The CEU Department of Philosophy cordially invites you to a talk

(as part of its Departmental Colloquium series)

by

Robert Rupert (University of Colorado)

on

"Embodiment, Consciousness, and the Massively Representational Mind"

Tuesday, 8 January, 2013, 5.30 PM, Zrinyi 14, Room 412

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I first describe the embodied perspective on cognition. I then argue that research on embodiment has produced a wealth of data that, along with a variety of other results, support a massively representational view of the mind. According to this view, the brain is rife with representations that possess overlapping and redundant content, and many of these represent other mental representations or derive their content from them. Moreover, many behavioral phenomena associated with attention and consciousness are best explained by the coordinated activity of units with redundant content. I finish by arguing that this massively representational picture challenges the reliability of a priori theorizing about consciousness.