Hybrid workshop for the ALIFE 2024 conference
23/07/2024 - 13:00
The IT University of Copenhagen
Recent advances in cognitive and biological research have deepened our understanding on many subjects, while forcing us to re-examine others that had for a long time been considered too conceptually tangled to be of relevance to practical advances in day-to-day scientific research.
Among such issues, the subjective experience of the present (“present-time consciousness”) and its relation to adaptive processes is one where – despite there still being much work to be done – the cognitive and life sciences appear to be seeing a gradual conceptual convergence.
The goal of this workshop is to encourage the Artificial Life community to capitalise on this rare trend towards conceptual re-alignment with substantive progress towards practical and implementable output, by drawing together its multiple research directions.
Shaun Gallagher is the Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Excellence. His areas of research include phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, especially topics related to embodiment, self, agency and intersubjectivity, hermeneutics, and the philosophy of time. Dr. Gallagher has a secondary research appointment at the University of Wollongong, Australia. He has held Honorary Professorships at the University of Copenhagen, Durham University (UK) and the University of Tromsø, Norway. He has held visiting positions at the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge University; the Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen; the Centre de Recherche en Epistémelogie Appliquée (CREA), Paris; the Ecole Normale Supériure, Lyon; and at the Humboldt University in Berlin. He was also Senior Research Fellow at Keble College, University of Oxford, and most recently Visiting Research Professor of Psychology at the University of Rome – Sapienza.
Professor Gallagher was awarded the D.Phil (honoris causa) by the University of Copenhagen in 2021. He also received the Humboldt Foundation Anneliese Maier Research Award [Anneliese Maier-Forschungspreis] (2012-18). He is currently part of the research project Minds in Skilled Performance with funding from the Australian Research Council (2017-2020). He was principle investigator on several previous grants, including a European Commission Marie Curie Actions Grant: TESIS: Towards an Embodied Science of Intersubjectivity (2011-15), and a Templeton Foundation grant (2011-2013) which funded an empirical and phenomenological study of astronauts' experiences during space flight [http://www.chdr.cah.ucf.edu/spaceandspirituality/]. Gallagher is a founding editor and a co-editor-in-chief of the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences.
Tuesday 23/07/2024
13:00 - 13:10
Adam Rostowski: Introductory presentation
13:10 - 13:30
Prof. Shaun Gallagher: Phenomenology of present-time consciousness and enactive cognitive science.
13:30 - 13:45
Mahault Albarracin: Mapping Husserlian phenomenology onto active inference.
13:45 - 14:00
Diego Bogotá: Primordial Affectivity and Primordial Temporality from an (En)active Inference Perspective.
14:00 - 14:15
Ishan Singhal: Pace and rhythms of consciousness across non-human animals.
14:15 - 14:40
Q&A/Panel discussion
THE IT UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN
Rued Langgaards Vej 7
2300 København S
Denmark
Adam Rostowski (a.rostowski@sussex.ac.uk), Department of Informatics, University of Sussex
Fernando Rodriguez Vergara (f.rodriguez-vergara@sussex.ac.uk), AI Research Group, University of Sussex