Workshop on action control, awareness, and working memory
Hosted via Zoom on September 14, 2020 (e-mail joshualshep@gmail.com for access)
Hosted via Zoom on September 14, 2020 (e-mail joshualshep@gmail.com for access)
March 26, at the University of Barcelona
Speakers: Denis Buehler (Jean Nicod), Lilian O’Brien (Helsinki)
The project’s first publication, Intelligent Action Guidance and the Use of Mixed Representational Formats, to appear in Synthese. Here’s the abstract:
My topic is the intelligent guidance of action. In this paper I offer an empirically grounded case for four ideas: that [a] cognitive processes of practical reasoning play a key role in the intelligent guidance of action, [b] these processes could not do so without significant enabling work done by both perception and the motor system, [c] the work done by perceptual and motor systems can be characterized as the generation of information (often conceptually structured information) specialized for action guidance, which in turn suggests that [d] the cognitive processes of practical reasoning that play a key role in the guidance of intelligent action are not the abstract, syllogistic ones philosophers often treat as the paradigm of practical reasoning. Rather, these cognitive processes are constrained by, and work well with, the specialized concepts outputted by perception and the feedback outputted by sensorimotor processes.
Directed by Dr. Joshua Shepherd, this project will investigate the relationship between conscious experience and capacities for action control.