CFS Lecture by Michael Silberstein: "Experience Unbound"

Lecture by Michael Silberstein, Department of Philosophy, Elizabethtown College, USA

Title: "Experience Unbound."

Abstract:

There are a number of different philosophical traditions such as strains of neutral monism, ecological psychology, phenomenology, Buddhism and Hinduism that reject the idea that conscious experience is 'in the head.' These traditions or the people speaking within them, often differ wildly as to what such a claim might mean. The equivocation on the claim that experience is somehow extended is no less prevalent in the present discussion.  Silberstein and Chemero in their “Complexity and Extended Phenomenological-Cognitive Systems” (TopiCS in Cognitive Science, Volume 4, Issue 1, pages 35–50, January 2012) attempt their own characterization of the extended experience claim. We will begin with a brief introduction to this work and then attempt to integrate and situate it within the aforementioned philosophical traditions.