Dear All, The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to the following talk<https://events.ceu.edu/2025-06-12/departmental-colloquium-stephen-b… by: Speaker: <https://www.butterfill.com/> Stephen A. Butterfill<https://www.butterfill.com/> (University of Warwick) Time: 4pm (to 6 pm) CET Date: Thursday, 12th June 2025 Venue: D002 (QS Vienna) and Zoom: https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/92936053342?pwd=rmn17eP5dgRh6VqhW91t5DE8EYmrXf.1 Meeting ID: 929 3605 3342 Passcode: 154211 Chair: Günther Knoblich Title: Joint Action at the Roots of Ethical Cognition Abstract: Processes likely to be evolutionarily ancient and to appear early in development (perhaps linked to philosophers’ *moral sentiments*) influence adults’ ethical intuitions. What is the best computational description of these processes? The leading answers involve principles. Thus Greene (2015; 2017) models fast processes as operating in accordance with deontological principles such as ‘do not harm.’ On such a view, basic moral processes yield values adaptive in a pre-historic world. This talk defends a speculative alternative, one which involves capacities for joint action and no principles. Joint action is (so the proposal) at the root of ethical cognition in two ways: it enables us to converge on what feels disgusting, bitter, unfitting, or otherwise wrong; and, as I will explain, joint actions enable us to turn these feelings into a form of normative guidance by upholding norm-like patterns of behavior. While full-blown normative attitudes and legal codes are important tools for modern societies, the impossibility of explicitly codifying every useful value indicates that joint-action-based forms of normative guidance are indispensable. *Anyone not affiliated with CEU wishing to attend in-person in Vienna must RSVP to get access to the lecture hall. Best regards, Fanni ------------------------------------------------ FANNI TAKÁTSY Lab Manager/Research Coordinator, Social Mind Center ------------------------------------------------ [cid:42067b17-4991-4d34-9c89-2f5005166125] CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY Quellenstrasse 51. | 1100 Vienna, Austria takatsyf@ceu.edu<mailto:jeneia@ceu.edu> http://socialmind.ceu.edu/ http://cognitivescience.ceu.edu/ ------------------------------------------------- ______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to talks-subscribe(a)cogsci.ceu.edu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to talks-unsubscribe(a)cogsci.ceu.edu

reminder, colloquium today ________________________________ From: Fanni Takatsy &lt;TakatsyF(a)ceu.edu&gt; Sent: Thursday, June 5, 2025 1:09 PM To: talks(a)cogsci.ceu.edu (talks(a)cogsci.ceu.edu) &lt;talks(a)cogsci.ceu.edu&gt; Subject: talk by Stephen A. Butterfill on 'Joint Action at the Roots of Ethical Cognition' - Thursday, June 12th 2025- 4pm (CET) Dear All, The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to the following talk<https://events.ceu.edu/2025-06-12/departmental-colloquium-stephen-b… by: Speaker: <https://www.butterfill.com/> Stephen A. Butterfill<https://www.butterfill.com/> (University of Warwick) Time: 4pm (to 6 pm) CET Date: Thursday, 12th June 2025 Venue: D002 (QS Vienna) and Zoom: https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/92936053342?pwd=rmn17eP5dgRh6VqhW91t5DE8EYmrXf.1 Meeting ID: 929 3605 3342 Passcode: 154211 Chair: Günther Knoblich Title: Joint Action at the Roots of Ethical Cognition Abstract: Processes likely to be evolutionarily ancient and to appear early in development (perhaps linked to philosophers’ *moral sentiments*) influence adults’ ethical intuitions. What is the best computational description of these processes? The leading answers involve principles. Thus Greene (2015; 2017) models fast processes as operating in accordance with deontological principles such as ‘do not harm.’ On such a view, basic moral processes yield values adaptive in a pre-historic world. This talk defends a speculative alternative, one which involves capacities for joint action and no principles. Joint action is (so the proposal) at the root of ethical cognition in two ways: it enables us to converge on what feels disgusting, bitter, unfitting, or otherwise wrong; and, as I will explain, joint actions enable us to turn these feelings into a form of normative guidance by upholding norm-like patterns of behavior. While full-blown normative attitudes and legal codes are important tools for modern societies, the impossibility of explicitly codifying every useful value indicates that joint-action-based forms of normative guidance are indispensable. *Anyone not affiliated with CEU wishing to attend in-person in Vienna must RSVP to get access to the lecture hall. Best regards, Fanni ------------------------------------------------ FANNI TAKÁTSY Lab Manager/Research Coordinator, Social Mind Center ------------------------------------------------ [cid:42067b17-4991-4d34-9c89-2f5005166125] CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY Quellenstrasse 51. | 1100 Vienna, Austria takatsyf@ceu.edu<mailto:jeneia@ceu.edu> http://socialmind.ceu.edu/ http://cognitivescience.ceu.edu/ ------------------------------------------------- ______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to talks-subscribe(a)cogsci.ceu.edu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to talks-unsubscribe(a)cogsci.ceu.edu

________________________________ From: Fanni Takatsy &lt;TakatsyF(a)ceu.edu&gt; Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2025 11:14 AM To: &#39;talks(a)cogsci.ceu.edu&#39; &lt;talks(a)cogsci.ceu.edu&gt; Subject: talk by Olivier Morin on 'How well designed are languages and other tools for communication?' - Wednesday, January 7th 2026 - 4pm (CET) Dear All, The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to the following talk<https://events.ceu.edu/2026-01-07/departmental-colloquium-olivier-m… by: Speaker: Olivier Morin<http://www.institutnicod.org/membres/membres-statutaires/morin-oli… (Institut Jean Nicod) Time: 4pm (to 6 pm) CET Date: Wednesday, 7th January 2026 Venue: D001 (QS Vienna) and Zoom: https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/92052279253?pwd=5fK9ZXAspOJCVearHyheYSSmrp01cI.1 Meeting ID: 920 5227 9253 Passcode: 193807 Chair: Christophe Heintz Title: How well designed are languages and other tools for communication? Abstract: A fruitful framework in cognitive science studies communication systems as a well-designed and efficient tool for communication. In this view, several features of language and other communication systems (non-human communication, non-lingustic codes, etc.) can be explained as adaptive solutions to the challenges of information transmission. Famous examples include the law of abbreviation, showing that frequent words or signals tend to be short or simple, saving cognitive and articulatory costs; or the combinatoriality of signals, whereby words and phonemes (but also other signals and their components) are made up from combinations of discrete elements or features, making symbols distinctive and numerous but still easy to store and produce. I will argue that this "efficient design" view of communication systems is incomplete at best. It lacks a mechanistic foundation—some account of how communication systems came to be efficiently designed. It lacks credible null hypotheses telling us what communication look like if it were not efficiently designed. I will illustrate this point with two studies. The first considers the law of abbreviation. This law, as it occurs in natural languages, fails to satisfy the prediction of the standard, efficiency-based account, inherited from Zipf. It is systematically weak, and always accompanied by heteroskedasticity. I propose a cultural evolutionary account that explains these features of the law of abbreviation, and the law itself, without assuming any selection for efficient communication. The second study looks at combinatoriality in letters. Like the sounds of languages, letter shapes combine distinct features to create multiple shapes (like the arch in n and m, or the vertical stroke in q,p,d,b). Yet, data from a broad comparative survey of letter shapes in 43 writing systems shows writing to be much less combinatorial than speech. Combinatoriality, thus, is not the only way for a communication system to create numerous, distinctive symbols. These two studies illustrate an approach of the evolution of communication systems where the need for communicative efficiency is acknowledged but not taken as a sufficient explanation. Languages and other communication systems evolved under a pressure for efficiency, but they do not always comply with it, or they may comply in unpredictable ways. *Anyone not affiliated with CEU wishing to attend in-person in Vienna must RSVP to get access to the lecture hall. Best regards, Fanni ------------------------------------------------ FANNI TAKÁTSY Lab Manager/Research Coordinator, Social Mind Center ------------------------------------------------ [cid:42067b17-4991-4d34-9c89-2f5005166125] CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY Quellenstrasse 51. | 1100 Vienna, Austria takatsyf@ceu.edu<mailto:jeneia@ceu.edu> http://socialmind.ceu.edu/ http://cognitivescience.ceu.edu/ ------------------------------------------------- ______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to talks-subscribe(a)cogsci.ceu.edu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to talks-unsubscribe(a)cogsci.ceu.edu

Please note that the colloquium will start tomorrow at 3PM! ________________________________ From: Fanni Takatsy &lt;TakatsyF(a)ceu.edu&gt; Sent: Thursday, January 8, 2026 4:24 PM To: &#39;talks(a)cogsci.ceu.edu&#39; &lt;talks(a)cogsci.ceu.edu&gt; Subject: talk by Gerry Altmann on 'Objects as Event Representations: Theory, Data, and Models. ' - Wednesday, January 14th 2026 - 3pm (CET) Dear All, The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to the following talk<https://events.ceu.edu/2026-01-14/departmental-colloquium-gerry-alt… by: Speaker: Gerry Altmann<https://psychology.uconn.edu/person/gerry-altmann/> <https://psychology.uconn.edu/person/gerry-altmann/> (University of Connecticut) Time: 3 pm (to 5 pm) CET Date: Wednesday, 14th January 2026 Venue: D001 (QS Vienna) and Zoom: https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/92542715048?pwd=ABqFncllhq9NUDaoaTTwh0Zb88CZtk.1 Meeting ID: 925 4271 5048 Passcode: 829493 Chair: Eva Wittenberg Title: Objects as Event Representations: Theory, Data, and Models. Abstract: To understand events like “the chef chopped the onion,” we need to grasp that objects have shared properties (inherited from their type) and unique properties that distinguish one token from another. The chef and the onion have (intersecting) histories that started with them in one state and ended with them in another. These histories are in fact trajectories of changes in state across time and space, and their intersection defines the interactions between objects (in this case, the action of the chef on the onion). To comprehend events, or their descriptions, in real time requires creating on-the-fly representations of object tokens and their changes in state. In this talk I shall outline an account of how this might be accomplished in a brain that is able to distinguish the systematic associations that define semantic memory for object types from the non-systematic accidental associations that define the episodic characteristics of object tokens. The talk will include fMRI, behavioral and eye tracking data, and computational modeling – all presented for audiences new to neuroscientific and computational methods. *Anyone not affiliated with CEU wishing to attend in-person in Vienna must RSVP to get access to the lecture hall. Best regards, Fanni ------------------------------------------------ FANNI TAKÁTSY Lab Manager/Research Coordinator, Social Mind Center ------------------------------------------------ [cid:42067b17-4991-4d34-9c89-2f5005166125] CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY Quellenstrasse 51. | 1100 Vienna, Austria takatsyf@ceu.edu<mailto:jeneia@ceu.edu> http://socialmind.ceu.edu/ http://cognitivescience.ceu.edu/ ------------------------------------------------- ______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to talks-subscribe(a)cogsci.ceu.edu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to talks-unsubscribe(a)cogsci.ceu.edu

Dear All, The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to the following talk<https://events.ceu.edu/2026-02-04/departmental-colloquium-monique-f… by: Speaker: Monique Flecken<http://moniqueflecken.com/> (University of Amsterdam) Time: 4 pm (to 6 pm) CET Date: Wednesday, 4th February 2026 Venue: D001 (QS Vienna) and Zoom: https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/96367649350?pwd=XjZa3u6Y9wocIvxTrfdgVx3donIpzc.1 Meeting ID: 963 6764 9350 Passcode: 895830 Chair: Eva Wittenberg Title: Events in language and cognition Abstract: Understanding the events (e.g., chopping an onion, walking to the bus stop) happening in the world around us is fundamental to our everyday lives. The area of study in cognitive science dealing with this human trait at the interface of perception, action and memory, is called “event cognition”. We often encounter events through language, i.e., by communicating about the things that are happening in our lives. This means that, when studying event cognition, it is crucial to take into account how events are conceptualized and described linguistically. Furthermore, given that events can be described in different ways both within one and the same language, and across different languages, I ask, to what extent linguistic variation may guide or shape our event cognition. I will present psycholinguistic studies that investigate how people conceptualize, perceive and memorize events of different types, with the aim of shedding light on the relation between language and (event) cognition. *Anyone not affiliated with CEU wishing to attend in-person in Vienna must RSVP to get access to the lecture hall. Best regards, Fanni ------------------------------------------------ FANNI TAKÁTSY Lab Manager/Research Coordinator, Social Mind Center ------------------------------------------------ [cid:42067b17-4991-4d34-9c89-2f5005166125] CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY Quellenstrasse 51. | 1100 Vienna, Austria takatsyf@ceu.edu<mailto:jeneia@ceu.edu> http://socialmind.ceu.edu/ http://cognitivescience.ceu.edu/ ------------------------------------------------- ______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to talks-subscribe(a)cogsci.ceu.edu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to talks-unsubscribe(a)cogsci.ceu.edu

________________________________ From: Talks &lt;talks-bounces(a)cogsci.ceu.edu&gt; on behalf of Fanni Takatsy &lt;TakatsyF(a)ceu.edu&gt; Sent: Tuesday, February 3, 2026 5:07 PM To: &#39;talks(a)cogsci.ceu.edu&#39; &lt;talks(a)cogsci.ceu.edu&gt; Subject: [CEU Cogsci Talks] REMINDER: talk TOMORROW: by Monique Flecken on 'Events in language and cognition ' - Wednesday, February 4th 2026 - 4pm (CET) ________________________________ From: Fanni Takatsy &lt;TakatsyF(a)ceu.edu&gt; Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2026 3:17 PM To: &#39;talks(a)cogsci.ceu.edu&#39; &lt;talks(a)cogsci.ceu.edu&gt; Subject: talk by Monique Flecken on 'Events in language and cognition ' - Wednesday, February 4th 2026 - 4pm (CET) Dear All, The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to the following talk<https://events.ceu.edu/2026-02-04/departmental-colloquium-monique-f… by: Speaker: Monique Flecken<http://moniqueflecken.com/> (University of Amsterdam) Time: 4 pm (to 6 pm) CET Date: Wednesday, 4th February 2026 Venue: D001 (QS Vienna) and Zoom: https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/96367649350?pwd=XjZa3u6Y9wocIvxTrfdgVx3donIpzc.1 Meeting ID: 963 6764 9350 Passcode: 895830 Chair: Eva Wittenberg Title: Events in language and cognition Abstract: Understanding the events (e.g., chopping an onion, walking to the bus stop) happening in the world around us is fundamental to our everyday lives. The area of study in cognitive science dealing with this human trait at the interface of perception, action and memory, is called “event cognition”. We often encounter events through language, i.e., by communicating about the things that are happening in our lives. This means that, when studying event cognition, it is crucial to take into account how events are conceptualized and described linguistically. Furthermore, given that events can be described in different ways both within one and the same language, and across different languages, I ask, to what extent linguistic variation may guide or shape our event cognition. I will present psycholinguistic studies that investigate how people conceptualize, perceive and memorize events of different types, with the aim of shedding light on the relation between language and (event) cognition. *Anyone not affiliated with CEU wishing to attend in-person in Vienna must RSVP to get access to the lecture hall. Best regards, Fanni ------------------------------------------------ FANNI TAKÁTSY Lab Manager/Research Coordinator, Social Mind Center ------------------------------------------------ [cid:42067b17-4991-4d34-9c89-2f5005166125] CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY Quellenstrasse 51. | 1100 Vienna, Austria takatsyf@ceu.edu<mailto:jeneia@ceu.edu> http://socialmind.ceu.edu/ http://cognitivescience.ceu.edu/ ------------------------------------------------- ______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to talks-subscribe(a)cogsci.ceu.edu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to talks-unsubscribe(a)cogsci.ceu.edu

________________________________ From: Fanni Takatsy &lt;TakatsyF(a)ceu.edu&gt; Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2025 9:14 AM To: &#39;talks(a)cogsci.ceu.edu&#39; &lt;talks(a)cogsci.ceu.edu&gt; Subject: talk by Mirta Galesic on 'Dynamics of belief networks' - Wednesday Nov 5, 2025- 4pm (CET) Dear All, The CEU Department of Cognitive Science cordially invites you to the following talk<https://events.ceu.edu/2025-11-05/departmental-colloquium-mirta-gal… by: Speaker: Mirta Galesic<https://csh.ac.at/mirta-galesic/> (Complexity Science Hub, Vienna) Time: 4pm (to 6 pm) CET Date: Wednesday, 5th November 2025 Venue: D002 (QS Vienna) and Zoom: https://ceu-edu.zoom.us/j/99083374688?pwd=jPtfRjTKSJGEzwkeeCNXaD0FiqsPzD.1 Meeting ID: 990 8337 4688 Passcode: 359871 Chair: Christophe Heintz Title: Dynamics of belief networks Abstract: Beliefs in individual minds are related and can be represented as networks. The structure and dynamics of these networks can be studied on both individual and collective levels. I will present the related ongoing research in our group. First, I will describe analogies that have been used to describe and model belief dynamics, along with their conceptual mileage an baggage (Olsson & Galesic, 2024, TICS). Second, I will describe a model of belief dynamics based on the analogy with systems studied in statistical physics (Dalege et al., 2025, Psychological Review). Third, I will describe two extensions of this model, one providing a framework for a unified model of psychological processes involved in belief dynamics, such as ego projection, social influence, authenticity, and conformity (Zimmaro & Olsson, 2025, arXiv:2502.14362); and the other describing a plausible mechanism for link updating in belief networks (Steiglechner et al., in prep). Finally, I will describe two novel paradigms for collecting empirical data about belief networks, one using natural language processing to extract individual and collective belief networks from comments on news sites (Barolo et al., in prep; Ha et al., 2025, arXiv:2504.08152); and the other using LLM-assisted interviewing and a visual interface to elicit self-reported belief networks (Poulsen et al., in prep). Ultimately, these and related efforts should help us understand and adapt our belief networks to ongoing societal challenges from climate change to intergroup conflicts. *Anyone not affiliated with CEU wishing to attend in-person in Vienna must RSVP to get access to the lecture hall. Best regards, Fanni ------------------------------------------------ FANNI TAKÁTSY Lab Manager/Research Coordinator, Social Mind Center ------------------------------------------------ [cid:42067b17-4991-4d34-9c89-2f5005166125] CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY Quellenstrasse 51. | 1100 Vienna, Austria takatsyf@ceu.edu<mailto:jeneia@ceu.edu> http://socialmind.ceu.edu/ http://cognitivescience.ceu.edu/ ------------------------------------------------- ______________________________________________ Subscribe by sending an empty mail to talks-subscribe(a)cogsci.ceu.edu Unsubscribe by sending an empty mail to talks-unsubscribe(a)cogsci.ceu.edu