Perception and Action
HAUPTSEMINAR
PERCEPTION AND ACTION:
Philosophical Issues in Psychology and Neuroscience
Dr Hong Yu Wong (CIN)
Summer 2011
Mondays, 12-2 pm (ST), Raum X, Die Burse (Google Map of location)
Starting April 11, 2011
Seminar crosslisted in:
Max Planck Graduate School of Neural & Behavioural Sciences
What is the role of consciousness in the control of action? In this seminar, we will explore the interplay between agentive control and the complex mechanisms underlying this control. What are we committed to when we claim that agents are in control of their actions? Is it that the actions are consciously guided by the agent? If so, what is the extent of the agent’s conscious control? Does it go down to the level of specific spatial parameters for movement? And what is the extent of the agent’s awareness of the specifics of movement execution? A recent surge of work in cognitive neuropsychology on action has thrown up an unprecedented amount of data about the neural and psychological processes involved in action control, allowing the student of action to approach the questions raised above with some level of empirical concreteness, and not just speculatively. Psychologists and neuroscientists distinguish between two classes of actions: stimulus-driven and endogenous. Roughly, stimulus-driven actions are actions performed in response to some perceptual stimulus; and endogenous actions are those actions which are not stimulus-driven. The seminar will be structured around this distinction. In the first half, we will look at how perception guides action. In particular, we will examine functional dissociations within sensory processing streams in vision and bodily awareness. We will also consider the reverse direction of explanation: whether action is a condition on perception. In the second half, we will explore issues concerning how intention and awareness of intention relate to the mechanisms underlying action control and the awareness of action. We will consider challenges to our commonsensical understanding of agency raised by experiments concerning the timing of intention and the influence of confabulation. The overarching aim of the seminar is to articulate the challenges to our understanding of agency raised by recent scientific work into stimulus-driven action and endogenous action, and to re-evaluate our philosophical picture of agency in the light of this.
Seminar format:
11 sessions of 2 hours each. Each seminar will begin with a 30 minute introduction to the topic by the instructor or a guest lecturer, followed by discussion of two papers. Each paper will be introduced by a student taking the seminar.
Readings:
Selections from contemporary literature on the topic of the seminar from philosophy, psychology and neuroscience.
Taking the seminar for credit:
Students taking the seminar for credit will be required to do the following:
at least 1 presentation
a 3000 word essay (due July 20)
a 300-500 word paragraph with comments/questions on readings for each seminar, to be posted by midnight before seminar day. (i.e. Sunday evening)
The grade will be determined as follows:
Presentation 10%
Participation in discussion 10%
Weekly paragraphs 30%
Essay 50%
Auditing the seminar:
Students not taking the seminar for credit are welcome to audit the seminar.
Prerequisites:
One course in philosophy of mind/psychology/neuroscience.
Students who do not meet this requirement but are interested in taking the course should contact the instructor at
whywong [AT] gmail.com.
Volumes of General Relevance
Jeannerod, M. (1997) The Cognitive Neuroscience of Action (Oxford: Blackwell).
Jeannerod, M. (2006) Motor Cognition: What Actions Tell the Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Jacob, P. and Jeannerod, M. (2003) Ways of seeing: The scope and limits of visual cognition (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Milner, A. D., and M. A. Goodale (2006) The Visual Brain in Action, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University press).
Pockett, S., Banks, W. P., and Gallagher, S. (2006) Does Consciousness Cause Behavior? (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
Roessler, J., and Eilan, N. (2003) Agency and Self-Awareness (Oxford: Oxford University Press).