Concerning Linguistic Reference and the “Split–Brain” Experiments

Breckan Johnston (Boston University)

In keeping with Harvard Review of Philosophy’s current issue, HRP XXXIII: Artificial Systems and Subjectivity, this year’s annual undergraduate conference will center around the theme of Philosophy of Mind and Phenomenology. Following similar conferences hosted by undergraduate philosophy groups in Boston and across the US in recent years, the Harvard Undergraduate conference welcomes paper submissions and attendees from diverse intellectual backgrounds and philosophical schools of thought.

Philosophy of mind and phenomenology encompasses a wide range of subjects, including the deeply intimate and most pressing questions of perception, reality, sense data, and the relation they bear to any concept of rationality. This year’s keynote speaker will be renowned philosopher and Samuel H. Wolcott Professor of Philosophy Dr. Alison Simmons, sparking our broader conversations around this year’s topic through a lively presentation and Q+A of her paper, Our Bodies, Ourselves: Cartesian Style.

Our discussion will also include some pressing questions of Artificial Intelligence we can’t help but consider especially within conversations on this year’s topic. Questions of embodied form, consciousness, and perception are more pressing than ever.