Brains Blog have run an interesting symposium on my paper with Chris Frith on dual process theories and consciousness. There are three excellent commentaries and some useful points in the comments as well. Shea, N. and Frith, C. F. (2016) ‘Dual-Process Theories and Consciousness: The Case for “Type Zero” Cognition’, Neuroscience…
Coverage in New Scientist
Our paper about the way consciousness facilitates learning features in this week’s New Scientist.
New Paper: Consciousness for Learning
My AHRC Fellowship supported a collaboration with Chris Frith exploring what difference consciousness makes to the way representations are processed. I have already blogged about our theoretical work, published in Neuroscience of Consciousness. We were lucky to be able to employ the adept experimentalist Dr Eoin Travers straight out of his…
What is Consciousness For? – Cheltenham Science Festival
The project was back at the Cheltenham Science Festival this weekend. Five of us visited the festival last year to talk about consciousness with visitors. Eoin Travers gathered data from over 40 willing participants in a simple psychological experiment. This year I returned to give a talk about the project’s…
Cheltenham Science Festival: What is Consciousness For?
We are back at the Cheltenham Science Festival again this spring – this time reporting on the data we collected last year. Nick Shea will be in conversation with Ophelia Deroy (Institute of Philosophy and LMU) on the Project’s question, ‘What is Consciousness For?’ Saturday 10th June: tickets and more…
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…
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…
