MindGrad 2009 Call for Papers

Well, the CFP for this year’s MindGrad conference went out on PHILOS-L a few weeks ago and we’ve already had lots of people sign up to our Facebook event and follow @MindGrad on Twitter. As previously mentioned, both Alva Noë and Tim Crane (also on Twitter as @timcrane) have agreed to give keynote talks at the conference, which I’m personally very excited about. Since then the organising committee has been busy applying for funding and making general arrangements for the conference, and we’re hoping to make this the best MindGrad yet.

I hope that some of the readers of this blog will consider submitting a paper and/or attending the conference. Having attended last year’s MindGrad, I can confirm that it’s a very enjoyable event, and there will be responses to graduate papers given by members of the Warwick faculty plus plenty of time for Q&A, so it’s a good chance to gain valuable feedback on your work, as well as experience of presenting at a graduate conference. We hope to be able to cover accommodation and transport costs of everyone whose papers are accepted, plus a few others who would not otherwise be able to attend, so it’s well worth submitting a paper. (Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to submit anything myself as I’m on the organising committee, but I guess there’s always next year!)

Further information can be found on the conference web site, or I’d be happy to answer questions via the comments section below.

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.