WORKSHOPS, SEMINARS, AND TALKS

WORKSHOPS

HOPP Final Workshop -- Turin, September 25-27, 2025

Venue: Auditorium Quazza, Palazzo Nuovo, via Sant'Ottavio 20, Turin

Confirmed speakers

Carola Barbero (University of Turin) and Fabrizio Calzavarini (University of Turin)

Quentin Coudray (Open University of Israel)

Anya Farennikova (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

Jonardon Ganeri (University of Toronto)

Casey Landers (Texas State University)

Anders Nes (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim)

David Papineau (KCL)

Athanasios Raftopoulos (University of Cyprus, Nicosia)

Stay tuned for more information.

TALKS 2024/2025

VENUE (unless otherwise specified): Main Library, Sala Incontri 1 (ground floor), Palazzo Nuovo, via S. Ottavio 20, Turin

Link to join online: https://unito.webex.com/unito/j.php?MTID=mcf064983fff7ce3467aa327720bb2c42

04/09/2024, 16:00-18:00 Discussion of Bence Nanay, Mental Imagery (Oxford University Press, 2023) with the author (VENUE: Aula di Antica, Palazzo Nuovo, via S. Ottavio 20, Turin)

24/09/2024, 16:00-18:00 Denis Buehler (Institut Jean Nicod, ENS), "Attention and Inquiry"

ABSTRACT. In this paper I argue that attention has a function in our capacity to find relevant perceptual information. I describe the capacity’s role in querying the world about our ongoing epistemic projects. 

02/10/2024, 16:00-18:00 Fiona Macpherson (University of Glasgow), "Perception in Dreams" (VENUE: Sala Lauree Gallino, Palazzo Nuovo, via S. Ottavio 20, Turin)

ABSTRACT. I argue that dreams can contain perceptual elements in multifarious, heretofore unthought-of ways. I also explain the difference between dreams that contain perceptual elements, perceptual experiences that contain dream elements, and having a dream and a perceptual experience simultaneously. I then discuss two applications of the resulting view. First, I explain how my taxonomy of perception in dreams will allow “dream engineers”—who try to alter the content of people’s dreams—to accurately classify different dreams and explore creating new forms of perception in dreams. Second, I consider the consequences of the view for the role of memory in dreaming and imagination. I argue that not every element of dreams or sensory imaginations must rely on memory. The resultant view of sensory imagination provides a counterexample to Hume’s account of sensory imagination, according to which sensory imagination must be built up from faint copies of sensory impressions stored in memory. 

04/03/2025, 16:00-18:00 Alfredo Tomasetta (IUSS, Pavia), "For-me-ness and No-Self. A Critical Appraisal of a Recent Indo-Analytc Argument"

ABSTRACT. According to Chadha (Selfless Minds, Oxford University Press, 2023), the great Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu denied the existence of the self in any form. Yet there seems to be something in our experience that signals that we own our experiences. How can this phenomenology of ownership be explained in the absence of a self? To this objection, Chadha offers an answer on behalf of Vasubandhu: there is no phenomenology of ownership to explain. In arguing for this conclusion, she focuses on the sense of ownership of bodily awareness. Here is her argument in a nutshell: there is a vivid, albeit rare, sense of bodily dis-ownership; the usual absence of this phenomenology is the basis of our routine judgments of bodily ownership; so, there is no sense of bodily ownership, only judgments we make in the absence of the sense of bodily dis-ownership. My claim is that even if we concede this point to Chadha, it does not follow that there is no sense of ownership of our experience. To argue for this thesis, one needs an example of an experience that is not experienced as one's own; but Chadha's argument provides none. So, I think her remarks, while interesting in many ways, are beside the point.  I conclude by suggesting a different and more promising argumentative strategy that Chadha could have used. 

01/04/2025, 16:00-18:00 Chaz Firestone (Johns Hopkins University), "Seeing 'How'" [online]

ABSTRACT. What is perception? The most intuitive and influential answer to this question has long been the one given by David Marr: To see the world is “to know what is where by looking” — to transform light into representations of objects and their features, located somewhere in space. But is this all that perception delivers? Consider the figure below; certainly you see some colored shapes, as well as where they are located. Yet, beyond this, you may also see how they relate to one another: The green piece can fit into the others, and even create a new object with a shape of its own. In this talk, I present evidence that perception extracts relations between objects in much the same way as it processes the objects themselves, and that these relations are abstract, structured, and surprisingly sophisticated. We’ll explore (and experience) the perception of several sophisticated relations between objects, including combining, supporting, containing, covering, and fastening — as well as relational “illusions” in which objects appear to interact with mysteriously invisible entities. Together, this work suggests that we see not only “what” and “where”, but also “how”. 

08/04/2025, 16:00-18:00 Alon Chasid (Bar-Ilan University), "Taking on a Fictional Doxastic (Orectic) Role: Toward a Definition of Imagination"

ABSTRACT. Imagination is sometimes claimed to be unconstrained: we are, to a great extent, free to imagine what we want. However, it seems that, within a specific (spontaneous or intended) imaginative project, our imaginings do not arise ‘just like that,’ but are constrained in certain ways. Showing that the constraints (or rules) that apply to imagining arise from the fact that imagining involves the simulation of certain mental roles, I will propose a definition of imagining in terms of such a simulation. More precisely, I will argue that, instead of accounting for mental simulation in terms of (belief-like / desire-like) imagining, imagining can be accounted for—indeed, fully analyzed, and defined—in terms of a certain type of mental simulation. 

03/06/2025, 16:00-18:00 Joulia Smortchkova (University of Grenoble), "First Impressions and Affect"

ABSTRACT. It has been recently argued that there is an affective aspect to perception. The intuitive claim is that, alongside sensory properties such as shapes, colors, orientations, we also perceptually experience affective valences. The relation between perception and affective valence is debated, however. Is affective valence a phenomenal quality of perceptual experiences? Is it represented in perceptual content on the model of the rich perceptual content view? Or is it rather a distinctive form of perceptual attitude? In my talk I will use the case study of first impressions, the phenomenon of vividly experiencing something for the first time, to suggest that the affective aspect of perception might be multi-level: both as a feature of perceptual experience and as a metacognitive feature of perceptual processing. The multi-level hypothesis can explain cases of affectively conflicting perceptual first impressions as well as how the affective tone of perception changes over time.

OUTREACH

10/03/2025, 18:00: Presentation of Roberto Casati, The Cognitive Life of Maps (MIT Press, 2024). The author will discuss themes from the book with Elvira Di Bona, Francesco Pierini, and Alberto Voltolini. Circolo dei Lettori, via Bogino 9, Turin

2023/2024

14/05/2024, 16:00-18:00 Achille Varzi (Columbia University) "On the Perception of Abs nces" (VENUE: Room 10, Palazzo Nuovo, via S. Ottavio 20, Turin)

ABSTRACT. Can we truly perceive an absence? Sartre tells us that when he arrived late for his appointment at the café, he saw the absence of his friend Pierre. Is that really what he saw? Where was it, exactly? Why didn’t Sartre see the absence of other people who were not there? Why did other people who were there not see the absence of Pierre? How could Sartre have seen a genuine absence if perception is based on causation and causation, in turn, can only originate from what is present? The perception of absences gives rise to a host of conundrums and is constantly on the verge of conceptual confusion. Here I focus on the need to be clear about four sorts of distinctions: (i) perceiving an absence vs. perceiving something that is absent; (ii) perceiving an absence vs. an absence of perceiving; (iii) perceiving an absence vs. perceiving something as an absence; and (iv) perceiving an absence vs. perceiving that something is absent. I will conclude with some general morals.

18/05/2024, Jason Geiger (University of Oxford) "Haptic, Projective and Ampliative Imagining"

ABSTRACT. The recognition that ‘typical touch experiences seem essentially to unfold over time, requiring us to connect different movements together in the formation of complex tactual representations’ (Fulkerson, 2013) provides a valuable starting point for understanding the role of haptic imagining. It has long been recognised that sculpture is particularly effective at soliciting tactile responses. It goes without saying that these responses are predominantly imaginative rather than actual: in the vast majority of cases, we do not physically touch the surface of a sculpture, and to do so would often run counter to or interrupt our imaginativeengagement. It therefore seems plausible to suggest that artworks that invite projective and ampliative responses in the viewer, also engage the haptic imagination. The link here, if there is one, is provided by the temporal and dynamic character of these forms of imaginative activity, which are open and exploratory whilst remaining answerable to the work. Through close examination of a range of relevant examples, I show that the resulting account of imaginative engagement is not restricted to representational art forms such as figurative painting and sculpture but that – suitably adapted – it can also be extended to include fully abstract sculptural objects, and that here, too, what I term haptic imagining has a vital role to play insofar as it is responsive to an overtly temporal structure that is internal to the work itself.