About iCog

iCog seeks to facilitate collaboration across constituent disciplines and to raise the profile of cognitive science.

The project of cognitive science is, in the broadest terms, to understand the workings of the mind. Researchers in its constituent disciplines — anthropology, psychology, philosophy, computational intelligence, neuroscience, linguistics — attempt to answer such questions as:

• What is the structure of the mind? Which parts of the mind are innate and which are learned?

• How do we come to perceive the world? What is consciousness, and how is it produced?

• What are emotions and other affective phenomena and how do they work?

• What are the adaptive functions of various behaviours and psychological capacities?

• What aspects of cognition are uniquely human, and which do we share with other animals?

• How are we able to understand the minds of others?

• How are concepts formed? How do we acquire language? Does language structure thought, and if so, how?

• What capacities are involved in various kinds of decision-making and executive functions?

• What is moral cognition and how does it work?

• How much variation is there in behaviours, beliefs and psychological capacities across cultures?

Despite a good deal of progress on these and other issues in recent decades, current disciplinary boundaries in the majority of British universities, funding agencies, and learned societies make it difficult for those working in one discipline of cognitive science to receive training in the methods of other disciplines, and meet with researchers working on similar issues in other discipline areas. This can be particularly discouraging for postgraduates and early-career researchers whose research does not fit neatly within disciplinary boundaries. 

Even where interdisciplinary work exists, balanced and reflective collaboration can be difficult to achieve. iCog aims to promote dialogue and collaboration between disciplines, rather than one-sided conversations.

iCog organises regular conferences and workshops.

iCog Committees

The iCog steering committee co-ordinates iCog activities.

Steering committee members:

• Andrea Blomkvist (Philosophy, Sheffield)

• Tony Cheng (Philosophy, NCCU, Taiwan)

• Sam Clarke (Philosophy, York University, Toronto), iCog blog editor

• Joe Dewhurst (Munich Centre for Mathematical Philosophy, LMU, Munich)

• Ryan Doran (Psychology, Cambridge), founder

• Lily FitzGibbon (Psychology, Reading), founder

• Alexander Green (Philosophy/Psychology, Warwick), iCog blog editor

• Jarosław Lelonkiewicz (Cognitive Neuroscience, SISSA, Trieste)

Former steering committee members:

• Daniel Calder (Philosophy, Edinburgh)

• Ed Donnellan (Psychology, Sheffield)

• Rosa Hardt (Philosophy, Edinburgh)

• Philipp Rau (Philosophy, Sheffield), founder

iCog conferences and workshops have their own organizing teams. The organizing committees for our conferences are listed below.

iCog 5 Conference Committee, 2019 (Reading):
Lily FitzGibbon, Kathryn Francis

iCog 4 Conference Committee, 2017 (Oxford):
Sam Clarke, Chris Fowles, Jamie Findlay

iCog 3 Conference Committee, 2016 (London):
Brianna Beck, Katharina Brecht, Cristina Cioffi, Tony Cheng, Merle Fairhurst, Rory Bufacchi, Emmanouil Protonotarios, Thomas Tanay

iCog 2 Conference Committee, 2014 (Edinburgh):
Daniel Calder, Joe Dewhurst, Lauren Hadley, Caitlin Hamblin, Rosa Hardt, Annina Hessel, Jarosław Lelonkiewicz, Mariana Vega-Mendoza

Inaugural Conference Committee, 2013 (Sheffield):
Ed Donnellan, Ryan Doran, Lily FitzGibbon, Max Gattie, Helen Mort, Philipp Rau