cognitive course

Hereby Department of General Psychology announces that Prof. Stevan HARNAD (Professor of Psychology and Director of Cognitive Sciences Centre at University of Southampton) will be our guest between 17th and 27th October and is going to give a brief couse on FOUNDATIONS OF COGNITION: A SOCIOBIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE We, like other species, evolved. And we can think -- in fact, we evolved the ability to think. We also evolved the ability to feel. Why we are afraid of the dark, of snakes, of strangers, of heights; why we feel like eating when our blood sugar goes down, why we overeat, why most of us prefer sex with the opposite sex rather than our own, why we are jealous, why we favour our kin -- all of this can be explained as an evolutionary legacy. What scope does this leave for thinking and freedom of will? These and other questions will be discussed in this seminar on what can and cannot be explained sociobiologically. A good starting paper is: http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.htm Note: this is a seminar, not a lecture course. We will discuss readings form these books (Other readings: http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/readlist.htm): Books: Barkow, J., Cosmides, L. and Tooby, J. (1992) The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. NY: Oxford University Press. Baker, Robin (1996) Sperm wars : infidelity, sexual conflict and other bedroom battles London : Fourth Estate, 1996. Dennett, Daniel C. (1995) Darwin's dangerous idea : evolution and the meanings of life. London ; New York : Allen Lane Pinker, S. (1994) The language instinct. NY: Morrow. Exact dates and times (each lecture will take place in H-1064, Budapest, Izabella str. 46.): 20th October (Monday), 12.00, room #209 21st October (Tuesday), 10.00, room #316 22nd October (Wednesday), 10.00, room #316 27th October (Monday), 12.00, room #209 By fulfilling the requirements the course gives a credit in the cognitive psychology programme of the Department of General Psychology (code number: PS-KK13.01). Professor Harnad will be staying at the guest suite in Izabella street, day time phone: 342-3130. His local host is Csaba Pleh, same number, e-mail: pleh(a)izabell.elte.hu, home number: (23) 453-933. ************************************************* Professor Harnad is going to give a public lecture on 22nd October (Wednesday) 17.00 in Institute for Advanced Study, Collegium Budapest (H-1014, Budapest, Szentharomsag str. 2.) The topic is: CATEGORISATION, COMMUNICATION AND COGNITION: ON THE ADVANTAGES OF SYMBOLIC THEFT OVER SENSORIMOTOR TOIL To categorise is to respond differentially to certain kinds of input. This is a very general cognitive capacity, covering everything from Pavlovian and instrumental responding to the chess master pondering how to respond to a chess move and the physicist inferring the existence of quarks. Once a categoriser has a repertoire of categories grounded through trial and error sensorimotor interaction ("honest toil"), higher-order categories can be formed in two ways: through further sensorimotor interaction, as with the ground-level categories, or through symbolic interaction with other categorisers, based on combining and recombining the names of lower-order categories into propositions describing new higher-order categories ("theft"). I will present some behavioural and computational data comparing these two strategies. Some related papers that can be found at my Web site: http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/genpub.html Harnad, S. (1995) Grounding symbols in sensorimotor categories with neural networks. In: IEE Colloquium 'Grounding Representations: Integration of Sensory Information in Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks' (Digest No.1995/103). London, UK, 15 May 1995). London, UK: IEE, 1995. p. 6/1-4. Harnad, S. (1996) The Origin of Words: A Psychophysical Hypothesis In Velichkovsky B & Rumbaugh, D. (Eds.) "Communicating Meaning: Evolution and Development of Language. NJ: Erlbaum: pp 27-44. Andrews, J., Livingston, K. & Harnad (1997) Categorical Perception Effects Induced by Category Learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learning and Cognition (in press). Cangelosi, A & Harnad, S. (in prep) On the Virtues of Theft Over Honest Toil: Grounding Language and Thought in Sensorimotor Categories. the CogPrints Electronic Preprint Archive in the Cognitive Sciences (supported by JISC and modeled on Paul Ginsparg's NSF-supported Physics Eprint Archive), he is Past President of the Society for Philosopy and Psychology. All welcome! ___________________________________ Gyongyi Czachesz (CZACHESZ(a)izabell.elte.hu, CZACHESZ(a)isis.elte.hu) Eotvos Lorand University Budapest Dept. of General Psychology H-1064 Budapest, Izabella St 46. Phone: (36-1) 342-3130