Hi just wanted to say very interesting research your doing. Im in my final year at Sussex taking Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Hoping to do human centred systems next year. Im also bloggin a bit, although havn't been doing much of it recently with my finals on.
We are doing some really interesting classes with Rob Clowes this term. Im heading a seminar today on "Is consciousness a virtual reality?" which is also my dissertation title. Next week we are looking at post-humanism and implication of future technology on humanity. So its all really related to your research at the moment.
"Is consciousness a virtual reality?" ...way off-topic but as soon as I read this I was struck by the cool title.. Especially as there are two quite different ways of reading this. On one, conscious states are realised by dynamic internal states, modelling/representing states of the world and states internal to the system, and so virtual qua simulation - probably the most nuanced version of this view is Metzinger's (though I'm still getting to grips with the depths of it myself). Metzinger's view is meant to account (with more or less constraints) for all conscious experience. But on another view, the content of *perceptual* experience in particular is "virtual all the way in", (though, apparently, not wholly constituted by internal processing). This is Alva Noe's use of the 'virtuality' metaphor, where for him virtual is bound up with *potential*: we experience the world as domain of potential for access and sampling through habitual or cognitively mediated sensorimotor routines, 'understanding' sensory stimulation according to our grasp of 'sensorimotor concepts'. So on his view content is virtual in that any occurrent experience is bound up with unaccessed elements occluded from view (like the back of the philosophically famous tomato) or in the attentional periphery, and understood potential patterns for access.
So will you be writing/talking about either of these? Or is there some further way in which one could say that the content of our experience is virtual, that is wholly distinct from these!? I'll keep an eye on your blog anyway. Have a lovely day, both of you, its snowing where I am, and I'm ridiculously happy about that..
yer Ill be looking at Metzinger type representationalist accounts of simulated consciousness. Also some work on dreams as models of consciousness by Revonsuo. Im likely to be quite critical of Noe, since Im following a predominately internalist account and thus will be claiming that sensori-motor contingencies are internally modelled as Clark postulates. Thus a Matrix type scenario is possible without direct perception and movement with the real external world. Ill probably write a blog on it in the summer after my finals are finished. More then.
Well then here's a shameless plug to a friend's paper that she wrote with my boss http://www.philosophie.uni-mainz.de/metzinger/publikationen/Dreams.pdf
Yeh this has got a bit out of control, but to answer you. It has been published, here's a full(er) reference Windt, J. M. and Metzinger, T. (2007), The Philosophy of Dreaming and Self-Consciousness: What Happens to the Experiential Subject during the dream state? In McNamara, P. and Barrett, D. (Eds.), The New Science of Dreaming (Greenwood Press). Not sure of page numbers though. But if you quote from the doc I linked you then use the reference at the top of their first page, put (ms) instead of year and give the URL and date of retreival. Sorry again Chris
Don't worry about it, it's good to see two cognitive philosophers exchange goods :) I reread my "Should there be a digital revolution in philosophy?" essay from the 3rd year the other day and decided to condense it and work it into the philosophy section on my website. Tell you both when I'm done.
Well, whilst I'm spreading the love, I don't know why I never said before you (Chris) should read Andy's "Natural Born Cyborgs" because you would love it..
you know what, i'm gonna go buy that book this weekend and read it and have long conversations about it with you over many beers. btw, i'd send you those papers you asked for if i had access to them, but my athens access is long gone. the 2008 paper on DBS is available for free though: it's number four in this collection.
12 comments:
Hi just wanted to say very interesting research your doing. Im in my final year at Sussex taking Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Hoping to do human centred systems next year. Im also bloggin a bit, although havn't been doing much of it recently with my finals on.
Keep up the good work
Jack
http://philosophyofcogs.blogspot.com/
Thanks. I'll keep an eye on your blog. Let me know if there are any interesting lectures in your department.
As is (nearly) always the case with these things, it looks like you will need to find a distinguished elderly scientist to back you up..
;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufficiently_advanced_technology
We are doing some really interesting classes with Rob Clowes this term. Im heading a seminar today on "Is consciousness a virtual reality?" which is also my dissertation title. Next week we are looking at post-humanism and implication of future technology on humanity. So its all really related to your research at the moment.
"Is consciousness a virtual reality?"
...way off-topic but as soon as I read this I was struck by the cool title.. Especially as there are two quite different ways of reading this.
On one, conscious states are realised by dynamic internal states, modelling/representing states of the world and states internal to the system, and so virtual qua simulation - probably the most nuanced version of this view is Metzinger's (though I'm still getting to grips with the depths of it myself).
Metzinger's view is meant to account (with more or less constraints) for all conscious experience. But on another view, the content of *perceptual* experience in particular is "virtual all the way in", (though, apparently, not wholly constituted by internal processing). This is Alva Noe's use of the 'virtuality' metaphor, where for him virtual is bound up with *potential*: we experience the world as domain of potential for access and sampling through habitual or cognitively mediated sensorimotor
routines, 'understanding' sensory stimulation according to our grasp of 'sensorimotor concepts'. So on his view content is virtual in that any occurrent experience is bound up with unaccessed elements occluded from view (like the back of the philosophically famous tomato) or in the attentional periphery, and understood potential patterns for access.
So will you be writing/talking about either of these? Or is there some further way in which one could say that the content of our experience is virtual, that is wholly distinct from these!?
I'll keep an eye on your blog anyway.
Have a lovely day, both of you, its snowing where I am, and I'm ridiculously happy about that..
yer Ill be looking at Metzinger type representationalist accounts of simulated consciousness. Also some work on dreams as models of consciousness by Revonsuo. Im likely to be quite critical of Noe, since Im following a predominately internalist account and thus will be claiming that sensori-motor contingencies are internally modelled as Clark postulates. Thus a Matrix type scenario is possible without direct perception and movement with the real external world. Ill probably write a blog on it in the summer after my finals are finished. More then.
Well then here's a shameless plug to a friend's paper that she wrote with my boss
http://www.philosophie.uni-mainz.de/metzinger/publikationen/Dreams.pdf
Good luck with your finals!
nice one thats really helpful. If it hasn't been published, how can I cite any ideas I draw from it?
p.s. sorry about the lack of relavence to this topic Chris.
Yeh this has got a bit out of control, but to answer you.
It has been published, here's a full(er) reference
Windt, J. M. and Metzinger, T. (2007), The Philosophy of Dreaming and Self-Consciousness: What Happens to the Experiential Subject during the dream state? In McNamara, P. and Barrett, D. (Eds.), The New Science of Dreaming (Greenwood Press).
Not sure of page numbers though.
But if you quote from the doc I linked you then use the reference at the top of their first page, put (ms) instead of year and give the URL and date of retreival.
Sorry again Chris
Don't worry about it, it's good to see two cognitive philosophers exchange goods :) I reread my "Should there be a digital revolution in philosophy?" essay from the 3rd year the other day and decided to condense it and work it into the philosophy section on my website. Tell you both when I'm done.
Well, whilst I'm spreading the love, I don't know why I never said before you (Chris) should read Andy's "Natural Born Cyborgs" because you would love it..
you know what, i'm gonna go buy that book this weekend and read it and have long conversations about it with you over many beers. btw, i'd send you those papers you asked for if i had access to them, but my athens access is long gone. the 2008 paper on DBS is available for free though: it's number four in this collection.
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