This fall I am teaching two regular courses (Introduction to Philosophical Problems and Philosophy of Mind) and one short course in Colgate’s Life Long Learning Program.
Last Spring (2022), I co-taught a course on the philosophy and neuroscience of sensory perception with my colleague Jason Meyers. We brought together students from our respective disciplines to explore empirical and philosophical questions about the conscious sensory perceptions that mark all of our waking moments. How are they produced? Can they be shared? When and why are they unreliable? We did some eating along with our discussing, as many key questions are usefully explored in reference to flavor: do we taste fat, carbonation, and chili pepper? Or should our perception of texture and heat be classified differently from our perception of acidity and salt? Flavor perception even connects to questions of responsibility: if you don’t like broccoli, is that because you can’t, or because you won’t?
