Cognitive Philosophy

Investigating philosophical topics
from the perspective of cognitive science

Events

The workshop will involve collaborations between researchers at Lund University and Radboud University Nijmegen.

The development of artificial intelligence and robotics can benefit from insights gained from biological systems. This workshop aims to explore how features from life sciences can be made relevant for AI models, with a focus on rationality. By leveraging the principles of embodied cognition and ecological rationality, more efficient and adaptive AI systems that prioritize tasks and make decisions in a more human-like manner is arguably possible.

Funding: Längmanska kulturfonden, Workshop Grant, BA25-1363.

The writing-workshop will explore how Gibbs free energy, which relates to metabolism and thermodynamics, and variational free energy, which relates to information theory, may provide a way to shed light on issues concerning biases and motivation.

By acknowledging that beliefs have metabolic costs, and may be attractive if they confer energy savings but aversive if they entail costly model updates or emotional pain, it becomes clearer that minimising variational free energy in terms of optimal Bayesian inference may only happen if agents are sufficiently motivated, or in emotionally neutral contexts. Hence, if a belief really matters to a person, that belief may be protected from change by the powerful apparatus of the emotional system.

The writing-workshop will involve collaborations between researchers at Lund University, the Berlin School of Mind and Brain in the Institute of Philosophy at Humboldt University, the interdisciplinary DFG Excellence cluster Science of Intelligence at Technical University Berlin, and VU University Amsterdam.

What is intelligence and why is it needed? Current research in the cognitive and life sciences presents only fragmented views on this question. We examine the question focusing on the role of prediction. Moreover we will investigate issues tied to conspiracy theories,reasoning, and rationality.

Funding: Stiftelsen Erik och Gurli Hultengrens fond för filosofi vid Lunds Universitet

The workshop will involve a collaborations between researchers at Lund University, the University of Gothenburg, the University of Manchester, Charles University in Prague, and the University of Oslo.

Natural complex phenomena are explored by many different sciences using different perspectives, on different levels of analysis. But (how) can fruitful pluralistic triangulations enable a coherent picture of the world’s ‘blooming, buzzing confusion’?

Funding: Makarna Ingeniör Lars Henrik Fornanders fond, Workshop Grant, FO2020-0004.

The two-day workshop will involve a collaborations between researchers at Lund University, the University of Tromsø (UiT), the Univeristy of Trento, and the University of Zurich (UZH).

How is philosophy being affected by advances in cognitive science, and what role should philosophy have in light of these advances? Could we develop frameworks that bring these fields together, or introduce new programme ideas which grapples with traditionally philosophical question in a cognitive scientific manner? This workshop is dedicated to discussing these metaphilosophical questions.

Funding: Stiftelsen Elisabeth Rausings minnesfond – forskning, Workshop Grant, RFh2019-0226.

The two-day workshop will strive to promote new writing collaborations between researchers at Lund University and the University of Zurich (UZH), as well as to inspire future cognitive philosophical events both in Lund and abroad. 

An overarching goal of the workshop is to provide the groundwork for cognitive and mind-centered explorations and explanations of natural phenomena, such as knowledge, perception, thought, and the mind itself, which predominantly have been discussed in philosophical contexts without the modern discoveries that have been made about how the brain operates and creates our experiences and concepts.

Funding: Makarna Ingeniör Lars Henrik Fornanders fond, Workshop Grant, FO2019-0005.

Publications

2026

• MirzaeiGhazi, S., & Tjøstheim, T. A. (2026). A naturalistic theory of (in)justice: How neurophysiology and metabolic energy ground the perception of injustice. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 56(1), e70027.
  
  

• Stephens, A., Felix, C. V., Tjøstheim, T. A., & Ask Zaar, B. (2026). Epistemic normativity from an evolutionary epistemological point of view. Erkenntnis. DOI: 10.1007/s10670-026-01064-5.

2025

• Johansson, B., Tjøstheim, T.A., & Balkenius, C. (2025). System-level brain modeling. Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, 19, 1607239.
  
  

• Kirkeby-Hinrup, A., Stephens, A., Balogh Sjöstrand, A., & Overgaard, M. (2025). Methodological issues in consciousness research: Theory comparison, the role of empirical evidence, and a replication crisis. Frontiers in Psychology, section Consciousness research, 16. Part of Methodological Issues in Consciousness Research- Volume III.
  
  

• Poth, N., Tjøstheim, T. A., & Stephens, A. (2025). Intelligent behaviour as adaptive control guided by accurate prediction. Proceedings: The 1st International Online Conference of the Journal Philosophies, Intelligent Inquiry into Intelligence-Contributing to the 2025 IS4SI Summit. Proceedings 2025, 126(1), 12, 1-8.
  
  

• Poth, N., Tjøstheim, T. A., & Stephens, A. (2025). Intelligent behaviour as adaptive control guided by accurate prediction. Program and Abstract Book: The 1st International Online Conference of the Journal Philosophies, Intelligent Inquiry into Intelligence-Contributing to the 2025 IS4SI Summit (p. 71). Basel: MDPI.
  

  
  

• Poth, N., Tjøstheim, T. A., & Stephens, A. (2025). Rethinking intelligent behavior through the lens of accurate prediction: Adaptive control in uncertain environments. Philosophy and the Mind Sciences, 6.

  
  

• Tsapos, M. (2025). Dimensions of Conspiracy: An inquiry into the cognitive and epistemic standing of conspiracy theories. Lund: Lund University, Media-Tryck. [Doctoral Thesis (compilation), Department of Philosophy]
  
  

• Tsapos, M. (2025). Dimensions of conspiracy theories: Toward a unifying framework. Philosophical Psychology, 1-23.
  
  

• Tsapos, M. (2025). What is interesting about conspiracy theories? Social Epistemology, 1-13.

2024

• De Benedetto, M., & Poth, N. (2024). Bootstrapping concepts via hybridization: A step-by-step guide. Review of Philosophy and Psychology.
  
  

• Dentith, M., Duetz, J., & Tsapos, M. (2024). Investigating conspiracy theoires: Introduction to the special issue. Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
  
  

• Dentith, M., & Tsapos, M. (2024). Why we should talk about generalism and particularism: A reply to Boudry and Napolitano. Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective, 13(10), 47-60.
  
  

• Ekström, A. G., Madison, G., Olsson, E. J., & Tsapos, M. (2024). The search query filter bubble: Effect of user ideology on political leaning of search results through query selection. Information Communication and Society. 27(5), 878-894.
  
  

• Stedtler, S., Fantasia, V., Tjøstheim, T. A., Johansson, B., Brinck, I., & Balkenius, C. (2024). Is there really an effect of time delays on perceived fluency and social attributes between humans and social robots?: A pilot study. In Companion of the 2024 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (pp. 1013-1017). Boulder: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
  
  

• Stephens, A. (2024). Cognitive epistemology: Knowledge as a natural phenomenon. Lund: Lund University, Media-Tryck. [Doctoral Thesis (compilation), Department of Philosophy].
  
  

• Tsapos, M. (2024). Should we worry about conspiracy theorists rejecting experts? Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
  
  

• Tsapos, M. (2024). Betting on conspiracy: A decision theoretic account of the rationality of conspiracy theory belief. Erkenntnis.
  
  
  

2023

• Balkenius, C., Johansson, B., & Tjøstheim, T. A. (2023). Elements of cognition for general intelligence. In P. Hammer, M. Alirezaie and C. Strannegård (Eds.), Artificial general intelligence: 16th international conference (Vol. 13921. pp. 11-20). AGI 2023, Stockholm, Sweden, June 16–19, 2023, Proceedings.  Cham: Springer.
  
  
• Olsson, E. J., Tjøstheim, T. A., Stephens, A., Schwaninger, A., & Roszko, M. (2023). The cognitive basis of the conditional probability solution to the value problem for reliabilism. Acta Analytica,38,417-438.
  
  

• Poth, N. (2023). Probabilistic learning and psychological similarity. Entropy, 25(10), 1407.
  
  

• Poth, N. (2023). Same but different: Providing a probabilistic foundation for the feature-matching approach to similarity and categorization. Erkenntnis. 
  
  

• Poth, N., & Dolega, K. (2023). Bayesian belief protection: A study of belief in conspiracy theories. Philosophical Psychology, 36(6), 1182-1207. 
  
  

• Tsapos, M. (2023). Who is a conspiracy theorist?. Social Epistemology, 37(4) 454-463.

2022

• Olsson, E. J. (2022). Explicationist epistemology and the explanatory role of knowledge. Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 53, 41-60.
  
  
• Poth, N. (2022). Refining the Bayesian approach to unifying generalisation. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 14, 877-907.
  
  
• Poth, N. (2022). Schema-centred unity and mechanistic pluralism of the predictive mind. Minds and Machines, 32, 433-459.
  
  

• Tjøstheim, T. A. (2022). Contours of cognition(1 ed.). [Doctoral Thesis (compilation), Department of Philosophy]. Lund University.
  

2021

• Stephens, A., Tjøstheim, T. A., Roszko, M., & Olsson, E. J. (2021). A dynamical perspective on the generality problem. Acta Analytica, 36(3), 409-422. 
  
  

• Tjøstheim, T. A., & Stephens, A. (2021). Intelligence as accurate prediction. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 13, 475–499.

2020

• Felix, C. V., & Stephens, A. (2020). A naturalistic perspective on knowledge how: Grasping truths in a practical way. Philosophies, 5(1), 5. Reprinted in Philosophies Special Issue, M. J. Schroeder, & G. Dodig-Crnkovic (Eds.), Contemporary natural philosophy and philosophies—Part 2. Basel: MDPI.
  
  

• Pärnamets, P., Tagesson, A., & Wallin, A.(2020). Inconsistencies in repeated refugee status decisions. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 33(5), 569-578.
  
  

• Poth, N., & Brössel, P. (2020). Learning concepts: A learning-theoretic solution to the complex-first paradox. Philosophy of Science,87(1), 135-151. (Preprint)
  
  

• Stephens, A., & Felix, C. V. (2020). A cognitive perspective on knowledge how: Why intellectualism is neuro-psychologically implausible. Philosophies, 5(3), 21. Reprinted in Philosophies Special Issue, M. J. Schroeder, & G. Dodig-Crnkovic (Eds.), Contemporary natural philosophy and philosophies—Part 2. Basel: MDPI.
  
  
• Stephens, A., & Tjøstheim, T. A. (2020). The cognitive philosophy of reflection. Erkenntnis, 87, 2219-2242.
  
  
• Tjøstheim, T. A., Stephens, A., Anikin, A., & Schwaninger, A. (2020). The cognitive philosophy of communication. Philosophies, 5(4), 39. Included in Philosophies Special Issue, G. Dodig-Crnkovic, & M. J. Schroeder (Eds.), Contemporary natural philosophy and Philosophies—Part 3 Basel: MDPI.

2019

• Poth, N. (2019). Conceptual spaces, generalisation probabilities and perceptual categorisation. In M. Kaipainen, F. Zenker, A. Hautamäki, & P. Gärdenfors (Eds.), Conceptual spaces: Elaborations and applications (Synthese library, Studies in Epistemology, Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 405, pp. 7-28).
  
  

• Stephens, A. (2019). Three levels of naturalistic knowledge. In M. Kaipainen, F. Zenker, A. Hautamäki, & P. Gärdenfors (Eds.), Conceptual spaces: Elaborations and applications (Synthese library, Studies in Epistemology, Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, Vol. 405, pp. 57-73). (Preprint)
  
  

• Tjøstheim, T. A., & Balkenius, C. (2019). Cumulative inhibition in neural networks Cognitive Processing. 20(1), 87-102.
  
  

• Tjøstheim, T. A., Roszko, M., & Stephens, A. (2019). From a cognitive philosophical point of view. EuroCogSci 2019, Ruhr Universität Bochum, Germany. (Paper, Poster)

2018

• Balkenius, C., Tjøstheim, T. A., Johansson, B., & Gärdenfors, P. (2018). From focused thought to reveries: A memory system for a conscious robot. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, 5(29), 1-13.

• Gärdenfors, P., & Stephens, A. (2018). Induction and knowledge-what. European Journal for Philosophy of Science, 8(3), 471-491.

• Roszko, M., Hall, L., Johansson, P., & Pärnamets, P. (2018). The phenomenology of eye movement intentions and their disruption in goal-directed actions. In T. Rogers, T., M. Rau, J. Zhu, & C. Kalish (Eds.), Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 973-978). Madison: Cognitive Science Society.

2017

• Olsson, E. J. (2017) Explicationist epistemology and epistemic pluralism. In A. Coliva, & N. Jang Lee Linding Pedersen (Eds.), Epistemic pluralism (pp. 23-46 ). Palgrave Innovations in Philosophy. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. (LU Publications)

2016

• Bååth, R., Tjøstheim, T. A., & Lingonblad, M. (2016). The role of executive control in rhythmic timing at different tempi. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 23(6), 1954-1960.
  
  

• Kim, H., Poth, N., Reuter, K., & Sytsma, J. (2016). Where is your pain?: A cross-cultural comparison of the concept of pain in Americans and South Koreans. Studia Philosophica Estonica, 9(1), 136-169.
  
  

• Olsson, E. J. (2016). A naturalistic approach to the generality problem. In B. P. McLaughlin, & H. Kornblith (Eds.), Goldman and his critics (pp. 178-196). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (LU Publications)
  
  

• Stephens, A. (2016). A pluralist account of knowledge as a natural kind. Philosophia, 44(3), 885-903. (Preprint)
  
  

CogNotes

The publication series CogNotes presents short notes, working papers, and reviews.

• CogNotes_2  Stephens, A. (2026). A note on evidence, systems, and processes. An exploration of how a processual and systems perspective can shine new light on our overall understanding of the world, ourselves, and our place in the world.
  
  
• CogNotes_1  Tjøstheim, T. A. (2026). ArgMap—Manual version. A paper-and-pencil syntax for structuring academic arguments.

Projects

2026

• CogPhi associated researcher Trond A. Tjøstheim received a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions postdoctoral fellowship for 2026–2028 for the project "ARCADE - Addressing the Distraction Crisis: a Cognitive Model of Attentional Allocation, Detraction, and Control". Hosting of fellowship at the Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique at Sorbonne University in Paris.

2025

• CogPhi associated researcher Andreas Stephens received funding from Åke Wibergs stiftelse, Personal Grant, H24-0145 for the project "Epistemic Normativity as a Natural Phenomenon". Hosting of postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Inland Norway.
  

About Us

The Cognitive Philosophy Research Group consists of researchers at Lund University and Radboud University Nijmegen. We are dedicated to the study of philosophical topics from the perspective of cognitive science. An overarching goal is to provide a mind-centered explanation of any natural phenomenon, such as for example knowledge, intelligence, and the mind itself, as long as it can be lucidly conceptualized.

This is done by analysing how humans interpret and represent natural phenomena via the existing cognitive and neurological capacities that are available for us to understand the world and ourselves, which sheds light on the natural phenomena themselves as well as on our relation to the world.

We are thus interested in how sciences such as cognitive neuroscience, cognitive ethology, cognitive psychology, and artificial intelligence research, as well as the different frameworks that have been developed within these sciences, can be applied to questions explored in, for example, metaphilosophy, epistemology, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mind. 

Affiliated Researchers

Erik J. Olsson, Full Professor and Chair, Theoretical Philosophy, Lund University, Sweden.

Nina Poth, Assistant Professor, AI, Philosophy of Mind and Language, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

Maximilian Roszko, Cognitive Scientist and UX Designer, Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden.

Arthur Schwaninger, AI Consultant and Philosopher, Theoretical Philosophy, University of Zurich, Switzerland.

Andreas Stephens, Researcher, Theoretical Philosophy, Lund University, Sweden.

Alexander Tagesson, PhD Student, Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden.

Trond A. Tjøstheim, Researcher, Cognitive Science, Lund University, Sweden.

Melina Tsapos, Researcher, Theoretical Philosophy, Lund University, Sweden.

Affiliated Universities

Contact