A lecture hosted jointly by CEU and the ELTE Theoretical Philosophy Forum,
Alexander V. Tyaglo (Department of Philosophy and Political Science, National University of Internal Affairs, Kharkiv )
Is informal logic a manifestation of new logical and philosophical paradigm?
10 March (Wednesday) 5:00 PM. ELTE, Budapest, Muzeum krt. 4/i, Room 226
Note that this lecture will take place at ELTE. Address and map with directions are here http://philosophy.elte.hu/tpf/info.html#location
Abstract: I would like to start with the basic attempt of traditional logic and epistemology to find an "absolute weapon of cognition", e.g. like Leibniz' scientia universalis. This fundamental approach was rejected finally in the 20th century only - due to Popper and a few other thinkers. In human rational sphere there is neither ideal knowledge ("absolute truth") nor ideal way of cognition (the "absolute weapon"). What comes after this simple but fundamental statement? First of all, special emphasis on different mistakes, both paralogisms and sophisms: they are immanent features of human knowledge; therefore we have to study these errors as well as how to fight these deeply and systematically (e.g., an infinite task is to complete a theoretical classification of errors). Second, "end of deductivism" and transition to some different way of thinking with accent on probability. In context of this general shift it seems reasonable to study non-demonstrative argument as a basic norm, and methods to evaluate its soundness (while deductive argument appears as a simplification only). I will address this last issue in my talk in detail.
Afra Alishahi (Computational Linguistics, Saarland University)
at 4.30 pm on Wednesday, 3 March 2010
Title:
Modeling different aspects of child language acquisition as a
probabilistic process
Abstract:
I will first present a probabilistic model of word learning by
children. A major source of disagreement among the different theories
of word learning is whether children are equipped with special
mechanisms and biases for word learning, or their general cognitive
abilities are adequate for the task. I present a novel computational
model of early word learning which learns word meanings as
probabilistic associations between words and semantic elements, using
an incremental learning mechanism, and drawing only on general
cognitive abilities. The computational simulations of the model
demonstrate that much about word meanings can be learned from
naturally-occurring child-directed utterances (paired with meaning
representations), without using any special biases or constraints, and
without any explicit developmental changes in the underlying learning
mechanism. Furthermore, our model provides explanations for the
occasionally contradictory child experimental data, and offers
predictions for the behaviour of young word learners in novel
situations.
Children use their knowledge of word meanings in order to learn the
structural properties of the language. I will also present a
probabilistic usage-based model of verb argument structure acquisition
that can successfully learn abstract knowledge of language from
instances of verb usage, and use this knowledge in various language
tasks. The model further demonstrates the feasibility of a usage-based
account of language learning, and provides concrete explanation for
the observed patterns in child language acquisition.
Venue:
CEU Cognitive Development Center
Hattyuhaz
1015 Budapest
Hattyu u 14.
Level 3 (one level up from the entrance level)
Everyone is welcome to attend.
A BME Kognitív Tudományi Tanszék szeretettel vár mindenkit tanszéki
szemináriumsorozatának *következő előadásá*ra:
Március 3., szerda, 14:00-15:00, BME, XI., Stoczek u. 2., St. ép.,
320.-as terem.
*
An Information Theoretic Approach to the Processing of Inflectional
Paradigms and Classes
*
*Petar Milin*
Department of Psychology, University of Novi Sad
Laboratory for Experimental Psychology, University of Belgrade
Bővebb info itt <http://cogsci.bme.hu/Esem.php?esemIndex=108>
--
Attila Keresztes
PhD student
Budapest University of Technology and Economics
Dept. of Cognitive Science,
Stoczek u. 2, Budapest
1111, Hungary
Tel & Fax: +36 1 4631072
Patrick Shafto (Psychology, Lousville)
at 10.00 am on Tuesday, 2 March 2010
Title:
Computational modeling of pedagogical reasoning
Abstract:
Much of human learning goes on in social situations. Among these
situations, pedagogical situations stand out as potentially the most
important. In pedagogical situations, a person (a teacher) chooses
data for the purpose of helping another person learn a concept. I will
present a computational model of pedagogical data sampling, which
formalizes the problem as complementary inferences on the parts of
both the teacher and learner. I will present a series of experiments
that test the model's predictions about reasoning with adults and
children. I will conclude by sketching a larger picture, in which
pedagogical sampling is a special case of reasoning about
intentionally sampled data, and outline directions of future research
in this context.
Venue:
CEU Cognitive Development Center
Hattyuhaz
1015 Budapest
Hattyu u 14.
Level 3 (one level up from the entrance level)
Everyone is welcome to attend.
