‘Mutual Relevance’ Conference Stimulates Minds and Sparks Curiosity

by Georgia Laidlaw

The 2026 Mutual Relevance conference — the biggest event on the Cognitive Science calendar — proved to be another stimulating afternoon of discussion and debate as thinkers across the field explored a central question in contemporary cognitive science: what counts as mental and where do its limits lie?

Featuring Dr. Kristin Andrews, Professor of Philosophy at York University and City University of New York, and Dr. Sara Aronowitz, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto, the event included presentations from both speakers, a constructive debate period, and an open discussion and Q&A with audience members.

Those in attendance included returning guests, current faculty members, and current students who all came to learn from Andrews' work on how we understand animals, and Aronowitz's work that clarifies how learning and memory operate across humans and machines.

“I've been coming to the Mutual Relevance seminars for a number of years. It's very interesting to hear two different takes on a particular topic," said an attending faculty member from University of Toronto Mississauga who worked in psycholinguistics, a sub-field of cognitive science. "Boundaries and scope of mind are relevant to a lot of things that people are concerned with in cognitive science in general, and also within my disciplinary home of psychology. It bears on my research in a number of ways, particularly the sort of implicit, automatic, versus fully-conscious distinction in terms of people's awareness of their own reactions to other people's behavior. 

“The animal mind angle is something very interesting to learn about that I don't come across very much in my own work because I'm focusing on language," they added. "The deeper kinds of distinctions between phenomena and scenarios that come from a philosophical take on issues is always very refreshing and also very different from what I'm used to because the field is focused on experimentation. There's often this way of distilling questions to make them portable or testable in experiments that bulldozes over meaningful nuances that are better appreciated in philosophy." 

Other student attendees learned directly from Dr. Aronowitz in class and were curious to see what she would present. "I've been in a class with Sarah, and I really enjoy hearing her perspectives. She usually has very nuanced, recent, and cutting-edge takes on things,” they said.

"Sarah, was my professor of philosophy of science," added another student, Alejandro. "I talked to her about my tendencies in philosophy, and she recommended taking cognitive science, so I just received an email and registered." 

Similarly, Fiona, a major in the Cognitive Science program's thinking and Reasoning stream, heard about the event via the program's mailing list and came to the conference. "I didn't know much about the other speaker, so I was interested to learn about what they had to offer. It's a good opportunity to at least learn about their topic."

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