Session one: 10:30-12:00
Making sense of our senses
Perception is our source of knowledge about the world. But when and how can we rely on our senses to put us in touch with things as they really are? Take colour perception: even though it seems to us that the grass really is green and the sky really is blue, vision scientists deny that colours are properties of objects in the world. Do we have to accept that colours are subjective properties that we project onto things? Or is there a way of reconciling what we learn from science with our common sense view?
Pain is another puzzling case. We don’t usually think there’s any appearance/reality distinction when it comes to pains. When you’re in pain, it doesn’t seem like you could be mistaken about that. But, we normally also think that pain involves sensing some kind of damage to your body. How often do we have pain without any damage and are these cases of pain hallucinations and illusions after all? If not, are we really sensing something when we are in pain? And what about the senses themselves? We ordinarily assume we have just five distinct ways of experiencing the world: we see, hear, touch, taste, or smell. Yet neuroscience and psychology show that we have many more sensory systems with dedicated sensory receptors. We also know that there are all sorts of interactions between those sensory systems. What are our reasons for counting just five senses? Should we hold on to the common sense view or should we radically rethink the senses?
Chair: Dr. Alisa Mandrigin (University of Edinburgh)
Session two: 13:30-15:00
Is Immoral Art Aesthetically Bad?
What is the relationship between morality and artworks? We can recognise immoral artworks, for example, those which depict abhorrent figures from history in a positive light, or those which promote immoral acts or attitudes. But when an artwork does this, is it also aesthetically bad, is it less good as an artwork, even if the artist demonstrates incredible skill in bringing their work to life? Why is it that we struggle to imagine immoral things when an author of a work tells us to, for example, when an author notes that ‘the child died, but that was fine because it was a girl’, we struggle under a kind of resistance. What is going on in such cases?
Chair: Dr. Ema Sullivan-Bissett (University of Birmingham)
Session three: 15:30-17:00
Believing Badly
We make sense of each other and ourselves by reflecting on what we believe. Many of us like to think that our beliefs are ones we have come to as a result of rational reflection on the evidence. On the other hand, all of us are guilty of believing badly. We are prone to think better of ourselves and our loved ones than the evidence suggests, to underestimate the probability of bad things happening to us, and overestimate the probability of good things happening to us. This is before we even get started on the prevalence of self-deceptive beliefs and delusional beliefs. Why are we so prone to believing badly? How is it that we acquire and retain such bad beliefs, and even act on them so often? Are there benefits to believing badly? Does forming some of these beliefs have psychological benefits? Might they even get us more true beliefs in the long run? Do they help us make sense of ourselves and function better than if we did not have these beliefs? And, if so, should this stop us worrying about believing badly? Or should we try hard to avoid believing badly, even if doing so has these benefits?
Chair: Dr. Ema Sullivan-Bissett
Making sense of our senses
Perception is our source of knowledge about the world. But when and how can we rely on our senses to put us in touch with things as they really are? Take colour perception: even though it seems to us that the grass really is green and the sky really is blue, vision scientists deny that colours are properties of objects in the world. Do we have to accept that colours are subjective properties that we project onto things? Or is there a way of reconciling what we learn from science with our common sense view?
Pain is another puzzling case. We don’t usually think there’s any appearance/reality distinction when it comes to pains. When you’re in pain, it doesn’t seem like you could be mistaken about that. But, we normally also think that pain involves sensing some kind of damage to your body. How often do we have pain without any damage and are these cases of pain hallucinations and illusions after all? If not, are we really sensing something when we are in pain? And what about the senses themselves? We ordinarily assume we have just five distinct ways of experiencing the world: we see, hear, touch, taste, or smell. Yet neuroscience and psychology show that we have many more sensory systems with dedicated sensory receptors. We also know that there are all sorts of interactions between those sensory systems. What are our reasons for counting just five senses? Should we hold on to the common sense view or should we radically rethink the senses?
Chair: Dr. Alisa Mandrigin (University of Edinburgh)
- Dr. Jennifer Corns (University of Glasgow)
- Dr. Laura Gow (University of Cambridge)
- Dr. Louise Richardson (University of York)
Session two: 13:30-15:00
Is Immoral Art Aesthetically Bad?
What is the relationship between morality and artworks? We can recognise immoral artworks, for example, those which depict abhorrent figures from history in a positive light, or those which promote immoral acts or attitudes. But when an artwork does this, is it also aesthetically bad, is it less good as an artwork, even if the artist demonstrates incredible skill in bringing their work to life? Why is it that we struggle to imagine immoral things when an author of a work tells us to, for example, when an author notes that ‘the child died, but that was fine because it was a girl’, we struggle under a kind of resistance. What is going on in such cases?
Chair: Dr. Ema Sullivan-Bissett (University of Birmingham)
- Dr. Eileen John (University of Warwick)
- Professor Peter Lamarque (University of York)
- Dr. Maarten Steenhagen (University of Cambridge)
Session three: 15:30-17:00
Believing Badly
We make sense of each other and ourselves by reflecting on what we believe. Many of us like to think that our beliefs are ones we have come to as a result of rational reflection on the evidence. On the other hand, all of us are guilty of believing badly. We are prone to think better of ourselves and our loved ones than the evidence suggests, to underestimate the probability of bad things happening to us, and overestimate the probability of good things happening to us. This is before we even get started on the prevalence of self-deceptive beliefs and delusional beliefs. Why are we so prone to believing badly? How is it that we acquire and retain such bad beliefs, and even act on them so often? Are there benefits to believing badly? Does forming some of these beliefs have psychological benefits? Might they even get us more true beliefs in the long run? Do they help us make sense of ourselves and function better than if we did not have these beliefs? And, if so, should this stop us worrying about believing badly? Or should we try hard to avoid believing badly, even if doing so has these benefits?
Chair: Dr. Ema Sullivan-Bissett
- Dr. Anna Ichino (University of Antwerp)
- Dr. Kathy Puddifoot (University of Birmingham)
- Dr. Sam Wilkinson (University of Edinburgh)