UOW Philosophy is pleased to have Dr. Nicolas Bullot (Macquarie,
MACCS) speaking at our seminar series on Wednesday, May 18th at 4:30pm
in room 19.1003. All are welcome to attend.
Title: Apparent animacy and modularity: Minding the gap between the
perception of animates and the understanding of other minds.
Abstract: Heider and Simmel (1944) provided the first empirical
evidence that humans tend to attribute animate characteristics to
inanimate objects when they move in apparently goal-directed motion
patterns, a phenomenon commonly referred to as ‘perceptual animacy’.
Recent work has demonstrated that the attribution of this apparent
animacy can be objectively measured in perceptual tracking
experiments. Here, I first discuss two long-standing problems that
still beset the literature on apparent animacy: (i) The vague and
circular specification of perceptual animacy, and (ii) the ostensible
discrepancy between an encapsulated, domain-specific, modular
mechanism for tracking animates, and the dependence of animacy
attribution on higher-level cognitive processes that allow us to
understand the minds of others (so-called ‘mindreading’ or
‘folkpsychology’). In an attempt to address these problems, I
introduce a taxonomy of animacy identifying five concepts of animacy
and five distinct concepts of apparent animacy. The taxonomy suggests
distinct ways in which animates can be identified or tracked over
time. Based on the taxonomy and its implications, I propose a new
assessment of the hypothesis of a modular mechanism for the perceptual
tracking animates.
For more information on this and other upcoming talks in Philosophy at
UOW, contact Patrick McGivern at [email protected]
_______________________________________________
SydPhil mailing list: http://sydphil.info
1000 subscribers now served!!
To UNSUBSCRIBE, change your MEMBERSHIP OPTIONS, find ANSWERS TO COMMON
PROBLEMS, or visit our ONLINE ARCHIVES, please go to the LIST INFORMATION PAGE:
http://sydphil.info
