Re: Májusi előadások

Andrew Brook (Institute of Cognitive Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada) alábbi két előadására minden érdeklődőt szeretettel várunk:** *1.* 2005. május 2, 16:00: * * *Zombies and Imprisoned Minds* *Andrew Brook and Paul Raymont * *Abstract* Thought experiments (TEs) about zombies are one standard way to argue for anti-cognitivism about consciousness, the view that consciousness is not a cognitive (information processing) property of minds. Another class of TEs are actually more interesting in this regard, TEs about what we call imprisoned minds. Imprisoned minds are minds that have no way of expressing themselves behaviourally. Unlike zombies, they actually exist, which adds to their interest - administration of curare and certain massive strokes in the brain stem can both produce imprisoned minds, curare temporally, strokes permanently. In both cases, one has to add an exotic premise to get an anti-cognitivist argument going. For zombie TEs, the exotic premise is that an utterly nonconscious zombie could be behaviourally, cognitively, or even molecule-for-molecule identical to us conscious beings. The exotic premise in the case of imprisoned mind TEs is that in addition to no behavioural expression, the activities of an imprisoned mind could also make no neural difference. (We call such minds Radically Imprisoned Minds [RIMs].) As has often been noted, part of what makes zombie TEs difficult to assess is their close kinship to the traditional problem of knowledge of other minds. In particular, we do not know by what criterion or criteria we could settle whether another being is conscious. The same is true of imprisoned minds. It turns out, interestingly enough, that it is easier to resolve the knowledge problem that arises in connection with each TE than it is to settle whether they have any potential as arguments for anti-cognitivism. The reason is the same in both cases: the exotic premise required for the TEs to work as arguments for anti-cognitivism, premises that are very difficult to assess, do not affect the knowledge problem. As arguments for anti-cognitivism, the two TEs are different. As we will show, zombie TEs do not work as arguments for anti-cognitivism. By contrast, we know of no definitive cognitivist response to imprisoned minds TEs. <> <>*Biographical Notes* Andrew Brook (D.Phil., Oxon.) is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Institute of Cognitive Science at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He is the author of /Kant and the Mind/ (Cambridge 1994) and, with Paul Raymont, /A Unified Theory of Consciousness/ (MIT Press forthcoming) and has written or edited five other books and about 80 papers, chapters, etc. He was recently President of the Canadian Philosophical Association. Paul Raymont (Ph.D., Toronto) was recently a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council post-doctoral fellow at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He is currently at the University of Toronto. He has numerous journal publications and co-authored /A Unified Theory of Consciousness/ with Andrew Brook.­ * * *Helyszín: *Tudományfilozófiai szeminárium*, * ELTE Tudománytörténet és Tudományfilozófia Tanszék, Pázmány P. sétány 1/A, 6. emelet, 654, terem *2.* 2005. május 3, 17:00: *The Representational Base of Consciousness * * * *Andrew Brook and Paul Raymont* * * *Abstract* ­Everyone agrees, no matter what else they think about con­sciousness, that it has a representational base. However, there have been relatively few worked-out at­tempts to say what this base might be like. The two best developed are perhaps the higher-order thought (HOT) model of David Rosenthal and the transparency ap­proach of Fred Dretske and others. As we will show, both face serious problems. Our alternative to these models starts from the notion of a self-presenting representation, a representation that presents not only what it is about (if it is about anything; not all representations have an object) but also itself to the representing subject. Thus, seeing text on the computer display tells one not only about the text but also about this representations of it, that, for example, one is seeing it, not touching it. Indeed, in our view, representations, being self-presenting, are the representational base for not just for con­sciousness of their objects (when they have one) and of themselves. They are also the representational base for consciousness of oneself as subject. Though we take mainly a philosophical approach, we hope that ­the unified picture of consciousness that flows from our picture of the representational base will assist research on consciousness no matter what the approach. <> *Biographical Notes* Andrew Brook (D.Phil., Oxon.) is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Institute of Cognitive Science at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He is the author of /Kant and the Mind/ (Cambridge 1994) and, with Paul Raymont, /A Unified Theory of Consciousness/ (MIT Press forthcoming) and has written or edited five other books and about 80 papers, chapters, etc. He was recently President of the Canadian Philosophical Association. Paul Raymont (Ph.D., Toronto) was recently a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council post-doctoral fellow at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He is currently at the University of Toronto. He has numerous journal publications and co-authored /A Unified Theory of Consciousness/ with Andrew Brook. *Helyszín:* Közép-Európai Egyetem, Filozófia Tanszék, Zrínyi u. 14, 412 terem