The Human Mind Conference

These are exciting times to be studying the mind. The Human Mind Conference is an international, interdisciplinary event bringing together a wide range of experts from across the humanities and the cognitive sciences to discuss key aspects of mental life and experience. The event will provide a major statement of the current state of knowledge in the study of the mind, and it will identify future directions of research for the years to come.

Themes and Questions

The Conference will feature four sessions, each with a distinctive research focus:

Brain & World: Perception & Consciousness

• How are perception and consciousness understood by philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists, and what might we gain from a cross-disciplinary perspective?
• What are the relationships between perception, attention, and consciousness?
• How much of perception is unconscious, and what role does unconscious perception play in our mental lives?
• What has the search for neural correlates of consciousness achieved, and how might it be pursued in the future?

The Human Agent: Intention & Action

• How do human agents reason about what to do?
• What are the relationships between decision, intention and action?
• How can neuroscience and psychology shed light on philosophical questions about agency, such as the questions of free will and free action?
• What is the sense of agency and how should it be explained?  

Self & Other: Social Cognition & Communication

• How do human language and communication work?
• How do human beings understand the minds of others?
• What kinds of skills, abilities or mechanisms sustain human social interactions?
• What role does culture play in the formation of the human mind?

The Subject’s Point of View: Intentionality & Emotion

1. What is it for human thoughts and feelings to represent the world?
2. What are the relationships between meaning, mental representation and information?
3. What are the emotions? In what ways are they shaped by history and culture?
4. How do the psychological and neural mechanisms of emotion underlie the subject’s point of view on the world?

Call for Poster

We invite abstracts for poster presentations on any topic related to the conference themes from PhD students and early career researchers (no more than 5 years from completion of PhD). Abstracts should not exceed 500 words and should be suitably prepared for submission through EasyChair. To submit, please visit our website here: www.humanmindconference.com/cfp

The deadline for receipt of abstracts is 21st April 2017. Authors will be notified within the following two weeks. If you have any queries, please get in touch by email: [email protected]

We strongly encourage submissions from those from under-represented groups in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience.

Registration to the conference will be free for poster presenters.

Organisation

The Human Mind Conference is a collaboration between the New Directions in the Study of the Mind Project, University of Cambridge and The Human Mind Project, School of Advanced Study, University of London.

Everyone is welcome. Places are limited and will be allocated on a first come, first serve basis.

Any queries? Get in touch by email: [email protected]

Event hashtag: #humanmind2017