Interactivist Summer Institute 2015

June 20 – 23, 2015, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey

The Interactivist Summer Institute is dedicated to exploring the frontiers of understanding of life, mind, and cognition. There is a growing recognition – across many disciplines – that phenomena of life and mind, including cognition and representation, are emergents of far-from-equilibrium, interactive, autonomous systems. In such a view, mind and biology, mind and agent, are re-united. The classical treatment of cognition and representation within a formalist framework of encodingist assumptions is increasingly recognized as a fruitless maze of blind alleys. From neurobiology to robotics, from cognitive science to philosophy of mind and language, dynamic and interactive alternatives are being explored.

Accepting the opportunity we presented our latest work on perception and emotions entitled “Feelings and the construction of perceptual content”. Our main argument is that feelings do not only play an important role in the reduction of interactive uncertainty but they also have an active role in 
the construction of the perceptual content itself 
facilitating the emergence of the representational content.

Great conference, great atmosphere, great people.

Many thanks to the amazing organizers.