Program:

• 11: Welcome

• 11:15 Talk: What your structure affords, Adrian Alsmith, Center for Subjectivity Research, KU

• 12:15 Lunch

• 12:45 Talk: Investigating causal properties of mental events. Mikkel C. Vinding, CNRU, AU.

• 13:45 14.15 Coffee and tea

• 14:15 Talk: Modulation of fronto-parietal connections during the Rubber hand illusion. Anke Karabanov, Danish Research Centre for Magnetic Resonance

• 15:15 Round off 

Abstracts: 

Adrian Alsmith: What your structure affords
In recent years several authors have appealed to the idea that a sense of practical possibility constrains and structures an agent's perceptual engagement with its environment. I will provide a detailed analysis of this phenomenon by introducing the notion of an affordance relation holding between an agent and its body: 'structural affordance'. After clarifying the relation between structural affordances and agent-environmental affordances, I show how exactly the notion meshes with certain accounts of spatial perception, bodily action and the relations between them. I then close with some speculations concerning the sub-personal basis of an agent’s knowledge of structural affordances.

Mikkel C. Vinding: Investigating causal properties of mental events

Conclusions about mental causation are drawn from experiments on intention and agency, but often based on ontological assumptions rather than the empirical results. Many of the experiments on mental causation are not designed in a manner that makes it possible to make actual causal claims. To investigate mental causation by empirical means there is a need reflect on how causation is addressed, including a clarification on which questions belong to a conceptual ontological injury and which are approachable by empirical/experimental procedures, and to develop the adequate empirical methods. The first step will be to consider whether mental causation at all can be a subject for empirical study, or whether it is impossible based on a prioi ontological account.

This will be a presentation on work in progress, where I shall argue, that it is possible to investigate mental causation by empirical means, without having to make strong ontological assumptions. To investigate mental causation empirically we use causal inference to estimate causal effect. The only assumption needed is that there exists a relation between mental events and the physical world. We do not need to know this relation in advance – it is enough to assume that it is there is at least one physical event that enables the mental event. From an empirical perspective we cannot distinguish between identity relations, supervenitent relations, or functional relations. How the mind-body relation is assumed to be is (in most cases) irrelevant for an empirical approach to mental causation. Prior causes, unconscious action initiation, or determinism (often taken to refute the possibility of mental causation) is no problem for investigating mental causation using the principles of causal inference. As I will argue he ontological arguments are often misplaced in an empirical context. Using causal inference changes the interpretation of “free will” studies in cognitive neuroscience that often use “post hoc” measures. E.g. the Libet experiment supposedly showing that unconscious action initiation is the real cause of action not the intention to act.

Anke Karabanov: Modulation of fronto-parietal connections during the Rubber hand illusion”

Accumulating evidence suggests that parieto-frontal connections play an important role in creating a coherent feeling of body ownership and movement agency. I will present recent experimental data, using transcranial magnetic stimulation to investigate the role of parietal activity and parieto-motor connectivity in creating a coherent experience of self agency and ownership during experimental modulations.