Philosophy
Events
The Interactive Mind
A series of workshops instigated, supported and funded by the
According to the interactive conception of mind, our minds are shaped by the details of our gross bodily form, our habits of action and intervention, and the enabling web of social, cultural, and technological scaffolding in which we are historically, evolutionarily, developmentally, and here-and-now situated. Intelligent activities such as reasoning, imagination and even creativity are not (or are not simply) a matter of processing information internally, but of manipulating and responding to external structures, sometimes in ways that involve bodily skills as much as mental ones. The interactive view has been gaining ground recently across a broad range of academic disciplines. The goal of this series of cross-disciplinary workshops was to explore the idea in an arts and humanities arena.
The interactive paradigm is already important in various branches of science. Influential models in artificial intelligence, psychology, human-computer interaction and other fields suggest that intelligence and even consciousness depend in subtle and fundamental ways on interactions with the environment. More recently, many arts and humanities disciplines have embraced the view. In archaeology, philosophy, linguistics, history, literary studies, the visual and performing arts, museum studies, feminist theory, and elsewhere, the interactive mind is beginning to make itself felt. No one discipline has the intellectual resources to deal with all the implications of taking the interactive viewpoint. This genuinely cross-disciplinary idea needs to be explored in a genuinely cross-disciplinary context. With its emphasis on the development of the idea within the arts and humanities, this series of workshops brought together researchers in the arts and humanities and the sciences to provide just such a context.
For more details about each of the three workshops that took place (venues, speakers, etc.), follow these links:
Edinburgh: 10th-11th June 2005
A final report on workshop series may be found here
Further Background
The Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) periodically investigates the possibility of committing funding to major strategic research intiatives. Back in 2003 the Arts and Humanities Research Board (the forerunner of the AHRC) convened a focus group with the goal of investigating the possibility that the Board might develop such a programme on The Interactive Mind. The outcome of the focus group meeting was a proposal submitted to the Board. Key sections of this document, giving further information about The Interactive Mind idea, are reproduced here.
The 2003 proposal, while well received by the Board, was not chosen for development in the first round of such programmes. However, in its report, the Board indicated that funding would be made available for extensive networking activities in this area, with the aim of facilitating further discussion and exchange of ideas between disciplines – including science and engineering – and with a possible view to reconsidering a revised proposal at a later date. This commitment was realised and Mike Wheeler was asked by the AHRC to co-ordinate a series of 3 workshops on The Interactive Mind, to take place before the end of July 2005.
To help guide the initiative, Mike Wheeler established a steering group consisting of Maggie Boden (Informatics, Sussex), Andy Clark (Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, Edinburgh), Eric Clarke (Music, Sheffield), Chris Gosden (Archaeology, Oxford), Jim Hurford (Linguistics, Edinburgh), David Papineau (Philosophy, KCL), Harvey Whitehouse (Anthropology, Queen's University, Belfast), and Mike himself.
We are disappointed to report that while The Interactive Mind was shortlisted by the AHRC’s Strategic Advisory Group as a potential Strategic Research Initiative in the wake of the 2005 workshops, it did not make the final cut. In its report the AHRC commented that "much of the intellectual urgency in the original proposal had been addressed through the highly successful series of workshops".
The AHRC funds postgraduate training and research in the arts and humanities, from archaeology and English literature to design and dance. The quality and range of research supported not only provides social and cultural benefits but also contributes to the economic success of the UK. For further information on the AHRC, please see our website www.ahrc.ac.uk