Biography

Director, Centre for Research in Cognitive Science (COGS)
Director, Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Programme in Cognitive Science
Director, MA in the Philosophy of Cognitive Science
Click here to view his homepage.

• Artificial mentality, especially artificial intelligence, artificial emotion and artificial consciousness ("machine consciousness")
• Non-conceptual representation and experience (e.g., animal and infant cognition)
• Philosophy of computation
• Philosophy of mind

A significant strand in Ron's research focuses on non-conceptual content: ways of representing the world that are less objective than we usually think adult human cognition is. For example, he is interested in how animals and robots navigate through and represent space, as well as how infants represent their environment before they have the concept of object. On the philosophical side of things, this interest compels him to look for a means of talking precisely about these pre-objective representations. On the scientific side of things, he is looking to develop an appropriate computational architecture for psychological theories of pre-objective representation. There are several reasons to believe that connectionist architectures are more suited to non-conceptual analyses than are classical architectures. In the past he has developed a connectionist architecture that permits an autonomous robot to build cognitive maps of its environment. He has also investigated how this architecture might also be used as a model of both the both systematic and non-systematic aspects of human visual object representation. Ron has several other research interests, including the philosophy of computation (What is computation? Under what conditions can we say that a physical system implements a computation? To what extent must we make reference to the environment of a computational system when characterizing/explaining it?), problems in the theory of representation/content (the disjunction problem, critiques of teleosemantics, etc.), and conceptual issues surrounding the problems of consciousness.

For 2003-2004:

• Postgraduate courses:
  • Philosophy of Mind
  • (Issues in) Philosophy of Cognitive Science 1: The Representational Theory of Mind
  • (Issues in) Philosophy of Cognitive Science 2: Mind Embodied and Embedded
  • (Issues in) Emotion and Consciousness
• Supervising 9 research students

Clowes, Robert W and Chrisley, Ron (2012) Virtualist representation. International Journal of Machine Consciousness, 4 (2). pp. 503-522. ISSN 1793-8430

Chrisley, Dr Ron, Amir, H, Igor, A, Allan, B, Leslie, S and Vassilis, C, eds. (2010) Brain Inspired Cognitive Systems 2008. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, Vol. 657 . Springer. ISBN 978-0-387-79099-2

Chrisley, Ron (2009) Artificial intelligence and the study of consciousness. Oxford University Press.

Chrisley, Ron (2009) Synthetic Phenomenology. International Journal of Machine Consciousness, 1 (1). pp. 53-70. ISSN 17938430

Hussain, Amir, Aleksander, Igor, Smith, Leslie S and Chrisley, Ron (2009) Brain inspired cognitive systems (BICS). Neurocomputing, 72 (4-6). pp. 683-684. ISSN 0925-2312

Chrisley, Ron (2008) Philosophical foundations of artificial consciousness. Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, 44 (2). pp. 119-137. ISSN 09333657

Chrisley, Ron (2008) Painting an experience: Las Meninas, consciousness, and the aesthetic mode. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 15 (9). pp. 40-45. ISSN 13558250

Chrisley, Ron and Parthemore, Joel (2007) Robotic Specification of the Non-Conceptual Content of Visual Experience. In: Proceedings of the AAAI Fall Symposium on "Consciousness and Artificial Intelligence: Theoretical foundations and current approaches".

Chrisley, Ron (2007) Natural intensions. Interdisciplines [web conference: adaptation and representation, 29 October 2007].

Clowes, Robert, Torrance, Steve and Chrisley, Ron (2007) Machine Consciousness: Embodiment and Imagination. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 14 (7). pp. 7-14. ISSN 00796123

Chrisley, Ron and Parthemore, Joel (2007) Synthetic Phenomenology: Exploiting Embodiment to Specify the Non-Conceptual Content of Visual Experience. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 14 (7). pp. 44-58. ISSN 1355-8250

Chrisley, Ron (2006) Consciousness as Depiction: Review of The World in my Mind, My Mind in the World: Key Mechanisms of Consciousness in People, Animals and Machines by Igor Aleksander. Centre for Research in Cognitive Science (COGS) and Department of Informatics, University of Sussex, Brighton.

Chrisley, Ron and Morse, Anthony (2005) The SEER Project: Robotic Experiments in Subsymbolic Psychology. Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour Quarterly (120). 3 and 8. ISSN 0268-4179

Chrisley, Ron (2005) Abstract of "Two problems for Higher-Order Thought Theories of Consciousness". Unset.

Sloman, A and Chrisley, R L (2005) More Things than are Dreamt of in your Biology: Information Processing in Biologically-inspired Robots. Cognitive Systems Research, 6 (2). pp. 145-174. ISSN 1389-0417

Chrisley, Ron, Clowes, Rob and Torrance, Steve (2005) Next-generation approaches to machine consciousness. In: Proceedings of the AISB05 Symposium on Next Generation approaches to Machine Consciousness: Imagination, Development, Intersubjectivity, and Embodiment.

Sloman, Aaron, Chrisley, Ron and Scheutz, Matthias (2005) The architectural basis of affective states and processes. In: Who needs emotions?: The brain meets the robot. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 203-244. ISBN 0195166191

Chrisley, Ron (2004) Artificial Intelligence. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Chrisley, Ronald and Ziemke, Tom (2003) Embodiment. Macmillan.

Chrisley, Ron (2003) Embodied artificial intelligence. Artificial Intelligence, 149 (1). pp. 131-150. ISSN 00043702

Sloman, Aaron and Chrisley, Ron (2003) Virtual machines and consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 10 (4-5). pp. 133-172. ISSN 1355-8250

Chrisley, Ron and Sloman, Aaron (2002) How Velmans' conscious experiences affected our brains. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 9 (11). pp. 58-63. ISSN 1355-8250

Chrisley, Ron (2002) Some foundational issues concerning anticipatory systems. International Journal of Computing Anticipatory Systems, 11. pp. 3-18. ISSN 1373-5411

Chrisley, Ron (2001) A View From Anywhere: Prospects for an Objective Understanding of Consciousness. In: Dimensions of Conscious Experience. Advances in Consciousness Research (37). John Benjamins Publishing, pp. 3-13. ISBN 9789027251572

Chrisley, Dr Ron, ed. (2000) Artificial Intelligence: Critical Concepts. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-1933-11

Chrisley, Ron (1999) Singular Terms and Reference: Evans and 'Julius'. Electronic Journal of Analytical Philosophy, 6 (4). ISSN 10715800

Chrisley, Ron (1996) Non-conceptual psychological explanation: content and computation. Unset thesis, University of Oxford.

Chrisley, Ron (1995) Why Everything Doesn't Realize Every Computation. Minds and Machines, 4 (40). 403 - 420.