Speaker Profiles

Andy Routledge (University of Manchester) "The Case for Selfless Experience"

Email: andrew.routledge [AT] manchester.ac.uk       Website: here

Bio: I'm currently in the process of completing a PhD at the University of Manchester. My research interests lie predominantly in the Philosophy of Mind, Metaphysics, and the Philosophy of Psychology. My thesis examines three core questions concerning the basic structure of experience and the relationship between these questions. The first of these is the Unity Question: What does co-consciousness consist in? The second is the Counting Question: How many experiences does a unified region of consciousness involve? Should we think of our experience at a time as consisting in just one very rich experience, in a handful of sense-specific experiences, or in many simple experiences? The third and final question, the Dependency Question, is interested in the degree of autonomy of the various different aspects of our unified experience. I offer a new answer to the Unity Question and argue that it has striking implications for the way that we address the Counting Question and the Dependency Question.

Bryony Pierce (University of Bristol) "Consciousness as an Interface"

Email: bryonypierce [AT] btinternet.com       Website: here

Bio: Bryony Pierce is a graduate student at the University of Bristol, due to submit her PhD thesis on ‘The Role of Consciousness in Action’ in 2014. This aims to give a naturalistic account of why consciousness is necessary for the capacity for some types of goal-directed behaviour. It argues that all action is a type of first- or higher-order reaction, and reasons for action are grounded in the affective valence of involuntary responses to actual or hypothetical anticipated outcomes. She is a Founder Member of Experimental Philosophy Group UK, Honorary Secretary of the Consciousness and Experiential Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society, and was a member of the European Science FoundationEUROCORES programme ‘Consciousness in a Natural and Cultural Context’ from 2008 to 2010.

Chiara-Camilla Derchi (CIMEC: Trento University) "Inserted Thoughts and I-Sentences"

Email: camilla.derchi [AT] gmail.com       Website: here      Paper: a copy of the handout for this talk is available here

Bio: Chiara-Camilla is an MA student at the Centre for Mind and Brain Sciences at the University of Trento, Italy. Her interests in the Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science include: Personal Identity (Constitution View and Animalism), Mind-Body Problem (Dualism, Monism), Qualia and Supervenience, Intentionality, Consciousness and Self-Consciousness, Pre-reflective Self-Consciousness. Neuropsychology of Consciousness, Schizophrenia and Self-Consciousness. Her interests in Philosophy of Language and Linguistics include: Pragmatics of communication, conversational implicatures, semantic/ontology relations, I-Thoughts and I- sentences (first-person sentences), generative grammar (universal grammar).

Lena Ljucovic (Postdam University) "From Self-Knowledge to Knowledge of the Self"   (Link to paper abstract here)

Email: lena.ljucovic [AT] uni-postdam.de       

Bio: I'm a PhD student in philosophy at Potsdam University. My thesis develops a hybrid account of self-knowledge which acknowledges the different kinds of relations towards our different mental states. I completed my Staatsexamen (equivalent to Masters Degree) at the University of Dortmund and wrote my thesis on “Personal Identity and Ethics” before joining the DFG graduate research group “Lebensformen, Lebenswissen” at Postdam University in November 2011. I spent one semester as Erasmus student at the University of Liverpool in 2007/08 and one semester as fellow in philosophy at Harvard University in 2012/13. Since I am currently working on the topic of self-knowlegde, I am particularly interested in the intersections between epistemology, philosophy of mind and moral psychology. I taught classes on the Self, Aristotle and Feminist Philosophy.

Christophe Al Saleh (University of Amiens) "Subjectiveness and Subjectivity"

Email: christophe.alsaleh [AT] u-picardie.fr       Website: here

Bio: I am lecturer at the University of Amiens, France. My research interests are: the Pittsburgh School of philosophy, content, perception, the ontology of colors, knowledge, empiricism, J.L. Austin, Ordinary Language Philosophy

Steven Gubka (University of Oxford) "Subjectivity and Personal Identity"

Email: steven.gubka [AT] balliol.ox.ac.uk

Bio: I am a BPhil student in philosophy at the University of Oxford. My current research is predominantly within philosophy of mind and includes the psychological basis of the explanatory gap, as well as the metaphysical problem of phenomenal consciousness. I am also fascinated by philosophical methodology in metaphysics and epistemology, especially in comparison to scientific methodology. In particular, I am interested in the role of our intuitions and ordinary concepts in debates about knowledge, free will, and the self.

Alexandre Billon (University of Lille) "Making Sense of the Cotard Syndrome"

Email: abillon [AT] gmail.com    Website: here

Bio: I am associate professor at the University of Lille Nor de France. I work on many areas broadly related to "the self":

- self-awareness

- the cogito

- consciousness and subjectivity

- meta/philosophical issues involving "the subjective point of view" and perspectives more generally

- pathologies of the self (DP, schizophrenia, cotard syndrome...)

- logical aspects of reflexivity  

Recently I have worked on two related psychiatric conditions, depersonalization and the Cotard syndrome. I have argued these conditions allow us 

 - to understand why we are certain that we exist (https://www.academia.edu/6981315/Why_are_we_certain_that_we_exist_preprint_forthcoming_in_Philosophy_and_Phenomenological_Research)

- to defend of broadly Cartesian theory of basic self-awareness (email me for the draft)

I have also argued that, conversely, the philosophical analysis of the certainty that we exist and basic-self awareness allows us to make sense of the most intriguing aspects of Cotard syndrome (email me for a draft).

Aaron Henry (University of Toronto) "Two Ways to Conceptualise Subjective Character"

Email: aaron.g.b.henry [AT] gmail.com    Website: here

Bio: I am in my second year of the philosophy PhD program at the University of Toronto. Before beginning at Toronto, I completed the BPhil degree in philosophy at the University of Oxford and wrote my Thesis on the challenge that the phenomenology of conscious attention poses to intentionalist theories of phenomenal consciousness. My current research focuses on perceptual activities, such as watching a thing as it moves or exploring a thing’s shape with your hand, and their relationship to perceptual attention and to perceptual learning. I am also interested in introspection and in the idea that there are structural features of consciousness.