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. 

Video discussion of my papers "The Neurophilosophy of Subjectivity" and "The Neurophilosophy of Consciousness"

The following video, from YouTube user YuryLarrea, discusses two of my papers on neurophilosophy, "The Neurophilosophy of Subjectivity" and "The Neurophilosophy of Consciousness.":

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:

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:

Two Flavors of Neurophilosophy video lecture

Two Flavors of Neurophilosophy part 1 of 3 

http://youtu.be/2nn2nAOMYRo

Two Flavors of Neurophilosophy part 2 of 3 

http://youtu.be/iLsP7-NkocA

Two Flavors of Neurophilosophy part 3 of 3 

http://youtu.be/sTTHTeyYBsk

Three Blasts of Awe

Here's some stuff on the cultivation and/or explicablity of awe. Whoosh up!:

 Number 1: Jesse Prinz's new essay on awe..er..wonder, "How Wonder Works."

 Number 2: From Jason Silva's "Shots of Awe" YouTube channel, it's Awe:

Number 3: More YouTube: Science Saved My Soul:

Mole reviews Prinz's book on consciousness

The Conscious Brain: How Attention Engenders Experience // Reviews // Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews // University of Notre Dame

Neurophilosophy bibliography translated into Romanian

This post goes out to all you HammerHeads who like to read stuff in Romanian. Alexander Ovsov has translated my neurophilosophy bibliography into Romanian. Check it out here: link. See the original here: link.

Brains: Forthcoming Synthese issue on Neuroscience and Its Philosophy

Brains: Forthcoming Synthese issue on Neuroscience and Its Philosophy

Re Portugal

I'm back in NYC from a week of sun, beer, neuroscience, qualia, and zen in lovely Lisboa at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown.

Zach Mainen, director of the Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme, ran a week-long course on consciousness and first-person methodology for the 2010 class of students in the International Neuroscience Doctoral Programme (with assistance from 2008 student Scott Rennie). Brian Keeley (who knows Zach from like a million years ago when they were together at University of California, San Diego) and I were brought on board to hang out in general as well as provide neurophilosophical overviews of consciousness, free will, and personal identity.



Each morning, the class kicked off with a half-hour of meditation led by monks from a local zen dojo. Then we set off to do things like coach opposing teams of students in constructing arguments about whether the self was something that could survive teleportation.

Thursday afternoon I presented "Does the neuroscience of consciousness need to care about qualia?" in the Neuroscience Seminar Series (abstract and answer here). It was fun to see so many neuroscientists get passionate about qualia!



Saturday afternoon, Brian and I took a teleporter to Cascais, where someone accidentally hit the "receive" button too many times.





(Photos from my flickr set, Lisbon 2011: Neuroscience Programme at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown)

Pete to Portugal

This looks pretty cool.

Next week, my good buddy Brian Keeley and I are heading to Lisbon to help run a week-long course on consciousness for the Neuroscience Programme at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. While there, I'll also be giving a talk, "Does the neuroscience of consciousness need to care about qualia?" More news, plus the answer to that titular question, when I get back to NYC later in May.

Vancouver Workshop and Conference on Cortical Color Vision

This summer I'm going to this pretty sweet looking conference and workshop, "More or Less: Varieties of Human Cortical Color Vision", that Kathleen Akins and Brit Brogaard are organizing. The call for participants is open now, see this website (http://www.sfu.ca/colour/) for full details. Below is a blurby excerpt. I hope to see lots of Hammer Heads there!

BLURB:


Philosophers, neurophysiologists, psychologists and researchers within the cognitive sciences are warmly invited to attend the conference and to submit posters.
The focus of this conference is “colour beyond the retina”, both the normal neurophysiology of human cortical colour mechanisms and a variety of cortical colour ‘anomalies’, in particular:

• Cerebral Achromatopsia 
• Colour Synaesthesias 
• Colour Blindsight 
• Cortical Colour Development

Early career researchers and graduate students are  invited to apply for a two day intensive workshop held prior to the conference.

Synthese Submission Option on Neuroscience and Its Philosophy

Synthese Submission Option on Neuroscience and Its Philosophy: Gualtiero Piccinini says:

Following up on a previous post on this topic:  The journal Synthese has added a submission option on 'neuroscience and its philosophy' to its online submission system.  If you select that option, the system should to put me (qua editor of the yearly issue on neuroscience and its philosophy) in charge of the paper.

Hatfield on Bickle on Philosophy and Neuroscience

From Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews: John Bickle (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Neuroscience, Oxford UP, 2009, 635pp., $150.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780195304787. Reviewed by Gary Hatfield, University of Pennsylvania.

Supervenience and Neuroscience Online

My Synthese article, "Supervenience and Neuroscience" has been published online. Here's the SpringerLink link: [link]

Abstract The philosophical technical term “supervenience” is frequently used in the philosophy of mind as a concise way of characterizing the core idea of physicalism in a manner that is neutral with respect to debates between reductive physicalists and nonreductive physicalists. I argue against this alleged neutrality and side with reductive physicalists. I am especially interested here in debates between psychoneural reductionists and nonreductive functionalist physicalists. Central to my arguments will be considerations concerning how best to articulate the spirit of the idea of supervenience. I argue for a version of supervenience, “fine-grained supervenience,” which is the claim that if, at a given time, a single entity instantiates two distinct mental properties, it must do so in virtue of instantiating two distinct physical properties. I argue further that despite initial appearances to the contrary, such a construal of supervenience can be embraced only by reductive physicalists.

Keywords Supervenience - Physicalism - Neuroscience - Reductionism

Mini-bibliography of philosophy of neuroscience

I hereby continue serving up steamy draft chunks of my Oxford Bibliography on Philosophy of Cognitive Science. Now, with more brain flavor:

PHILOSOPHY OF NEUROSCIENCE
Though there’s considerable overlap with work in ELIMINATIVISM and REDUCTIONISM , in the past two decades philosophy of neuroscience has taken off as a subdiscipline of its own. Probably the most comprehensive of the article-length overviews is Bickle, Mandik, and Landreth (2006), but see also Brook and Mandik (2007). Anthologies of key works in philosophy of neuroscience are Bechtel et al (2001), Bickle (2009), Brook and Akins (2005), and Machamer, Grush, and McLaughlin (2001). Two excellent research monographs by philosophers of neuroscience are Bechtel (2008) and Bickle (2003).

Bechtel, W., Mandik, P., Mundale, J., & Stufflebeam, R. (Eds.). (2001). Philosophy and the Neurosciences: A Reader. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
A collection of both classic and newer works in the field.

Bechtel, W. (2008). Mental Mechanisms: Philosophical Perspectives on Cognitive Neuroscience. London: Routledge.
A research monograph presenting Bechtel’s distinctive take on the philosophy of neuroscience.

Bickle, J., Mandik, P., & Landreth, A. (2006). The Philosophy of Neuroscience [Electronic Version]. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2006 Edition), from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2006/entries/neuroscience/
The most comprehensive of the article-length treatments of the philosophy of neuroscience.

Bickle, J. (Ed.). (2009). The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Neuroscience. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
A wide ranging and up to date collection of articles by main key contributors to the area.

Bickle, J. (2003). Philosophy and Neuroscience: A ruthlessly reductive account. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
A research monograph presenting Bickle’s distinctive take on the philosophy of neuroscience.

Brook, A., & Mandik, P. (2007). The Philosophy and Neuroscience Movement. Analyse & Kritik, 29(1), 3-23.
An overview of the philosophy of neuroscience that pays particular attention to issues concerning consciousness.

Brook, A., & Akins, K. (Eds.). (2005). Cognition and the Brain: The Philosophy and Neuroscience Movement. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
A collection of articles based on talks given at a conference dedicated to the topic.


Machamer, P., Grush, R., & McLaughlin, P. (Eds.). (2001). Theory and Method In The Neurosciences. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Of the philosophy of neuroscience anthologies, this one has perhaps the strongest leaning toward the philosophy of science (as opposed to the philosophy of mind).

Supervenience and Neuroscience

My paper "Supervenience and Neuroscience" has just today made the transition from sorta-mostly-accepted for publication in Synthese to totally-definitely-accepted for publication in Synthese. Many Brain-Hammer Heads were very helpful in suffering through earlier versions. Thanks, all y'all!

Here's a link to the latest version: [link].

Abstract: The philosophical technical term “supervenience” is frequently used in the philosophy of mind as a concise way of characterizing the core idea of physicalism in a manner that is neutral with respect to debates between reductive physicalists and nonreductive physicalists. I argue against this alleged neutrality and side with reductive physicalists. I am especially interested here in debates between psychoneural reductionists and nonreductive functionalist physicalists. Central to my arguments will be considerations concerning how best to articulate the spirit of the idea of supervenience. I argue for a version of supervenience, “fine-grained supervenience,” which is the claim that if, at a given time, a single entity instantiates two distinct mental properties, it must do so in virtue of instantiating two distinct physical properties. I argue further that despite initial appearances to the contrary, such a construal of supervenience can be embraced only by reductive physicalists.

Briscoe's Egocentric Spatial Representation in Action and Perception

Egocentric Spatial Representation in Action and Perception

ROBERT BRISCOE

Ohio University

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Volume 79 Issue 2, Pages 423 - 460

Published Online: 10 Sep 2009

ABSTRACT

Neuropsychological findings used to motivate the "two visual systems" hypothesis have been taken to endanger a pair of widely accepted claims about spatial representation in conscious visual experience. The first is the claim that visual experience represents 3-D space around the perceiver using an egocentric frame of reference. The second is the claim that there is a constitutive link between the spatial contents of visual experience and the perceiver's bodily actions. In this paper, I review and assess three main sources of evidence for the two visual systems hypothesis. I argue that the best interpretation of the evidence is in fact consistent with both claims. I conclude with some brief remarks on the relation between visual consciousness and rational agency.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/122594428/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0