Centre for the Study of Perceptual Experience

25-26 October 2019
Open to the public

Perception is our key to the world. It plays at least three different roles in our lives. It justifies beliefs and provides us with knowledge of our environment. It brings about conscious mental states. It converts informational input, such as light and sound waves, into representations of invariant features in our environment. Corresponding to these three roles, there are at least three fundamental questions that have motivated the study of perception. How does perception justify beliefs and yield knowledge of our environment? How does perception bring about conscious mental states? How does a perceptual system accomplish the feat of converting varying informational input into mental representations of invariant features in our environment?

The aim of the workshop is to bring together philosophers of mind and epistemologists working on the nature and normativity of perception to make progress towards answering these questions. The first day of the conference will feature a half-day author-meets-critic session centred on Susann Schellenberg’s new book The Unity of Perception. The second day will involve a series of talks on the philosophy of perception.

The event will benefit the philosophical community in Scotland by bringing leading researchers here to discuss a vibrant area of research. The Department of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow is a hub for research in philosophy of perception and in epistemology, notably housing the Centre for the Study of Perceptual Experience (CSPE) and the Cogito Epistemology Group. The workshop will help the production and dissemination of CSPE and Cogito research and foster future collaborations between these universities. The workshop will offer staff and postgraduate students in Scotland the chance to network with potential research partners within and outside Scotland.

Organisers

Mona Simion and Derek H. Brown, Philosophy, University of Glasgow - on behalf of the Centre for the Study of Perceptual Experience and COGITO Epistemology Group, University of Glasgow.

Sponsors

Scots Philosophical Association
Centre for the Study of Perceptual Experience, University of Glasgow

Programme (draft)

Friday, October 25th

9.00-9.15 Coffee

9.15-10.45 'Visual Space, Constancy, and Vision Science' Susanna Schellenberg (Rutgers)

10.45-11.00 Coffee

11.00-12.30 'Representationalism and the Perceptual Veil' Derek Brown (Glasgow)

12.30-13.30 Lunch

13-30-15.00 'The power of Taste' Louise Richardson (York)

15.00-15.15 Coffee

15.15-16.45 'Evidence' Mona Simion (Glasgow)

16.45-17.00: Coffee

17.00-18.30 'Hallucination and Perceptual Justification' Jack Lyons (Arkansas)

19.00 Conference Dinner: Stravaigin, Gibson Street

 

Saturday, October 26th

9-9.15 Coffee

9.15-lunch Book Symposium: Susanna Schellenberg’s ‘The Unity of Perception’ with commentaries by

• Christoph Kelp (Glasgow)
• Louise Richardson (York)
• Jack Lyons (Arkansas)

and replies from Susanna Schellenberg (Rutgers)

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First published: 3 August 2019