I. Parmenides

The Parmenides Foundation, established in Italy in the year 2000, is research partner of the Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich and supporting member of the Max Planck Society. The foundation has been named after the presocratic philosopher Parmenides, who lived and taught in Elea in Lower Italy. He was the first to inquire systematically into the relationship between thinking and reality, and to reveal the power of logical thought.

II. Background and Task

The purpose of the Parmenides Foundation is to provide a platform for advanced interdisciplinary research on thinking. Progress in various disciplines of neuro- and cognitive sciences allows for a significantly better understanding of many aspects of cognition. But what actually happens in the human brain when we form a complex thought is to a large extent still terra incognita - and, therefore, constitutes the focus of the research efforts of the Parmenides Foundation.

III. Research Approach

The overall research approach is to study the phenomenon of complex thinking in a matrix-like format. Horizontally we distinguish between the following layers: (1) the generation of mental content, (2) pre-lingual thinking operations, (3) elementary language-based operations, and (4) the fully developed richness of explicit reasoning. Each of these four layers is addressed in five vertical columns: (a) hypothesis formation, (b) model-building, (c) brain-imaging, and research into (d) the phylogeny and (e) ontogeny of the respective processes. The goal of our research is to provide a coherent, empirically validated framework for the understanding of complex thinking.

IV. Implementation

The work of the foundation is based on close co-operation with leading experts and institutions worldwide. The research is organized in two interacting bodies. The first is a small interdisciplinary core team working out of Munich. The second is a larger international faculty. Its members represent the best insights regarding thinking from mainly six disciplines: neurosciences, neuroinformatics, philosophy, cognitive psychology, evolutionary anthropology and linguistics. The faculty members come together in various combinations for workshops and seminars that are coordinated with the work of the core team. In addition there are biannual faculty plenaries allowing for a broad exchange and redirection of the thrust of work.