CFP: Actions: The Mental and the Bodily

Actions: The Mental and the Bodily

6th-7th July - University of Warwick

The study of agency has traditionally payed much more attention to the actions we perform with our body than to the actions we perform with our mind. This two-day conference aims to redress that imbalance by revisiting mental action in light of recent work in philosophy and psychology. The programme will bring together philosophers and psychologists working on different strands of the topic with the hope of yielding new insights and revealing novel lines of enquiry.

Questions to be explored include:

- How should we draw the distinction between bodily and mental action?

- What role does mental action have in the preparation and performance of bodily action?

- What does recent work on cognitive control tell us about mental action and its relationship with bodily action?

- How might emerging models of bodily action be adapted to accommodate mental action?

- Can theories on which action selection is guided by affordance perception be extended to accommodate affordances for mental action?

Confirmed Speakers:

Lucy O'Brien (UCL) & Matthew Soteriou (KCL)

Kath Bicknell (Macquarie) & Wayne Christensen (Warwick)

Lucy Campbell (Warwick)

Tom Crowther (Warwick)

Tom McClelland (Warwick)

We invite abstracts (500 words) for short-talks on the theme of the conference. We welcome contributions from PhD students and early-career researchers. Submissions from under-represented groups are especially encouraged. Talks will be 20mins long with 10mins for questions. Please email submissions to [email protected] by midnight on 18thJanuary 2018.

This conference marks the end of the Leverhulme-funded project 'Mental Action and Cognitive Phenomenology' led by Tom McClelland at the University of Warwick. The event webpage is https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/research/researchcentres/wma/current/mentalaction/conf/