The next talk in the CDC seminar series will be given by:
Michael Brody, UCL/Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Date: Wednesday, June 1, 2011, 5 PM
Location: CEU Cognitive Development Center, Hattyú u. 14, 3rd floor
*The default human*
Abstract: The pronoun *they* in a sentence like (1) is ambiguous:
(1) At the watchmakers shop, they buzz every morning.
*They * can refer to concrete people or objects, as when I am thinking for
example of Peter and John or I might be having a couple of watches in mind.
Another, more interesting, reading is where *they* picks no specific
referents. On this interpretation (1) means something like (2a)
(2) a. At the watchmakers shop, some people buzz every morning
(possibly, but not necessarily by making
watches buzz)
b.NOT: At the watchmakers shop, watches buzz every morning
In spite of the fact that the contextually natural interpretation would
require an inanimate referent (watches), and nothing in the structure
overtly signals the necessity of a human referent, as indicated by (2b) a
nonhuman subject is impossible on this non-specific reading. I will show
that this phenomenon is very general and stable both cross-linguistically
and across various constructions. I'll provide a partial explanation and
raise the possibility of a potential connection with core cognitive systems.
CEU Cognitive Science events calendar: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events
_______________________________________________
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THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY FORUM
Institute of Philosophy
Faculty of Humanities, Eötvös University
Address: Múzeum krt. 4/i, Budapest
1 June (Wednesday) 5:00 PM Room 226
Graeme Forbes
Department of Philosophy, University of Colorado, Boulder
The Problem Of Factives For Sense Theories
___________________________________
Abstracts and printable program (poster) are available from the web
site of the Forum: http://phil.elte.hu/tpf (Please feel free to post the
program in your institution!)
The Forum is open to everyone, including students, visitors, and faculty
members from all departments and institutes! Format: 60 minute lecture,
coffee break, 60 minute discussion.
The organizer of the Forum: László E. Szabó
(leszabo(a)phil.elte.hu)
--
L a s z l o E. S z a b o
Professor of Philosophy
DEPARTMENT OF LOGIC, INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY
EOTVOS UNIVERSITY, BUDAPEST
http://phil.elte.hu/leszabo
The next talk in the CDC seminar series will be given by:
Michael Brody, UCL/Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Date: Wednesday, June 1, 2011, 5 PM
Location: CEU Cognitive Development Center, Hattyú u. 14, 3rd floor
The default human
Abstract: The pronoun *they* in a sentence like (1) is ambiguous:
(1) At the watchmakers shop, they buzz every morning.
*They * can refer to concrete people or objects, as when I am thinking for
example of Peter and John or I might be having a couple of watches in mind.
Another, more interesting, reading is where *they* picks no specific
referents. On this interpretation (1) means something like (2a)
(2) a. At the watchmakers shop, some people buzz every morning
(possibly, but not necessarily by making
watches buzz)
b.NOT: At the watchmakers shop, watches buzz every morning
In spite of the fact that the contextually natural interpretation would
require an inanimate referent (watches), and nothing in the structure
overtly signals the necessity of a human referent, as indicated by (2b) a
nonhuman subject is impossible on this non-specific reading. I will show
that this phenomenon is very general and stable both cross-linguistically
and across various constructions. I'll provide a partial explanation and
raise the possibility of a potential connection with core cognitive systems.
CEU Cognitive Science events calendar: http://cognitivescience.ceu.hu/events
_______________________________________________
Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu
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The next talk in the CDC seminar series will be given by
Hanna Marno, CEU
Date: Wednesday, May 25, 2011, 5 PM
Location: CEU Cognitive Development Center, Hattyú u. 14, 3rd floor
How do we learn about objects in the context of communication?
Abstract: Humans, uniquely among animals, learn from each other by
receiving semantic information via communication. It has been
hypothesized that the emergence of this ability is supported by
perceptual biases in learning that would make people more likely to
extract semantically relevant features of a scene in a communicative
context. According to this hypothesis, when people observe an object
in an ambiguous communicative context, they would be biased to encode
the permanent features of the object, such as its colour or shape, at
the expense of its transient features, such as its location. Although
experimental evidence with young infants corroborated this proposal,
it has been unclear whether the same tendency still exists in adults.
I will present a series of studies that provides evidence that,
similarly to infants, adults have a tendency to preferentially encode
permanent features of objects under communicative contexts. By using
a change detection paradigm, our first series of studies focused on
immediate perceptual coding. We found that people more likely detect
changes of identity than changes of location of objects when the
objects are presented in the context of communication. Our second
series of studies tested the long-term effect of communicative cues on
memory representations. By using a recall task, we found that subjects
memorised and recalled the permanent features of objects more reliably
in situations where the objects were encountered in a communicative
context. Together these studies shed new light on the complex
interaction between communication and learning in humans.
_______________________________________________
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Dear All,
The next talk in the Friday seminar series at the Institute for
Psychology, HAS, is going to be given by:
Joram Feldon (Laboratory of Behavioural Neurobiology, Swiss Federal
Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich)
"Prenatal Infections and Long-Term Mental Outcome"
Please find attached the abstract of the talk.
MAY 20, 14:00, Szondi u. 83-85.
Everyone is welcome to attend.
Kindest regards,
Tamás Bőhm
__________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 6134 (20110519) __________
The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus.
http://www.eset.com
Kedves Érdeklődők,
emlékeztetőül írom, hogy ezen a héten kerül sor az ELTE kognitív Péntek
sorozatának utolsó előadására ebben a tanévben.
Téglás Ernő: A kontingens reakciók észlelése és értelmezései csecsemőkorban
2011. május 20. 14:00-15:00, Izabella u. 46., 216 terem
Absztrakt:
https://sites.google.com/site/eltekognitiv/home/elte-kognitiv-pentek
Szeretettel várunk mindenkit!
Üdvözlettel:
Garami Linda
ELTE-PPK, Kognitív Pszichológia Tanszék
The next talk in the CDC seminar series will be given by
Hanna Marno, CEU
Date: Wednesday, May 25, 2011, 5 PM
Location: CEU Cognitive Development Center, Hattyú u. 14, 3rd floor
How do we learn about objects in the context of communication?
Abstract: Humans, uniquely among animals, learn from each other by
receiving semantic information via communication. It has been
hypothesized that the emergence of this ability is supported by
perceptual biases in learning that would make people more likely to
extract semantically relevant features of a scene in a communicative
context. According to this hypothesis, when people observe an object
in an ambiguous communicative context, they would be biased to encode
the permanent features of the object, such as its colour or shape, at
the expense of its transient features, such as its location. Although
experimental evidence with young infants corroborated this proposal,
it has been unclear whether the same tendency still exists in adults.
I will present a series of studies that provides evidence that,
similarly to infants, adults have a tendency to preferentially encode
permanent features of objects under communicative contexts. By using
a change detection paradigm, our first series of studies focused on
immediate perceptual coding. We found that people more likely detect
changes of identity than changes of location of objects when the
objects are presented in the context of communication. Our second
series of studies tested the long-term effect of communicative cues on
memory representations. By using a recall task, we found that subjects
memorised and recalled the permanent features of objects more reliably
in situations where the objects were encountered in a communicative
context. Together these studies shed new light on the complex
interaction between communication and learning in humans.
_______________________________________________
Subscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-subscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu
Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to seminars-unsubscribe(a)cdc.ceu.hu
---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Subject: [MaFLa] invitation to a philosophy talk on`Kant's Case for the
Syntheticity of Mathematical Judgments in the First Critique and Afterwards`
Date: Tuesday, May 17, 2011, 02:44:16 PM
From: "Krisztina Biber" <Biberk(a)ceu.hu>
To: whatson(a)ceu.hu, mafla(a)phil.elte.hu
The CEU Department of Philosophy cordially invites you to a talk
by
Katherine Dunlop (Brown University)
on
`Kant's Case for the Syntheticity of Mathematical Judgments in the First
Critique and Afterwards`
Friday, 3 June, 2011, 4.00 PM, Zrinyi 14, Room 411
ABSTRACT
In the _Critique of Pure Reason_, especially the "Doctrine of Method" portion,
Kant seems to argue that mathematical judgments are synthetic because they
are justified by "pure intuition", where intuition represents particulars (and
pure intuition is a priori).
But it is not easy to understand how representation of a particular can
justify a priori conclusions. In this paper, I develop a further reason to
seek an another way to understand Kant's argument that mathematical judgments
are synthetic. I show that the position Kant takes in the first Critique is
vulnerable to objections made by followers of Christian Wolff in the 1790s.
These opponents argued that the predicate of any mathematical judgment could
be incorporated into an appropriate definition of its subject. The judgment
would then be justified by conceptual analysis--without any contribution from
intuition--and so would be analytic. Kant is vulnerable to the objection
because he maintains that mathematical definitions are "arbitrary". I argue,
however, that Kant has the resources to withstand the objection. Kant can
argue that the definitions introduced by the Wolffians presuppose the same
cognitive capacities used to prove the result in question, in particular, the
capacity to construct figures in space. However, this cognitive power is not
easily understood as representation of a particular, i.e., intuition as Kant
defines it in the first Critique. Kant should instead maintain that definitions
of concepts presuppose, on the part of the sensible faculty, general
constructive abilities. I show that Kant indeed formulates his view this way
in response to the Wolffians.
-----------------------------------------
--
L a s z l o E. S z a b o
Professor of Philosophy
DEPARTMENT OF LOGIC, INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY
EOTVOS UNIVERSITY, BUDAPEST
http://phil.elte.hu/leszabo
The next talk in the CDC seminar series will be given by
Sarah Lloyd-Fox, Birkbeck, University of London
Date: Wednesday, May 18, 2011, 5 PM
Location: CEU Cognitive Development Center, Hattyú u. 14, 3rd floor
Cortical mapping of human action perception during infancy: A functional
Near Infrared Spectroscopy investigation <http://www.ceu.hu/node/21879>
Abstract: The ability to identify cues from motion, such as eye gaze shifts,
emotional expression, articulation of the mouth and manual gestures,
provides the foundation of social perception and allows us to comprehend and
interpret the intentions, language, emotions and desires of others. The
cortical mapping of human action perception in the infant brain is poorly
understood, largely due to the limitations of available neuroimaging
methods. The research presented in this talk investigated cortical
activation to facial and manual human actions using functional near infrared
spectroscopy (fNIRS). fNIRS provides an elegant solution to bridge this
methodological gap, and is an emerging new technology for investigating
developmental cognitive neuroscience. Over a series of experiments, four to
six-month-old infants watched life-size videos of adult actors moving their
hand, their mouth, or their eyes, while haemodynamic responses were recorded
over the frontal and temporal cortices. The data presented in Study 1 and 2
suggests that a localised superior temporal region of the cortex is
responsive to the observation of complex social human actions, and not to
non-human mechanical actions. Study 3 reveals localised cortical responses
to differing dynamic facial and manual human action cues in regions of the
frontal and temporal cortex with partially separable localised responses
evident to different types of human movements. Finally Study 4, which
investigated these effects further, presents optical data alongside
concurrent eye-tracking data and additional behavioural measures of manual
dexterity. These preliminary findings suggest that infant’s own fine motor
abilities may be correlated with cortical activation to the perception of
another’s hand movements. Taken together, this work illuminates hitherto
undocumented maps of cortical activation to human action perception in the
early developing brain, and demonstrate the potential that fNIRS offers for
developmental research.
_______________________________________________
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Begin forwarded message:
> From: Anne Boeckler <jam4in2011(a)gmail.com>
> Date: 16 May 2011 12:12:08 pm CEST
> Subject: JAM program
>
> Dear friends, colleagues, and JAMmers,
>
> please find attached the program of JAM IV.
> Details about the location are available on our homepage www.somby.nl
>
> Conference fees are 30 Euro for (graduate/PhD)-students and 60 Euro for postdocs/seniors. Please pay in cash at the conference reception.
>
> Looking forward to seeing you in Vienna!
> Best,
> Anne, Georg, Günther, and Natalie