The AHRC Culture & the Mind Project

We view the International Cognition and Culture Institute as complementary to other initiatives that pursue the same general goal, often in a more focused manner and within a limited time frame. We obviously welcome information about such initiatives in our news, including, at this juncture, about initiative that are already being developed. One of them is the AHRC Culture and the Mind project, many of whose participants are also member of the ICCI.

The AHRC Culture and the Mind project is a major five-year interdisciplinary research project based in the Philosophy Department at the University of Sheffield. The project is funded primarily through a major research grant of from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (to the project director, Stephen Laurence).

The project brings together top scholars in a broad range of disciplines-including anthropology, archaeology, cognitive psychology, comparative psychology, developmental psychology, economics, history, neuroscience, and philosophy-to investigate the philosophical consequences of the impact of culture on the mind and the cognitive and evolutionary foundations of culture. (See also the related AHRC Innateness and the Structure of the Mind project).

The AHRC Culture and the Mind Project is organized around three subprojects.

1.    Folk Psychology & Folk Epistemics (2006-2009) 2.    Norms & Moral Psychology (2007-2010) 3.    Artefacts & Material Culture (2008-2011)

Each subproject will involve a number of workshops and philosophically informed anthropological fieldwork, and will culminate in a major international conference that will be open to the public.