellphone visors, can there be limits preventing users from transforming the appearance of others, how are children to be safely hybridized with cyborg technologies, what risks or better forms of life arise if individuality blurs when populations of cyborgs interconnect?
--Aging as pathology: E.g. To what degree is it appropriate to treat aging as a single pathology? What are the prospects for life-extension, the costs, the availability, the state of the science of gene-therapy and pre-natal anti-aging interventions?
---------------------------
Send abstracts for 20-25 minute talks and CV or bio-sketch to submissions@sandiegotranshumanists.org
John Jacobson, Chair, PhD Candidate in Philosophy at UCSD and Collaborator at Salk Institute
Jamie Dunbaugh, Organizer, Founder of San Diego Transhumanists

CFP: Distributed cognition and memory research

CFP: Distributed cognition and memory research: How do distributed memory
systems work?

Special issue of the Review of Philosophy and Psychology

Guest editors: Kourken Michaelian and John Sutton


Call for Papers

Deadline for submissions: July 15, 2012

According to the extended mind hypothesis in philosophy of cognitive
science and the related distributed cognition hypothesis in cognitive
anthropology, remembering does not always occur entirely inside the
brain, but can also be distributed across heterogeneous systems
combining neural, bodily, social, and technological resources. Much of
the critical debate on these ideas in philosophy has so far remained
at some distance from relevant empirical studies. But claims about
extended mind and distributed cognition, if they are to deserve wider
acceptance, must both make sense of and, in turn, inform work in the
cognitive and social sciences. Is the notion of extended or
distributed remembering consistent with the findings of empirical
memory research? Can such a view of memory usefully inform empirical
work, suggesting further areas of productive enquiry or helping to
make sense of existing findings?

This special issue will bring together supporters and critics of
extended and distributed cognition, to consider memory as a test case
for evaluating and further developing these hypotheses. Submitted
papers should thus address both memory and distributed cognition/
extended mind: ideally, papers should aim simultaneously to make
contributions to relevant debates in both philosophy and psychology or
other relevant empirical fields. While primarily theoretical papers
are welcome, they should make direct contact with empirical findings.
Similarly, while empirically-oriented papers might draw on evidence
from a range of areas, including the cognitive psychology of
transactive memory and collaborative recall, cognitive anthropology
and cognitive ethnography, science studies and the philosophy of
science, the history of memory practices, and the cognitive
archaeology of material culture, they should seek to advance the
theoretical debate over extended mind and distributed cognition,
rather than simply presenting findings from these fields.


Potential topics include (but are not limited to):

Relations between biological memory and external memory

How do forms of representation and storage in neural and external
memory differ, and why do such differences matter? Can theories of
distributed cognition deal with the existence of multiple memory
systems? For example, does the expert deployment of exograms in
certain external symbol systems affect working memory? How might the
development and operation of distributed memory systems affect neural
memory processes? Is evidence for neuroplasticity relevant for
assessing claims about distributed remembering? Given plausible links
between memory and self, what might distributed memory systems imply
about identity and agency? What happens when distributed memory
systems fail or break down?

How do distributed memory systems work?

What is socially distributed remembering, and does it offer any
support to revived ideas about group cognition, or to a naturalized
understanding of collective memory? Can theories of extended or
distributed cognition encompass socially distributed remembering in
addition to artifacts and other forms of memory scaffolding? What are
the implications of experimental studies of collaborative recall and
transactive memory for theories of distributed cognition? How do such
theories deal with memory practices and rituals, and with the roles of
the non-symbolic material environment?

Distributed memory and embodied cognition

How central in theories of extended or distributed memory should be
the study of skill acquisition and of expertise in the deployment of
external resources? What accounts of embodied skills, procedural
memory, and smooth or absorbed coping are required to support such
theories? How do distributed memory systems work in specific contexts
of embodied interaction, from conversation to music, dance,
performance, and sport?


Guest authors

The issue will include invited articles authored by:

Robert Rupert, University of Colorado (Boulder)
Deborah Tollefsen, University of Memphis, and Rick Dale, University of
California (Merced)
Mike Wheeler, University of Stirling


Important dates

Submission deadline: July 15, 2012

Target publication date: December 15, 2012


How to submit

Prospective authors should register at: www.editorialmanager.com/ropp
to obtain a login and select Distributed cognition and memory research
as an article type. Manuscripts should be approximately 6,000 words.
Submissions should follow the author guidelines available on the
journal's website.


About the journal

The Review of Philosophy and Psychology (ISSN: 1878-5158; eISSN:
1878-5166) is a peer-reviewed journal published quarterly by Springer
and focusing on philosophical and foundational issues in cognitive
science. The aim of the journal is to provide a forum for discussion
on topics of mutual interest to philosophers and psychologists and to
foster interdisciplinary research at the crossroads of philosophy and
the sciences of the mind, including the neural, behavioural and social
sciences. The journal publishes theoretical works grounded in
empirical research as well as empirical articles on issues of
philosophical relevance. It includes thematic issues featuring invited
contributions from leading authors together with articles answering a
call for paper.


Contact
For any queries, please email the guest editors:
kmichaelian@bilkent.edu.tr, john.sutton@mq.edu.au