Call for papers : The Extended Mind

The Extended Mind

In the decade or so since the publication of Clark and Chalmers' seminal paper, the extended mind thesis has had a highly significant influence on the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. This comes from the fact that it promotes a view of mind and cognition that breaks away from other such views popular in the late 20th century. Thus, the extended mind thesis promotes: one, functionalism, without the restrictions imposed by biological implementational structure; two, externalism, not only regarding mental contents, but also regarding the vehicles of content; and three, postcognitivism, where cognition is not simply a matter of internal symbol manipulation. The result is, thus, a view that could be labelled "situated and embodied functionalism".
Critics have reacted in different ways. Some have objected, on behalf of intracranialism, that the extended mind thesis is too radical, in that it flouts the distinction between intrinsic and derived intentionality in the characterization of the mental; or in that it mistakes extracranial aids to cognition for the real vehicles of cognition. Other critics, though, have argued that the development of Clark and Chalmers' insights has sometimes been too conservative, insofar as it supports a representationalist, rather than an antirepresentationalist, version of postcognitivism; or insofar as it continues to give pride of place to processes in the brain/CNS, precluding the extension of the idea of cognition to other less complicated life forms.
Teorema invites submissions on these and related topics for a special issue to be published in 2011. Papers must be written in English or in Spanish, and should not exceed 6000 words. For the presentation of their manuscripts, authors are requested to adhere to the details that can be found at Teorema. Electronic submissions, both in .doc and .pdf formats and prepared for blind refereeing, must be sent to the Editor by October 1st, 2010. Notification of intent to submit including title (tentative) and subject matter (a brief abstract) will be greatly appreciated as it will assist with the coordination and planning of the special issue.

Contact details for queries and submissions:

Teorema
Prof. Luis M. Valdés Villanueva
Director de teorema
Departamento de Filosofía
Universidad de Oviedo
E-33071 Oviedo (España)
E-mail: lmvaldes at uniovi.es

The Geometry of Visual Space and the Nature of Visual Experience, by Farid Masrour

Next Tuesday, June 29th at the Colloquium du DEC, (12h à 13h3O – Salle Paul Lapie – 29 rue d’Ulm – 1er étage) : The Geometry of Visual Space and the Nature of Visual Experience, Farid Masrour (Assistant Professor, NYU).

Abstract :

Empirical research shows that we see bent lines as straight, we see an object oriented along the depth axis as having a different size than a same-sized object oriented along the horizontal axis, as a result objects seem to change their shape as they rotate in space. Our visual experiences seems to systematically falsify some of the basic principles that are required to make sense of fundamental geometrical notions such as straight lines, distances and planes. This paper argues that these results have significant philosophical implications about the nature of our perceptual experience. In particular, I shall argue that they put pressure on accounts that regard our visual experiences as constituted by relations to external facts, as well as those accounts that assimilate our visual experience to pictures.

Second Paris-Nancy PhilMath Workshop

November 17-19, 2010, Paris

This is the second in an annual series of workshops on the philosophy of mathematics organized by a team of scholars from Paris, Nancy and elsewhere in France. The three-day meeting will feature both invited and contributed talks. The invited speakers, who have confirmed their participation, are:

- Patricia Blanchette (Notre Dame University)
- Jacques Bouveresse (Collège de France, Paris)
- John Burgess (Princeton University)
- Gabrielle Crocco (University of Provence, Aix-Marseille)
- Gilles Dowek (Ecole Polytechnique, Paris)
- Ignasi Jané (University of Barcelona)

Call for papers

Submissions of full-text papers are invited in the philosophy of mathematics for presentation at the workshop as one of six contributed talks. The languages of the workshop are English and French. Presentations should be no longer than 45 minutes, and will be followed by 30 minutes of discussion. In particular younger scholars and graduate students working on their dissertations are encouraged to submit, as the workshop provides them with an opportunity to discuss their work with experts from around the world. The deadline for submission is August 31st. Receipt of submissions will be acknowledged by email. The Program Committee will evaluate all papers and announce its decisions by the end of September. The papers should be sent by email in DOC, RTF, or PDF format to the following address: Marco.Panza@univ-paris1.fr

Steering Committee: M. van Atten, D. Bonnay, G. Crocco, J. Dubucs, S. Gandon, G. Heinzmann, P. Mancosu, S. Shapiro, I. Smadja.

Program Committee: A. Arana, M. Detlefsen, B. Halimi, P. Nabonnand, M. Panza, J.-J. Szczeciniarz, S. Walsh

Local Organizing Committee: M. Panza, P. Cardon, M. Detlefsen, A. Rodin, J.-J. Szczeciniarz.

Schedule

Call for papers: June 10st

Deadline for submission of papers: August 31st

Notification of acceptance: September 30st

Support: Chaire d’excellence ANR (senior) Michael Detlefsen.

Jean Nicod Prize 2010 : Tyler Burge

Tyler Burge (University of California, LA) was awarded the Jean Nicod Prize (2010). The Jean Nicod Prize winner will give 4 conferences in a few days in Paris. (More details here).

(Photo : T. Burge, on the right, with Jerry Fodor. Source : Alan Chalmers.)

Journée à la mémoire de Marie-Claude Lorne

L'IHPST organise une journée à la mémoire de Marie-Claude Lorne. Une brève présentation de ses travaux et de sa vie, et des hommages peuvent être lus ici et ici.

Chimpanzees : learning and language

PRESTIGE AND LEARNING

Here is the abstract of a very interesting article written by Victoria Horner1, Darby Proctor1, Kristin E. Bonnie, Andrew Whiten, Frans B. M. de Waal, about some social aspects in learning, for chimp. The (free access) article can be read here : Prestige Affects Cultural Learning in Chimpanzees.

Humans follow the example of prestigious, high-status individuals much more readily than that of others, such as when we copy the behavior of village elders, community leaders, or celebrities. This tendency has been declared uniquely human, yet remains untested in other species. Experimental studies of animal learning have typically focused on the learning mechanism rather than on social issues, such as who learns from whom. The latter, however, is essential to understanding how habits spread. Here we report that when given opportunities to watch alternative solutions to a foraging problem performed by two different models of their own species, chimpanzees preferentially copy the method shown by the older, higher-ranking individual with a prior track-record of success. Since both solutions were equally difficult, shown an equal number of times by each model and resulted in equal rewards, we interpret this outcome as evidence that the preferred model in each of the two groups tested enjoyed a significant degree of prestige in terms of whose example other chimpanzees chose to follow. Such prestige-based cultural transmission is a phenomenon shared with our own species. If similar biases operate in wild animal populations, the adoption of culturally transmitted innovations may be significantly shaped by the characteristics of performers.



LANGUAGE

It is believed that language is the privilege of the human species. Well, this belief may be wrong :

Mirror Neurons observed in human action.

In Current Biology, a nice study of mirror-neurons (about mirror neurons). Mirror-neurons were directly observed in certain species of primates, but not in humans. Here is a study that shows, as believed previously to this experiment, that mirror-neurons fire when a human acts and when he/she observes another human acting : Single-Neuron Responses in Humans during Execution and Observation of Actions.

The Epistemological Argument against Mathematical Platonism

An amended version of my "epistemological argument against mathematical platonism" (forthcoming in Bruce & Barbone, Just the Argument : 100 of the most important Arguments in Western Philosophy, Blackwell) can be read here : draft.

Une somme en français sur le darwinisme contemporain

Les Mondes darwiniens (Syllepses, 2009, 30 euros), sous la direction de Thomas Heams, Philippe Huneman, Guillaume Lecointre, Marc Silberstein, est une somme sur le darwinisme contemporain, y compris bien sûr les aspects théoriques fondamentaux (fonction, variation, espèce, etc), mais aussi l'enseignement de la théorie de l'évolution, le débat entre le créationnisme et le darwinisme, l'application du paradigme darwinien à d'autres champs de recherche (morale, éthique, linguistique, sciences humaines, etc). Une cinquantaine d'auteurs ont participé à la réalisation de cet ouvrage, indispensable pour tous les chercheurs et les étudiants travaillant sur des questions liées plus ou moins directement au darwinisme.

Notez que le livre est accompagné par un site intéressant : lesmondesdarwiniens, et que Florian Cova a réalisé un compte-rendu du livre sur NonFiction.

Paleontology is hot

Two important discoveries were made recently in Paleontology. Both are described in the lastest online issue of Nature. The first is all about the presence of the first tetrapod on earth : it seems they appeared 20 millions years before when we thought they had (400 millions and not 380 millions years before today). The second is about the discovery of a new human species, in Siberia, who share a common ancestor (homo erectus) with homo neandertalis and homo sapiens, and migrated before homo heidelbergensis, the ancestor of homo neandertalis, from Africa (between 300 000 and 500 000 years ago).

1) Tetrapod : an article in french (La Recherche) and a video on Nature.
2) New human species : Nature.

Both are really worth seeing and reading !