Mark H. Bickhard
Henry R. Luce Professor in Cognitive Robotics
and the Philosophy of Knowledge
312 Chandler Hall, 610.758.3633
mark@bickhard.name
personal page

Academic History
University of Chicago, Ph.D., 1973, Human Development
University of Chicago, M.S., 1970, Statistics
University of Chicago, B.S., 1966, Mathematics

Research Interests
Theoretical psychology, cognitive science, developmental psychology, language, personality and psychopathology, evolutionary biology, cognition and the central nervous system, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language.

My work is primarily in formal theoretical psychology, with a focus on the formal modeling of cognitive processes. I am interested in the nature of persons - both in the sense of the modeling of biological persons and the emergence of social persons, and in the sense of the design of artificial persons.

Current Book Project
The Whole Person - Toward a Naturalism of Persons, Contributions to an Ontological Psychology

Teaching Interests
Cognitive Science
Cognitive Psychology
Developmental Psychology
Philosophy of Science
Theoretical Biology

Selected Publications

Bickhard, M. H.  (2009).  Interactivism: A Manifesto.  New Ideas in Psychology 27, 85–95.

Bickhard, M. H.  (2009).  The Biological Foundations of Cognitive Science.  New Ideas in Psychology 27,
   75–84.

Bickhard, M. H.  (2009).  The interactivist model.  Synthese 166(3), 547-591.

Bickhard, M. H.  (2009).  Interactivism.  In J. Symons, P. Calvo  (Eds.)  The Routledge Companion to
   Philosophy of Psychology.  (346-359).  London: Routledge.

Bickhard, M. H. (2008). Are You Social? The Ontological and Developmental Emergence of the Person.
   In U. Mueller, J. I. M. Carpendale, N. Budwig, B. Sokol (Eds.) Social Life and Social Knowledge. (17-42).
   New York: Taylor & Francis.

Bickhard, M. H. (2008). Issues in Process Metaphysics. Ecological Psychology, 20(3), 252-256.

Bickhard, M. H. (2008). Social Ontology as Convention. Topoi, 27(1-2), 139-149.

Bickhard, M. H. (2007). Language as an Interaction System.
   New Ideas in Psychology, 25(2), 171-187.

Christopher, J. C., Bickhard, M. H. (2007). Culture, Self and Identity:
   Interactivist Contributions to a Metatheory for Cultural Psychology.
   Culture & Psychology, 13(3), 259-295.

Bickhard, M. H. (2006). Developmental Normativity and Normative Development.
   In L. Smith, J. Voneche (Eds.) Norms in Human Development. (57-76).
   Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bickhard, M. H. (2005). Consciousness and Reflective Consciousness.
    Philosophical Psychology, 18(2), 205-218.

Bickhard, M. H. (2004). The Social Ontology of Persons.
    In J. I. M. Carpendale, U. Muller (Eds.) Social Interaction and the
    Development of Knowledge. (111-132). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Bickhard, M. H. (2004). Process and Emergence: Normative Function
   and Representation. Axiomathes - An International Journal in Ontology
   and Cognitive Systems, 14, 135-169.
   Also in: Seibt, J. (2003). Process Theories: Crossdisciplinary Studies in
   Dynamic Categories. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.

Bickhard, M. H., Campbell, D. T. (2003). Variations in Variation and Selection:
   The Ubiquity of the Variation-and-Selective Retention Ratchet in Emergent
   Organizational Complexity. Foundations of Science, 8(3), 215-282.

Bickhard, M. H. (2003). Some notes on internal and external relations
   and representation. Consciousness & Emotion, 4(1), 101-110.

Bickhard, M. H. (2002). Critical Principles: On the Negative Side of
    Rationality. New Ideas in Psychology, 20, 1-34.

Christensen, W. D., Bickhard, M. H. (2002). The Process Dynamics of
    Normative Function. Monist, 85(1), 3-28.

Bickhard, M. H. (2001). Why Children Don't Have to Solve the
    Frame Problems: Cognitive Representations are not Encodings.
    Developmental Review, 21, 224-262.

Christopher, J. C., Bickhard, M. H., Lambeth, G. S. (2001). Otto
    Kernberg's Object Relations Theory: A Metapsychological Critique.
    Theory and Psychology, 11(5), 687-711.

Bickhard, M. H. (2000). Motivation and Emotion: An Interactive Process
    Model. In R. D. Ellis, N. Newton (Eds.) The Caldron of Consciousness.
    (161-178). J. Benjamins.

Levine, A., Bickhard, M. H. (1999). Concepts: Where Fodor Went Wrong.
    Philosophical Psychology, 12(1), 5-23.

Bickhard, M. H. (1999). Interaction and Representation. Theory &
    Psychology, 9(4), 435-458.

Bickhard, M. H. (1998). Robots and Representations. In R. Pfeifer,
    B. Blumberg, J.-A. Meyer, S. W. Wilson (Eds.) From Animals to Animats 5.
    (58-63). Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Simulation of
    Adaptive Behavior. Zurich, Switzerland, August 17 - 21, 1998. MIT.

Bickhard, M. H. (1997). Cognitive Representation in the Brain. In R.
    Dulbecco (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Human Biology. 2nd Ed. (865-876).
    San Diego: Academic Press.

Bickhard, M. H. (1995). Intrinsic Constraints on Language: Grammar
    and Hermeneutics. Journal of Pragmatics, 23, 541-554.

Bickhard, M. H., Terveen, L. (1995). Foundational Issues in Artificial
    Intelligence and Cognitive Science: Impasse and Solution. Elsevier Scientific.