The Brain and Its Self
A New Frontier of Neuroscience
An International Workshop
Sponsored By:
·
Sesquicentennial
Committee of
·
The
·
Henry Luce
Program in Individual and Collective Memory
·
The
Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology (PNP) Program of
Conference Schedule
Friday 2 April
9:00-9:45 Jonathan Schooler Losing sight of your self: Zoning-out and other dissociations of
meta-awareness
9:45-10:00 Commentator: Tony Jack
10:00-10:20 Questions & general discussion
10:20-10:40 Coffee Break
10:40-11:25 Uta Frith Egocentrism in Asperger
Syndrome
11:25-11:40 Commentator: Philip Robbins
11:40-12:00 Questions & general discussion
12:00-2:00 Lunch and POSTER session
2:00-2.45 James
Blair The healthy and psychopathic brain: responding
to one's own and other's emotions
2:45-3:00 Commentator: Tom Oltmanns
3:00-3:20 Questions & general discussion
3:20-3:40 Coffee Break
3:40-4:25 Bernard
Baars Self as an unconscious executive interpreter network that receives
conscious input and exerts voluntary control
4:25-4:40 Commentator: Todd Braver
4:40-5:00 Questions & general discussion
5:00-6:00 Break
6:00-7:30 Keynote
Address Brown Hall 100
Dan Dennett
The Far Side of the Self: And then what happens?
7:45 - Dinner at Cardwell's
Saturday 3
April
9:00-9:45 Todd
Feinberg What Neuropathology Can Teach us About the
Neurobiology of the Self
9:45-10:00 Commentator: Maurizio Corbetta
10:00-10:20 Questions & general discussion
10:20-10:40 Coffee Break
10:40-11:25 Chris
Frith The self in action: lessons from delusions of alien control
11:25-11:40 Commentator: George Graham
11:40-12:00 Questions & general discussion
12:00-2:00 Lunch and POSTER session
2:00-2.45 Dan
Wegner How do you know you're the one who's reading
this? On identifying self as a source of action
2:45-3:00 Commentator: Eddy Nahmias
3:00-3:20 Questions & general discussion
3:20-3:40 Coffee Break
3:40-4:25 Debra
Gusnard Just being your self (more or less): considerations from functional imaging
4:25-4:40 Commentator: David Fraser
4:40-5:00 Questions & general discussion
5:00-6:00 Break
6:00-8:00 Conference
Dinner in Multi-Purpose room, lower level of conference area.
Sunday 4 April
9:00-9:45 Daniel
Povinelli Bodily origins of SELF: An evolutionary hypothesis
9:45-10:00 Commentator: Pascal Boyer
10:00-10:20 Questions & general discussion
10:20-10:40 Coffee Break.
10:40-11:00 José
Bermúdez Conference Round-up
11:00-12:00 Question Time. Conference ends at 12pm.
Last words for Speakers at Brain and its Self
The conference will finish with a ‘Question Time’ panel on
Sunday.
1. What discovery would make you radically revise your theory?
2. Empirical research is partly (largely?) driven by the methodologies available for investigation. Are there aspects of your topic of research interest that current methods fail to address? What hope is there of new methods that might shed light on those aspects?
3. Does the ‘self’ actually exist? If so, how do you think it has evolved? If you think we suffer from an illusory sense of self, why and how do you think this has evolved – or is it a culturally inherited illusion?
4. What is the ultimate explanatory goal of cognitive science? Is it mechanistic explanation, improving on folk psychology, something else?
5. Is there any danger that mechanistic explanations of the mind and/or neural interventions will de-humanize us? Can we and should we do anything about this?
6. Can you describe an example of how philosophical work has assisted psychological/neuroscientific research? OR how psychological/neuroscientific research has helped to answer a philosophical question?
7. How do you think more productive collaboration between neuroscientists, psychologists and philosophers might be facilitated? Is this important for the development of our understanding of the mind/brain?
8. Please give us your view of the GOOD, the BAD, and the UGLY in one discipline (supposedly) allied to your own. Tell us: What does it offer? What are its problems? What annoys you about it (or its practitioners)?