News
-
February 22, 2010
-
November 27, 2009
-
June 2009
-
Post-Conference Student Survey Now Online!
In case you attended the conference and haven't received an email with a link to the survey, please contact the survey administrator, Joel Parthemore.
-
Student Committee Announces Essay Contest
All students welcome! Answer the questions from a philosophical, psychological, neuroscience, or other perspective as appropriate to your interest or background. Winning entries will be published in the ASSC journal PSYCHE as well as appearing on this website. Prizes also include free student memberships to the ASSC. Register your interest by sending your name, institutional affiliation, and preference of topics to the contact address below.
Judges:
- Jane Aspell (EPFL, Switzerland)
- Ned Block (New York University, USA)
- Peter Brugger (University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland)
- Ryoto Kanai (University College London, UK)
- Michael Pauen (Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Germany)
- Anil K Seth (University of Sussex, UK)
- Isabelle Viaud-Delmon (CNRS UMR 9912, IRCAM, France)
Topics (choose one):
-
Explain the enduring significance of Searle's Chinese Room argument to discussions in cognitive science -- for all the simplicity of the thought experiment -- and describe what for you is the key insight or fault of Searle's original 1980 paper.
-
Are there auditory objects in the auditory domain, like visual objects in the visual domain? If so, what is an auditory object? Discuss in the light of evidence from philosophical theories of auditory/object perception, empirical work in neuroscience, or both.
-
If we accept that Mary the colour scientist gains new knowledge when she sees the colour red for the first time must this lead us to a non-physicalist theory of consciousness?
-
Can consciousness exist without a subject of experience (a self)? Can consciousness be distinguished from self-consciousness?
-
What kind of experiences are qualia? Qualia are usually described as the redness of red or the painfulness of pain. While most people would agree that qualia refer to the quality of subjective experiences, it is often difficult to judge whether less sensory aspects of experiences should be taken to accompany specific qualia. In order for the concept to be useful for driving neuroscientific research, it is important to determine the fundamental conditions for an experience to count as a quale in a meaningful way. Are there any critical experimental protocols to determine whether a certain experience counts as a quale?
-
Some philosophers and neuroscientists have called into question the whole traditional separation of senses into the five different modalities and hold that, prior to sensory experience being conceptualized into these different categories, there is only sensory experience undifferentiated by the sensory modalities. Discuss.
Format: 1,500 words maximum. PDFs please! Deadline: 15 December, 2009 Submissions & Info: Sundeep Teki
Contest Rules:- The maximum word limit is 1500 words excluding references, figure legends etc.
- You are welcome to write essays on more than one topic in which case you should submit them as separate essays.
- Do not mention your name or university anywhere in the essay. This is to ensure that all essays are anonymously and fairly assessed. All essays will be given an ID which you should quote when submitting your essays.
- Submit your essays as a pdf document and name it like this – FullName_ID (To convert doc to pdf: http://www.pdfonline.com/convert-pdf/)
- The deadline for receiving the essays is midnight of 15th December, 2009 (GMT 0).
- You will be sent a reminder two weeks before the deadline.
- We have arranged with the editors of the ASSC journal, PSYCHE to publish the best essays as reviewed by our panel of judges.
- We hope to have the results ready by April, 2010.
-
Philosophy Poster Competition at ASSC-13 Berlin!
Congratulations to the winners of the ASSC-13 poster competition: first place Sebastian Watzl and second place Liz Irvine!
Sebastian Watzl - Columbia University - The Experience of Attention 
Liz Irvine - University of Edinburgh - Do Dissociations Work?
May 2009
-
ASSC on Facebook
The ASSC Student Committee has lanched a page on Facebook. Anyone with a Facebook account is invited to add us as fans.
Please contact Chien-Hui (Lynn) Chiu (chiu.chienhui@gmail.com) if you have any questions.
-
ASSC Essay Contest Results
The results of the first ASSC Essay Contest on Consciousness are now out. The top five essays will be published in Psyche.
The winners of the essay contest include (in no particular order):
1. Sam Wilkinson from University of Edinburgh for his essays on topics 2 and 3
2. Victoria Stone again from the University of Edinburgh for her essay on topic 3
3. Colin Hales from the University of Melbourne for his essay on topic 5, and
4. Hsueh Qu from the University of Oxford for his essay on topic 3.
All winners will also receive free ASSC Student Memberships.
Many thanks are due to our distinguished judges who took out time to evaluate the submitted essays. They include:
1. Jane Aspell, EPFL, Switzerland
2. Anil Seth, University of Sussex
3. Peter Brugger, University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland
4. Isabelle Viaud-Delmon, CNRS UMR 9912, IRCAM, France
5. Ryota Kanai, University College London, UK
6. Ned Block, New York University, USA
7. David Chalmers, Australian National University, Australia
8. Michael Pauen, Berlin School of Mind and Brain, Germany
For any questions or suggestions for the next Essay Contest, feel free to write to the organizer, Sundeep Teki.
ASSC Essay Contest Update
The first ASSC Essay contest has received a good response so far and is nearing it's deadline of Dec. 15, 2009. However, participants are encouraged to submit their essays sooner in order to facilitate a timely publication of the winning essays in Psyche. For any questions and to register for the contest, please contact the organizer, Sundeep Teki.
