C3 2007 - The Whitehead Lectures on Cognition, Computation & Creativity

The Whitehead Lectures are funded and organised by the Departments of Computing and Psychology at Goldsmiths College, University of London, with the aim of stimulating interest and debate in the area of cognition, computation and creativity. All are welcome to attend.

The meetings for the lent term 2007 [January .. March] are listed below. All seminars to be held at 4pm in the Pimlott Lecture Theatre, (Ben Pimlott Building), unless otherwise stated.

For directions to Goldsmiths see: http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/find-us/

To be added to the seminar mailing list, please contact Mark Bishop by email: m.bishop@gold.ac.uk

Wednesday, 10th October, 16.00

An Outsiders view of the Self and Certainty

David Malone
- Director, Because you think TV

Abstract: In this talk David will offer a series of questions that have been the basis for nine films over the last ten years. Culminating with Dangerous Knowledge shown on BBC television this year. Like the films, each question led to the next. Beginning with wondering how to describe the relationship between Consciousness and the Self and ending with wondering if the modern Self’s obsession with Proof and Certainty is neither healthy nor perhaps inevitable. Along the way the talk will touch upon the phenomenon of artists and scientists who hear voices, robots who believe in God, Greg Chaitin’s views on creativity and computation and Wolfram’s work on Cellular automata. David's job as a documentary film maker is to find a way of posing or framing a question that draws together views which at first might seem disparate and unexpected. What comes out of this process is rarely an answer, but hopefully deeper, richer questions.

David Malone’s academic background is in hominid evolution. He began his film making career at the BBC’s Science Department in 1986. During his time there he established the record for bringing Tomorrow’s World the closest it ever came to not making it to transmission. He made films ranging from the Flow of Time to the legacy of Darwinism in modern thought. More recently he has made a several series of films that have looked at questions of Consciousness, the Self and Soul as well as arguments surrounding the work of Kurt Gödel, whether Computation can ever be Conscious, how the mind models other people, the limits of Certainty and the source of Creativity. His thinking has been influenced by, amongst others, Roger Penrose and Greg Chaitin, Louis Sass and Iain McGilchrist.

Wednesday, 17th October, 16.00

Stefan Debener
- Senior Clinical Scientist at the MRC Institute of Hearing Research, Southampton

Abstract: Little is yet known about the relation between the scalp-recorded event-related EEG and the fMRI BOLD response. This holds true in particular for brain activation related to higher order cognitive processing. Whereas previous research focused on the event-related potential (ERP), an alternative approach will be presented integrating EEG and fMRI on a trial-by-trial basis. The basic idea is to apply independent component analysis (ICA) to disentangle otherwise overlapping EEG activations. An example will be presented showing that ICA-filtered single-trial EEG amplitudes not only predicted the subjects' reaction times, but also systematically correlated with the fMRI BOLD response. The potential of simultaneous EEG-fMRI studies will be discussed with regard to an event-related brain dynamics view of cognitive processes.

Stefan Debener is a psychologist by training and received his Ph.D. in 2001 from the University of Dresden, Germany. He is currently NHS Senior Clinical Scientist at the MRC Institute of Hearing Research, Southampton, and received honorary degrees (Reader) from the Schools of Medicine and Psychology, University of Southampton. He aims at bridging the gap between computational neurosciences and cognitive psychophysiology. His major contributions are in the field of advanced EEG analysis and multi-modal brain imaging, which includes the direct integration of EEG, fMRI and behaviour. He is also interested in multi-sensory processing, temporal attention, and cortical plasticity before and after cochlear implantation.

Wednesday, 24th October, 16.00

Scientific Art or Artistic Science?

Nicolas Wade
- Professor of Visual Psychology, University of Dundee

Abstract: The study of natural phenomena could be pursued with regard to their representation (art) or interpretation (science) and in previous centuries the same people engaged in both endeavours. One consequence of the division and the attendant specialisation is that histories of art and science are surveyed by those steeped in one tradition or the other. This has resulted in the neglect of areas of common enterprise, like vision. Visual artists and visual scientists are often concerned with examining the same phenomena, but the methods they adopt differ radically. Scientists try to discover new facts regarding old phenomena. New phenomena are rarely discovered but they do determine different conditions under which old ones operate (perhaps using some novel apparatus for generating stimuli). Artists are concerned with arranging phenomena in a manner that has not been seen before, or perhaps to increase the spectators’ awareness of the phenomena. Often this involves complicating the effects rather than simplifying them. Thus, scientists rarefy and isolate phenomena to control them in the laboratory, whereas artists embrace complexity and manipulate phenomena intuitively. The differences in method have resulted in divergent vocabularies for describing similar visual effects, and the two approaches can appear more disparate than their phenomenal commonality would suggest. Not only have artists provided more engaging examples of visual spatial phenomena, but they have also enhanced their range in ways that are scientifically novel. The opposite argument applies to motion perception, where scientists developed techniques that were eagerly adopted in the arts. The interactions between art and both spatial and motion vision were influenced by instruments invented in the early nineteenth century for manipulating the representation of space and time – the stereoscope and the stroboscopic disc. Art and science can provide complementary approaches to the study of vision.

Nicholas Wade research interests are concerned with: the representation of space and motion in human vision, the history of research on visual phenomena, and the relationship between visual science and visual art. He has written several books on these topics among which are: The Art and Science of Visual Illusions (1982), Brewster and Wheatstone on Vision (1983), Visual Allusions: Pictures of Perception (1990), Psychologists in Word and Image (1995), A Natural History of Vision (1998), Destined for Distinguished Oblivion: The Scientific Vision of William Charles Wells (1757-1817) (2002), Perception and Illusion. Historical Perspectives (2005), The Moving Tablet of the Eye: The Origins of Modern Eye Movement Research (with Ben Tatler, 2005), and Circles: Science, Sense and Symbol (2007).

Wednesday, 31st October, 16.00

Computing with neurons (tbc)

Slawek Nasuto
- Reader in Cybernetics, University of Reading

Abstract: (tbc)

Biog: (tbc)

Wednesday, 14th November, 16.00

Evolutionary Robotics and Machine Consciousness (tbc)

Inman Harvey
- Senior Lecturer Informatics, University of Sussex, UK.

Abstract: (tbc)

Biog: (tbc)

Wednesday, 21st November, 16.00

Genetic algorithms and game playing (tbc)

Simon Lucas
- Reader in Computing, University of Essex

Abstract: (tbc)

Biog: (tbc)

Wednesday, 28th November, 16.00

Second Order Cybernetics: an historical introduction

Bernard Scott
- Senior Lecturer in Electronically-Enhanced Learning, Cranfield University, Defense Academy, Shrivenham

Abstract:In 1974, Heinz von Foerster articulated the distinction between a first order and a second order cybernetics, as, respectively, the cybernetics of observed systems and the cybernetics of observing systems. Von Foerster’s distinction, together with his own work on the epistemology of the observer, has been enormously influential on the work of a later generation of cyberneticians. It has provided an architecture for the discipline of cybernetics, one that, in true cybernetic spirit, provides order where previously there was variety and disorder. It has provided a foundation for the research programme that is second order cybernetics. However, as von Foerster himself makes clear, the distinction he articulated was imminent right from the outset in the thinking of the early cyberneticians, before, even, the name of their discipline had been coined. In this paper, I give a brief account of the developments in cybernetics that lead to von Foerster’s making his distinction. As is the way of such narratives, it is but one perspective on a complex series of events. Not only is my account a personal perspective, it also includes some recollections of events that I observed and participated in at first hand.

Dr Bernard Scott is Head of the Flexible Learning Support Centre, Cranfield University, Defence College of Management and Technology, Defence Academy, Shrivenham, Wiltshire, UK. Previous appointments have been with: the University of the Highlands and Islands Millennium Institute, De Montfort University, the Open University and Liverpool John Moores University. Between 1967 and 1978, he worked with Gordon Pask at System Research Ltd, developing conversation theory and computer-based systems for teaching, course assembly and knowledge elicitation. Dr Scott’s research interests include: theories of learning and teaching; course design and organisational change; foundational issues in systems theory and cybernetics. He has published extensively on these topics. Dr Scott is a Fellow of the UK Cybernetics Society and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society. Dr Scott is President of Research Committee 51 (on Sociocybernetics) of the International Sociological Association.

Wednesday, 5th December, 16.00

The interplay between evolution and development: the case of pointing gestures

Juan Gomez
- Lecturer, School of Psychology, University of St.Andrews

Abstract: I this talk I address the issue of the interaction between evolutionary and developmental processes using the case of pointing gestures as an illustration.  Pointing is probably a universal communicative behaviour among humans that can be used in very complex ways. It emerges relatively early in ontogeny and has been claimed to be a precursor to some of the most complex cognitive achievements of humans (language and Theory of mind). In apes, in contrast, manual pointing is not a natural behaviour that can be observed in the wild. However, when reared in captivity, apes seem to spontaneously develop whole-hand, or occasionally even index-finger, pointing gestures that are both similar and different to the pointing gestures of human infants. I will discuss different models of what this case can tell us about how development and evolution interact in creating behavioural and cognitive adaptation.

Dr. JJuan-Carlos Gómez obtained his PhD. in 1992 in the Department of Developmental Psychology in The Universidad Autónoma of Madrid with a study on the development of intentional communication in young captive gorillas. In 1995 he was a PostDoc at the MRC Cognitive Development Unit, London, with Prof. A. Karmiloff-Smith. In 1996 he became a Lecturer at the School of Psychology, University of St.Andrews, where he is currenty working as  Reader in Psychology. His research interests include the comparative study of early communication and theory of mind skills in non-human primates and typically and atypically developing children. He is a founding member of the Social Learning and Cognitive Evolution Centre, University of St.Andrews, and director of project REFCOM, on the origins of Referential Communication, funded by the FT-6 program of the European Union. He is the author of Apes, monkeys, children and the growth of mind (Harvard University Press), and Associate Editor of Developmental Science.

Wednesday, 12th December, 16.00

Head, heart and hand: Exploring the psychology of art

Chris McManus
- Professor of Psychology and Medical Education at University College London

Abstract: Despite the arts and aesthetics dominating so much of everyday life, there has been surprisingly little effort in psychology to understand what is going on. There have been 'big' theories, but I will suggest that these often fail, and are almost embarrassing in their attempts to explain the rich variety of the arts with relatively limited explanatory tools. Instead I will take the line that psychology needs at present to dig down into a detailed understanding of relatively limited but nevertheless illustrative phenomena, and I will describe some such cases.

Chris McManus is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences. He qualified originally as a doctor, intercalating a degree in psychology. His PhD was on the genetics of handedness and cerebral lateralisation, a topic in which he still has a great interest, editing the journal Laterality, and also having written a popular book Right Hand Left Hand, which won the Aventis Prize in 2003. His interest in experimental aesthetics began with his undergraduate project, and he has published a series of experimental papers over many years, and is currently working on a book on the psychology of the arts.