One of the central concerns of the project is to get a better understanding of the nature of mental representation. But what are mental representations? Should we even accept the idea that there are representations in the head? In the second Mind Bites podcast, Professor Peter Godfrey-Smith examines what it…
New paper: representation in game theoretic models of communication
One way to understand a phenomenon is to build mathematical or computational models that capture some of its key features. Recent years have seen this approach applied productively to the task of understanding communication and signalling. Brian Skyrms and his collaborators exemplify the value of this approach. They construct game…
Consciousness and altruism
This week, I continue to discuss ideas from participants at the Cheltenham science festival as to what consciousness might be for. Another theme that emerged from discussions is the idea that consciousness facilitates altruistic or social behaviour. Here are some of those suggestions. “Consciousness is why we look out for…
Do you think in images? Sometimes … always?
The most obvious types of mental representation are our own conscious perceptual states: seeing an apple on the table or imagining a flock of sheep on a mountainside. Many philosophers have thought that we also have a more abstract kind of mental representation: concepts, which compose together to make up…
Consciousness and decision making
In the first of a series of posts, I discuss ideas from participants at the Cheltenham science festival as to what consciousness might be for. Several participants discussed decision making and problem solving, where some different ideas emerged: Consciousness is for making decisions, otherwise we would be automated. – Chi…
RSA Lunchtime Seminar
What is Consciousness Good For? I’ll be talking about that question in conversation with Barry Smith in the RSA’s popular Thursday lunchtime seminar series: Thursday 14th July 2016 at 13:00 – 14:00 Durham Street Auditorium, RSA House I’ll present some of the questions the project has been grappling with over the…
The moral significance of the personal/sub-personal distinction
How we characterise the personal/sub-personal distinction has implications for how we understand the moral significance of cognition and its role in action guidance. Our moral and legal practices are committed to the idea that people are sometimes personally responsible for their actions, being then the authors of those actions. Plausibly,…
What Does Consciousness Do For Us? – Ideas
Many thanks to so many for stopping by to talk to the team at the Cheltenham Science Festival on Saturday. We demonstrated a typical experimental paradigm to many keen volunteers (gathering some useful data in the process) and talked to many more about consciousness and the mind. The question of…
Cheltenham Science Festival
We’ll be at the Cheltenham Science Festival on Saturday 11th June. As well as having members of the team on hand to talk about the project, we’ll be asking looking for volunteers to take part in an ongoing experiment. This will give us an valuable new dataset for the project. More…
New paper: ‘type 0’ cognition
As well as trying to characterise meaning or representational content in relatively simple information processing systems in the brain, we’re also interested in identifying ways that information processing is different in more complex cases. Clearly consciousness may make a difference, as we’ve discussed already. Another popular way of distinguishing between…
