Stevan Harnad


Stevan Robert Harnad is a Hungarian-born cognitive scientist based in Montréal, Canada.

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, his Doctor of Philosophy degree from Princeton University in 1992. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by University of Liège in 2013.

Research

Harnad's research interests are in cognitive science, open access and animal sentience. He is currently professor of psychology at Université du Québec à Montréal, McGill University, and professor emeritus of cognitive science at the University of Southampton. Elected external member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2001, he was Canada Research Chair in cognitive science . His research is on categorization, communication, cognition, and consciousness 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 and Julian Jaynes.

Research publishing and open access

In 1978, Harnad was the founder of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, of which he remained editor-in-chief until 2002. In addition, he founded Psycoloquy, CogPrints, and the American Scientist Open Access Forum. Harnad, an active promoter of open access self-archiving and EPrints is currently Editor-in-Chief of the refereed journal Animal Sentience

Political activism

Harnad is the author of a 2011 open letter 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.

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. A vegan, Harnad is increasingly active in animal welfare, animal rights. and animal law.