Stevan Harnad

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox scientist Stevan Robert Harnad (Hernád István Róbert, Hesslein István, born 1945) is a Canadian cognitive scientist based in Montreal.

Early life and education

Harnad was born in Budapest, Hungary. He did his undergraduate work at McGill University and his graduate work at Princeton University's Department of Psychology. Harnad completed his Master of Arts degree in Psychology from McGill University in 1969<ref name="harnadma">Template:Cite thesis</ref> and received his Doctor of Philosophy degree from Princeton University in 1992.<ref name="harnadphd">Template:Cite thesis</ref> He was awarded an honorary doctorate by University of Liège in 2013.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Research

Harnad's research interests are in cognitive science, open access and animal sentience.<ref name="googlescholar">Template:GoogleScholar</ref><ref name="dblp">Template:DBLP</ref> He is currently professor of psychology at Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), McGill University, and professor emeritus of cognitive science at the University of Southampton. Elected external member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2001 (resigned in protest, 8 October 2016<ref name="apnews.com">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>), he was Canada Research Chair in cognitive science 2001–2015. His research is on categorization,<ref>Harnad, Stevan (2005). To Cognize is to Categorize: Cognition is Categorization. Template:Webarchive in Lefebvre, C. and Cohen, H., Eds. Handbook of Categorization. Elsevier.</ref> communication,<ref>Cangelosi, Angelo and Harnad, Stevan (2001). The adaptive advantage of symbolic theft over sensorimotor toil: Grounding language in perceptual categories. Template:Webarchive Evolution of Communication 4(1) 117-142</ref> cognition,<ref>Harnad, Stevan (2006). The Annotation Game: On Turing (1950) on Computing, Machinery, and Intelligence. Template:Webarchive In: Epstein, Robert & Peters, Grace (Eds.) Parsing the Turing Test: Philosophical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer. Springer</ref> and consciousness<ref>Harnad, Stevan & Scherzer, Peter (2008). First, Scale Up to the Robotic Turing Test, Then Worry About Feeling. Template:Webarchive Artificial Intelligence in Medicine 44(2): 83-89</ref> and he has written extensively on categorical perception, symbol grounding, origin of language, lateralization, the Turing test, distributed cognition, scientometrics, and consciousness. Harnad is a former student of Donald O. Hebb<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and Julian Jaynes.<ref>What It Feels Like To Hear Voices: Fond Memories of Julian Jaynes Template:Webarchive</ref>

Research publishing and open access

In 1978, Harnad was the founder<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, of which he remained editor-in-chief until 2002.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In addition, he founded Psycoloquy (an early electronic journal sponsored by the American Psychological Association), CogPrints (an electronic eprint archive in the cognitive sciences hosted by the University of Southampton), and the American Scientist Open Access Forum<ref>Archive of American Scientist Open Access Forum Template:Webarchive</ref> (since 1998; now the Global Open Access List, GOAL<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>). Harnad, an active promoter of open access self-archiving and EPrints<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> is currently Editor-in-Chief of the refereed journal Animal Sentience.<ref name="animalstudiesrepository.org">Animal Sentience An Interdisciplinary Journal on Animal Feeling Template:Webarchive</ref>

Scholarly skywriting

Scholarly skywriting, coined by Harnad around 1987,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> is the combination of multiple email and a topic threaded web archive such as a newsgroup, electronic mailing list, hypermail, netnews or Internet forum, linked and sortable by date, author, or subject-heading threads.<ref name=skywriting1990>Template:Cite journal</ref> 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").<ref name=skywriting1990/> Harnad suggested that it could be a kind of open peer review,<ref name=skywriting1990/> a supplement to classical peer review, but not a substitute for it.<ref>Adler, J. R., Chan, T. M., Blain, J. B., Thoma, B., & Atkinson, P. (2019). # OpenAccess: free online, open-access crowdsource-reviewed publishing is the future; traditional peer-reviewed journals are on the way out. Canadian Journal of Emergency Medicine, 21(1), 11-14.</ref> What Harnad called student skywriting is scholarly skywriting done in a teaching/learning context.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Political activism

Harnad is the author of a 2011 open letter<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> signed by over 60 external members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences addressed to the Academy's President, József Pálinkás, concerning the press and police harassment campaign against Hungarian philosophers who were critics of the current Hungarian ruling party, Fidesz, and its prime minister, Viktor Orbán.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>"Hungarian newspaper targets former dissidents". Monsters and Critics. 8 January 2011.</ref> Harnad resigned from his external membership of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences on 8 October 2016<ref name="apnews.com"/> in protest against the increasingly "Illiberal democracy" of Viktor Orban.

Animal welfare

Harnad is Editor-in-Chief of the refereed journal Animal Sentience<ref name="animalstudiesrepository.org"/> launched in 2015 by the Institute of Science and Policy of The Humane Society of the United States. A vegan,<ref>Elise Desaulniers "I Am Ashamed to Have Been a Vegetarian for 50 Years" Template:Webarchive, Huffington Post, 30 May 2013.</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Harnad is increasingly active in animal welfare,<ref>Harnad, S. (2014) Animal pain and human pleasure: ethical dilemmas outside the classroom Template:Webarchive. LSE Impact Blog 6/13 June 13, 2014</ref><ref>Marc Bekoff & Stevan Harnad (2015) Doing the Right Thing: An Interview With Stevan Harnad Template:Dead linkTemplate:Cbignore. Psychology Today Blog. January 2015</ref> animal rights,<ref>Harnad, Stevan (2012). How/Why Explaining the Causal Role of Consciousness is Hard Template:Webarchive Turing Centenary Institute on the Evolution and Function of Consciousness</ref> and animal law.<ref>Manifesto for the Evolution of Animals’ Legal Status in the Civil Code of Quebec</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

See also

• List of animal rights advocates
• "Subversive Proposal"

External links

• Interview by Marc Bekoff
• Open Access Archivangelism Blog, Stevan Harnad's blog on Open Access
• Publications by Harnad archived in Archipel, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)