April 2017 Lunchtime Abstracts & Details

::: The Trouble With Billiards
Mark Wilson
U. of Pittsburgh, Dept. of Philosophy
Tuesday, April 4
12:05 pm, 817R Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: In the development of science, things are seldom what they seem. The popular presumption that billiard ball-like impacts represent the core ingredients of “classical physics” has distorted the subject since its earliest days and continues to render its fundamental doctrines deeply disconcerting even to this day. In this talk, we will survey the original sources of these troubles and discuss how several central doctrines within mainstream philosophy (e.g., Leibniz’ monads and Hume’s analysis of “cause and effect”) stem from these misapprehensions.

::: Reifying Representations
Michael Rescorla, UCLA
Tuesday, April 11, 2017
12:05 pm, 817R Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: The Representational Theory of Mind (RTM) holds that the mind is stocked with mental representations: mental items that represent. They can be stored in memory, manipulated during mental activity, and combined to form complex representations. RTM is widely presupposed within cognitive science, which offers many successful theories that cite mental representations. Nevertheless, mental representations are still viewed warily in some scientific and philosophical circles. I will develop a novel version of RTM. On my approach, a mental representation is an abstract type that marks the exercise of a representational capacity. Talk about mental representations is an ontologically loaded way of classifying mental states through representational capacities that the states deploy.

Complex mental representations mark the appropriate joint exercise of multiple representational capacities. I will support my position with examples drawn from cognitive science, including perceptual representations and cognitive maps. I will apply my approach to longstanding debates over the existence, nature, individuation, structure, and explanatory role of mental representations.

::: Bayesian Accounts of Covert Selective Attention
Ben Vincent , University of Dundee
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
12:05 pm, 817R Cathedral of Learning

Abstract: Bayesian approaches offer an important and distinct theoretical stance on covert selective attention. While their probabilistic formulation allows quantitative comparison to human performance, the models can be complex and their insights are not always immediately apparent. In this talk I will establish the theoretical appeal of the Bayesian approach, and introduce the way in which probabilistic approaches can be applied to covert selective attention. I will provide a walk-through of how performance in a task normally considered as attentional, can in fact be understood as inferential. In this talk, I hope to have demonstrated that many experimental phenomena in the domain of covert selective attention are a set of by-products. These effects emerge as the result of observers conducting Bayesian inference with noisy sensory observations, prior expectations, and knowledge of the generative structure of the stimulus environment.
Based upon: Vincent, B. T. (2015). Bayesian accounts of covert selective attention: A tutorial review. Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 77(4), 1013–1032.