The Cognitive Science Seminar is one of the crown jewels of the Institute. It is both a course offering and a public lecture series.
Each semester's Seminar is organized around a different thematic area and offers seminars by national and international experts in the field.
Talk are held in FIT 405 on Wednesday's from 4 pm to 5 pm.
Current Semester
Embodied Cognition
Shaun Gallagher
Lillian and Morrie Moss Chair of Excellence in Philosophy
The cognitive science seminar for Fall 2023 will focus on embodied (or 4E – embodied, embedded, extended, enactive) cognition, which presents an alternative to standard cognitivist views in cognitive science. 4E approaches motivate a number of contemporary debates and critical responses to questions about the role of brain, body and environment in cognition; notions of representation, affordance, affectivity, dynamical attunement; relations between perception and action, predictive processing and active inference. We’ll considers the strengths and weaknesses of the theories in question and discuss major criticisms and their possible resolutions. We’ll also discuss practical applications in the areas of education, humanities, economics, psychiatry and clinical reasoning. Guest speakers are from the fields of philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, cognitive archaeology, computer science and AI.
Most of the talks will be held in person in FIT 405 from 4 pm to 5:15 pm. Attendance in person is recommended but you can access the talks via Zoom by registering at
https://memphis.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEudu-hrTsvHdUjwNX14QoVGLNvvZJzKO8u
Guest lectures
| Aug 30 | Louise Barrett (Psychology. U. Lethbridge). Beyond the brain |
| Sep 6 | Detlef H. Heck (Neurology, U Minnesota Medical School) Bodily constraints on perception |
| Sep 13 | Art Glenberg (Psychology, Arizona State). Embodied cognition in education. |
| Sep 20 | Mark Johnson (Philosophy, U Oregon). Embodied mind, meaning, and reason |
| Sep 27 | David Kirsh (CogSci, UC-San Diego) Epistemic actions |
| Oct 4 | Michael Wheeler (Philosophy, Stirling U, Scotland) Extended cognition |
| Oct 11 | Anthony Chemero (Psychology/Philosophy, U Cincinnati) Ecological psychology |
| Oct 18 | Karl Friston (Neuroscience, UCL London) Predictive processing and the free energy principle |
| Oct 25 | Larry Shapiro (Philosophy, U Wisconsin) Conceptions of embodiment |
| Nov 1 | Karenleigh A. Overmann (Anthropology and Cognitive Archaeology, U Colorado) Reading and writing: Extended cognitive states? |
| Nov 8 | Takashi Ikegami (AI, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Okinawa, Japan). Embodied robotics |
| Nov 15 | Ezequiel Di Paolo (Computer Science, U of the Basque Country, San Sebastian, Spain) Enactivism and Autopoiesis |
Next Semester
Previous Semesters
Previous semester's Seminar themes:
- Spring 2023 Agents: Why should they act?
Bonny Banerjee, IIS and Electrical and Computer Engineering
Schedule - Fall 2022 Educational Assessment and Validity
Leigh Harrell-Williams, Counseling, Educational Psychology & Research
Schedule - Spring 2022 The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
David Gray, Philosophy
Schedule - Fall 2021 Computational Linguistics for the Social Sciences and Humanities
Leah Windsor, IIS and English (Applied Linguistics) and Alistair Windsor, Mathematical Sciences
Schedule - Spring 2021 Emotion and Cognition
Ulrike Griebel, IIS, and Kim Oller, Communication Sciences and Disorders
Schedule - Fall 2020 Reading Literacy, Foundational Skills, Comprehension, Knowledge, Assessment, and EdTech
or
How cognitive science on reading literacy and assessment is transforming research and development (or if it isn’t, how it ought to).
John Sabatini, IIS and Psychology
Schedule - Spring 2020 The Brain Basis of Human Behavior
Gavin Bidelman, IIS and Communication Sciences and Disorders
Schedule - Fall 2019 Language Across Modalities
Leah Windsor, IIS and English (Applied Linguistics)
Schedule - Spring 2019 Models of Human Learning
Philip Pavlik, IIS and Psychology (Cognitive)
Schedule - Fall 2018 Harnessing the Data Revolution:Science in the Age of AI
Andrew Olney, IIS and Psychology (Cognitive)
Schedule - Spring 2018 The Evolution and Development of Neurodiversity
D. Kimbrouh Oller, Communication Scieces and Disorder, and Ulrike Griebel