ECOM members Chris Rahlwes and Mengyu Hu were the recipients of this year’s Ruth Garrett Millikan Graduate Research Fellowship. This fellowship was created in 2017 with the aid of generous admirers, friends, and colleagues of Professor Ruth Garrett Millikan, one of the world’s most distinguished living philosophers, and a cherished member of UConn’s philosophical community. The recipients are outstanding ABD students in the Philosophy Department who use the fellowship to further their graduate research study in the summer of the award year. Congratulations, Chris and Mengyu!

Our research group manager, Aliyar received the CT Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences (IBACS) Summer Fellowship. As a part of the fellowship, Aliyar will learn the application process of NSF grants, and he plans to apply to the NSF Linguistics Grant with Prof. William Snyder. Good luck!

There is an excellent workshop, organized by Laura Danón (National University of Córdoba) and Giuseppe Lorini (University of Cagliari), titled “Animal Normativity” (March 31, 2022 9:00 EDT). Speakers include Kristin Andrews (York University), Jonathan Birch (LSE), Rahel Brügger (University of Zurich), Frans de Waal (Emory University), Hannah Ginsborg (UC Berkeley), Carel van Schaik (University of Zurich).

Registration link: https://www.normactivity.com/animalnormativity.html

This conference will provide an unprecedented opportunity to bring together 3 of the major language evolution research communities, enabling a global platform for interdisciplinary discussion.

The conference will take place as a hybrid online & on-site conference in Kanazawa, Japan from September 5th – 8th, 2022.

February 1st, 2022

January 5th, 2022

More info can be found here.

ECOM director Dorit Bar-On’s “How to do things with nonwords: pragmatics, biosemantics, and origins of language in animal communication” – which features a discussion of work by distinguished ECOM member Ruth Millikan (as well as acknowledging discussions with other ECOM members) – is now forthcoming in the interdisciplinary journal Biology & Philosophy.  

ECOM Director Dorit Bar-On will be giving a keynote talk titled “Pragmatic Protolanguage” at the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology on Sept 2.

One of the most active members, Drew, will be an UCHI (University of Connecticut Humanities Institute) dissertation fellow next year. Congratulations Drew!

Ryo Tanaka published his paper at Southern Journal of Philosophy! The paper is titled “Hume on Nonhuman Animals, Causal Reasoning, and General Thoughts”. Congratulations Ryo!

Drew published his paper at Thought! The paper is titled “Disjunctive Luminosity”. Congratulations Drew!

Michael published his first paper at Filosofia Unisinos! The paper is titled “A Dilemma for Naturalistic Theories of Intentionality”. Congratulations Michael!