The Reflective Mind Workshop

Human beings, like many other animals, think and act intelligently to achieve their aims. But unlike most – perhaps all – other animals, we are also able to think about thoughts themselves, or ‘metarepresent’, and engage in deliberate, critical reasoning. Both abilities are manifestations of our nature as reflective beings, and arguably central to human nature. Philosophers have long sought to understand each of these two human abilities, but hitherto largely in isolation, as a result leaving many important questions unanswered. The project aims to be a systematic, integrated study of the interconnections between reasoning and metarepresentation, exploring how they are jointly exercised in central domains of mentality, including self-awareness, autonomous action, and communication.

This is a workshop to launch the 3-year research project 'The Reflective Mind', based at the Centre for the Study of Mind in Nature, University of Oslo, and funded by the Research Council of Norway.

No need to register in advance. All who are interested are welcome.

For more details, including abstracts of the talks, see: