Sunday, November 21, 2010

Gangopadhyay Talk at Aarhus

Nivedita's "Experiential Blindness Revisited" paper came out this summer in Leslie Marsh's special issue of Cognitive Systems Research.  I read through a draft and I was just looking it over again yesterday.  It is a scientifically imposing reply to my "Understanding Embodied Perception" and Chapter 9 of The Bounds of Cognition.  I have it in my mind to write a reply to this, along with Rob Wilson's "Extended Vision" (to be found in Perception, Action, and Consciousness), but I don't see myself getting to that before next fall.

Invitation to a brown bag lunch discussion with:

Nivedita Gangopadhyay (Postdoc)
Center for Subjectivity Research
University of Copenhagen



"Experiential blindness revisited: In defence of a case of embodied cognition"


Date: Dec. 7 and 12:000
Location: GNOSIS Research Centre,  Aarhus University
Tuborgvej 164,
2400 Copenhagen, Denmark
Building C, room 016



Abstract
The sensorimotor theory (Noe¨,2004, in press) discusses a special instance of lack of perceptual experience despite no sensory impairment. The phenomenon dubbed  "experiential blindness” is cited as evidence for a constitutive relation between sensorimotor skills and  perceptual experience. Recently it has been objected (Adams&Aizawa, 2008; Aizawa, 2007)that the cases described by Noe¨ as experiential blindness are cases of pure sensory deficit. This paper argues that while the objections bring out limitations of Noe¨’s sensorimotor theory they do not do enough to challenge a robust perception–action interdependence claim. There are genuine cases of experiential  blindness and these are better explained by the hypothesis of the interdependence of perception and action rather than by a passive vision approach. The cases provide support for a strong thesis of embodied cognition where ongoing sensorimotor dynamics non-trivially constrain perceptual content.


Bring your own lunch. Coffee and cake will be provided.
See you then.


John Michael
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow
GNOSIS Research Centre,  Aarhus University
Tuborgvej 164,
2400 Copenhagen, Denmark
T: 0045 - 88 88 95 57
F: 0045 - 88 88 97 10


John Michael
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow
GNOSIS Research Centre,  Aarhus University
Tuborgvej 164,
2400 Copenhagen, Denmark
T: 0045 - 88 88 95 57
F: 0045 - 88 88 97 10

2 comments:

  1. Sounds interesting. I have a friend in Aarhus, maybe he can score video :)

    Those papers sound interesting too. Noe's books are on my hit list for the blog but after RECS, so I'm not actually that up on this topic yet. It certainly sounds cool.

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  2. It is very interesting. The discussion depends a lot, it seems to me, on both getting the science right and getting the philosophy right.

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