1. How To Be Sure: Sensory Exploration and Empirical Certainty.
   
• This paper will appear in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. It argues that after adequate sensory exploration--a form of knowledge-gathering described in the first part of the paper--a  subject can be certain of some truths. At least s/he can be certain, if s/he brackets certain kinds of doubt. That is, she cannot dismiss sceptical doubt, or what Matthen calls “reflexive doubt,” but she can dismiss all other doubts. In the second half of the paper, Matthen offers a novel analysis of how these different kinds of doubt can be distinguished from one another, and show why empirical certainty is attainable.
2. The Individuation of the Senses
   
• A fairly late draft of an entry for the Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of Perception (edited by Matthen).
3. The Individuation of the Senses (PPT for talk)
4. Image Content
   

June 15-16, 2012

SUBJECTIVE REPORTS: THEIR ROLE IN SCIENCE

Location: TBA

The workshop is intended to address questions regarding the use of subjective or first-person data in cognitive science, including contributions from psychologists, neuroscientists, and philosophers of science, to focus on the following sorts of questions:

- If there are scientific paradigms or areas of research in which first-person data is an ineliminable part?

- If or how first-person data differs from other scientific data (e.g. is it really private data, is it incorrigible).

- Whether there are specific problems associated with collecting first-person data, as compared with other scientific data (e.g. demand characteristics, response bias).

- How to collect first-person data, and how to interpret it, given any potential methodological problems (e.g. methods for reducing bias, experimental design, choice of measurement procedure).

- Do these methodological problems raise further questions about the way first-person states should be conceptualised (e.g. are there phenomenal facts)?

Speakers:

Uljana Feest (Philosophy, Technische Universitat, Berlin)

Liz Irvine (Philosophy of Neuroscience, CIN)

Matt Longo (Psychology, Birkbeck, London)

A. J. Marcel (Psychology, University of Hertfordshire/MRC Cambridge)

Thomas Metzinger (Philosophy, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz)

Gualtiero Piccinini (Philosophy, University of Missouri, St. Louis)

Jonathan Schooler (Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara)

How to improve Referees´Calls: Judgment and Decision Making in Sports From a Social Cognition and an Embodiment Perspective.

SPEAKERS:

Henning Plessner, Lecturer in Philosophy, King's College London

Markus Raab, German Sport University, Cologne

LOCATION: Lecture Hall Max Planck House, Spemannstrasse 36, Tübingen

Matters of Taste: Integration, expectation, and the multisensory perception of flavour

Traditionally, there has been little interest amongst either philosophers or psychologists in the study of flavour perception. This is rather surprising given the fact that flavours constitute some of the most pleasurable and arguably most multisensory of our everyday experiences. In this talk, I will review the psychology and neuroscience of multisensory flavour perception in humans. I will consider the thorny question of whether flavour should be considered as a separate sense, or whether instead we might all perhaps be considered as synesthetes when it comes to flavour. I will also question whether audition and vision ought to be included in our definition of flavour. Differences in the relative importance of multisensory integration and expectation to flavour perception will be highlighted and the possibility that there may actually be more than one flavour system raised. I will also highlight the latest research demonstrating that packaging and atmospheric cues can also impact on flavour perception. By the end, I hope to have convinced you (at the very least) that the perception of flavour represents an interesting, if somewhat neglected, topic of research, and also that the study of flavour constitutes an important area in which psychologists, philosophers, and neuroscientists have much to offer each other.

Flavours are often defined as the results of multisensory integration between gustatory, olfactory and trigeminal components (Auvray & Spence, 2008). I will argue here that the definition is incomplete, and should include congruency relations. Drawing on the recent literature on cross-modal and semantic effects on flavour perception, i show first why it is necessary to recognize that the combination of the various cues is dependent on a series of unity or rather congruency assumptions (see Welch & Warren, 1980; Spence, 2011 ; Deroy & Spence, sub.). In the second part, i show why this definition helps thinking about three problems concerning flavor perception: what does it mean to perceive complex flavours in a single mouthful ? Why shouldn’t we include color and auditory cues in the definition of flavours, if they also bear on the perception of what we eat? Can there be flavour-illusions?