New Work in the Theory of Mind

The "New Work in the Theory of Mind" graduate conference aims to bring together students and researchers in order advance our understanding of how we come to interact, either by using a theory of mind framework or by emerging alternative accounts.

The conference will take place 10-11 February 2023. It will have a mixed format, in that speakers may choose whether they present online only or face to face at the event's location (if so, their session will enjoy a live audience, but it will also be streamed to remote participants).

Keynote speakers:

Shaun Gallagher (University of Memphis and University of Wollongong)

Daniel Hutto (University of Wollongong)

Topic areas:

• Folk Psychology and narrative practices (folk psychology, understanding reasons, intentional attitudes/ propositional attitudes, representational-computational ToM/ radical of E-cognition)
• An alternative to theory of mind (theory of mind/ interaction theory, false-belief tasks and pretend play, narrative competencies and intersubjective abilities, action and interaction)

Programme:  (All times below are for Bucharest, Romania.)

Friday, February 10

08:45 Opening remarks (Andrei Mărăşoiu, University of Bucharest, hybrid)

9.00 Keynote Daniel Hutto (University of Wollongong, online), “Where Are We Now? Rival Possibilities and Frameworks”

10:30 Alan Jurgens (University of Wollongong, online), “Theories of Mind and False-Belief Task Know-How”

Lunch break

15.00 Marco Facchin (Istituto Universitario di Studi Superiori IUSS Pavia, online) & Zuzanna Rucinska (Antwerp University, online), “Enactive Pretending without Folk Psychology”

15:55 David Sánchez (University of Granada, online), “Ecological Mindshaping. From Attention to Intention and Social Cognition”

16:50 Agata Machcewicz-Grad (University of Warsaw, online), “Escaping Embodied Social Cognition: in Defence of Mindreading”

17:45  Roundtable  

Saturday, February 11

12:00 Elizabeth Beckman (University of Michigan, hybrid), “Moral Responsibility for Empathic Failures”

12:55 Sandra Brânzaru (University of Bucharest, hybrid), “What is Narrative Competence?”

Lunch break

16: 55 Cătălin Teoharie (University of Bucharest, hybrid), “New approach in Theory of Mind using the Free Energy Principle Framework”

17:50 Nimra Asif (University of Connecticut, online), “Minimal Theory of Mind and Pushmi-pullyu Representations”              

18:45 Keynote Shaun Gallagher (University of Memphis, online), “Interaction in the Wild”

 20:15 Roundtable

For any questions, please don't hesitate to email [email protected] You may register at the same address (or by RSVP here on PhilEvents) on or before February 8th in order to receive the Zoom connection details.

The conference is organized with the support of graduate students in the “Mind the Brain” master’s programme in cognitive science within the Department for Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Bucharest. More details about the programme are available here: https://filosofie.unibuc.ro/master-of-arts-in-cognitive-science-mind-the-brain/

The conference is at its second edition, following the “Consciousness and Reality” graduate conference organized in June 2022, which enjoyed keynote talks from Mircea Dumitru (University of Bucharest), Gualtiero Picinnini (University of  Missouri) and Hong Yu Wong (University of Tȕbingen). More details about that conference are available here: https://philevents.org/event/show/99970

For those of you who would like to join some of the meetings but have overlapping commitments, we will do our best to record the meetings whenever everyone in attendance consents to it, and to then upload the recordings on the Department's YouTube channel. Previous talks are available here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOgUq3dN8CXI4L6DhZT1f_Q

Stay tuned, as there will be weekly announcements concerning the titles and abstracts of upcoming talks on the Facebook page titled "Seminarul Departamentului de Filosofie Teoretica UniBuc". Some of the department's recent events are also listed at https://philevents.org/event/show/105249 for 2022-23 and at  https://philevents.org/event/show/93365 for 2021-22.