Experiencing What’s Not There: A Workshop on Hallucinations, Dreams, Imagination, and Virtual Reality

Sensory experience of what's not there provides a foundational set of problems for philosophical theorizing about perception. This includes hallucinations, dreams, imagination, and virtual reality. Traditionally, these cases are thought to reveal something about (1) how experience of distal objects arises from proximal receptor stimulation and (2) the nature of the perceptual contact afforded through that experience.

This workshop brings together some of the best current research on experience of what's not there, from both philosophers and scientists. Although different in some ways, hallucinations, dreams, imagination, and virtual reality --- all being experience of what's not there --- overlap and intersect in interesting and important ways. By bringing together a diverse group of top researchers we hope to foster new and unconventional insights into these problem areas.

Schedule:
Friday June 7
9-9:30: welcome
9:30-10:45: Talk 1: Fiona Macpherson (University of Glasgow, Philosophy): "Does Virtual Reality Consist in Veridical, Illusory or Hallucinatory Experience?"
10:50-12:05: Talk 2: Thomas Crowther (University of Warwick, Philosophy): "Dreams, Imagination and the First-Person Perspective"
12:05-1:15: Lunch
1:15-2:30: Talk 3: Heather Culbertson (University of Southern California, Computer Science): "Fooling the Sense of Touch through Data and Illusions"
2:30-3:00: Coffee Break
3:00-4:15: Talk 4: Amy Kind (Claremont McKenna College, Philosophy): "Can Imagination Be Unconscious?"
4:20-5:20: Discussant Panel: Casey O'Callaghan, Alison Springle, Michael Barkasi

Saturday June 8
9-9:30: welcome
9:30-10:45: Talk 1: Alex Byrne (MIT, Philosophy): "Hallucination and Its Objects"
10:50-12:05: Talk 2: Michelle Lui and Rhonda McEwenn (University of Toronto, Institute of Communication, Culture, Information & Technology): "Perception & Learning in Virtual Reality"
12:05-1:15: Lunch
1:15-2:30: Talk 3: Tomoyasu Horikawa (Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International, Neuroinformatics): "Neural decoding of what’s not there from human brain activity"
2:30-3:00: Coffee Break
3:00-4:15: Talk 4: Jennifer Windt (Monash University, Philosophy): "Dreaming as immersive mental simulation: beyond the imagination-perception dichotomy"
4:20-5:20: Discussant Panel: Casey O'Callaghan, Jacob Beck, Michael Barkasi