COGNITIO 2011
The time has come to turn our attention to “nonhuman minds”: to reflect on other minds, on minds that could have been and on minds that could be. Do our primate cousins have minds? And what about other animals? Does it make sense to think of “robot minds” and “artificial minds” in general?
Knowing about the varieties of minds, both actual and possible (technologically or conceptually), may help us to better understand the design space of minds: what are its dimensions, what is its internal structure, and what design principle(s) govern the passage from one point in the space to another.
Perhaps we will find that the human mind is an anomaly. Perhaps Homo sapiens is the only mindful creature that has ever existed and will ever exist. Or perhaps, in the tradition of pedestal smashing (as Stephen Jay Gould called the successive epoch changing scientific discoveries that dethroned humans from their self-declared status as the “center of creation”), we will find that human minds are but a tiny speck in a vast space of possible minds.
Knowing about the varieties of minds can also help us understand how all actual minds (current and past), including our own, came to be. Assuming that minds result from the gradual evolution of brains and bodies, knowing about the minds of other animal species may help us understand how the variety of minds connects with the evolution of brains. If we discover general principles governing those mappings, we may the able to predict what minds extinct hominins or related primate species are likely to have (or have had).
Finally, learning about robots and artificial minds might help us to prepare the future, to adapt our laws and institutions to new citizens in the community of the mindful. Or perhaps not: we may indeed decide that having a mind is not so special after all. Maybe it does not deserve special ethical treatment or institutional change, and maybe we should reserve our ethical concern for minds possessing some special features (consciousness is the obvious choice) or for some other features of beings (life, regardless of the possession of a mind).
Website:http://cognitio.uqam.ca/2011/
Young Researchers Conference in Cognitive Science
Montréal
July 3, 4 and 5 2011
Cognitio is a young researcher’s conference now held every two years at the Université du Québec à Montréal, under the auspices of its Cognitive Science Institute. Over the past several years, Cognitio has been a colloquium where many facets of the human mind were explored. We looked at the relationship between mind and its material substrate (2004), at human decision making (2005), at situated minds (2006), at social cognition (2007) and at the evolution of minds and cultures (2009).The time has come to turn our attention to “nonhuman minds”: to reflect on other minds, on minds that could have been and on minds that could be. Do our primate cousins have minds? And what about other animals? Does it make sense to think of “robot minds” and “artificial minds” in general?
Knowing about the varieties of minds, both actual and possible (technologically or conceptually), may help us to better understand the design space of minds: what are its dimensions, what is its internal structure, and what design principle(s) govern the passage from one point in the space to another.
Perhaps we will find that the human mind is an anomaly. Perhaps Homo sapiens is the only mindful creature that has ever existed and will ever exist. Or perhaps, in the tradition of pedestal smashing (as Stephen Jay Gould called the successive epoch changing scientific discoveries that dethroned humans from their self-declared status as the “center of creation”), we will find that human minds are but a tiny speck in a vast space of possible minds.
Knowing about the varieties of minds can also help us understand how all actual minds (current and past), including our own, came to be. Assuming that minds result from the gradual evolution of brains and bodies, knowing about the minds of other animal species may help us understand how the variety of minds connects with the evolution of brains. If we discover general principles governing those mappings, we may the able to predict what minds extinct hominins or related primate species are likely to have (or have had).
Finally, learning about robots and artificial minds might help us to prepare the future, to adapt our laws and institutions to new citizens in the community of the mindful. Or perhaps not: we may indeed decide that having a mind is not so special after all. Maybe it does not deserve special ethical treatment or institutional change, and maybe we should reserve our ethical concern for minds possessing some special features (consciousness is the obvious choice) or for some other features of beings (life, regardless of the possession of a mind).
Website:http://cognitio.uqam.ca/2011/
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