SWIP-TR Conference program

The program for the second SWIP-TR conference which will take place at Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University on 14-16 November is now up on the SWIP-TR website.

Bowe’s seminar (third session), Oct 23rd, 6pm

We pick up tomorrow, October 23rd, at 6pm, at GSÜ, where we left off at Geoffrey Bowe’s seminar on Plato’s Republic. This session is entitled “Puppets, Sunshine and the Afterlife: Noble Lies and Orphic Myths”. And the discussant is İpek Tuncel from Koç University.

Graduate Student Philosophy workshop at Boğaziçi (19/10/2019)

There will be a Phd student philosophy workshop at Boğaziçi  this Saturday (19/10/2019) starting at 1pm in JF507. Everyone is welcome.

Schedule:

1.00-2.00
Hakkı Kaan Arıkan (Boğaziçi): “Sellars, Grice and Theory of Mind”

2.00 – 3.00
Müge Kuyumcuoğlu (Boğaziçi): “The problem of relevance as it applies to learning from experience.”
Commentator: Buse Kurtar (Boğaziçi)

3.30 – 4.30
Arzu Gökmen (Boğaziçi):  “Machine ethics: questions and objectives”
Commentator:  Tuğba Sevinç (Bahçeşehir)

4.30 – 5.30
Oğuz Erdin (Boğaziçi): “An evaluation of methodologies in  cognitive science based on Lakatos’ methodology of scientific research programs.”
Commentator: Aran Arslan (Boğaziçi)

MA and PhD in Philosophy at Bilkent University

We are now accepting applications for our MA and PhD in philosophy (for those starting in Spring 2020).

Early application deadline: Nov 1
Regular application deadline: Dec 13

All successful applicants will receive a comprehensive scholarship (tuition waiver, housing support, private health insurance, and monthly stipend).

Up to five graduate students each year will have the opportunity to spend a semester at the School of Philosophy at Australian National University. The exchange is fully funded.

We warmly welcome applications from international students, as well as philosophy and non-philosophy majors.

The language of instruction for all aspects of the program is English.

For more information click here.

Talk by Bence Nanay at Bilkent University

The Fragmented Mind

By Bence Nanay (Antwerp & Cambridge)

Date: Thursday 24th October

Time: 1740-1900

Place: Bilkent University, FFB-06

Abstract: You are bored during this talk, do you check your phone or not? Resist the temptation or yield? Social psychology shows that both are bad options. Yielding establishes bad habits and resisting often leads to cognitive dissonance (when you want to hide from yourself that you had the urge to check your phone). The best thing to do with temptation is to avoid them – leave that phone at home, for example. If we want to understand self-control, we should focus on avoiding, not on resisting temptations. And we have some evidence that the ability to avoid temptations directly correlates to the extent to which our mind is fragmented.

About the speaker: Bence Nanay is Professor of Philosophy and BOF Research Professor at the University of Antwerp, where he is also co-director of the Centre for Philosophical Psychology and Senior Research Associate at Peterhouse, Cambridge University. He is the author of Between Perception and Action (OUP, 2013) and the editor of Perceiving the World (OUP, 2010), Aesthetics as Philosophy of Perception (OUP, 2016) and of Current Controversies in Philosophy of Perception (Routledge, 2016). He has published more than 90 articles on various topics mainly in philosophy of mind and in aesthetics. He used to work as a film critic and served on the jury of various major international film festivals.

This talk precedes “Exploring the Mind’s Eye – An Interdisciplinary Conference on Imagination” (October 25-26), where Prof. Nanay will also be presenting.

Imagination and Mental Imagery Reading Group at Bilkent

In preparation for the Exploring the Mind’s Eye interdisciplinary conference, which will take place on October 25-26 at Bilkent, we will have two more meetings of our reading group on imagination and mental imagery where we will discuss some papers by the conference speakers. Having participated in the summer meetings is not a requirement to attend the meetings this semester. The readings (which might be adjusted based on the participants’ suggestions) are as follows:

Session 1: October 8, Tuesday, 17:40-18:40, H-355

• Abraham, Anna. (2016) The Imaginative Mind. Human Brain Mapping 37:4197-4211
• Strohminger, Margot & Yli-Vakkuri, Juhani. (2017) The Epistemology of Modality. Analysis 77/4

Session 2: October 22, Tuesday, 17:40-18:40, H-355

• Perrin, Denis & Michaelian, Kourken. (2017) Memory as mental time travel. In Sven Bernecker & Kourken Michaelian (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Memory. Routledge. pp. 228-239.
• Weisberg, Skolnick Weisberg. (2016) How Fictional Worlds are Created. Philosophy Compass 11/8: 462-470

If you are interested in joining the reading group, please contact Tufan Kıymaz.

Organized by the Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Group at Bilkent University.