Professor Sir Colin Blakemore, neuroscientist and director of the Centre for the Study of the Senses (CenSes) at the School of Advanced Study (SAS), University of London, has won the Elise and Walter A. Haas International Award, given by the University of California, Berkeley, USA. It recognises distinguished international work by a UC Berkeley graduate, and is one of the university’s most prestigious honours.

The Institute of Philosophy is pleased to announce that this year's Chandaria Lecture series will be given by Professor Andy Clark of the University of Edinburgh.

What is the nature of representational content? Can a naturalistic theory or account be given of the content of mental representations? This conference will take stock of the new wave of work on that issue. There will be a particular focus on some of the simpler systems whose operation has been well-characterised by psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Topics to be addressed include: - What role if any do functions play in fixing representational content? - How should such functions be characterised? - What is the role of ‘exploitable relations’ in fixing content?

We currently have a wealth of physiological and perceptual data on the body, but little theoretical tradition, and few scientific theories about what constitutes bodily awareness, what functions it may have, and what mechanisms may generate it. This is the theoretical gap that we would like to fill in a series of seminar meetings by tracking and developing new thinking about somatic experience, bodily awareness, and bodily self in physiology, psychology and philosophy.