MindGrad Conference

For the past five years, the University of Warwick has held a graduate conference in the philosophy of mind  called—surprisingly enough—MindGrad. It is (or so I am told) normally organised by second year Ph.D. students working in that general area, and seeing as I was the only new philosophy of mind Ph.D. student starting at Warwick this year, it has fallen me to organise this year’s conference. Not that I mind, you understand, as it’s a great opportunity to invite some top notch philosophers to come and speak on topics relating to my research, and the range of graduate papers on offer at last year’s conference was excellent.

The conference itself is scheduled for the first weekend in December (5th–6th), and I’m happy to say that both keynote speakers have now confirmed. They are Alva Noë, who works on phenomenology, philosophy of cognitive science, embodiment, extended mind and consciousness, and Tim Crane, philosopher of mind and perception, Head of Department at UCL and soon to be Knightbridge Professor at the University of Cambridge. Both will, I’m sure, be excellent and I’m really looking forward to some fascinating discussions of graduate papers in light of their considerable experience and philosophical work.

Susan Hurley Memorial Conference

As mentioned in my previous post, I was at the Susan Hurley Memorial Conference last weekend, so I thought I’d record a few thoughts and comments about it here for comments and discussion. In general, it was a very useful and enjoyable event, and left me with a strong impression of what a creative, energetic and intelligent individual Susan Hurley was. Her untimely death was a tragedy not just for those who knew her, but for the philosophical community as a whole, not least because her work seemed to be reaching new levels just before she died.

The brief to speakers was apparently to talk about something that Susan would have found interesting, rather responding to her work directly, although there was inevitably some crossover between the two. It was touching that many of the speakers chose to begin their talks with personal recollections or anecdotes about the time they spent with Susan, or the impression that she had made upon them. Indeed, the introductory session was given by Susan’s husband, Nick Rawlins, who, along with their son Merryn, was present throughout most of the conference. It was also a distinctly interdisciplinary gathering with many neuro- and cognitive scientists, as well as philosophers, in attendance—a mark of the nature and breadth of Susan’s work.

Minds, Brains, and Beyond

I’m off to Bristol tomorrow to attend the Susan Hurley memorial conference entitled Minds, Brains, and Beyond. The conference runs until Sunday and features an impressive array of philosophical luminaries, including John Campbell, José Luis Bermudéz, Daniel Dennett, Andy Clark, Alvin Goldman, Jesse Prinz and Ruth Millikan, to name but a few. Unfortunately, Alva Noë and Kim Sterelny had to drop out at the last minute, although the good news is that ticketing problems with Dennett’s keynote seem to have been sorted out and places have now been offered to anyone who’s attending the conference and wants to go (quite right too!).

I’m very much looking forward to seeing some of the philosophical big beasts in action, especially given that many of the talks are on topics close to my own areas of interest. As seems only fitting, I will be taking my copy (well, Warwick university library’s copy, actually) of Consciousness in Action to read on the train (6:30am at Leamington Spa station!). I started reading it some time ago and only managed until chapter 7, not because it wasn’t interesting, but because I moved onto other things and needed some time to process some of the arguments concerning the inverted spectrum thought experiments after which this blog is named. In any case, it will be good to return to these issues at the interface between philosophy and neuroscience, and upon which Hurley wrote so eloquently.

New Philosophical Gourmet Report

Well, a new edition of the Philosophical Gourmet Report (PGR for short) came out yesterday with the University of Warwick making a very respectable—if slightly lacklustre—joint ninth in the UK rankings. As expected, Oxford, along with St Andrews, Cambridge and the various London colleges, continue to dominate the top slots with the overall ordering being very similar to the 2006 rankings.

Although I must admit to being rather sceptical about the utility of such global rankings, there’s no doubt that they provide an interesting reflection of the way that various departments are regarded within the profession. When it comes to postgraduate study, I suspect that it’s as important to choose the department—and in particular the supervisor—that is most suited towards one’s intended area, rather than going to the institution with the highest overall ranking. The PGR’s subject specific rankings are quite useful in this regard since they reflect the perception of each department’s strengths on a subject by subject basis, although this can again be a bit hit and miss since the PGR is based upon peer evaluation rather than a direct attempt to measure the quality of the relevant research, as per the UK RAE rankings, for example.

Welcome to my New Blog

Welcome to Inverted Spectrum, my new philosophy blog. In it I hope to discuss matters relating to my Ph.D. research in the philosophy of mind, perception and epistemology, as well as other issues of philosophical interest, news, web links, etc.

This site is something of an experiment in that it’s the first time that I’ve published a blog via a web-based service like WordPress. It takes over from my old philosophy blog, The Real World, which will continue to be available via my home page at www.keithwilson.org.uk, but which I don’t intend to update for the foreseeable future (the main reason being that it takes too long and is too fiddly to maintain this site in conjunction with my other online content, although perhaps that will become easier with the latest version of iWeb).

My main web site also includes some more information about myself, my philosophical interests and writing, so feel free to check it out if you’re interested. I also intend to post some of the more recent talks and papers that I’m writing on Academia.edu, an excellent site that enables academics working in different areas to network and share their work online (although when I do so I will normally link to them from a blog post here as well, so there’s no need to watch both sites).

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you’ll enjoy, comment on and discuss the material that I post here. Studying philosophy has always been something of an adventure for me, and I look forward to sharing part of that journey with some fellow travellers through the wonderful medium of the Internet. Or something like that…