PHIL20560 Selves & Others:Perspectives from Philosophy, Cognitive Science & Virtual Reality

Academic Year 2017/2018

Rationale:
Students in philosophy will benefit from a course such as this one which shows how philosophical insights and arguments can gear into scientific discovery and practice. Students in psychology, psychiatry and the human sciences engaged in projects related to social cognition would benefit from a subject such as this which examines a variety of conceptual frameworks. These conceptual frameworks would provide a useful interpretative base and they could also inform experimental design and the analysis of experimental data. This subject thus aims to provide means for addressing the rather common complaint these days that we are 'data rich and theory poor'. Students will improve their interrogative strategies, their analyitical skills and be able to discuss their findings more effecively with their peers and also non-specialist audiences.

Subject Description:
Descartes writes in his Meditations that gazing out his window at the passersby, he wondered how he could be sure that beneath the hats and cloaks were real human beings not just automatons. Even though Descartes identified this problem of other minds, he did not directly address it as such. Descartes' early articulation of ‘the problem of other minds' has inspired much philosophical debate since the early 20th century. Today such debates in philosophy are being driven in significant part by the development of the domains of cognitive science, artificial intelligence and virtuality. These are fast-expanding areas of research with relevance to philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, cognitive science, anthropology, evolutionary theory, criminology and ethics. New findings are coming to light which challenge and reconfigure our understandings of humans as intelligent, embodied, social beings. The relation between selves and others marks a key investigation in philosophy which principally addresses the question – how is it possible that from one subject's seemingly self-enclosed interiority, this subject may come to know that an-Other is minded in the same way as she is? That is, that this Other enjoys all the mental states that the subject enjoys – beliefs, desires, intentions, imaginations, and emotion – and that these may constitute reasons for action. The debates today are expanding to include further concerns - the mindedness of non-human animals, the possibilities of there being "zombies" or the question of the philosophical status of androids and whether we are heading for what is ominously referred to as ‘the singularity’ when robot intelligence will outrun human intelligence. So too with the rapid advances in technology the domain of Virtuality is challenging our preconceptions regarding embodiment, identity and relations with others. Most recently, virtual reality is finding interesting applications in general medicine and also psychiatry. Virtuality has been described as the media of disembodiment wherein the mind is conceived as pure data and the body as mere vehicle. This view offers much appeal to some cultural theorists who propose that virtuality provides a means of transcending gender, race, class, disability, through a transcendence of the body – but is this the case? Could it be the case that in fact our understandings of embodiment have been too limited – that our bodies are not merely physical but also already incorporate the virtual?