Memorandum

To: Professor Selmer Bringsjord , Project Advisor
Office of Undergraduate and Continuing Education
From: Geoff Ginader, Undergraduate Researcher
Date: March 4, 1996
RE: Undergraduate Research Project Research Plan

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Overall Project Objective: To obtain experience in contributing to a philosophical and scientific rebuttal to a proposed consciousness model in the field of Cognitive Science while earning philosophy credit at the 400 level to apply towards a concentration in Cognitive Science.

Parent Project Description: Dennett puts forth a case for the "multiple drafts" view of consciousness by drawing inferences from a visual phenomenon traditionally called the phi phenomenon. The project in progress seeks to show that Dennett's inferences are incorrect by showing that the phi phenomenon is consistent with traditional views of consciousness using replicated experiments of the phenomenon.

Phase Objectives:

• Understand Bringsjord, Bringsjord, and Noel's motive and strategy for phi research and attack on Dennett from a Cognitive Science perspective.
• Understand the scientific conditions of the phi experiment with the purpose of creating an application for the World Wide Web (WWW) to demonstrate the experiment.
• Create an interactive WWW application using Sun Microsystems' new Java programming language. Include system adjusters and feedback page for online visitors.
• Produce written and online manuals detailing user operation of the application.
• Produce written manual detailing code structure for future maintenance on application.
• Produce written paper explaining the value of the application to Cognitive Science.
  
• Time permitting, create an application to allow WWW users to adjust parameters for computer based story generation.

Project Deadline: May 8, 1996

Project References:

Kolers and Grunau, "Shape and Color in Apparent Motion" in Vision Research, Vol. 16, 1976, pp. 329-335.

Dennett, D (1991) Consciousness Explained (Boston, MA: Little, Brown).

(others as suggested by advisor)

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