Peter Gärdenfors#

Education

Born 1949 in Forsakar, Sweden. B.Sc. 1970 at Lund University (mathematics, philosophy, computer science). Ph.D. in Philosophy 1974, Lund University. Dissertation: Group Decision Theory.

Academic positions

Various positions at Department of Philosophy, Lund University, 1970-1980. Held a vacancy as Associate Professor in Philosophy of Science at Umeå University parts of 1975-1977. Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy, Lund University, 1980-1988. Held a research chair in Cognitive Science at the Swedish Council for Research in Humanities and Social Sciences, 1988-1994. Professor of Cognitive Science at Lund University, since 1994.

Visiting positions

Visiting Fellow, Princeton University 1973-1974. Visiting Scholar, Stanford University 1983-1984. Visiting Professor, Auckland University September 1986. Visiting Fellow, Australian National University, 1986-1987. Visiting Professor, Universidad de Buenos Aires, November 1990. Visiting Professor, École Normale Superieur, Cachan, June 1992. Visiting Professor, Rome University La Sapienza, May 1995, Visiting Scholar, CREA, Paris, October 1999, Fellow at SCASSS, Uppsala 2003-2004. Visiting Professor, UCSD, January-February 2005, Visiting Scholar, Bristish Academy, April 2005. Visiting Professor, Cà Foscari University of Venice, May-June 2005.

Honors

Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities since 1996. Member of Academia Europaea since 1999. Presented with the electronic Festschrift Spinning Ideas on my 50th birthday. Member of Leopoldina Deutsche Akademie für Naturforscher since 2004. Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science since 2009.

Awards

The Rausing prize in humanities in 1996. Senior Individual Grant from the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research in 1997. The prize for interdisciplinary research by Academiæ Regiæ Scientiarum Upsaliensis in 2008.

Editor of Theoria 1978-1986. Editor of Journal of Logic, Language and Information 1992-1995.

Research interests

Previous research focussed on philosophy of science, decision theory, belief revision and nonmonotonic reasoning. Main current research interests are concept formation (using conceptual spaces based on geometrical and topological models), cognitive semantics, models of knowledge and information and the evolution of cognition.