Peter King
Seminar Leader, Faculty of Arts
Contact
Biography
I live and work in Nottingham and did my BA and MA here at Nottingham University. I am originally from Nottingham although I have only really lived here in the last 6 years. My main hobby is juggling and circus skills, and I enjoy playing or watching: squash, cricket, mountain biking, golf, backgammon and rugby. I am apparently a 'mature' student since I used to be a Geologist and Geophysicist and gave it up 8 years ago to follow my passion for Philosophy - and it seems to be going quite well so far, having gained government funding for my MA and PhD - after self funding my BA.
Research Summary
My main area of research at the moment is into the work that the imagination does in allowing us to plan our actions and understand the world and ourselves. I am also investigating what phenomenal… read more
Current Research
My main area of research at the moment is into the work that the imagination does in allowing us to plan our actions and understand the world and ourselves. I am also investigating what phenomenal (or episodic) imagination is ontologically and am analysing whether it can be seen as an offline perceptual process. So my approach is a mix between Philosophy of Mind, Perception and Epistemology, which is strongly guided and inspired by psychological research and evolutionary considerations.
My research for the last few years has been focused on our capacity to imagine (ourselves) in another place and/or time. I refer to this as Spatio-Temporal Imagination (STI). I believe, and hope to show, that this mental capacity is crucial to a great number of mental processes, many of which are what make us distinctly human. The foremost of these is the capacity to have hindsight and forethought with which to better plan our future actions, and to have an extended spatio-temporal awareness of our surrounding environment (which includes other intentional agents who's future actions and movements we want to predict - in order to even better guide our future actions).
I am also studying perceptual theories such as Relational Disjunctivism and Modern Naïve Realism; and comparing these with Externalist and Internalist Representationalism. This boils down to analysing what the common core between perception and imagination is and how perception is claimed to work and whether this lends itself to being taken offline. I defend Projectivist Physicalist Non-Reductive Internalist Representationalism and suggest there is a significant overlap between perception and mental imagery.
Hence my studies have interesting things to say about: Mindreading, Episodic Thinking, Mental Time Travel (e.g. memory, foresight), Personal Identity, Phenomenology, Consciousness, Intelligence and the Proper Function of the Imagination. It's possible that the mental disorders of autism and schizophrenia, and individuals with frontal lobe damage and executive function deficits, show classic signs of dysfunctional STI, and studying them may tell us interesting things about what it would be like to lack this capacity. I also have a general interest in: Consciousness and Philosophical Zombies, the Philosophy of Time and Change, Philosophy of Science and investigations into the nature of reality and out access to it. I am a 'New Scientist' and 'Philosophy Now' subscriber.
I welcome any correspondence relevant to any of the above topics and e-mail is usually the best way to do that.
Conference Presentations
- 'What is Spatio-Temporal Imagination and how did it evolve?' - at Mind 2006, Sussex University, Brighton
- 'Is the capacity to imagine a different time and/or place crucial to our ability to plan and behave flexibly?' - at the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology, 2006, Queens University Belfast
- 'What is Episodic Thinking? How does it relate to Spatio-temporal Imagination, Mental Time Travel and Mental Imagery', at the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology, 2008, Utrecht, Holland
- I have also attended the conference on Phenomenal Intentionalist in Reggio Emilia, Italy April 2008
- I have also presented numerous talks to the Nottingham Postgraduate Research group, as well as having had my talks filmed and favourably assessed by the Graduate school.
- I will be attending the conference in Greece on Hallucination in September 2008.
Papers/PhD Chapters in Preparation
- New 'old' arguments against relational perceptual theories
- Eliminating the need to be Eliminativist about the phenomenal character of hallucination
- What is Episodic Thinking and how does it relate to perception, mental time travel and phenomenal imagination.
- Why Externalist Representationalism doesn't work and arguments for Projectivist Internalist Representationalism
- How could imagination be perception offline and how much common core is required?
Key Past Essay/Thesis Topics
- What is the nature and function of Stich and Nichol's (2003) 'Possible World Box'? What role does it play in Pretence and Mindreading and how does this relate to the remit of Recreative Imagination? - MA Thesis
- How important is Spatio-Temporal Imagination to the functioning of the modern human mind? - MA Research Essay
- Is there a plausible theory of how Spatio-Temporal Imagination evolved? What part could this have played in the development of Internal Representations? - MA Research Essay
- Has Chalmers developed a convincing argument to show that zombies are conceivable and that materialism is false? - MA Research EssayWhat are the most plausible theories that about why imagination evolved in humans? - 3rd Year Essay
- What evidence is there that children with autism lack imagination? What, if anything, does this tell us about how important imagination is for human beings? - 3rd Year Essay
- Evolutionary and scientific arguments for the nature and limitations of our access to external reality and their implications for a realist epistemology - 3rd Year Dissertation
- Consciousness in Cognitive Neuroscience - 3rd Year Dissertation with Psychology Department
- How Important Could the Development of a Theory of Mind (ToM) be to the Evolution of the Human Mind and How Might it be a Necessary Precursor to the Development of Language, Society and Culture? - 2nd Year Essay
Teaching Assistant Experience
- Self, Mind and Body (1st year core)
- Reason and Knowledge (2nd year core
- Philosophy of Science (1st and 2nd years)
- Imagination (1st and 2nd years)
- Evolution and Human Nature (1st and 2nd years)
- Philosophy of Science (1st and 2nd years)
- Locke: Appearance and Reality (1st year core)
- Time and Change (1st and 2nd years)
- Emotions (1st and 2nd years)