A blog about problems in the field of psychology and attempts to fix them.

Friday, June 1, 2018

Chicago APA Convention 2019 - Society for the History of Psychology

FYI: Cathy Faye, President-Elect of the Society for the History of Psychology (American Psychological Association Division 26), asked a while ago if I would be program chair for the 2019 APA convention in Chicago. I foolishly agreed pretty readily! Three quick things:

1) If you or someone you know might be interested in being the co-chair, with me shouldering most of the work, please give me a heads up.

2) This weekend (June 1-3, 2018) I will be attending a training event for program chairs in Washington DC. The most obvious goal of this event is to help the program chairs figure out APA's convoluted process to create "Collaborative Programing." That has such a long timeline, it requires multiple divisions to join forces over a year ahead of the conference. I will post details here as I get them, but in the meantime, if you might have ideas for collaborative programs, or have interest in putting together a regular session for the 2019 conference, give me a heads up.

3) Cathy's presidential theme hasn't officially been announced yet, but she strongly shares my interest historic research that provide practical guidance for emerging issues in the field. So we will be looking for both straightforward history of psychology papers and historic critiques of currently emerging issues.


Sunday, April 8, 2018

Representation, Bee Dances, and Daniel Hutto

Dan Hutto, who does great philosophy of psychology work, recently gave an ENSO seminar titled Beyond Content: Explications, Motivations and Implications


This is the ENactive Seminars Online (ENSO), put together by Merek McGann and Mathew Egbert. Dan gives a solid overview of the players working today on whether cognition necessarily entails representation - and what on earth that might mean. For those who don't know, after championing a Wittgensteinian view of folk-psychology theories in the beginning of his career,  Dan has spent the last decade or so as one of the heavy hitters in philosophy arguing that cognition need not entail mental representation. Though he thinks representation has a place in the conversation - post language - he does not think "basic cognition" requires it at all.