Insight Events

ASSC conference

2008-06-19T16:00:00.000+01:00

The 12th annual meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC) will be held for the first time in Asia during the 19 - 22 June 2008, in Taipei, Taiwan. The conference will take place in the heart of Taipei city at the National Tiawan University. The ASSC conference is one of the worlds largest events on the science of consciousness. For more information please visit the dedicated conference website.

Posted by Michael Hill

The vagus nerve: a window on consciousness and disease

2008-04-11T20:00:00.001+01:00

Dr Chris Pomfrett
The Royal Institution
Friday 11 April 2008
8.00pm-9.00pm - Good availability

The vagus nerve connects our brainstem to the body, facilitating monitoring and control of many automatic functions. The vagus electrically links our gut, lungs and heart to the base of the brain in an evolutionarily-ancient circuit, similar between mammals and also seen in birds, reptiles, and amphibians. In many ways the vagus can be compared to the USB or Firewire connection of your computer. By monitoring changes in the level of control exerted by the vagus, apparent as beat by beat changes of heart rate, it is possible to indirectly view the effect of pharmaceuticals and disease on brainstem function and neural processes underlying consciousness.

Tickets are free to Ri Full Members, £6 Associate Members and £9 non-members

Posted by: Michael Hill

Toward a Science of Consciousness 2008

2008-04-08T08:00:00.001+01:00

Toward a Science of Consciousness 2008
April 8-12, 2008 - Tucson Convention Center - Tucson Arizona

The eighth biennial Tucson conference continues an interdisciplinary tradition of intense, far-ranging and rigorous discussions on all approaches to the fundamental issue of how the brain produces conscious experience.

This is probably the biggest event on consciousness research in the world and well worth checking out! Their program is is very impressive indeed!

Posted by Michael Hill

Conference on Qualia

2008-03-28T18:06:00.005Z

Qualia: Thinking the Senses Conference
28-30 March 2008
St John's College, Durham University

"Aims
The aim of this interdisciplinary conference, and the research project associated with it, is to explore the ways in which different disciplines theorise the qualitative dimension of experience and integrate the sensual into their working-models of a range of phenomena. It will explore sensory perception in different times and places, in its multiple relations to the literary and the artistic as well as to the political and social. It will create a forum for an exchange of points of view between researchers in the fields of literary theory, history, art history, philosophy, anthropology, psychoanalysis, geography, cognitive science and other areas still. It will also involve practising artists and writers."

For informal enquiries and further information please contact Dr Boris Wiseman (boris.wiseman@durham.ac.uk)

Posted by: Nat

Galen Strawson

2008-03-14T16:30:00.000Z

The Jowett Philosophical Society presents Galen Strawson (University of Reading), who will deliver a talk entitled "Unity and Self: Subjects as Objects".

Week 9 Fri, 4.30pm (14th Mar).

The Lecture Theatre in the Faculty of Philosophy, 10 Merton Street. Admission is free and open to all.

Posted by Christian Beenfeldt.

Consciousness in the Persistent Vegetative State

2008-03-08T10:30:00.004Z

Workshop on Consciousness in the Persistent Vegetative State:
Philosophical and Methodological Issues

Saturday 8th March 2008: 10.30-6

speakers:
STEVEN LAUREYS (Liège) FNRS Senior Research Associate and Neurologist at the Cyclotron Research Centre and a pioneer of the use of brain imaging to investigate brain activity in PVS and related states. ADRIAN OWEN (Cambridge) Senior Scientist, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and lead author of pathbreaking investigation of preserved consciousness in a PVS patient. NICHOLAS SCHIFF (Weill Cornell) Director, Laboratory of Cognitive Neuromodulation and expert on brain imaging of states of impaired consciousness as well as a pioneer of therapeutic deep brain stimulation. MARTIN DAVIES (Oxford) Wilde Professor of Mental Philosophy and author of numerous articles on consciousness.
Commentators: NEIL LEVY (Melbourne/Oxford); NICHOLAS SHEA (Oxford); ADAM ZEMAN (Peninsula Medical School)

All talks will take place in the Lecture Room, Philosophy Faculty, 10 Merton St, Oxford.
Registration is free but places are limited to Oxford University Members only. To register, please email neil(dot)levy(at)philosophy(dot)ox(dot)ac(dot)uk with your name and affiliation. Registration will be confirmed by email by 27 February 2008.

Posted by Michael Hill

Insight meeting

2008-03-07T19:00:00.004Z

The Oxford Society for the Science of Consciousness and the Philosophy of Mind (hosting this website) will be meeting at the University Club on Mansfiled Road on Friday 07.03.08, 7.00 - 8.30.
We will be welcoming our new members, looking ahead to events which we would like to organize next term and have a short discussion on what the positions in the current science of consciousness and philosophy of mind are.
All members of Oxford University are welcome to join us. If you are not a member of the university but would still like to participate, please send us an email.

We look forward to seeing you there!

The Insight committee, Michael, Nat and Christian

Quassim Cassam

2008-03-07T16:30:00.000Z

The Jowett Philosophical Society presents Quassim Cassam (University of Cambridge).
He will deliver a talk entitled "The Basis of Self-Knowledge".

Week 8 Fri, 4.30pm (7th Mar).

The Lecture Theatre in the Faculty of Philosophy, 10 Merton Street. Admission is free and open to all.

Posted by Christian Beenfeldt.

Shadow Play

2008-02-22T10:00:00.000Z

22 February 2008 | Watershed, Bristol | 10 – 4pm

This conference will bring together industry professionals and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), to launch Shadowplay, a collaborative research project created by Andrew J King, Senior Lecturer in Critical Theory, School of Design at the Arts Institute at Bournemouth (AIB) and Piers Bizony, media producer in the field of Public Understanding of Science. The aim is to build an animatronically simulated humanoid robot, representing a model that might exist in, say, 20 years’ time. This robot is essentially a physical illusion, operated by human performers using remote control. It will enable project participants to role-play the experience of interacting with an apparently intelligent, socially competent machine.

For more info visit their website

Posted by: Michael Hill

The unbearable lightness of seeing

2008-02-15T20:00:00.001Z

Prof Colin Blakemore will be giving a talk at the Royal Institution asking the fundamental question why do we need ot be conscious of anything. For more information onProf. Blakemore click here.

Royal Institution
Friday 15 February 2008
8.00pm-9.00pm

Mammalian evolution was dominated by the engineering of vision - not through radical changes in the design of the eye, but through the gradual discovery by the brain of new ways of interpreting the retinal image to gain ever more comprehensive knowledge of the nature of the world. Surely human vision is the pinnacle of this process. But growing evidence is revealing that vision is largely ‘sleight-of-brain' - an extraordinary conjuring trick that creates the reassuring sense of reality out of almost nothing. Most of what we do with the information from our eyes - controlling our hands, guiding our posture, deciding what to look at - happens without awareness. One deep question arises: if we are genuinely aware of such a small fraction of what we see, why do need to be conscious of anything?

Tickets are free to Ri Full Members, £6 Associate Members and £9 non-members.

Posted by: Michael Hill

Unnoticed Seeing

2008-02-15T16:30:00.000Z

Andy Clark (Edinburgh), ‘Unnoticed Seeing’ to be held in the Lecture Room, 10 Merton Stree, Oxford, on the 15:02:08, 04:30 pm - 06:30 pm

There is now substantial evidence for preserved, and sometimes surprisingly rich, representations in some forms of 'change blindness'. But what does this mean for the elusive topic of conscious seeing? Do we visually experience, at the time of encounter, the elements that later surface in experiments revealing preserved representations, or were they merely registered in some non-conscious manner? Drawing on recent work by Fred Dretske, I shall argue that not only do we encode more than it sometimes appears, but that we experience more than we sometimes notice that we experience. Such a view can seem empirically puzzling. How can we demonstrate that experience outruns a subject's capacity to notice what they are experiencing? And if we can show this, or at any rate make it plausible that this is so, what does this tell us about the functional role of conscious perceptual experience?

For more information see the Seminars in Moral Philosophy webpage

Posted by: Michael Hill

On the Varieties of Superintelligence

2008-02-12T14:00:00.000Z

Dr Anders Sandberg & Toby Ord (Oxford), ‘On the Varieties of Superintelligence’

Tuesday 12 February 2008, 2.00 – 4.00 p.m., Seminar Room 1, Old Indian Institute, Broad Street, James Martin Advanced Research Seminar.

Posted by Christian Beenfeldt.

Determinism, Self-Efficacy and the Phenomenology of Free Will

2008-02-11T14:48:00.000Z

Richard Holton (MIT), 'Determinism, Self-Efficacy and the Phenomenology of Free Will' to be held in the Lecture Room, 10 Merton Street, Oxford, 11:02:08, 04:30 pm - 06:30 pm

Some recent studies have suggested that belief in determinism tends to undermine moral motivation: subjects who are given determinist texts to read become more likely to cheat or to go in for vindictive behaviour. One possible explanation is that people are natural incompatibilists, so that convincing them of determinism undermines their belief that they are morally responsible.

I suggest a different explanation, and in doing so try to shed some light on the phenomenology of free will. I contend that one aspect of the phenomenology is our impression that maintaining a resolution requires effort—an impression well supported by a range of psychological data.

For more information see the Seminars in Moral Philosophy webpage

There's also a paper inregard to this talk online here.

Posted by: Michael Hill

David Armstrong

2008-01-16T16:30:00.000Z

The Jowett Society presents David Armstrong--one of the most influential philosophers of mind in the 20th century. He is the author of "A Materialist Theory of the Mind" and several other notable works.

Wednesday 16th Jan, 4.30pm.

The Lecture Theatre in the Faculty of Philosophy, 10 Merton Street. Admission is free and open to all.

Posted by Christian Beenfeldt.

Decoding Consciousness

2007-12-05T18:30:00.001Z

The Royal Society will be hosting the Crick Prize lecture 2007 entitled "Decoding Consciousness" By Professor Geraint Rees MRCP PhD, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London. The lecture will take place on the 5th December 2007 at 6.30 pm, see their website for more information.

Posted by Michael Hill

Oxford debate video online

2007-11-30T20:00:00.000Z

The Mind Science Foundation have published a video recording of the debate held between Prof. Susan Greenfield and Prof. Christoph Koch at Oxford University on the 22nd June 2006. It is a heated debate about different approaches to a science of consciousness and is well worth watching. The debate was continued in an article in the October 2007 issue of Scientific American. Watch the video here.

Posted by Michael Hill

Feature Film on Locked in Syndrome

2007-11-30T12:00:00.000Z

Jean-Dominique Bauby was a 43-year-old editor of French fashion magazine Elle, a success and a playboy before a sudden stroke left him immobile and without speech in what's called "locked-in syndrome".
He wrote a book about his life entitled "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly", which is worth a read. I wasn't as fascinated by it as others seem to have been, but it is a good insight into what the locked-in state might feel like. many consciousness researchers work with locked in syndrome patience as their interaction with the world is extremely different to normal.
Julian Schnabel now produced a film of the book, which I do think will be well worth seeing. For more details see the CNN article.

Posted by Michael Hill

Nature and nurture in brain function: clues from synesthesia and phantom limbs

2007-11-28T18:30:00.001Z

Professor VS Ramachandran, University of California San Diego, examines problems that lie at the interface between neurology and psychiatry. He explains how phantom limbs may be used as a probe for understanding brain functions. Ramachandran will also discuss synesthesia, an inherited condition in which sounds and printed numbers are seen as colored.

This is a public lecture at the Royal Society taking place on Wednesday 28 November 2007 at 6:30pm. The lecture is free - no ticket or advanced booking required. Doors open at 5.45pm and seats will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis. The event will also be webcast live.

For further information please visit the Royal Society's website.

Sir Roger Penrose at the RI

2007-11-21T18:30:00.000Z

Although this talk will not be on consciousness or mind, we still publish it here as Sir Roger is a very senior representative of quantum theories of mind. He will be giving a talk on "The unusual world of tiling patterns and quasi-crystals" at the Royal Institution on the 21.11.2007 at 6.30 pm. Tickets cost £8/£5 Ri Members and concessions.
For further details please see the Royal Institution website.

Posted by Michael Hill

Insight talks in Oxford

2007-11-19T12:00:00.000Z

The Oxford Society for the Science of Consciousness and the Philosophy of Mind, which also hosts this website, is in the process of organizing scientific and philosophical talks in Oxford on the topic of consciousness and mind. If you are interested in helping organize these talks please contact us (for contact information see the details published here).

Posted by Michael Hill