We are pleased to announce a new seminar series on Philosophy and Neuroscience at the Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Tübingen. The seminar series is titled The Games of the Brain: Adventures in Philosophy and Neuroscience and is run by Kirsten Volz, Group Leader in the Neural Basis of Intuition at the CIN, Hong Yu Wong, Group Leader in the Philosophy of Neuroscience at the CIN, Sabine Döring, Professor of Practical Philosophy at Universität Tübingen, and Axel Lindner, Group Leader of the Neurobiology of Decision Lab, Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research.

Optogenetics and Maker's Knowledge

SPEAKER: Prof. Carl Craver, University of Washington, St Louis

LOCATION: CIN seminar room (3rd floor FIN building)

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

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Judgement in Trolley Problems 

SPEAKER: Dr Natalie Gold

Lecturer in Philosophy, King's College London

LOCATION: Raum X, Burse, Bursagasse1, Tübingen

Workshop: A Taste of Flavour

SPEAKERS: Prof Charles Spence, Dr Ophelia Deroy, Prof Barry C Smith

LOCATION: CIN Seminar Room, CIN, Paul Ehrlich Str. 17, Tuebingen 72076

Does Neuroscience make Philosophy Irrelevant?

LOCATION: CIN Seminar Room, CIN, Paul Ehrlich Str. 17, Tuebingen 72076

SPEAKERS: Liz Irvine and Anders Nes

Liz Irvine (Edinburgh)

"Evaluating ‘mental’ concepts: The role of scientific practice"

Taking seriously the goal of integrating philosophical, psychological and neuroscientific work entails that concepts at all of these levels of analysis should be open to revision. This revision is the natural result of the research heuristics found in interdisciplinary integrative research, such as the role played by dissociation methods in testing and generating frameworks to interpret dissociated phenomena, the role played by identity statements in highlighting inconsistencies between the ‘identified’ concepts and generating new research questions (e.g. McCauley & Bechtel, 2001), and the role of experimental interventions in exploring causal structure, mechanisms, and (perhaps) natural kinds (Woodward, 2008, Craver, 2007, Boyd, 1999). By considering several case studies I will argue that contemporary cognitive and computational neuroscience show how major changes are needed in the way we describe and categorise ‘mental’ phenomena. These sometimes radical changes are entirely to expected from progressive interdisciplinary research, and I will argue that they should be taken seriously not only by scientists working with these concepts, but also by those working in philosophy of mind.

Anders Nes (CSMN Oslo)

"Can there be entirely unconscious agents? The case of decorticated rats and cats"

Most philosophers and neuroscientists these days accept that some goal-directed actions are unconscious, with examples ranging from unusual neurological syndromes to everyday automatisms. However, such unconscious actions often seem to be either abnormal for the agents in question, or else (as in the case of many automatisms) to be carried out in pursuit of a more over-arching goal that is consciously pursued. Such examples of unconscious action do not, then, directly refute the thesis that there cannot be agents all of whose goal-directed agency is unconscious. In this talk, I first sharpen the version of the thesis I will be focusing on, viz. one that invokes a broadly 'accessibility' notion of consciousness, and then note some lines of thought implicit or explicit in the philosophy of mind in its favour. I go on to observe that decorticated rats and cats, i.e. animals whose cerebral cortex has been removed, engage in what arguably should be recognised as goal-directed action. These animals thus leave us with one of two options: either reject the target thesis, or accept the view, currently controversial in neuroscience, that consciousness, in the relevant 'accessibility' sense, at least sometimes is realised entirely at subcortical levels.

For the first seminar, we are very pleased to announce that we will have Gerd Gigerenzer, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. His lecture entlitled 'Heuristic Decision Making'  will take place on May 26 at 11 am.