Mind Network

Special issue of the Review of Philosophy and Psychology

Guest Editors:

Daniel D Hutto, University of Hertfordshire

Mitchell Herschbach, University of California, San Diego

Victoria Southgate, University of London

Deadline for submissions: 1 December 2010

Human beings, even very young infants, exhibit remarkable capacities for attending to, and engaging with, other minds. A prevalent account of such abilities is that they involve “theory of mind” or “mindreading”: the ability to represent mental states as mental states of specific kinds (i.e., to have concepts of “belief,” “desire,” etc.) and the contents of such mental states. A number of philosophers and psychologists question the standard mindreading and wider representationalist framework for characterizing and explaining our everyday modes and methods of understanding other people. One possibility is that infants may be exhibiting sophisticated yet non-conceptual, and possibly non-representational, mind tracking abilities that do not equate to any sort of mindreading.

Proponents on both sides of this debate must adequately accommodate recent work in developmental psychology. Experiments involving a variety of nonverbal tasks—e.g., the “violation of expectation” paradigm and anticipatory looking tasks, as well as nonverbal tasks involving more active responses—suggest that young infants can understand others’ goals, intentions, desires, knowledge/ignorance, and beliefs. Perhaps most prominent are studies suggesting infants as young as 13 months of age are selectively responsive to the false beliefs of others, well before they are able to reliably pass standard verbal false belief tasks around 4 years of age.

This special issue of the Review of Philosophy and Psychology aims to create a dialogue between the mindreading and non-mindreading approaches to basic social cognition. Contributors are asked to clarify their theoretical commitments; explain how their accounts compare with rivals; and how they propose to handle the emerging empirical data, particularly that from human developmental psychology. Themes and questions to be addressed include but are not limited to:

• Infants as young as 13 months old display a systematic sensitivity to the beliefs of others. Does it follow that they must be operating with a concept of belief, or indeed, any concepts at all?
• Normally developing children become able to attribute false beliefs to others between the ages of 3 and 5. Does it follow that they must be operating with a “theory of mind” or the equivalent?
• What does mental attribution minimally involve? What exactly distinguishes mindreading from non-mindreading approaches to early social cognition? Are there theoretical reasons to prefer one over the other?
• What exact roles are mental representations thought to play in mindreading approaches? What kind of mental representations might be involved? Can a principled dividing line be drawn between representational and non-representational approaches?
• How precisely should we understand the explicit/implicit distinction as invoked by certain theorists?

Invited contributors

• José Luis Bermúdez, Texas A&M University
• Pierre Jacob, Institut Jean Nicod
• Andrew Meltzoff, University of Washington

Important dates

• Submission deadline: 1 December 2010
• Target publication date: July 2011

How to submit

Prospective authors should register at: https://www.editorialmanager.com/ropp to obtain a login and select “Social Cognition: Mindreading and Alternatives” as an article type to submit a manuscript. Manuscripts should be no longer than 8,000 words. Submissions should follow the author guidelines available on the journal’s website: http://www.springer.com/13164

Any questions? Please email the guest editors:

d.d.hutto@herts.ac.uk, mherschb@ucsd.edu, v.southgate@bbk.ac.uk

Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Moral Cognition

At the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics

• Protocol reference number: HUM/09100F/E
• Grade 7: £28,983 – £35,646 per annum at 1 October 2009
• Fixed-term for two years from date of appointment

Applications are invited for a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to work on a project that is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, and jointly hosted by the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics (both of which are within the Faculty of Philosophy). The project is entitled Emotion and Intuition in Moral Decision?Making: Empirical Evidence and Ethical Implications.

The fellowship is for two years from the date of appointment. The Research Fellow will be based at the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics, which is located at Littlegate House in central Oxford, where the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics is also based.

The Research Fellow’s primary role will be to conduct research for the project, by studying the philosophical and ethical implications of scientific accounts of morality, and will also be an integral part of the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics. In addition to research responsibilities, s/he will be expected to contribute in other ways which may include, for example, involvement in conference or other event organisation and editing a collected volume.

The successful candidate will have a strong academic background in one or more of the following: (1) moral philosophy or a branch of ethics (2) philosophy of mind/psychology/neuroscience, (3) empirical research on moral decision?making; and an outstanding research record. By the date of appointment, applicants will be expected to have received (or submitted their thesis for) the degree of PhD (or equivalent).

Further particulars, including details about how to apply are available from the following websites: www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/vacancies

www.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/vacancies.htm

or directly from Nicholas Iles, Suite 8, Littlegate House, Oxford Centre for Neuroethics, University of Oxford, Littlegate House 16 – 17 St Ebbes Street, Oxford, OX1 1PT (telephone: +44 1865 286279; email: Nicholas.iles@philosophy.ox.ac.uk)

The deadline for receipt of applications is Noon (GMT) on Friday, 6 August 2010