A two-day research-intensive interdisciplinary workshop on synchronising the senses and the temporal structure of multisensory experience as part of the Rethinking the Senses: Uniting the Philosophy and Neuroscience of Perception project.

Workshop speakers include:

• Vanessa Harrar (Montréal, Psychology)
• Christoph Hoerl (Warwick, Philosophy)
• Lars Muckli (Glasgow, Psychology)
• Simon Prosser (St Andrews, Philosophy)
• Charles Spence (Oxford, Psychology)
• Jean Vroomen (Tilburg, Neuropsychology)

The aim of the workshop will be to examine how some of the latest research on multisensory integration and the perception of temporal order and simultaneity bears upon philosophical questions concerning the fundamental nature of experience. In particular:

1. How do experiences across multiple modalities, each of which operates across a distinct timescale, become bound together as experiences of ‘the same time’?
2. Can the temporal properties that we experience (e.g. temporal order and simultaneity) be explained in terms of the temporally extended structure of experiences (i.e. extensionalism) or via a ‘specious present’ in which multiple events spanning some finite duration are represented concurrently (i.e. intentionalism)?
3. To what extent do we perceptually experience temporal properties such as movement, simultaneity and the ‘flow’ of time via the senses as opposed to merely inferring that time has passed?
4. Are perceptual experiences states, processes, events, or something else? What, if any, implications does this have for current theories of perception and/or consciousness?

The contents of the workshop will build upon research undertaken in earlier phases of the Rethinking the Senses project on multisensory integration, attention and action, and help to inform the direction of additional work packages on consciousness and multisensory contents.

This workshop will also form the basis for a follow-on project on the temporal structure of perceptual experience, ‘Synchronising the Senses’, funded by the John Templeton Foundation via the University of Cambridge’s New Directions in the Study of the Mind initiative.

The workshop will take place at the University of Glasgow. Registration is free and includes lunch on both days. Attendance at the workshop dinner on Friday 17th February is optional and payable upon arrival (£35, cash only). Further details of the workshop venue, programme and abstract are available on the workshop webpage.

Please note: places are strictly limited, so if you register and are subsequently unable to attend, please inform us as soon as possible so that we can offer your place to another attendee.