Seeing
Things You Don’t See:
Unifying
the Philosophy, Psychology and Neuroscience of Multimodal Mental Imagery
Principal
Investigator: Bence Nanay
Project
funded by the European Research Council’s ERC Consolidator Grant 726251
The European Research Council awarded 1,967,192 Euros worth of ERC Consolidator Grant
for five years (2017-2022) to support Bence Nanay’s research grant Seeing
Things You Don’t See
As part of this grant, four postdoctoral and two PhD
positions will be advertised from 2017 on – see the first call for
applications below. There will also be various workshops and conferences on
the theme of the project.
The theme of the project is multimodal mental
imagery. Here is a short description:
When I am looking at my coffee machine that makes
funny noises, this is an instance of multisensory perception – I perceive this
event by means of both vision and audition. But very often we only receive
sensory stimulation from a multisensory event by means of one sense modality.
If I hear the noisy coffee machine in the next room (without seeing it), then
how do I represent the visual aspects of this multisensory event?
The aim of this research project is to bring together
empirical findings about multimodal perception and empirical findings about
(visual, auditory, tactile) mental imagery and argue that on occasions like the
one described in the last paragraph, we have multimodal mental imagery:
perceptual processing in one sense modality (here: vision) that is triggered by
sensory stimulation in another sense modality (here: audition).
Multimodal mental imagery is rife. The vast majority
of what we perceive are multisensory events: events that can be perceived in
more than one sense modality – like the noisy coffee machine. And most of the
time we are only acquainted with these multisensory events via a subset of the
sense modalities involved – all the other aspects of these events are
represented by means of multisensory mental imagery. This means that
multisensory mental imagery is a crucial element of almost all instances of
everyday perception, which has wider implications to philosophy of perception
and beyond, to epistemological questions about whether we can trust our senses.
Focusing on multimodal mental imagery can help us to
understand a number of puzzling perceptual phenomena,
like sensory substitution and synaesthesia. Further,
manipulating mental imagery has recently become an important clinical procedure
in various branches of psychiatry as well as in counteracting implicit bias –
using multimodal mental imagery rather than voluntarily and consciously
conjured up mental imagery can lead to real progress in these experimental
paradigms.
Call for applications: Postdoc in philosophy of mind
Applications are invited for a postdoctoral
researcher positions at the University of Antwerp. The length of the
postdoc is two years.
The postdoc will be part of Bence Nanay’s ERC-funded
project as well as his larger research group (funded by ERC, FWO, FP7
CIG and BOF UA) and will work with Professor Nanay. The pay is (for
US and UK standards) very generous. Postdoctoral researchers and PhD students
in Belgium are public employees with very generous benefits. The research group
has six postdocs and three PhD students at the moment.
There are no teaching obligations. These positions,
unlike some previous ones advertised, is on a very specific topic funded by the
recently awarded ERC project described above: on mental imagery and
multimodal perception. The postdoctoral researcher is expected to work
on joint projects with Professor Nanay that are related to this topic and
the PhD student is expected to write his/her dissertation on a topic related to
the ERC project.
Background in the empirical sciences is an
advantage. Candidates are encouraged to email nanay@berkeley.edu if
they have doubts about whether their profile matches this call. Candidates
must have a PhD degree in philosophy (PhD has to be
officially awarded before the staring date, which is in March
2018.
In the light of recent findings on implicit bias, the
candidates are asked to send their application material fully anonymized:
Please send an anonymized cv, an anonymized max 5000 word writing sample
and an anonymized max 2-page outline of what joint papers/projects the
candidate envisages to write/have with Professor Nanay to nanay@berkeley.edu and
have two letters of reference (which obviously shouldn't be anonymized) sent to
the same email address. Please write ‘Postdoc: ERC’ in the subject line.
Deadline: December 15, 2017
Starting date of the position: March 1, 2018
(not negotiable)
______________________________________________________________________________
Call for applications: Three positions in philosophy
of mind
Applications are invited for the following three
positions at the University of Antwerp:
·
Postdoctoral researcher (2 years)
·
PhD student (4 years)
·
Administrative assistant (half time,
5 years – I want to fill this position with a research active philosopher who
would be a full member of the research group)
The postdoc/PhD student/admin assistant will be part
of Bence Nanay’s ERC-funded project as well as his larger research group
(funded by ERC, FWO, FP7 CIG and BOF UA) and will work with
Professor Nanay. The pay is (for US and UK standards) very generous.
Postdoctoral researchers and PhD students in Belgium are public employees with
very generous benefits. The research group has six postdocs and three PhD
students at the moment.
There are no teaching obligations. These positions, unlike
some previous ones advertised, is on a very specific topic funded by the
recently awarded ERC project described above: on mental imagery and
multimodal perception. The postdoctoral researcher is expected to work
on joint projects with Professor Nanay that are related to this topic and
the PhD student is expected to write his/her dissertation on a topic related to
the ERC project.
Background in the empirical sciences is an
advantage. Candidates are encouraged to email nanay@berkeley.edu if
they have doubts about whether their profile matches this call. Postdoctoral
candidates must have a PhD degree in philosophy (PhD has to be officially
awarded before the staring date, which is September 1st, 2017
and PhD candidates must have a masters degree in
philosophy (again, in hand before the starting date).
In the light of recent findings on implicit bias, the
candidates are asked to send their application material fully anonymized:
Please send an anonymized cv, an anonymized max 5000 word writing sample
and an anonymized max 2-page outline of what joint papers/projects the
candidate envisages to write/have with Professor Nanay to nanay@berkeley.edu and
have two letters of reference (which obviously shouldn't be anonymized) sent to
the same email address. Please write ‘Postdoc: ERC’ or ’PhD: ERC’ or ’Admin:
ERC’ (depending on which position you are applying for or enquiring
about).
Deadline: April 9, 2017
Starting date of the position: September 1, 2017
(not negotiable)