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Author |
|
| Name | Butterfill, Stephen |
| Research field | Philosophy and Educational Sciences |
| Career stage | professor |
| Home university/institution | University of Warwick |
| Department/Research unit at home university/institution | - |
| Chair/Working group at home institution | - |
International activity |
|
| Country | Germany |
| Location | Bochum |
| University | Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) |
| Fund Research School | VIP |
| Type of activity | research stay |
| Period |
starts 01-01-2017 ends 31-12-2019 |
| Keywords | - |
| Report |
Project Prof. Butterfill is Associate Professor at the University of Warwick and Visiting Professor at the Cognitive Science section of the Central European University in Budapest, both very strong departments with respect to the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. He is an internationally known expert on research in Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science, in particular on issues surrounding phenomena like Joint Action and Social Cognition and the notion of representation in explanations of mental phenomena. Currently, he is writing a book-length treatment of philosophical issues in social cognition research. His original contributions to debates on social understanding and joint action as well as their interconnections have shaped philosophical discussions as well as empirical investigations of these phenomena. The core question regarding social cognition is: What are the mechanisms with which we gain access to other people’s minds? The core question regarding joint action is: What distinguishes actions done together by two agents or a bigger team from ordinary actions performed by a single agent? Together with Prof. Corrado Sinigaglia (University of Milan) he is also conducting his own interdisciplinary research projects, especially in the area of motor representations. All these areas overlap with Prof. Schlicht’s research interests, most prominently also with particular dissertation projects in his research group on Situated Cognition. Perceiving the World and Understanding other minds, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation from 2014-2019. The aim of this philosophical collaboration is twofold: First, to evaluate contemporary philosophical analyses of joint action by integrating research on embodied skills and implicit (unconscious) attitudes and heuristics to yield a more differentiated philosophical framework. Secondly, to dig deeper into the nature, function and use of the notion of representation in explanatory projects in cognitive science. The question whether simple goal-oriented actions like grasping a coffee mug involve representations and which format such representations may have, is an important question debated by cognitive scientists and philosophers in the context of recent enactive, embodied, and situated approaches to cognition. September 27-28, 2018 Steve Butterfill acts as invited keynote speaker at the interdisciplinary workshop on The structure and development of understanding actions and reasons, as part of a newly started research project together with Albert Newen (Bochum), Josef Perner (Salzburg) and Hans-Johann Glock (Zürich). April 25-26, 2018 Steve Butterfill visited Bochum especially for a small internal work-in-progress workshop together with members of the team who presented and discussed their work. The main idea was to meet for two days and have extended times for discussion based on texts that were shared in advance. All early career researchers who participated are working on topics related to Butterfill's work (Krys Dolega, Beate Krickel, Judith Martens, Elmarie Venter, and Julia Wolf). Short presentations of discussion papers were followed by extended discussion of each paper (90 minutes each). The focus was on providing each other feedback for developing the drafts further into chapters and articles. Finally, Stephen shared a draft of his own work-in-progress before the meeting, which we also discussed. The topics that were discussed ranged from metacognition and dual-process theories to implicit bias, joint action, predictive processing, the self, and the development of social cognition. This was a very productive and intensive meeting with feedback which integrated also members of Albert Newen’s research group. April 9-13, 2018 Stephen Butterfill stayed at RUB to teach a week-long Block seminar on Joint Action covering material normally spread over 9 weeks in just one week on a graduate level. This course was not only aimed at our MA students in Cognitive Science but also provided an opportunity for the research group to discuss state-of-the-art philosophical and empirical work in this area. In addition to students the seminar included Prof. Schlicht and team members Judith Martens and Luke Roelofs. One particularly positive outcome was the productive collaboration of Martens and Roelofs resulting in a joint paper that was subsequently presented at workshops in Vienna and Cork. February 1-2, 2018 Stephen Butterfill was one of the few keynote speakers at a workshop on Implicit Attitudes, explicit attitudes, and (joint), organized by Judith Martens and Tobias Schlicht at RUB. PhD student Judith Martens developed the outline of the workshop in connection with her dissertation project. In addition to Butterfill, further speakers included Jules Holroyd (Sheffield), Katja Crone (Dortmund), Michael Kimmel (Vienna), Zoe Drayson (UC Davis), Albert Newen & Julia Wolf (RUB). |