Censes

23-24 May 2013
Senate House, Malet Street, WC1

Thurs 23 May, Senate Room, first floor

1.30 Registration
2.00 Welcome from Professor Barry Smith (Director, IP, School of Advanced Study)
Chair: Prof Uta Frith (UCL)
2.15 Sir Jonathan Miller
On the Move
3.30 Prof Vicki Bruce (Psychology, Newcastle upon Tyne)
Face Fallacies
4.45 Tea
5.15 Patrick Hughes (Reverspective Ltd, London)
Paradoxymoron
6.30 Reception in Jessel Room

Fri 24 May, Room G22/26, ground floor

Morning Chair: Prof Chris Frith (UCL)
9.30 Prof Marina Wallace (Central Saint Martins)
The Paradox of Representation
10.45 Coffee
11.15 Prof Thomas Papathomas (Rutgers)
Masks and reverspectives: ambiguity in depth inversion illusions

12.30 Lunch (own arrangements)

Afternoon Chair: Dr Ophelia Deroy (IP)
1.45 Prof Michael Martin (UCL)
3.00 Prof Andrew Parker (Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics, Oxford)
Edges, Knives and the Warring parties
4.15 Tea
4.45 Dr Francois Quiviger (Warburg, School of Advanced Study)
Visual representations of non-visual sensations in early modern painting
6.00 Close

REGISTRATION (essential)
To register please send a message to philosophy@sas.ac.uk with “Pictorial Paradoxes 23-24 May” as the subject header. In the message please state in the following format:

1. Surname, Forename
2. Your fees category
3. Any affiliation (current staff and students should state department and/or course)

FEES (includes all teas and reception):
£10 CURRENT STAFF AND STUDENTS OF UOL PHILOSOPHY & IP INDIVIDUAL MEMBERS
£20 STAFF AND STUDENTS OF OTHER PHILOSOPHY DEPTS
£40 STANDARD
All fees will be taken at the conference venue and you will only be contacted in advance if there is a query with your registration.

Censes Forum, 5.30-7.30pm (R243, Senate House 2nd Floor)
Geraint Rees (UCL Faculty of Brain Sciences)

Abstract: Consciousness is central to the human condition, furnishing us with phenomenal awareness of the external world and the ability to reflect upon our own thoughts and experiences. Almost half our communication concerns the contents of our thoughts and experiences. The shared language we use to do this obscures the recent realization that there is substantial variability in how different people experience the same physical environment. Moreover, key aspects of this variability in conscious experience are heritable, suggesting a conscious phenotype with adaptive significance. In this talk I will explore the nature of individual differences in conscious perception and their neural basis, focusing on both structure and function of the human brain.

Censes Forum seminar
17.00 on 7 March Room ST243, Senate House, Malet Street

HOW VISION SUCCEEDS IN AN UNKNOWN WORLD

Dale Purves
Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, Singapore

Abstract
Photo-sensors cannot measure the parameters that define reality, thus excluding information about the physical world from the mechanisms of biological vision. Nonetheless, the behavior of humans and other visual animals is routinely successful. The purpose of the talk is to consider how this feat is accomplished, and what the apparent strategy implies about vision and other brain functions.

Dale Purves is Professor of Neurobiology, Psychology and Brain Sciences, and Philosophy at Duke University, and is presently the Director of the Neuroscience and Behavioral Disorders Program at the Duke-NUS Graduate School in Singapore. He came to Duke in 1990 as the founding chair of the Department of Neurobiology at Duke Medical Center and was subsequently Director of Duke’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. He earned his B.A. from Yale and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. Purves was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1989 for his work on neural development and synaptic plasticity; however, his research over the last 15 years years has sought to explain why we see and hear what we do, focusing on the visual perception of brightness, color, form, and motion, and the auditory perception of music and speech. His books include Principles of Neural Development (with Jeff Lichtman; Sinaur,1985) Body and Brain (Harvard,1988); Neural Activity and the Growth of the Brain (Cambridge, 1992); Why We See What we Do (with Beau Lotto; Sinauer, 2003); Perceiving Geometry (with Catherine Howe; Springer 2005); Why We See What we Do Redux (Sinauer, 2011) and Brains: How they Seem to Work (Financial Times Press, 2011). He is also lead author on the textbooks Neuroscience, Fifth Edition (Sinauer, 2011) and Principles of Cognitive Neuroscience, Second Edition (Sinauer, 2012). More information, access to publications and a complete CV are available at www.purveslab.net.

Censes Forum, Thursday Jan 17th, 5-7pm
Room 243, Senate House (2nd floor), Malet Street London WC1

Vincent Hayward (ISIR, Paris)
A World of Tactile illusions And What We Can Do With Them

ABSTRACT
During mechanical interaction with our environment, we have a perceptual experience that can be compare to audition or vision. The sense of touch is based on mechanics and on its infinite complexities. Feeling objects, like in vision and audition, relies on the solution of a vast inverse problem, which is at the root of many ambiguities. To make matters more interesting, there is mounting evidence that many percepts, such as shape, texture, rigidity, speed, size, and on on, can be elicited through multiple sensing modes that blur the boundaries traditionally erected between touch and kinesthesia. From these ambiguities many illusions can arise when provoked by staging the proper conditions. In our group, we strive to build equipment to study them and take advantage of them for practical purpose. Sometimes, we can come up with informative, or even predictive explanations.

Vincent Hayward (Dr.-Ing., 1981 Univ. de Paris XI) was Postoctoral Fellow then Visiting Assistant Professor (1982) at Purdue University, and joined CNRS, France, as Chargé de Recherches in 1983. In 1987, he joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at McGill University as assistant, associate and then full professor (2006). He was the Director of the McGill Center for Intelligent Machines from 2001 to 2004. Hayward is interested in haptic device design and in perception. He is on editorial board of the ACM Transactions on Applied Perception and just completed a term as associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Haptics, and is a Fellow of the IEEE. Hayward has published in Nature, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B, Current Biology, as well as in numerous engineering journals.

Click here for the list of forthcoming seminars

Thursday Oct 25th (4-6pm): Victoria Williamson (Goldsmith) on Amusia.

Thursday Nov 1st (4-6pm):Georges Rey (Maryland) on Concept Nativism.

Wednesday Nov 7th (SPECIAL SCHEDULE: 4.30-6.30pm): Roi Cohen-Kadosh (Oxford) on Synaesthesia

Thursday Nov 22nd (4-6pm): Matt Nudds (Warwick), title to be confirmed

Thursday Dec 7th (4-6pm): Joelle Proust (Jean Nicod, Paris) on Noetic feelings

Thursday Dec 13th (LUNCHTIME 12.30pm-2.30pm): Josef Pavizi (Stanford)

Thursday Dec 13th (4p. – 5.30pm) Richard Samuels (Ohio) Scientific Inference and Ordinary Cognition: Fodor on Holism and Cognitive Architecture.

All the seminars will take place in R 243, Senate House, 2nd floor, Malet Street. Entrance via Senate House (exceptionally via Stewart House on Russell Square, on nov 1st)
Please email contact@thecenses.org to receive our announcements.

The Institute of Philosophy, a member institute of the University of London’s School of Advanced Study, is delighted to welcome Professor Colin Blakemore as Director of the Institute’s Centre for the Study of the Senses.
Professor Blakemore, a renowned vision scientist, is one of Britain’s leading scientists, who speaks and advises on a number of public issues, including chairing the Royal Society’s recent Brain Waves project, reviewing the policy implications of developments in neuroscience, including a report on Neuroscience and the Law. Colin Blakemore is a Fellow of the Royal Society, and was a previous head of the Medical Research Council. He has been a Reith Lecturer and given the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. He has been honoured by many countries, including India and China, and has ten honorary degrees.
Colin‘s research on the neuronal plasticity of the brain has wide implications for learning and memory. He has shown how the visual cortex adapts shortly after birth, helping the brain to match itself to the sensory environment, and this process of reorganisation helps to explain how some parts of the brain can take over the function of others after damage. Professor Blakemore will direct the work of the Centre for the Study of the Senses, which pioneers collaborative sensory research between philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists, looking at the way our senses cooperate to create perceptions of the world around us.
Colin Blakemore commented: “For many years I have thought that philosophy has much to contribute to the exploding field of neuroscience – and vice versa. I am very excited about the challenge of facilitating new interactions and collaborations across the traditional boundaries between the humanities and neuroscience.”
Professor Barry Smith, Director of the Institute of Philosophy, said: “We are delighted to have Colin Blakemore joining us. He will play a vital role in leading a new generation of philosophically-minded neuroscientists and scientifically-minded philosophers. ”