The Philosophy Graduate Student Association (PGSA) is pleased to announce its first annual PGSA Interdisciplinary Public Lecture. Our first annual lecture will be given by David Chalmers, noted philosopher and cognitive scientist.
All are welcome to attend the talk, including graduate students, faculty and undergraduates from any department, although the talk will be aimed at the graduate level.
Chalmers' lecture will be given on Thursday September 17th, 6:00-7:30PM in the Homer Babbidge Library's Video Theatre II. The title of his talk is "Virtual Reality and Spatial Illusions", and the abstract is as follows:
Do virtual reality devices such as the Oculus Rift produce the illusion of an external reality? Or do they produce non-illusory experiences of a virtual reality? I address this question by starting with an analogous question about mirrors. When one looks in a mirror, does one undergo the illusion that there is someone on the other side of the mirror, or does one have a non-illusory experience of someone on this side of the mirror? I will argue that at least for familiar users of mirrors, there is no illusion. Knowledge of mirrors provides a sort of cognitive orientation (a variety of cognitive penetration) that affects the content of visual experience and renders it non-illusory. I will suggest that familiar users of virtual reality devices have a similar sort of cognitive orientation that renders their experience non-illusory.
Chalmers is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and director of the Centre for Consciousness at ANU, and Professor of Philosophy and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at NYU. Chalmers' book The Conscious Mind introduced the "hard problem of consciousness", which has been highly influential in work across the cognitive sciences. Reviews for his book can be found here. You can view his recent TED talk on how to explain consciousness here.
This event is possible due to generous financial support from the Graduate Student Senate and the Expression, Communication and the Origins of Meaning (ECOM) Research Group, as well as additional support from the UConn Philosophy Department.
For more information, contact: Nathan Kellen at nathan.kellen@uconn.edu