THE DETAILS
Andy Clark is a leading philosopher and cognitive scientist. The fruits of his work have been diverse and lasting. They have had an extraordinary impact throughout philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and robotics. The extended mind hypothesis, the power of parallel distributed processing, the role of language in opening up novel paths for thinking, the flexible interface between biological minds and artificial technologies, the significance of representation in explanations of intelligent behaviour, the promise of the predictive processing framework to unify the cognitive sciences: these are just some of the ideas explored in Clark’s work that have been picked up by many researchers, and that have been contributing to intense debate across the sciences of mind and brain.
In occasion of the launch of the book “Andy Clark and his Critics” (OUP), a free one-day conference will be held at the University of Edinburgh on May the 31st 2019. The aim of the conference is to take an interdisciplinary, critical and forward-looking approach to Andy Clark’s work, bringing together researchers working in various fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Keynote talks will be given by Professors Barbara Webb (University of Edinburgh, Biorobotics), Jesse Prinz (CUNY, Philosophy), and Andy Clark (University of Edinburgh/Sussex, Philosophy).
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
ANDY CLARK
BARBARA WEBB
JESSE PRINZ
VIDEO PLAYLIST
A playlist of the talks (audio plus slides) is available on the Edinburgh Philosophy YouTube channel: https://tinyurl.com/y527tm7h
PROGRAMME
9 AM
WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION
Matteo Colombo
Liz Irvine
Mog Stapleton
9.15 - 10.15
KEYNOTE: JESSE PRINZ (CUNY)
Would we be better off without emotions? An android's perspective
This talk takes the form of a science fiction fable about an android trying to decide whether to accept a module that would give her emotions. This takes her on a journey to find out what emotions are and how they contribute to mental life. Along the way she learns some Clarkian lessons: emotions are embodied, situated, and extended; they help construct social Umwelten. Human emotions are also highly plastic; they are amenable to cultural transformations. Thus, this allegedly animalistic aspect of the human mind turns out to be a cognitive technology, which can be programmed and enhanced. In this respect, the android’s question is also always our own.
10.15 - 10.45
MORNING COFFEE
In the Bayes Centre Foyer
10.45 - 11.30
ADAM TOON (EXETER)
Minds, materials and metaphors
The extended mind thesis advances a radical claim concerning the location of mental states. And yet, at least in its canonical form due to Clark and Chalmers, the thesis fits comfortably with a traditional, representationalist account of the nature of those states. I will argue that proponents of the extended mind thesis would do better to adopt a fictionalist approach to mental states. In so doing, they could retain the important insights underlying the extended mind thesis, while avoiding its more problematic consequences. Moreover, I shall suggest, fictionalism also fits better with Clark’s own views concerning the role of the “folk solids” in cognitive science.
11.30 - 12.15
KATE NAVE (EDINBURGH)
The (in)determinacy of visual experience in the probabilistic brain
According to Predictive Processing, the brain models its environment probabilistically. Yet ordinary visual experience seems to present unambiguous objects, not a ‘Bayesian blur’ of possibilities. Clark (2018) argues that this poses no barrier to drawing explanatory bridges between the two - for the imperative to support action planning explains why sub-personal probability distributions would be forced into a single experiential peak. Nonetheless, both phenomenological investigations and more recent experiments on inattentional blindness, cast doubt on the above characterization - suggesting that we are mistaken about the determinacy of visual perception. This conflict stems from an ambiguity. There are two notions of ‘determinacy’ at play: univocality and detail. Action-orientation accounts for the former, but does not mandate that every detail of our single winning hypotheses be fully specified. The PP model is hierarchical, allowing for a winning hypothesis at many different levels of spatiotemporal grain. Experience is univocal, but only at the (flexible) level required for action planning, leaving further details unspecified.
12.15 - 13.30
LUNCH BREAK
Recommendations of nearby lunch venues will be given
13.30 - 14.15
GEORGE NEISH (UCL)
Predictive Processing, Basic Actions, and Perceptual (In)determinacy
Clark (2018) worries that Bayesian predictive coding accounts of perception seem to lead to the unacceptably counterintuitive result that the content of perceptual experience lacks ‘unitary-coherence’. His response to this problem relies on the view that there are basic actions that ground a single action-guiding take on the world. However, the notion of basic actions is in tension with Clark’s wider theoretical commitments to embodied-extended cognition. I argue that we should instead abandon the original worry, since perceptual content grounded by action on the no basic action view, while non unitary-coherent, does not involve the problematic ‘Bayesian blur’ that underlies his concerns.
14.15 - 15.15
KEYNOTE: BARBARA WEBB (EDINBURGH)
Insects as a cognitive edge-case
Insects often serve as paradigmatic examples of embodiment, tightly coupling physical and neural systems for adaptive behavioural control. But can they also provide insight into cognition? More specifically, does the emerging account of brains as multilevel prediction machines extend to insect brains? I will review some surprising examples from insect behaviour that suggest they are capable of internal emulation and Bayesian integration of information, and perhaps more. Will the neural mechanisms of cognition be first unravelled in the fruit-fly?
15.15 - 15.45
AFTERNOON TEA
In the Bayes Centre Foyer
15.45 - 16.45
KEYNOTE: ANDY CLARK (SUSSEX)
A World, Entangled: Neural Prediction and the Fiercely Woven Mind
Human minds, it has been argued, are embodied and sometimes even ‘extended’ – reaching beyond the bounds of skin and skull to inhere in unified processing regimes built of biological and non-biological parts. Human brains, it has also been argued, are multi-level prediction machines geared to minimizing long-term prediction error. But could one person coherently hold both these views? Doesn’t the emphasis on a distinctive inner processing profile put pressure on the picture of minds as extended, and potentially invite some re-thinking of the role of embodiment too? In this exploratory talk I acknowledge the pressure but argue that the re-thinking that results reveals a richer landscape in which to understand minds as embodied and even extended. What emerges is once more a picture of neural processing as deeply woven into its bodily and socio-technological settings. But within that tight, dense, multi-scale weave we may now mark a surprising continuity of strategic interventions, with attention and salience emerging as key contributors whose interlocking roles determine the surprising intimacy of mind and world.
16.45 - 17.00
BOOK LAUNCH & CLOSING REMARKS
***
17.00 onwards
CELEBRATION
Location TBA
SPONSORS
THE SCOTS PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION
PHILOSOPHY @ THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
EIDYN RESEARCH CENTRE, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
THE MIND ASSOCIATION
THE ANALYSIS TRUST
ORGANISERS
MATTEO COLOMBO
LIZ IRVINE
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MOG STAPLETON
GET IN TOUCH
Please follow the links to register for the conference. While registration is free, places are limited and so registration is required. Abstracts should be emailed to us by Friday March 1st. For any other questions please fill out the form below.
Bayes Centre, 47 Potterrow, Edinburgh EH8 9BT, UK