Agency in AI, Mind, and Mental Disorders

When:
Monday, March 30, 2026 | 15:30 – 19:30
Where:
ACG Plaka Building, 17b Ipitou Street, Plaka, Athens
Organized by:
Dr. Elly Vintiadis and Prof. Themistoklis Pantazakos (ACG)
Supported by:
the Frances Riches School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

About the event

An interdisciplinary workshop on agency in mental disorders and AI systems, led by Professors Lisa Bortolotti (University of Birmingham) and Tim Crane (Central European University). It will include a lecture by both and will be followed by a roundtable discussion with professor Pantazakos and Dr. Vintiadis (ACG)

About the speakers

Tim Crane

Tim Crane is Professor of Philosophy and Pro-Rector at the Central European University (CEU) in Vienna specializing in philosophy of mind, metaphysics, philosophy of perception and philosophy of psychology. He is Pro-Rector for Foresight and Analysis and Professor of Philosophy at Central European University (Vienna), having previously served as the Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and taught at University College London. Tim Crane is Principal Investigator of the “Knowledge in Crisis” Cluster of Excellence, a major five-year research project (2023–2028) funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) with nearly €9 million, which investigates the nature of knowledge and its challenges in contemporary society. He holds or has held major roles editing and shaping the field: he was the founding Director of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of London, is general editor of the Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy and has been the philosophy consultant editor for the Times Literary Supplement.

Lisa Bortolotti

Lisa Bortolotti is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Birmingham, with a joint appointment at the University of Ferrara. Her research spans the philosophy of the cognitive sciences, philosophy of psychology and psychiatry and bioethics. She investigates human rationality, agency, irrational beliefs, delusions, distorted memories and self‐knowledge, with a view to understanding both the limits and potentials of cognition. She has led major funded research projects, most notably PERFECT (Pragmatic and Epistemic Role of Factually Erroneous Cognitions and Thoughts), supported by an ERC Consolidator Grant (2014–2019), exploring the idea that beliefs and cognitions often labeled “faulty” can carry important pragmatic or epistemic roles. She is also co‐investigator and PI on other grant‐funded projects relating to mental health, agency, identity, and justice. Since January 2022 she has been Editor‐in‐Chief of Philosophical Psychology, one of the leading journals in cognitive science and philosophy of mind.

Themistoklis Pantazakos

Dr. Pantazakos is a psychologist and philosopher teaching at ACG. Besides this appointment, he is also Visiting Professor at KU Leuven and Honorary Research Fellow at University College London. He holds an M.Sc. in Philosophy of Science from the London School of Economics, where he won the Imre Lakatos Award for outstanding performance. His research covers two areas. First, he is developing a framework for mental health interventions for people diagnosed with autism. This project is undertaken in collaboration with a diverse cohort and professional including psychiatrists and educations and is aligned with the neurodiversity movement. This means that it seeks not to pathologize autism itself, but tackle the mental ailments that this population faces in their own regard, taking autism as a departure point rather than something to work against. Second, he works in the philosophy of perception. He studies contemporary and emerging views of perception, using these theories to investigate the question of scientific realism, i.e., whether the sciences describe a mind-independent world as it is.

Elly Vintiadis

Elly Vintiadis is associate Lecturer on philosophy at Deree- The American College of Greece working at the intersection of philosophy and cognitive science. Her research centers on the philosophy of mind and psychiatry and also extends into epistemology, metaphilosophy, animal ethics and bioethics. She works on the nature of consciousness and mental disorders, examining how environmental factors shape both, and on the foundations of our ethical obligations – to one another and to non-human animals. She is associate editor of the interdisciplinary journal Philosophical Psychology. She also co-directs two major projects: the Demographics in Philosophy Project, which addresses the underrepresentation of women in philosophy and promotes diversity in the field; and the Mind-at-Large Project, a three-year conference series exploring consciousness and its role in reality.

The event is free and open to the public.

For further clarifications, please contact [email protected] or [email protected]