Mind and cognition

The intersection of philosophy of mind and cognitive science, specialising in embodiment, consciousness, perception, action, and situated reason

Mind and cognition is an inherently interdisciplinary and fast-moving field, in which Edinburgh ranks among the world leaders.

The group benefit hugely from research and faculty in the nearby School of Informatics (ranked number 1 in the last two UK Research Assessment Exercises) which brings together research in Computer Science, Cognitive Science, Computational Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence.

We also enjoy regular contact with Psychology (especially Human Cognitive Neuroscience), Linguistics (especially the unique and world-leading Centre for Language Evolution), and Music (especially the Institute for Music and Human Development).

Research questions

Focal topics for our research include:

The debates concerning extended and embodied cognitionThe metaphysics and epistemology of mind
The nature of perception and perceptual experienceBounded and situated reason
The nature of computationPredictive coding and neurocomputational approaches to mind
Agency and the willThe epistemological ramifications of extended cognition
Phenomenology and consciousness 

People

Core faculty working in this area include:

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Research interests
Mazviita ChirimuutaDr Chirimuuta’s main area of research, currently, is the philosophy of computational neuroscience. She is examining computational explanations of neural processes and asking how these models can inform philosophical theorising about cognitive processes such as vision. She maintains an interest in philosophy of perception and is happy to supervise projects in this area.
Alistair IsaacPhilosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of science.
Jane Suilin LavellePhilosophy of psychology, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, moral psychology, philosophy of science.
Aidan McGlynnEpistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind.
Mark SprevakPhilosophy of mind, philosophy of science, metaphysics, philosophy of language.
Nick TreanorMetaphysics, epistemology and the philosophy of mind.
Tillmann VierkantPhilosophy of mind, free will, mental actions, mindreading, consciousness, implicit/explicit mental processing, neuroethics, philosophy of psychology and of cognitive science.
David WardPhilosophy of mind and cognitive science.

Other faculty and post-docs with an interest in mind and cognition include:

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Research interests
Pauline PhemisterEarly modern philosophy, embodied values.
Mike RidgeEthics, political philosophy, action theory, epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language

Miranda Anderson

(History)

Parallels and contrasts between recent philosophical theories on the embodied and extended mind, and analogous ideas in literary, philosophical, and scientific texts from the fifteenth and early-seventeenth century.

Simon Kirby

(Linguistics)

Origins and evolution of language; cultural evolution; bridging scientific and artistic practice.

Robert McIntosh

(Psychology)

Neural control of visual perception and visually-guided action in humans.

Paul Schweizer

(Informatics)

Philosophical logic, the computational paradigm and conceptual foundations of cognitive science and AI, philosophy of mind and language.

Mark Steedman

(Informatics)

Computational linguistics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computational music analysis, combinatory logic.

Barbara Webb

(Informatics)

Question answering, bioinformatics, discourse, natural language semantics, knowledge representation and inference.

Postgraduate study

Meetings and events

The group organises one of the university's most diverse interdisciplinary reading group: a bi-weekly interdisciplinary seminar uniting Philosophy, Psychology, Neuroscience, Linguistics and Informatics (the PPIG series). We also organise the computational mind reading group.

Philosophy, psychology and informatics (PPIG) reading group

Past conferences and workshops in mind and cognition

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