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11th Annual CEP Conference
Reflection: Self-Actualisation and Awareness
The 11th Annual CEP Conference on the theme of Reflection: Self-actualisation and Awareness will be held over the weekend of 14-16, September, 2007 at St. Anne’s College, Oxford University, Oxford.
Reflection has many aspects to it, some of which are very relevant to issues in the field of consciousness studies. The idea of this conference is to examine questions such as:
• What does it mean to be able to reflect?
• How did self-awareness arise?
• What are the uses of reflection in self-actualisation?
• How do reflexive neural networks work?
Our conferences are wide-ranging: delegates and presenters come from a variety of interests connected with consciousness and experiential psychology.
Themes to be explored will include:
• practical and therapeutic aspects (including health care and teaching professions) e.g. uses of and problems with reflection in self-actualisation, realisation and transformation, personal and group-based reflection, intuition and non-verbal ways of knowing
• developmental aspects, e.g. origins and evolution of self-awareness
• philosophical aspects, e.g. what it means to be able to reflect, what can be said about reflective awareness given the variety of different conceptual frameworks in different cultures
• biological bases, e.g. how reflection arises from brain organisation, neural correlates of different forms of awareness
This is the conference timetable. Please note that it may be subject to change.
CEP 2007 timetable
Keynote speakers are:
Nick Humphrey on: "The Necessity of Consciousness: Why Human Zombies would be an Evolutionary Dead-End"
Guy Claxton on: "In the Hall of Mirrors: On the Varieties of Reflective Experience"
Russ Hurlburt on: Can Inner experience be faithfully apprehended?
Eric Schwitzgebel
Nick Humphreys' abstract:
The hard problem of consciousness is to explain where the phenomenal feel comes from - why it’s "like something" to experience sensations, and what biological purpose this being- like-something serves. I will propose an entirely new solution, by arguing as follows: 1. Sensations don’t have to have a phenomenal feel to them in order to serve their basic role; indeed, in the early stages of evolution, sensations were surely non-phenomenal. 2. Phenomenality must have been added by natural selection as a quite peculiar design feature, probably relatively late in evolution (and possibly only in mammals). 3. It will have been selected because the psychological changes that the experience of phenomenality brings about in the conscious subject are highly adaptive. 4. Arguably these changes were - and are - nothing less than an enhanced sense of self and a new enchantment with the world outside. 5. Even if phenomenal consciousness is present in other species, human beings have built on it in ways none others have. 6. It has allowed humans to occupy what I call the "soul niche", that’s to say , the cultural and biological territory, rich with almost unlimited opportunities, that must have opened up for our ancestors once they first began to think of themselves as spiritual beings.
Guy Claxton's abstract:
The idea of ‘reflection’ can only be understood in the context of a general approach to the role of consciousness in learning. This presentation outlines a ‘neurocultural’ approach to learning and consciousness, and distinguishes between a variety of forms and functions of conscious learning. At least the following have to be distinguished: sensibility, awareness, consciousness, imagination, rumination, reverie, metacognition and mindfulness. Not all of these states are appropriate to all kinds of learning. Confusion about this has led to the development of naïve and counter-productive pedagogies in professions such as teaching and nursing.
Russ Hurlburt's abstract:
Descriptive Experience Sampling (DES) aims at capturing inner experience through guided reflection on moments randomly sampled during everyday life. But can DES accomplish that aim? Russ Hurlburt, creator of DES, thinks it can, and will demonstrate DES with volunteers from the CEP audience. Eric Schwitzgebel is skeptical, and will discuss his reservations in the context of these demonstrations. Thus this demonstration brings together the two authors of Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic, to be published in October by MIT Press.
Eric Schwitzgebel's biography:
Eric Schwitzgebel (Ph.D., Philosophy, U.C. Berkeley, 1997) is currently an Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of California at Riverside. He has published a series of articles articulating a pessimistic view of our knowledge of our own ongoing stream of experience, including "How Well Do We Know Our Own Conscious Experience? The Case of Visual Imagery" (JCS, 2002), "Introspective Training Apprehensively Defended: Reflections on Titchener's Lab Manual" (JCS, 2004), "Do Things Look Flat?" (Philosophy & Phenomenological Research, 2007), and "Do You Have Constant Tactile Experience of Your Feet in Your Shoes?" (JCS, 2007). His first book, "Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic" (co-authored with
Russell T. Hurlburt) is due out with MIT Press this fall.
SUBMISSIONS can be in the form of paper presentations, posters, round tables, workshops, or other formats.
PRESENTATIONS will normally be 30 minutes (including questions). Symposia will normally be allocated one and half hours. Other forms of presentation, (e.g. dialogues) are welcome. In each case, please send a 150 word abstract, plus a 500 word summary or full paper. Please include affiliation plus contact details with submissions.
SUBMISSION DEADLINES:
Paper and symposia abstracts: 14th July, 2007
Poster abstracts: 28th July, 2007
Submissions and correspondence regarding them should be sent to: Deborah Biggerstaff
Institute of Clinical Education
Directorate Masters Accredited Programmes
Medical School Building
Warwick Medical School
University of Warwick
Coventry UK
CV4 7AL
Tel (direct): +44 (0) 24 7652 8206
Email: D.L.Biggerstaff@warwick.ac.uk
FURTHER DETAILS
Registration forms and enquiries about these should be sent to:
Dr. Jane Aspell
Department of Psychology
Goldsmiths
University of London
New Cross
London
SE14 6NW
email: j.aspell@gold.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)7876 213 568
OTHER ENQUIRIES
Enquiries other than those to do with submissions, registration or accommodation should be sent to Dr Guy Saunders: guy.saunders@uwe.ac.uk
Dr Guy Saunders
Senior Lecturer in Social Psychology & Consciousness Studies
FAS-Psychology
UWE, Bristol
Frenchay Campus
Bristol BS16 1QY
(0)117 328 2185
Fax: (0)117 328 2904
Travel and accommodation
 http://www.st-annes.ox.ac.uk/about/how_to_find_us.html
gives information on how to get to St. Anne's. Please note that there is no car parking at the college, and on-road parking is scarce to non-existant. Please consider using public transport, car-sharing, etc..
Accommodation
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