Re: conference call

FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS We are happy to announce a conference and workshop on Multidisciplinary Colloquium on Rules and Rule-Following: Philosophy, Linguistics and Psychology between April 30-May 1-2, 1998 at Janus Pannonius University Pecs, Hungary Keynote speakers (who have already accepted invitation): philosophy: Gyoergy Kampis Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest linguistics: Pierre-Yves Raccah Idl-CNRS, Paris psychology: Csaba Pleh Dept. of General Pschology Lorand Eoetvoes University, Budapest Organizing Committee: Laszlo Tarnay (JPTE, Dep. of Philosophy) Laszlo I. Komlosi (ELTE, Dept. of Psychology) Andras Bocz (JPTE, Dept. of English Studies) e-mail: tarnay(a)btk.jpte.hu; komlosi(a)btk.jpte.hu; bocz(a)btk.jpte.hu Advisory Board: Gabor Forrai (Budapest) Gyoergy Kampis (Budapest) Mike Harnish (Tucson) Andras Kertesz (Debrecen) Kuno Lorenz (Saarbruecken) Pierre-Yves Raccah (Paris) Janos S. Petifi (Macerata) Aims and scopes: The main aim of the conference is to bring together cholars from the field of cognitive linguistics, philosophy and psychology to investigate the concept of rule and to address various aspects of rule-following. Ever since Wittgenstein formulated in Philosophical investigations his famous 201 concerning a kind of rule-following which is not an interpretation, the concept of rule has become a key but elusive idea in almost every discipline and approach. And not only in the human sciences. No wonder, since without this idea the whole edifice of human (and possibly all other kinds of) rationality would surely collapse. With the rise of cognitive science, and especially the appearance of connectionist models and networks, however, the classical concept of rule is once again seriously contested. To put it very generally, there is an ongoing debate between the classical conception in which rules appear as a set of formulizable initial conditions or constraints on external operations linking different successive states of a given system (algorithms) and a dynamic conception in which there is nothing that could be correlated with a prior idea of internal well-formedness of the system's states. The debate centers on the representability of rules: either they are conceived of as meta-representations, or they are mere faon de parler concerning the development of complex systems. Idealizable on the one hand, while token-oriented on the other. Something to be implemented on the one hand, while self-controlling, backpropagational processing, on the other. There is however a common idea that almost all kinds of rule-conceptions address: the problem of learning. This idea reverberates from wittgenstenian pragmatics to strategic non-verbal and rule-governed speech behavior, from perceiving similarities to mental processing. Here are some haunting questions: - How do we acquire knowledge if there are no regularities in the world around us? - But how can we perceive those regularities? - And how do we reason on the basis of that knowledge if there are no observable constraints on infererring? - But if there are, where do they come from and how are they actually implemented mentally? - And finally: how do we come to act rationally, that is, in accordance with what we have perceived, processed and inferred? We are interested in all ways of defining rules and in all aspects of rule following, from the definiton of law, rule, regularity, similarity and analogy to logical consequence, argumentational and other inferences, statistical and linguistic rules, practical and strategic reasoning, pragmatic and praxeological activities. We expect contribution from the following reseach fields: game-theory, action theory, argumentation theory, cognitive science, linguitics, philosophy of language, epistemology, pragmatics, psychology and semiotics. We would be happy to include some contributions from natural sciences such as neuro-biology, physiology or brain sciences. The conference is organized in three major sections: philosophy, psychology and linguistics with three keynote lectures. Then contributions of 30 minutes (20 for paper and 10 for discussion) follow. We also plan to organize a workshop at the end of each section. Abstracts: Abstracts should be one-page (maximum 23 lines) specifying area of contribution and the particular aspect of rule-following to be addressed. Abstracts should be sent by e-mail to tarnay(a)btk.jpte.hu or bocz(a)btk.jpte.hu. Hard copies of abstracts may be sent to: Laszlo Tarnay Department of Philosphy Janus Pannonius University H-7624 Pecs, Hungray. Important dates: Deadline for submission: Jan.-15, 1998 Notification of acceptance: Febr.-28, 1998 conference: April 30-May 1-2, 1998