Stevan Robert Harnad (Hernád István Róbert, Hesslein István, born June 2, 1945, Budapest) is a Hungarian-born cognitive scientist based in

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

, Canada.

Education

Harnad was born in

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...

. He did his undergraduate work at

McGill University McGill University (french: link=no, Université McGill) is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter granted by King George IV,Frost, Stanley Brice. ''McGill Universit ...

and his graduate work at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

's Department of Psychology. Harnad completed his

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( la, Magister Artium or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA, M.A., AM, or A.M.) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Tho ...

degree in

Psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

from McGill University in 1969, his

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...

degree from Princeton University in 1992. He was awarded an

honorary doctorate An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hon ...

University of Liège The University of Liège (french: Université de Liège), or ULiège, is a major public university of the French Community of Belgium based in Liège, Wallonia, Belgium. Its official language is French. As of 2020, ULiège is ranked in the 301 ...

in 2013.

Research

Harnad's research interests are in cognitive science,

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...

and animal sentience. He is currently professor of psychology at

Université du Québec à Montréal The Université du Québec à Montréal (English: University of Quebec in Montreal), also known as UQAM, is a French-language public university based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is the largest constituent element of the Université du Québe ...

(UQAM),

, and professor emeritus of cognitive science at the

University of Southampton , mottoeng = The Heights Yield to Endeavour , type = Public research university , established = 1862 – Hartley Institution1902 – Hartley University College1913 – Southampton University Coll ...

. Elected external member of the

Hungarian Academy of Sciences The Hungarian Academy of Sciences ( hu, Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, MTA) is the most important and prestigious learned society of Hungary. Its seat is at the bank of the Danube in Budapest, between Széchenyi rakpart and Akadémia utca. Its ma ...

in 2001 (resigned in protest, 8 October 2016), he was

Canada Research Chair Canada Research Chair (CRC) is a title given to certain Canadian university research professors by the Canada Research Chairs Program. Program goals The Canada Research Chair program was established in 2000 as a part of the Government of Canada ...

in cognitive science 2001–2015. His research is on

categorization Categorization is the ability and activity of recognizing shared features or similarities between the elements of the experience of the world (such as Object (philosophy), objects, events, or ideas), organizing and classifying experience by a ...

, communication,

cognition Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...

, and

consciousness Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scien ...

and he has written extensively on

categorical perception Categorical perception is a phenomenon of perception of distinct categories when there is a gradual change in a variable along a continuum. It was originally observed for auditory stimuli but now found to be applicable to other perceptual modalit ...

symbol grounding In cognitive science and semantics, the symbol grounding problem concerns how it is that words (symbols in general) get their meanings, and hence is closely related to the problem of what meaning itself really is. The problem of meaning is in t ...

origin of language The origin of language (spoken and signed, as well as language-related technological systems such as writing), its relationship with human evolution, and its consequences have been subjects of study for centuries. Scholars wishing to study th ...

lateralization The lateralization of brain function is the tendency for some neural functions or cognitive processes to be specialized to one side of the brain or the other. The median longitudinal fissure separates the human brain into two distinct cerebra ...

, the

Turing test The Turing test, originally called the imitation game by Alan Turing in 1950, is a test of a machine's ability to artificial intelligence, exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. Turing propos ...

distributed cognition Distributed cognition is an approach to cognitive science research that was developed by cognitive anthropologist Edwin Hutchins during the 1990s. From cognitive ethnography, Hutchins argues that mental representations, which classical cognitive s ...

scientometrics Scientometrics is the field of study which concerns itself with measuring and analysing scholarly literature. Scientometrics is a sub-field of informetrics. Major research issues include the measurement of the impact of research papers and academi ...

, and

. Harnad is a former student of

Donald O. Hebb Donald Olding Hebb (July 22, 1904 – August 20, 1985) was a Canadian psychologist who was influential in the area of neuropsychology, where he sought to understand how the function of neurons contributed to psychological processes such as l ...

and

Julian Jaynes Julian Jaynes (February 27, 1920 – November 21, 1997) was an American researcher in psychology at Yale and Princeton for nearly 25 years and best known for his 1976 book ''The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind'' ...

Research publishing and open access

In 1978, Harnad was the founder of ''

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ''Behavioral and Brain Sciences'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal of Open Peer Commentary established in 1978 by Stevan Harnad and published by Cambridge University Press. It is modeled on the journal ''Current Anthropology'' (whi ...

'', of which he remained

editor-in-chief An editor-in-chief (EIC), also known as lead editor or chief editor, is a publication's editorial leader who has final responsibility for its operations and policies. The highest-ranking editor of a publication may also be titled editor, managing ...

until 2002. In addition, he founded ''

Psycoloquy Psycoloquy was a refereed interdisciplinary open access journal that was published from 1990 to 2002 and was sponsored by the American Psychological Association (APA) and indexed by APA's PsycINFO and the Institute for Scientific Information. T ...

'' (an early

electronic journal An academic journal or scholarly journal is a periodical publication in which scholarship relating to a particular academic discipline is published. Academic journals serve as permanent and transparent forums for the presentation, scrutiny, and d ...

Scholarly skywriting

Scholarly skywriting, coined by Harnad around 1987, is the combination of multiple

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

and a topic threaded

web Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by ...

archive such as a

newsgroup A Usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from users in different locations using the Internet. They are discussion groups and are not devoted to publishing news. Newsgroups are technically distinct ...

electronic mailing list A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients. The term is often extended to include the people subscribed to such a list, so the group of subscribers is re ...

hypermail Hypermail is a free program for creating email archives, in the form of cross-referenced HTML documents. It takes a file in Unix mbox format and generates an HTML archive, complete with an index and various sorting options. It is commonly used for ...

netnews Usenet () is a worldwide distributed discussion system available on computers. It was developed from the general-purpose UUCP, Unix-to-Unix Copy (UUCP) dial-up network architecture. Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis (computing), Jim Ellis conceived th ...

Internet forum An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...

, linked and sortable by date, author, or subject-heading threads. The name derives from the idea that texts can be written in the "sky" (via multiple email and a web archive) for all to see ("skyreading") and all to add their own comments to ("skywriting"). Harnad suggested that it could be a kind of

open peer review Open peer review is the various possible modifications of the traditional scholarly peer review process. The three most common modifications to which the term is applied are: # Open identities: Authors and reviewers are aware of each other's ident ...

, a supplement to classical peer review, but not a substitute for it. What Harnad called student skywriting is scholarly skywriting done in a teaching/learning context.

Political activism

Harnad is the author of a 2011 open letter signed by over 60 external members of the

addressed to the Academy's President,

József Pálinkás József Pálinkás (born 18 September 1952) is a Hungarian atomic physicist and politician who served as Minister of Education between 2001 and 2002. He was President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences from 2008 to 2014. Thereafter Pálink� ...

, concerning the press and police harassment campaign against Hungarian philosophers who were critics of the current Hungarian ruling party,

Fidesz Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Alliance (; hu, Fidesz – Magyar Polgári Szövetség) is a right-wing populist and national-conservative political party in Hungary, led by Viktor Orbán. It was formed in 1988 under the name of Alliance of Young ...

, and its prime minister,

Viktor Orbán Viktor Mihály Orbán (; born 31 May 1963) is a Hungarian politician who has served as prime minister of Hungary since 2010, previously holding the office from 1998 to 2002. He has presided over Fidesz since 1993, with a brief break between 20 ...

. Harnad resigned from his external membership of the

on 8 October 2016 in protest against the increasingly "

Illiberal democracy An illiberal democracy describes a governing system in which, although elections take place, citizens are cut off from knowledge about the activities of those who exercise real power because of the lack of civil liberties; thus it does not con ...

" of

Viktor Orban The name Victor or Viktor may refer to: * Victor (name), including a list of people with the given name, mononym, or surname Arts and entertainment Film * ''Victor'' (1951 film), a French drama film * ''Victor'' (1993 film), a French shor ...

Animal welfare

Harnad is Editor-in-Chief of the refereed journal ''Animal Sentience'' launched in 2015 by the Institute of Science and Policy of

The Humane Society of the United States The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) is an American nonprofit organization that focuses on animal welfare and opposes animal-related cruelties of national scope. It uses strategies that are beyond the abilities of local organizations. ...

. A

vegan Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal product—particularly in diet—and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals. An individual who follows the diet or philosophy is known as a vegan. Di ...

, Harnad is increasingly active in

animal welfare Animal welfare is the well-being of non-human animals. Formal standards of animal welfare vary between contexts, but are debated mostly by animal welfare groups, legislators, and academics. Animal welfare science uses measures such as longevity ...

animal rights Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all sentient animals have moral worth that is independent of their utility for humans, and that their most basic interests—such as avoiding suffering—should be afforded the sa ...

, and

animal law Animal law is a combination of statutory and case law in which the nature legal, social or biological of nonhuman animals is an important factor. Animal law encompasses companion animals, wildlife, animals used in entertainment and animals raised ...

References

External links

Interview by Marc BekoffOpen Access Archivangelism Blog
Stevan Harnad's blog on Open Access
Publications by Harnad
archived in ''Archipel'', Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) {{DEFAULTSORT:Harnad, Stevan Academics of the University of Southampton Animal welfare scholars Canada Research Chairs Canadian people of Hungarian descent Canadian cognitive scientists Scientists from Budapest Living people McGill University Faculty of Science alumni Princeton University alumni Université du Québec à Montréal faculty 1945 births Open access activists

Education

Research

Research publishing and open access

Scholarly skywriting

Political activism

Animal welfare

See also

References

See also

External links