Naturally Evolving Minds: Controversies, Developments, Interventions conference

This event brings together researchers in the philosophy of psychology and cognitive science to explore possible answers to these questions. It will be an occasion to celebrate, launch and engage with topics and themes in three new books – Ruth Millikan’s Beyond Concepts: Unicepts, Language, and Natural Information, OUP, 2017; Shaun Gallagher’s Enactivist Interventions: Rethinking the Mind, OUP 2017; and Daniel D. Hutto and Erik Myin’s Evolving Enactivism: Basic Minds Meet Content, MIT Press, 2017.

The conference will explore questions about the nature of and relation between: information, biological function and cognition; scaffolded cognition and cultural evolution; enactivist and cognitivist approaches to cognitive science; new theories of perceiving; emoting; imagining, remembering; and the role narratives may play in folk psychology, mental time travel, memory and selfhood.

Confirmed speakers include:

20th February 2018: Biological and Scaffolded Minds 

• Ruth Millikan (Distinguished Professor Emerita, University of Connecticut)
• Paul Griffiths (Australian Laureate Fellow, University of Sydney)
• Peter Godfrey Smith (University of Sydney/CUNY)
• Kim Sterelny (Australian Laureate Fellow, Australian National University)

21st February 2018: The Day of RECkoning 

• Daniel D. Hutto (University of Wollongong)
• Erik Myin (University of Antwerp)
• Erik Rietveld(University of Amsterdam) and Ludger van Dijk (University of Antwerp)
• Glenda Satne (University of Wollongong)
• Michael Kirchhoff (University of Wollongong)
• Kourken Michaelian (University of Otago)

22nd February 2018: Rethinking Minds 

• Shaun Gallagher (Lillian and Morrie Moss Chair of Excellence in Philosophy at the University of Memphis/Professorial Fellow, University of Wollongong)
• Jesús Ilundain (Linfield College)
• David Macarthur (University of Sydney)
• Talia Morag (Deakin University)

23rd February 2018: More to the Story – Narratives: Mind, Memory and Self

• Marya Schechtman (University of Illinois at Chicago)
• Richard Menary (ARC Future Fellow, Macquarie University)
• Anika Fiebich (University of Milan)
• John Sutton (Macquarie University)

Contributing Speakers:

• Nikolai Alksnis, LaTrobe University, Melbourne
• Eran Asoulin, Macquarie University
• Massimiliano L. Cappuccio, United Arab Emirates University
• Mark-Oliver Casper, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany
• Manuel Heras Escribano, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile
• Alexander Gillett, Macquarie University
• Paul Hubble, University of Waikato, New Zealand
• Alan Jurgens, University of Wollongong
• Jonggab Kim, Konkuk University, South Korea
• Justine Kingsbury, University of Waikato, New Zealand
• Christian Kronsted, The University of Memphis, USA
• Victor Loughlin, University of Antwerp, Belgium
• Andrés Luco, Nanyang Technological University
• Stephen Mann, Australian National University
• Anco Peeters, University of Wollongong
• Miguel Segundo Ortin, University of Wollongong
• David Spurrett, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
• Anna Strasser, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
• Graham Thomas, Macquarie University
• Samuel Veissière, Maxwell Ramstead & Laurence Kirmayer, McGill University, Montreal
• Graham Wood, University of Tasmania

This conference will be partly funded by the ARC Discovery Project “Minds in Skilled Performance” DP170102987.

View the presentations on YouTube.