The Centre for the Study of Perceptual Experience (CSPE) has now been in existence for twenty years. We are holding a celebratory 20th Anniversary Conference from 4 – 6th June 2025 in Glasgow. We would love for you to join us.

We will have a range of philosophy talks on all things sensory that have been core to the work at the CSPE, such as perception, illusion, hallucination, imagination, and the senses. We will particularly hear from those who have worked, visited, and contributed to, the CSPE and its projects and events over the years

We also will have lots of time for informal discussion. To promote this, we will have a poster session and would encourage all attendees to exhibit a poster (A1, portrait) on a topic within the philosophy of perception or mind. Delivering posters is often done by junior members of conferences, and we would like it if attendees of all levels of seniority participated instead.

We are also offering a variety of sensory experiences for you to try, including experiencing the content for VR that we and others have created in our multi-person VR labs, and a talk about our work on VR by Prof Neil McDonnell. Other experiences will be announced soon.

Our Schedule is as follows:

Wednesday 4th June

9 – 9.30 Registration and tea and coffee.

9.30 – 10.10 Prof Fiona Macpherson (Glasgow): Welcome to the conference and overview of the CSPE

10.10 – 11.10 Prof Jack Lyons (Glasgow) “Are Cognitive Maps Really Maps?”

11.20 – 12.20 Dr Andrea Blomkvist (Glasgow) “Memory images: what we can learn from aphantasia”

12.30 – 1.30 Prof Neil McDonnell (Glasgow) “Virtual Reality: Theory and Practice at the University of Glasgow”

1.30 – 2.45 Lunch – including poster session and virtual reality sessions

2.45 – 3.45 Dr Sam Clarke (Southern California) “Can we “see” value? Spatiotopic “visual” adaptation to an imperceptible dimension”

3.55 – 4.55 Dr E.J. Green (Johns Hopkins)“Perceptual Abstraction”

4.55 – 6.00 Poster session and virtual reality session

7.00 - late Conference Dinner @ Ka Pao (26 Vinicombe Street, Glasgow, G12 8BE)

Thursday 5th June

9.30 – 10.30 Dr Derek H. Brown (Glasgow) “Sensory Engineering, Perceptual Mediation, and Indirect Perception”

10.40 – 11.40 Dr Umut Baysan (Oxford) “Emergence: From Consciousness to Normativity” 11.45 – 12.45 Prof Michael Brady (Glasgow) “Trauma, meaning-making, and illusions of growth”

12.45– 1.45 Lunch – including poster session, virtual reality sessions, and strobe sessions 1.45 – 2.45 Dr David Bain (Glasgow) “Seven questions about suffering”

2.55 – 3.55 Prof Josefa Toribio (Barcelona) "The Feel Beyond Sight: On the Affective Life of Experience in Sensory Substitution"

3.55 – 6.00 Poster session and virtual reality session

7 .00 - late Conference Dinner @ Mother India at The Lansdowne (7A Lansdowne Crescent, Glasgow, G20 6NQ)

Friday 6th June

9.30 – 10.30 Dr Keith Wilson (University College Dublin) “Realism About Perspectival Character”

10.40 – 11.40Dr Robert Cowan (Glasgow) “Beyond good and evil? In your dreams!”

11.50 – 12.50 Dr Brandon Ashby (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg) “The structures of perception and the practical limits of sensory engineering"

12.50 – 2.00 Lunch – Poster session, virtual reality session, and strobe session

2.00 – 3.00 Dr Jennifer Corns (Glasgow) “Engineering and Eliminating Pain”

3.10 – 4.10 Prof Robert Briscoe (Ohio) “Depiction as Sensory Engineering”

4.10 – 5.45 Poster session, virtual reality session, and strobe session

6. 00 - late Conference after-party (including buffet and whisky tasting) @ Glasgow University Union (32 University Ave, Glasgow G12 8LX)

As seen in the schedule, we are offering optional activities in the evenings:

On Wednesday 4th, we are having a conference dinner at Ka Pao, which has been awarded the Bib Gourmand by the Michelin Guide.
On Thursday 5th, we will have another conference dinner at another beloved Glasgow institution - Mother India at The Lansdowne.
On Friday 6th, we are hosting a free catered conference afterparty at the Glasgow University Union, with a free whisky tasting session by Good Spirits Co. (drinks available to purchase on the night).

If you’d like to come to any of these additional events (we hope you do!), please purchase the relevant tickets from this page. There are options for drinks to be included or not included - please purchase the relevant ticket. Please note that the conference venue (the ARC), Ka Pao and the GUU are all wheelchair-accessible, but unfortunately Mother India at The Lansdowne is not.

Please note that registration for dinners will end on the 19th May.

This conference is jointly funded by the Royal Institute for Philosophy (RIP), the Scots Philosophical Association (SPA) and the Department of Philosophy and the Centre for the Study of Perceptual Experience at Glasgow.

Centre for the Study of Perceptual Experience 20th Anniversary Conference