The purpose of the Society for Machines and Mentality is to advance philosophical understanding of issues involving artificial intelligence, philosophy, and cognitive science.

News Archive

December 9, 2007.

The 2007 meeting of the Society for Machines and Mentality will be held on Thursday, December 27, 2007, from 6:30 to 9:30 pm at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. As always, the meeting is held in conjunction with the Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association. Our meeting is Group Session GI-5 and will convene in Grand Ballroom, Salon X (Third Floor). This year's topic is Ray Kurzweil and Philosophy, featuring Ray Kurzweil and three other distinguished speakers. Please consult our meetings page for more information.

June 19, 2007.

Processing of membership applications may be delayed while the Treasurer is in the process of moving. Things should be back to normal on or around July 19, 2007.

April 5, 2007.

The next batch of membership applications will be processed on Wednesday, April 25.

December 26, 2006.

As you know, the 2006 meeting of the Society for Machines and Mentality will be held on Thursday, December 28, 2006, from 5:15 to 7:15 pm at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC, USA in conjunction with the Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association. In order to assist hearing-impaired meeting attendees, the APA has encouraged affiliated groups to post full-text versions of the papers to be presented on their websites, and we are happy to oblige. You can find abstracts and papers on the 2006 meeting page.

The topic of this year's meeting is The Ontology of Software. It is scheduled as Group Session GV-7 and will convene in Virginia Suite A (Lobby Level).

August 4, 2006.

The 2006 meeting of the Society for Machines and Mentality will be held on Thursday, December 28, 2006, from 5:15 to 7:15 pm at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC, USA. As always, the meeting is held in conjunction with the Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association. Our meeting is Group Session GV-7 and will convene in Virginia Suite A (Lobby Level). This year's topic is The Ontology of Software. Three papers will be presented. Please consult our meetings page for more information.

May 30, 2006.

The topic for the 2006 annual meeting is The Ontology of Software. The meeting will be held at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC, USA in conjunction with the 2006 Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association. Three papers will be presented. The date, time, and meeting room will be announced in August after they have been assigned by the APA. Please consult our meetings page for more information.

April 20, 2006

A set of membership forms was processed this morning. If your form was processed, you should have received a confirming email by now. If you sent in a form but did not receive an email, please contact the Treasurer to check on the status of your application.

Incoming membership applications will next be processed on or around May 26..

March 7, 2006

A set of membership forms was processed on February 27. If your form was processed, you should have received a confirming email by now. If you sent in a form but did not receive an email, please contact the Treasurer to check on the status of your application.

Incoming membership applications will next be processed on March 28.

January 31, 2006

A set of membership forms was processed this morning. If your form was processed, you should have received a confirming email by now. If you sent in a form but did not receive an email, please contact the Treasurer to check on the status of your application.

Membership forms received after this date will be processed on February 14, 2006.

January 24, 2006

Incoming membership applications will next be processed on January 31.

January 10, 2006

Reminder to renewing members: the Treasurer will process the first set of incoming applications on January 20.

Note: due to illness of the Treasurer, this news item has turned out to be false! (Applications will be processed on January 31.)

December 27, 2005

Reminder: The 2005 Annual Meeting of the Society for Machines and Mentality will be held on Wednesday, 28 December 2005 at the Hilton New York (New York City, USA) in Concourse G. The topic of the meeting is Classical Computation and Hypercomputation. The meeting will be held from 5:15 to 7:15 pm.

Please consult the 2005 meeting page for more details, including abstracts of the talks to be given.

December 26, 2005

The results of the 2005 election are as follows: Eric Steinhart was elected Vice President and Brian Rosmaita was re-elected Treasurer.

December 20, 2005

Ballots for the election of officers of the Society are due on Friday, 23 December 2005, at 22:00 UTC (5:00 pm EST in the USA). If you are a current member of the Society and have not yet received voting instructions, please contact the Society immediately.

December 13, 2005

Reminder: The 2005 Annual Meeting of the Society for Machines and Mentality will be held on Wednesday, 28 December 2005 at the Hilton New York (New York City, USA) in Concourse G. The topic of the meeting is Classical Computation and Hypercomputation. The meeting will be held from 5:15 to 7:15 pm.

Please consult the 2005 meeting page for more details, including abstracts of the talks to be given.

October 24, 2005

The European Conference on Computing And Philosophy (E-CAP'06), 22-24 June, 2006, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway, will have a special track on the Philosophy of Computer Science. Best submissions to the track will also be considered for revision and publication in the Fall 2007 Minds and Machines special issue on the Philosophy of Computer Science. Consult http://pcs.essex.ac.uk/ecap06/cfp.html for more information.

October 14, 2005

The web server has been malfunctioning for the past few weeks. I believe that everything has now been restored to normal. In particular, the membership enrollment scripts and the contact form are now working properly.

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience.

August 16, 2005

A set of membership forms was processed today. If your form was processed, you should have received a confirming email by now. If you sent in a form but did not receive an email, please contact the Treasurer to check on the status of your application.

Membership forms received after this date will be processed on or about September 15, 2005.

July 12, 2005

The North American Computing and Philosophy Conference is being held August 4-6, 2005, at the University of Oregon, Corvallis. This year's speakers include Paul Churchland, Mark Bedau, Selmer Bringsjord, Branden Fitelson, Patrick Grim, William Harms, Peter Vanderschraaf, C.T.A. Schmidt, Maralee Harrell, John Sullins, Christopher Chapman, Archana Barua, Scott Dexter, Kenneth Himma, Kevin Zollman, Ryan Muldoon, Seth Casana, William Braynen, and Robert Rosenberger. For more information, consult the conference website, http://oregonstate.edu/groups/cap/ .

June 21, 2005

A set of membership forms was processed today. If your form was processed, you should have received a confirming email by now. If you sent in a form but did not receive an email, please contact the Treasurer to check on the status of your application.

Membership forms received after this date will be processed on or about August 1, 2005.

March 11, 2005

A set of membership forms was processed today. If your form was processed, you should have received a confirming email by now. If you sent in a form but did not receive an email, please contact the Treasurer to check on the status of your application.

Membership forms received after this date will be processed on or about April 8, 2005.

January 30, 2005

Members may be interested in the 2005 North American Computing and Philosophy Conference, to be held at Oregon State University August 4–6, 2005. Please consult the Call for Proposals for further details. (The deadline for proposal submission is February 28, 2005.)

December 25, 2004

Reminder: The 2004 Annual Meeting of the Society for Machines and Mentality will be held on Tuesday, 28 December 2004 at the Boston Marriott Hotel Copley Place (Boston, Massachusetts, USA). The topic of the meeting is Integrated Cognition. The meeting will be held from 5:15 to 7:15 pm.

Please consult the 2004 meeting page for more details, including abstracts of the talks to be given.

December 14, 2004

A set of membership forms was processed today. If your form was processed, you should have received a confirming email by now. If you sent in a form but did not receive an email, please contact the Treasurer to check on the status of your application.

Membership forms received after this date will be processed on or about January 15, 2005.

October 28, 2004

The Society is now able to accept credit card transactions. In addition to being able to pay for your journal subscription by credit card, you may now pay for membership alone by credit card. We hope that this will prove a convenience to our international members.

For details on how the new credit card transaction system works, please consult our rewritten membership information page and our updated Frequently Asked Questions page.

September 20, 2004

Effective immediately, the Society is temporarily unable to process credit card transactions. The situation should be resolved by mid-October. We regret any inconvenience this may cause.

If you would like to be notified by email when the Society is ready to process credit card transactions, please use this notification form.

August 21, 2004

The 2004 Annual Meeting of the Society for Machines and Mentality will be held on Tuesday, 28 December 2004 at the Boston Marriott Hotel Copley Place (Boston, Massachusetts, USA). The topic of the meeting is Integrated Cognition. The meeting will be held from 5:15 to 7:15 pm.

Please consult the 2004 meeting page for more details. (The page will be updated as more information becomes available.)

July 21, 2004

A set of membership forms was processed today. If your form was processed, you should have received a confirming email by now. If you sent in a form but did not receive an email, please contact the Treasurer to check on the status of your application.

Membership forms received after this date will be processed on or about August 27.

June 30, 2004.

The topic for the 2004 meeting is Integrated Cognition. The meeting will be held in December in Boston, MA, during the Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association (December 27-30, 2004). The exact date, time, and location have not yet been set. Consult the meetings page for more details.

June 7, 2004

A set of membership forms was processed today. If your form was processed, you should have received a confirming email by now. If you sent in a form but did not receive an email, please contact the Treasurer to check on the status of your application.

Membership forms received after this date will be processed on or about July 15.

May 2, 2004

Minds and Machines will be publishing a special issue, “Daniel Dennett and the Computational Turn” in Spring 2005. Please consult the Call for Papers for submission details.

April 7, 2004

Membership forms received after this date will be processed on May 15.

February 27, 2004

A set of membership forms was processed today. If your form was processed, you should have received a confirming email by now. If you sent in a form but did not receive an email, please contact the Treasurer to check on the status of your application.

Membership forms received after February 27 will be processed on April 2.

February 3, 2004

A set of membership forms was processed on February 2. If your form was processed, you should have received a confirming email by now. If you sent in a form but did not receive an email, please contact the Treasurer to check on the status of your application.

Membership forms received after January 30 will be processed on February 27.

January 15, 2004

Reminder to renewing members: the Treasurer will process the first set of incoming applications on January 30.

December 27, 2003

If you're in Washington, DC, this weekend, don't forget the Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association at the Washington Hilton. In addition to our 2003 annual meeting at 5:15 pm on Sunday, December 28, in the Georgetown Room East (Concourse), there is a special session arranged by the APA Committee on Philosophy and Computers. It will be held on Monday Afternoon, December 29, from 1:30–4:30 pm in the Map Room (Terrace). The topic is Philosophical Modeling and Robotics: Examples and Reflections, and it will feature the following presentations: Brian Skyrms, "Modeling the Social Contract"; Selmer Bringsjord, Marc Destefano, and Bettina Schimanski, "Doing and Teaching Philosophy through Robotics"; Pete Mandik, "Modeling Memory and Mental Representation"; and J. McKenzie Alexander, "Philosophical Modeling and the Structural Evolution of Norms".

November 17, 2003

The results of the 2003 election are as follows: Jack Copeland was elected Vice President, Brian Rosmaita was re-elected Treasurer, and the constitutional amendment to allow web elections passed.

November 10, 2003

Ballots for the election of officers of the Society are due on Thursday, 13 November 2003, at 20:00 UTC (3:00 pm EST in the USA). If you are a current member of the Society and have not received a ballot, please contact the Society immediately.

August 21, 2003

The topic for the 2003 meeting is Philosophical Simulations: Communication and Prejudice. The meeting will be held on Sunday, 28 December 2003, at the Washington Hilton (Washington, DC, USA) from 5:15–7:15 pm. Consult the 2003 meeting page for more details.

August 1, 2003

The topic for the 2003 meeting is Philosophical Simulations: Communication and Prejudice. The meeting will be held in December in Washington, DC, during the Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association (December 27-30, 2003). The exact date, time, and location have not yet been set. Consult the meetings page for more details.