>From: Ian Pitchford <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Ian Pitchford <[log in to unmask]>
>
>Subject: Innateness and the Structure of the Mind
>Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2002 12:04:54 +0100
>
>The First Annual ARHB Conference on
>Innateness and the Structure of the Mind
>Conference Topic: The Structure of the Innate Mind
>3rd - 6th July 2002
>Earnshaw Hall, University of Sheffield, England
>
>
>This interdisciplinary conference will investigate the nature of the innate
>capacities, processes, representations, biases, and connections in the
>human mind. What elements of the mind are plausibly innate? How do these
>innate elements feed into a story about the development of our mature
>cognitive capacities? Which of these elements are shared with other members
>of the animal kingdom? What is the structure of the innate mind?
>
>
>
>Invited Speakers
>(subject to final confirmation)
>
> Scott Atran
> Paris and Michigan
> Rochel Gelman
> Rutgers Paul Pietroski
> Maryland
> Mark Baker
> Rutgers Susan Gelman
> Michigan
> Daniel Povinelli
> Southwestern Louisiana
> Paul Bloom
> Yale Lila Gleitman
> Penn Richard Samuels
> Kings College London
> David Buss
> Texas Stephen Laurence
> Sheffield Brian Scholl
> Yale
>
> Peter Carruthers
> Maryland David Lightfoot
> Georgetown Elizabeth Spelke
> Harvard
> Leda Cosmides
> USCB Gary Marcus
> NYU Dan Sperber
> CNRS
> Stephen Crain
> Maryland Eric Margolis
> Rice Helen Tager-Flusberg
> Boston
> Randy Gallistel
> Rutgers Geoffrey Miller
> New Mexico John Tooby
> USCB
> David Papineau
> Kings College London
>
>
>Click for costs and a registration form as a word document or as a .pdf
>file (using Adobe Acrobat Reader).
>
>Or contact:
>
> Conference on The Structure of the Innate Mind
> Department of Philosophy
> University of Sheffield
> Sheffield
> S10 2TN
>
> email: [log in to unmask]
>
>This conference is the first of a three-year project sponsored by the Arts
>& Humanties Research Board of the United Kingdom. Additional funding for
>the project provided by the Cognitive Studies Group at the University of
>Maryland, the Research Group on Evolution and Higher Cognition at Rutgers
>University, and the Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies at the
>University of Sheffield.
>
>http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/phil/AHRB-Project/YearOneConference.html
>
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>The AHRB Project on
>Innateness and the Structure of the Mind
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Details of the first annual conference of the project are now available
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>The Innateness and the Structure of the Mind project is a major new three
>year interdisciplinary project investigating the current status and most
>promising future directions of nativist research. The project is funded
>primarily by a major research grant from the Arts & Humanties Research
>Board (for £310,000, awarded to Stephen Laurence, the project Director).
>The project is also funded by the Cognitive Studies Group at the University
>of Maryland, led by Peter Carruthers, the Research Group on Evolution and
>Higher Cognition at Rutgers University, led by Stephen Stich, and the Hang
>Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies, Co-Directed by GeorgeBotterill and
>Stephen Laurence.
>
>Following many years of neglect, nativist theorizing is now thriving. This
>resurgence owes much to the pioneering arguments of Noam Chomsky, which
>have stimulated a great deal of productive work in linguistics and
>cognitive psychology. But nativist theorizing has also received a powerful
>impetus from work in genetics and evolutionary biology, as biological
>thinking has begun to permeate psychology and philosophy of mind. As a
>result of these influences, there has been a huge amount of work in the
>cognitive sciences inspired by nativist theorizing in the past 15 or 20
>years.
>
>By bringing together many of the top researchers in philosophy and
>cognitive science to investigate basic philosophical questions and issues
>surrounding the doctrine of nativism, the project aims:
>
> a.. to undertake a comprehensive assessment of where nativist theorizing
>stands now, and determine what directions future research should take,
> b.. to foster cross-disciplinary interaction aimed at achieving a
>synthesis of distinct strands of nativist thinking,
> c.. to produce a series of three volumes which present a comprehensive
>overview of contemporary nativist thought and provide the definitive
>reference point for future nativist enquiry.
>The project will be centred around three sets of research questions, to be
>tackled in successive years.
>
>
>Year One: The Structure of the Innate Mind
>
> The first year of the project will be primarily concerned with the
>fundamental architecture of the mind. What capacities, processes,
>representations, biases, and connections are innate? How do these innate
>elements feed into a story about the development of our mature cognitive
>capacities, and which of them are shared with other members of the animal
>kingdom? While these issues are related to traditional philosophical
>concerns dating back at least to Plato, in recent years, philosophers,
>psychologists, ethologists and others have increasingly been drawing on one
>another's resources to piece together a picture of the structure of the
>innate mind and its developmental trajectory.
>
>Year Two: Culture and the Innate Mind
>
> The second year of the project will be primarily concerned with the
>interaction of culture and the innate mind. To what extent are mature
>cognitive capacities a reflection of particular cultures and to what extent
>are they a product of innate elements? How do innate elements interact with
>culture to achieve mature cognitive capacities? How do minds generate and
>shape cultures? How are cultures processed by minds? In recent years,
>cognitive science and the philosophy of mind have been undergoing a sort of
>glasnost. Much of this new freedom is the result of the integration of
>biological thinking into philosophy and cognitive science, in part through
>evolutionary psychology. Philosophers, psychologists, and others have
>turned their attention to the cognitive bases and evolutionary significance
>of creativity, art, religion, love, sport, morality, science, and war. This
>new work has not only turned up many entirely new questions, but it has
>also shed considerable new light on many old issues. Among other things, it
>has raised the prospect of new models of development, resulting from
>detailed case studies of both the universal and the culturally variable
>aspects of emotions, for example, or of moral thought.
>
>Year Three: Foundational Issues
>
> In recent years, a number of conceptual issues have arisen concerning
>the notion of innateness and a variety of related theoretical terms
>including 'instinct', 'learning', 'hereditability', 'canalisation',
>'universality', 'information', 'genetically coded', 'nature', 'nurture',
>and 'environment'. Clarifying the nature of these various theoretical terms
>is an important and pressing task. In addition, nativist theorizing is
>currently thriving in a wide variety of different areas: linguistics,
>developmental psychology, ethology and comparative psychology, evolutionary
>psychology, developmental genetics, neuropsychology, and philosophy of
>mind. This raises many important theoretical questions about how such
>different broadly nativist approaches and methodologies can best be
>integrated with one another.
>
>Participants in the project include:
>
>
>
> Scott Atran (Paris/Michigan) Charles Galllistel (Rutgers) Olivier
>Pascalis (Sheffield)
> Mark Baker (Rutgers) Merideth Gattis (Sheffield) Paul Pietroski
>(UMD)
> Simon Baron-Cohen (Cambridge) Rochel Gelman (Rutgers) Steven Pinker
>(MIT)
> Ned Block (NYU) Susan Gelman (Michigan) Daniel Povinelli (USL)
> Paul Bloom (Yale) Marcus Giaquinto (UCL) Georges Rey (UMD)
> George Botterill (Sheffield) Gerd Gigerenzer (Max Planck) Edmund
>Rolls (Oxford)
> Robert Boyd (UCLA/Berlin) Lila Gleitman (Penn) Paul Rozin (Penn)
> David Buss (Texas) Peter Godfrey-Smith (Stanford) Richard Samuels
>(KCL)
> Brian Butterworth (UCL) Juan Carlos Gomez (St. Andrews) Brian
>Scholl (Yale)
> Susan Carey (Harvard) Patricia Greenspan (UMD) Gabriel Segal (KCL)
> Peter Carruthers (UMD) Paul Griffiths (Pitt) Richard Shweder
>(Chicago)
> Leda Cosmides (UCSB) Marc Hauser (Harvard) Michael Siegal
>(Sheffield)
> Fiona Cowie (Caltech) Joe Henrich (Emory/Berlin) Tom Simpson
>(Sheffield)
> Stephen Crain (UMD) Norbert Hornstein (UMD) Elizabeth Spelke
>(Harvard)
> Lee Cronk (Rutgers) Susan Johnson (Stanford) Dan Sperber (Paris)
> Greg Currie (Nottingham) Richard Joyce (Sheffield) Stephen Stich
>(Rutgers)
> Jules Davidoff (London Goldsmiths) Stephen Laurence (Sheffield)
>Karin Stromswold (Rutgers)
> Richard Davidson (Wisconsin) David Lightfoot (UMD) Helen
>Tager-Flusberg (Boston)
> Stanislas Dehaene (Paris) Catherine Lutz (UNC) Peter Todd (Max
>Planck)
> Franz de Waal (Yerkes) Gary Marcus (NYU) John Tooby (UCSB)
> Michael Devitt (CUNY) Eric Margolis (Rice) Heather van der Lely
>(UCL)
> Sue Dwyer (Maryland) Geoffrey Miller (New Mexico) Rosemary Varley
>(Sheffield)
> Paul Ekman (UCSF) Richard Nisbett (Michigan) Denis Walsh (Edinburgh)
> Keith Frankish (Open) David Papineau (KCL) Fei Xu (Northeastern)
>
>
>
>Three major interdisciplinary conferences are planned for the years
>2002-2004, all to held under the auspices of the HSCCS at the University of
>Sheffield. The first of these annual conferences will be held July 3-6,
>2002.
>
>http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/phil/AHRB-Project/index.html
>
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