Aug 25: Your Self in Cyber-Space – Perils and Promises

Join the UBC B.R.A.I.N. Lab and experts with diverse backgrounds to discuss opportunities and risks brought by our increasing involvement with digital reality. This public event is presented as part of a PWIAS International Research Roundtable on “The addicted self in the age of information technology: exploring the mind’s propensity for habitual and compulsive interactions”.

We will specifically explore the how digital reality can reframe our notion of self-identity and other aspects of our mind, as well as how digital reality can support or harm mental health.

Our speakers are:

• Trisha Chakrabarty, MD, FRCPC
• Tom Froese, PhD in Cognitive Science
• Mirjana Prpa, PhD in Interactive Arts and Technology
• UBC ESports Association

Background

Neuroscience has characterized brain mechanisms related to addiction, including information technology addiction (e.g., internet, video gaming and online betting). It has remained unclear how these findings on brain mechanisms relate to our understanding of mental processes, such as the “self”, and deliberate, habitual and addictive interactions.

Our commonsense intuitions of a “self” as an irreducible conscious intentional agent has been challenged by findings in diverse fields such as cognitive sciences, philosophy, and artificial intelligence. But the relationships between intuitions, brain mechanisms and science-based conceptualizations of mental processes have received little attention.

The multidisciplinary roundtable explores the current concept of the “self” as it pertains to deliberate, habitual, and addicted interactions of the individual with information technology, testing the utility of embodied and enactive concepts as comprehensive integrating approaches.