Reflection and Self-Governance in Human and Machine Intelligence

Susanna Schellenberg (Rutgers - New Brunswick)

We are pleased to announce our monthly online talk series on "Inferences & Capacities."

Our next speaker is:

Susanna Schellenberg (Rutgers)
"Reflection and Self-Governance in Human and Machine Intelligence"

June 22: 11am (Buenos Aires), 10am (New York), 4pm (Berlin).

Abstract: Our capacity for reflection and self-governance allows us to introspect on our thoughts and preferences, engage in metacognition, and evaluate our progress on projects while reconfiguring our approach as needed. Despite being central to human intelligence, reflection has received marginal attention in developing artificial intelligence. There are burgeoning signs of an artificial equivalent of our capacity for reflection. To illustrate, so-called self-attention mechanisms and metacognition in Large Language Models, meta-reinformecemnt learning moduls, and self-improving systems can each be argued to be examples of systems that possess the capacity for reflection. However, in each case, the capacity is rigid in its scope compared our human capacity, and it developed as a side-effect of pursuing other goals. To date, no explicit attention has been directed at artificially replicating this central element of human intelligence. The paper argues that a general capacity for reflection and self-governance is key to bringing AI to the next level.

How to participate: Please, send an email to Alfredo Vernazzani at: 

alfredo-vernazzani AT protonmail.com

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• About Inferences & Capacities:

The series brings together work on inferential capacities, rationality, normativity, and cognition — across both human and non-human animals — with the aim of fostering discussion on the nature and limits of the cognitive sphere.  

2026 line-up:  

April 27: Angelica Kaufmann (University of Milan): "Mind Blanking as Mental Imagery." 

May 18: Federico Burdman (Universidad Alberto Hurtado) "Constrained choices: addiction, attention, and reasons-responsiveness." 

June 22: Susanna Schellenberg (Rutgers): TBA 

July 20: Cameron Buckner (University of Florida): "Chains-of-Thought, Inner Speech, and Artificial Epistemic Agency."

September 7: Ulf Hlobil (Concordia University): TBA  

October 19: Eva Schmidt (TU Dortmund): TBA 

November 16: Hans-Johann Glock (University of Zürich): "Is Ascribing Inferences to Brains or Non-human Animals a Fallacy?" 

December 14: Emma Borg (SAS, University of London): "Twitches, Fidgets, Habits, Skills: The Scope of Common-Sense Psychology." 

Each talk lasts c. 40 minutes followed by 40 minutes open Q&A.  

The series is co-organized by:

Mariela Aguilera (University of Córdoba)

Matías Osta-Vélez (Universidad de la República)

Alfredo Vernazzani (TU Dortmund; Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg).

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