Dr Keith A. Wilson

Activities / Societies: Departmental Graduate Seminar, Staff–Student Liaison Committee, Events Committee, MindGrad

The perception of objects that stand for something other than themselves gives rise to an intriguing puzzle. When perceiving a representation—e.g. hearing a bit of speech, seeing a picture or hearing a piece of music—this other thing—e.g. a meaning, an image, or a tone—is experienced too. How can we explain that perceiving some visual or auditory stimuli lets us experience something other than that very stimuli? The project will undertake a unified and comparative study of this research question with regard to three different types of representations: speech, pictures and music.

An interdisciplinary investigation of the temporal structure of experience and its implications for the metaphysics of perception, funded by the John Templeton Foundation via the University of Cambridge’s New Directions in the Study of the Mind initiative.