Steve Torrance
Research theme
Research interests include consciousness: in particular the relation between cognitive and phenomenal properties of natural and artificial agents; artificial agency and ethics; social interaction between humans and artificial agents; enactive and autopoietic approaches to the understanding of mind, teleology and social interaction.
I have collaborated with colleagues at Sussex on projects in Machine Consciousness (see forthcoming journal issue of Journal of Consciousness Studies , details below). I am also collaborating with Dr Ezequiel Di Paolo and Dr Hanneke De Jaegher of the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience and Robotics at Sussex, on social interaction dynamics and enactive approaches to cognition and agency. We are planning to hold an international interdisciplinary workshop on enaction and social interaction, in the summer of 2008. Other meetings on enaction that I have organized include a 3-day meeting at Oxford in 2003 and a 2-day meeting in Sussex in 2004.
I've recently edited several collections of papers, published as themed journal issues including a two-volume special issue on Enactive Experience: Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences (2 nd volume in progress); a special issue of Ethics and Artificial Agents: Artificial Intelligence and Society; and, with Robert Clowes and Ron Chrisley, a special issue of Journal of Consciousness Studies, on Machine Consciousness: Embodiment and Imagination.
Video and experimental material