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Sep 17

Unconventional cognition through the lens of cellular collective intelligence in morphogenesis
Prof Michael Levin
Tufts

Abstract: The emerging field of Diverse Intelligence seeks to understand what is common to all active agents, regardless of their composition or origin story. My group works to integrate developmental biophysics, computer science, and cognitive science as tools with which to test empirical consequences of diverse intelligence perspectives. In this talk, I will discuss a framework for detecting, creating, and ethically relating to minds in unconventional embodiments. The problem-solving competencies of cells during embryogenesis, regeneration, and cancer will be used to illustrate how simple cognitive systems can arise and scale into new problem spaces. I will talk about the implications of these ideas for evolution, regenerative medicine, and robotics, via synthetic biobots and the plasticity of the agential material of life.

online

Passcode: 173954

Oct 15

Mixed-resource modeling and the autonomy of the personal level
Prof Rob Rupert
Colorado

Abstract: A layered picture of the natural world has enjoyed widespread and enduring appeal. According to this view, entities of similar sizes cluster together to define layers, or levels, in nature, where each scale-specific clustering is subject to investigation by a proprietary science. Particle physics models the behavior of subatomic particles, sociology models the behavior of living groups, and so on, each scale-specific science mapping out the relations between members of a distinctive family of interrelated properties and deploying a distinctive set of theoretical tools.

To be sure, complications have been recognized, and challenges issued. Does the arrangement of layers constitute a linear order or a partial order? How do properties and activities at the smaller scales determine or constrain processes occurring at larger scales? More radical challenges arise, however, when we attempt to model complex phenomena in such domains as evolutionary biology and cognitive science. Some successful models in these domains are what one might call “mixed-resource” models, opportunistically deploying quantities, elements, and properties from a variety of traditional, scale-specific endeavors in the treatment of a single phenomenon or set of data. This is not a point about so-called multi-scale modeling or pluralistic modeling. Rather, a mixed-resource model is a single model that selectively includes components drawn from different scales, all co-contributing in a way that does not necessarily set those components within, or presuppose their contribution via, a scale-specific model constructed in their home discipline.

In this talk, I motivate the mixed-resource approach to modeling, in general, and in the sciences of the mind, in particular. I further argue that, to the extent to which mixed-resource modeling represents a genuinely promising approach to the phenomena of interest to cognitive scientists, its doing so undermines widely held views about the nature of self and mind (that they appear at a strongly autonomous personal level) and about the explanatory structure of cognitive science (that it has so-called personal-level capacities as its ultimate explanatory target).

Fulton Building, FUL-109

Passcode: 426625

Oct 22

Radical Empiricism: On the Road to Recovery
Prof Michael Silberstein
Elizabethtown

Abstract:Physicalism and ontological reductionism have dominated philosophy and science for a very long time. In cognitive science, neuroscience, and the science of consciousness this leads to a variety of problems such as the hard problem of consciousness, the seeming explanatory and ontic separation of cognitive abilities from experience, and the question of how to interpret or treat realistically a variety of everyday experiences such as the passage of time, as well as less common transformative “mystical” experiences such as those sometimes produced by psychedelics, meditation, etc. Indeed, this state of affairs has led to a variety of seemingly intractable epistemic, ontic, and existential conundrums in philosophy, science, and everyday life. While there are philosophical and scientific counter-movements afoot such as enactivist-based 4E cognitive science and multiscale contextual emergence, these evolving scientific approaches need to be grounded in a different metaphysical and epistemological foundation. It will be argued that the radical empiricism (neutral monism) of William James and others is the cure-all. Radical empiricism allows for a new non-reductionist scientific worldview and multiscale explanatory pluralism, all without the pitfalls of cognitivism or neo-mechanism.

Bio:Michael Silberstein is Professor of Philosophy at Elizabethtown College, Director of the Cognitive Science Program, and a Core Neuroscience Faculty member. His primary research interests are foundations of physics, foundations of cognitive science, and the science of consciousness. He is also interested in how these branches of philosophy and science bear on more general questions of reduction, emergence, and explanation. His three most recent books with OUP are Beyond the Dynamical Universe (2018), Emergence in Context (2022), and Einstein's Entanglement: Bell Inequalities, Relativity, and the Qbit (2024)

Fulton Building, FUL-109

Passcode: 882455

Oct 29

The unity and plurality of sharing
Prof Dan Zahavi
Copenhagen

Abstract: Many accounts of collective intentionality target rather sophisticated types of cooperative activities, i.e., activities with complex goals that require prior planning and various coordinating and organizing roles. But although joint action is of obvious importance, an investigation of collective intentionality should not merely focus on the question of how we can share agentive intentions. We can act and do things together, but it is not obvious that the awe felt and shared by a group of tourists when they gain entry to a pharaonic tomb can or should be analyzed in the same way as, say, a heist that a group of criminals carefully plan and execute together. The aim of the talk is to better understand the kind of emotional sharing that can occur between two individuals who are perceptually co-present. Does the sharing involve a kind of phenomenal fusion? Is it a matter of sharing one and the same token experience? It will be argued that both of these recent suggestions must be rejected as misleading in favor of an account that sees emotional sharing as a form of emotional integration that involves constitutively interdependent processes of empathy and identification.

online

Passcode: 835744

Nov 19

Time as a fundamental aspect of consciousness
Ishan Singhal
Sussex

Abstract:Time is the only property of experience which is ubiquitous across modalities and contents of experience. Its study offers a basis for grounding mental representations, understanding phenomenological universals, and linking disparate fields of inquiry of experience. This talk will first cover the distinct temporal properties which pervade across our experiences. Specifically, the hierarchical, nested, and mirrored nature of time in our experience. I will then present empirical evidence in support of these phenomenal regularities. A case will be made for temporal partitioning of experiences into moments or ‘psychological nows’. These “nows” offer a scaffolding over which we can gauge seemingly private and inaccessible experiences. To demonstrate this, I will present results from a recently concluded project on the dynamics of imagination. Here, participants recreated the speed, smoothness, and persistence of their imagined contents. Results showed that while there was immense individual variability in these abilities across participants, the dynamics of mental imagery were constrained by principles of “now” moments. In the final part of this talk, I will extend the idea of temporal regularities beyond the case of human experience. I will speculate on a possible comparative investigation of “nows” across species. We know already that experience partitions reality in different umwelts across species, with varying sensitivities to audio-visual spectra, distinct navigational capabilities and so on. The same may also be true for how elements of experience are structured in time. While there is already work on comparing temporal sensitivities of the retina across species, this talk will extend this discussion to temporal regularities of attention, pain, and perception.

Bio:
Ishan Singhal has recently joined the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science as a postdoctoral research fellow. He will be working with Anil Seth under an ERC grant which involves putting phenomenological constraints in predictive processing models.

Pevensey 1 1A3

Passcode: 339320