The innovative Philosophy-Neurosciences-Psychology (PNP) program at Washington University fosters engagement between different disciplines addressing the mind-brain. It draws together a number of areas in addition to those in its name, including biology, linguistics, education, and cultural anthropology. Each of these disciplines investigates facets of the mind using distinctive modes of inquiry. Neuroscience investigates mental ‘hardware’ by scrutinizing the brain; psychology is concerned with the ‘software’; linguistics affords insights into the mind by exploring language, one of its most complex products; cultural anthropology approaches the mind by looking at the workings of society; and philosophy provides conceptual tools needed for understanding the nature of the mind and its standing in the physical world.

PNP offers two major tracks, Cognitive Neuroscience and Language, Cognition, and Culture, in addition to a minor and a doctoral program. PNP was originally set up as a graduate program in 1993 with a grant of $1,320,000 from the James S McDonnell Foundation (a further grant of $880,000 was made in 1995). Subsequently the program was expanded to include an undergraduate second major, with the first students graduating in 1999. The PNP Research Centre was founded in 2003.