Center for Subjectivity Research > News > Adrian Alsmith - Proje...

2011-11-29

Adrian Alsmith - Project grant and Sapere Aude

Adrian Alsmith has received a Sapere Aude: Young Elite Researcher stipend (622.008 DKK) as supplement to his individual postdoc project grant (1.699.720 DKK). This will provide him with an extension of the original project period, as well as funds for further training and extended research collaborations abroad.

The project, titled "The Unity of Spatial Consciousness", begins with the following trilemma:
(i) A subject's perceptual experience is unified both within and between its senses according to a single perspective.
(ii) The perspectival nature of perceptual experience ought to be conceived as the point of origin for an egocentric frame of reference.
(iii) Multiple distinct egocentric frames of reference are employed both within and between the senses.
Individually each of these claims has some plausibility. Collectively, (i) - (iii) present an inconsistency: perceptual experience cannot be unified according to a single perspective, if that perspective is conceived as the point of origin for an egocentric frame of reference, when there are multiple distinct egocentric frames of reference in operation within and between the senses. As (i) & (ii) are essentially philosophical theses, and (iii) stems from contemporary psychology and neuroscience, the puzzle generated by these theses presents an interdisciplinary challenge par excellence. Dr Alsmith's research will focus on attempts to meet this challenge.

Read more on the website DFF (Danish)