Previous CEP annual conferences

September 2006 Exploring the Boundaries of Experience and Self

September 2005 Reconstructing Consciousness, Mind and Being

September 2004 Science, self and meaning

September 2003 Enactive consciousness: perception, intersubjectivity and empathy

September 2002 Positive psychology

September 2000 Imagination and transformation

September 1999 Consciousness and wellbeing

September 1998

October 1997 Consciousness and change

10th ANNUAL CONFERENCE

St. Anne’s College, Oxford, 15th to 17th September, 2006

EXPLORING THE BOUNDARIES OF EXPERIENCE AND SELF

Where are the boundaries of conscious experience and self, and why do these boundaries exist? How do they develop in interaction with parents, carers and others? In what ways are they conditioned by prevailing systems of belief, philosophy, sociocultural history, and environment? How is adult experience and sense of self altered by psychological, social or spiritual development? How does subjective experience relate to intersubjectivity? How do changes in conscious experience affect one's sense of self, for example through meditation, mysticism, or in pathological states? In this 10th Annual Conference we encourage papers that explore these and related themes from the perspectives of psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, social science, ecology, Eastern and Western spiritual practices, and other, related disciplines.

Speakers include: John Barresi, Judith Blackstone, Andrew Brook, Matthijs Cornellisen, Alan Costall, Shaun Gallagher, Brian Goodwin, Valerie Gray Hardcastle, John Pickering, Vasudevi Reddy, Susan Stuart, Steve Torrance, B Alan Wallace, Max Velmans and Dan Zahavi.

CEP_2006_abstracts

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Shaun Gallagher

From the minimal self to the narrative other

Abstract: Drawing on phenomenology, developmental psychology, neuroscience, and narrative theory, I will map out a route that starts with a minimal sense of self and others in infancy, and leads to our fuller understanding of others based on our competency for self-narrative. Our earliest sense of self and others is tied to embodied proprioceptive, neural resonance, and perceptual processes that help to define what Trevarthan has called 'primary intersubjectivity'. By entering into the interactive pragmatic and social practices of everyday life (in 'secondary intersubjectivity' beginning around 1 year of age) we begin to develop an understanding of social context. This understanding is enhanced through a more objective sense of self, the acquisition of language, and the development of autobiographical memory. Before the age of 4 years, our competency for self-narrative helps to form the framework for our more mature understanding of others and the possibility of empathy. These accounts form a phenomenological alternative to the standard theory of mind approaches ('theory theory' and 'simulation theory'), and provide a more parsimonious approach to understanding self and intersubjectivity.

Shaun Gallagher is Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Central Florida; he has been occasional Visiting Professor at the University of Copenhagen (2004-06) and Visiting Scientist at the Medical Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge University (1994). He is co-editor of the interdisciplinary journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. His research interests include phenomenology and philosophy of mind, cognitive sciences, hermeneutics, theories of the self and personal identity. His most recent book, How the Body Shapes the Mind, is published by Oxford University Press (2005). He is co-editor of the forthcoming Does Consciousness Cause Behavior? An Investigation of the Nature of Volition (MIT Press 2006).

He is currently working on several projects, including a co-authored book, The Phenomenological Mind: Contemporary Issues in Philosophy of Mind and the Cognitive Sciences (Routledge 2007). His previous books include: Hermeneutics and Education (1992) and The Inordinance of Time (1998). Hehas edited or co-edited volumes that include: Ipseity and Alterity: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Intersubjectivity (2004); Models of the Self (1999); Hegel, History, and Interpretation (1997).

Brian Goodwin

The Boundaries of Experience and Meaning Between Nature and Culture

Abstract: The natural sciences such as physics, chemistry, and biology are generally regarded as providing a window onto nature, while the arts, humanities and psychology present and describe aspects of the realm called culture.These two areas of learning have been sharply separated in modern thought. A major reason for this is the belief that during the course of evolution properties such as consciousness, language and ethics have emerged in humans but not, with possibly minor exceptions, in other species, and certainly not in the objects studied by the physical sciences. Furthermore, meaning is a term that is used in the context of human language, communication and writing, but is considered to make no sense in describing the processes involved in the development and evolution of species of organism belonging to lower taxonomic levels.

However, recent biological studies on molecular and genetic organisation within cells are leading to a new perspective on how organisms make themselves that involves a radical rethinking of the distinction between culture and nature, knowing self and other. It appears that when developing organisms read their genomes and make sense of them by constructing themselves as coherent, functional wholes appropriate to their history and environmental contexts, whether they be sea urchins or willow trees or humans, they are engaged in making meaning through the use of self-referential networks of relationships that have deep affinities with spoken language. The evidence for this, its implications for how we see evolution, and the consequences for our view of nature and culture will be explored.

Brian Goodwin was born in 1931 in Canada where he studied biology. He then took a mathematics degree at Oxford and a PhD involving biology and mathematics at Edinburgh University. He has held research and teaching positions at MIT, at the University of Sussex, and the Open University, UK, where he was Professor of Biology. He was connected with the Santa Fe Institute for a number of years in the 80s and 90s. He now teaches Holistic Science at Schumacher College in England.

His interests are in developing a science of qualities that can address issues of health and quality of life in diverse areas, in promoting holistic patterns of living, and in the reunion of the arts and humanities with the sciences.

B. Alan Wallace

Observing the Mind: A Buddhist Approach to Exploring Consciousness

Abstract: While the modern cognitive sciences approach the study of consciousness primarily by way of examining the neural and behavioral correlates of states of consciousness, Buddhist contemplatives have introspectively focused their attention primarily on subjective mental states themselves. But introspection, as William James pointed out more than a century ago, is a fallible mode of observation, and it has been largely marginalized in the modern study of the mind. Buddhists have recognized how unreliable introspection can be, but they have sought to overcome its shortcomings bydeveloping highly sophisticated modes of attention, with enhanced stability and vividness. By exploring the mind primarily from a first-person perspective with refined attention, they claim to bring to the light of consciousness many mental processes that are otherwise unconscious. In this way, they assert that the nature of conscious phenomena themselves, and not just their physical correlates, can be investigated in depth. The Buddhist study of the mind is not only epistemic--concerned with the nature, origins, and causal efficacy of mental events--but also pragmatic, for it is primarily concerned with bringing about greater mental balance and genuine happiness through understanding the nature of the mind and its relation to the world at large.

B. Alan Wallace, Ph.D. has been a scholar and practitioner of Buddhism since 1970, and he has taught Buddhist theory and meditation worldwide since 1976. Having devoted fourteen years to training as a Tibetan Buddhist monk, ordained by H. H. the Dalai Lama, he went on to earn an undergraduate degree in physics and the philosophy of science at Amherst College and a doctorate in religious studies at Stanford University.

His published works include Choosing Reality: A Buddhist View of Physics and the Mind (Snow Lion, 1996), The Taboo of Subjectivity: Toward a New Science of Consciousness (Oxford, 2000), Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground (New York: Columbia, 2003), Genuine Happiness: Meditation as the Path to Fulfillment (John Wiley & Sons. 2005), Balancing the Mind: A Tibetan Buddhist Approach to Refining Attention (Snow Lion, 2005), and The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind (Wisdom, 2006).

After teaching for four years in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, he founded the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies(http://sbinstitute.com), of which he is president.

Dan Zahavi

The Time of the Self

Abstract: What is the relation between temporality and selfhood? Much depends on the notions of time and self employed. In my talk, I will compare and contrast two different philosophical conceptions of self, namely a hermeneutical (Ricoeur, MacIntyre, Brunner) and a phenomenological (Husserl, Sartre, Henry). Both conceptions stress the close relationship between selfhood and temporality, but they address rather different aspects, partly because they investigate two quite different dimensions of time. In the first case, the focus is on narrated time and on the link between selfhood and narration, in the second case, it is on the temporal structure of the stream of consciousness, and on the question of whether the unity of the experiential flow requires a formal subject of experience. I will argue that the two conceptions are complementary rather than conflicting and that the phenomenological conception of time and self must be ascribed a certain priority.

Dan Zhavi is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Danish National Research Foundation's Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen. He obtained his Ph.D. (summa cum laude) from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 1994, and his Dr.phil. (Danish Habilitation) from University of Copenhagen in 1999.

Zahavi has been the recipient of the Ballard Prize in Phenomenology, and was awarded a prize by the Royal Danish Society of Sciences and Letters in 2000 for his research in phenomenology. He was elected member of Institut International de Philosophie in 2001, and is currently serving as president of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology. Zahavi has published more than 100 articles on topics in philosophy of mind, phenomenology, and history of philosophy.

He has authored 7 books including Husserl und die transzendentale Intersubjektivität (Kluwer 1996), Self-awareness and Alterity (Northwestern University Press 1999), Husserl's Phenomenology (Stanford University Press 2003), and Subjectivity and Selfhood (MIT Press 2005). He is the editor and/or co-editor of 10 volumes, including Exploring the Self (John Benjamins 2000), One Hundred Years of Phenomenology (Kluwer 2002), and The structure and development of self-consciousness (John Benjamins 2004).

Ninth Annual Conference: September 16-18, 2005, St Anne's College, Oxford

Reconstructing Consciousness, Mind and Being

Conference Theme: In current debates, discussions of consciousness and mind are often rather disconnected from discussions of embodied being in the world. This split has both theoretical and practical consequences. In this conference we focus on ways of reconstructing and reintegrating consciousness, mind, and being, both theoretically and in applied contexts. Papers are invited that address these issues from a wide range of interdisciplinary perspectives including neuropsychology, clinical and therapeutic practices, positive psychology, phenomenological and embodied psychologies, integrative philosophies of mind, and syntheses of Eastern and Western approaches.

CEP 2005 conference abstracts

Keynotes included:

Madness explained - Richard Bentall.

Consciousness, the Phenomenal Self, and the First-Person Perspective - Thomas Metzinger

Richard Bentall is Professor of Experimental Clinical Psychology, Department of Psychology, University of Manchester. In 1989 he received the British Psychological Society's May Davidson Award for his contribution to the field of clinical psychology and his book Madness Explained (Penguin) has been awarded the British Psychological Society Book of the Year award for 2004.

Thomas Metzinger is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Theoretical Philosophy Group at the Department of Philosophy of the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz. His books include Being No One: The Self-Model Theory of Subjectivity (MIT), Conscious Experience (Imprint Academic), and Neural Correlates of Consciousness - Empirical and Conceptual Questions (MIT).

Ravi Ravindra is Professor Emeritus at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, where he was previously Professor of Comparative Religion and Adjunct Professor of Physics. His current interests lie in comparative studies of theoretical and practical aspects of spiritual disciplines. Among his publications are Science and the Sacred; Pilgrim Without Boundaries; Yoga and the Teaching of Krishna; The Gospel of John in the Light of Indian Mysticism; Krishnamurti: Two Birds on One Tree; and Heart Without Measure: Gurdjieff Work with Madame de Salzmann.

Eighth annual conference
Science, self and meaning

17-19 September 2004
St Anne's College, Oxford

Seventh annual conference
Enactive consciousness: perception, intersubjectivity and empathy

Saturday June 28 - Sunday June 29 2003
St Anne's College, Oxford

The conference aimed to explore enactive approaches to consciousness, with particular reference to perception and intersubjectivity.

The term 'enactive cognitive science' derives from 'The Embodied Mind' (1991) by F. Varela, E. Thompson and E. Rosch, where it was used to describe a new direction in thinking about the mind, influenced by phenomenological and ecological approaches. Much work done in cognitive psychology and computational modelling has been influenced by this and related perspectives over the last ten to fifteen years. However, it is only recently that the enactive perspective has been applied to issues within consciousness studies.

Sixth annual conference
Positive psychology

28th - 30th June 2002
King Alfred's College, Winchester

Positive psycholgy addresses positive aspects of experience with a view to improving the quality of individual and community life. It encompasses topics such as well-being, psychology of happiness, flow, personal strengths, wisdom, creativity, psychological health and the positive characteristics of individuals, groups, institutions and communities that are functioning particularly well. The 'American Psychologist' special issue in January 2000 provides an introduction to work in this area.

The conference was held in King Alfred's College new conference centre. It was organised jointly by the BPS Consciousnes and Experiential Psychology Section, and the Wessex and Wight branch.

Fifth annual conference

21-23 September 2002
Durham University

The conference discussed issues related to the following areas: embodied mind, evolutionary psychology, intersubjective consciousness, subjective experience, phenomenological psychology, and evolving psychology.

Fourth annual conference
Imagination and tranformation

22-24 September 2000
Somerville College, Oxford

Third annual conference
Consciousness and well-being

17-19 September 1999
Wadham College, Oxford

Second annual conference

11-13 September 1998
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge

First annual conference
Consciousness and change

11-12 October 1997
Parsifal College, London

The themes of the conference were psychological enquiry into conscious experience, and change and well-being.