Robbins Library Notes

Good morning, all!

Late last year, I received an e-mail from Christian Beenfeldt, an Oxford DPhil-student and a member of the board of directors of the Danish Society for Philosophy and Psychology. It read:

Dear librarian,

I am an Oxford DPhil-student and a member of the board of directors of the Danish Society for Philosophy and Psychology.

A year ago, I was a main organizer of the ‘Concepts–Content and Constitution’ conference, which took place at the University of Copenhagen. About 130 graduate students and scholars from the fields of philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, neuroscience, biology, and media studies participated in the conference.

As speakers, we had secured some of the most famous and influential contemporary philosophers of mind and cognitive scientists, including Daniel C. Dennett and Ruth G. Millikan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Millikan

The event attracted national attention in Denmark, and generated coverage by national television, radio and newspapers.

In addition to organizing the conference, I directed a small film crew during the event, and conducted filmed interviews with all six speakers. I managed the postproduction of the more than 50 hours of raw material, and have now finished a 120-minute cognitive science DVD based on the lectures and interviews made during the event.

500 copies of the DVD have been printed for distribution to the world’s leading research libraries–to help undergraduate students in philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, linguistics and so on, gain a perspective on how leading contemporary cognitive scientists view the mental phenomenon of concepts.

I have acquired a copy of this DVD for Robbins, though it is not yet cataloged.

In addition to Dennett and Millikan, the DVD also contains interviews with José Luis Bermúdez, Gregory Ashby, Peter Gärdenfors, and Jesse Prinz. The topics discussed include:

• “The nature of concepts
• Conceptual space
• Conceptual vs. nonconceptual content
• Varieties of content
• The perceptual constitution of concepts

And much more”

I have not had a chance to review this DVD, but I’m hoping to do so over this coming weekend.  Once I have watched the DVD, I will let you know what I think of it.