Talks

The Mind and Perception Workshop, begun in the 2009–10 academic year, is a workshop series which convenes a multidisciplinary group of participants from Rice, University of Houston, and the Medical Center community. Each year the Workshop aims to bring three faculty speakers to the Rice campus for a two-hour afternoon workshop on their research and an open evening lecture. These workshops and lectures often cover core questions from contemporary philosophy of perception on phenomenal consciousness and the content of perceptual experiences. Recent visits have or future visits will also cover philosophical issues in neuroscience, philosophical issues in psychiatry, and feminist critiques of contemporary mind and neural science.

The aim of the Mind and Perception Workshop is to serve as a venue for faculty in Philosophy and other disciplines to convene and to generate community, shared research interests, and research and teaching initiatives in the interdisciplinary and humanistic understanding of the mind and its place in nature. Interested graduate and undergraduate students are strongly encouraged to participate in the workshops and attend the evening lectures. The Workshop also affords faulty and students opportunities for individual meetings with visitors, as well as informal discussions over meals or receptions.

The Reading Group

In addition to the three invited visitors, the Workshop also began hosting a reading group in the fall of 2012. That semester the group met weakly to discuss current papers in the philosophy of perception. The group also affords participants an opportunity to discuss work in progress.

Sponsorship

The Mind and Perception Workshop is sponsored through the Humanities Research Center at Rice University. Recently, some events have also been cosponsored with the department of Philosophy, the department of Psychology, and the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality.