The Tri-State Cogblog
March 24, 2008 at 4:57 pm · Filed under Talks, Philosophy of Mind, Perception & Consciousness
When: Tuesday, April 1, 2008, at 8:00 pm
Where: Trayes Hall B, Douglass Campus Center, Rutgers University
Abstract: Are we living in a Matrix? And if so, is our perception of the external world illusory? Many people, including philosophers from Descartes to Morpheus, say yes: if we’re in a Matrix, then the ordinary objects that we seem to see don’t exist, and we’re radically deluded. I say no: even if we’re in a Matrix, ordinary objects still exist, and most of our beliefs about the external world are correct. Instead, we can see the Matrix hypothesis as a metaphysical hypothesis about the underlying nature of physics in our world.
March 6, 2008 at 11:41 pm · Filed under Perception & Consciousness, Neuroscience, Attention
When: Tuesday, March 11, 2008, at 1:00 pm
Where: Room 101, Psychology Building, Busch Campus, Rutgers University
Abstract: When we experience the visual world, we experience it in the form of objects embedded within a surrounding scene. While considerable efforts have gone into understanding object recognition, the problem of scene recognition has garnered much less attention. Neuroimaging data suggest that the human brain contains specialized systems for scene perception that are distinct from the more well-study systems involved in object perception. In particular, two cortical regions — the parahippocampal place area (PPA) and retrosplenial complex (RSC) — respond more strongly when subjects view scenes such as landscapes, cityscapes, and rooms than when they view other stimuli such as faces or decontextualized objects. These findings lead to the inevitable question: why do these regions respond so strongly to scenes? In this talk, I will present evidence that the preferential response to scenes in the PPA and RSC reflects the engagement of mechanisms that extract navigationally-relevant information from visual input. In particular, the PPA and RSC appear to support distinct but complementary mechanisms for place recognition, with the PPA encoding a viewpoint-specific “snapshot” of the local scene and RSC supporting processes that allow the local scene to be situated within the broader spatial environment. I will also discuss results from fMRI adaptation studies that provide insight into how these regions encode scenes in order to mediate their distinct recognition functions.
February 28, 2008 at 8:11 pm · Filed under Talks, Language
When: Tuesday, March 4, 2008, at 1:00 pm
Where: Room 101, Psychology Building, Busch Campus, Rutgers University
Abstract: Understanding language is generally rapid, accurate and seemingly effortless. This capacity is supported by an ability to incrementally recover the structured representations that guide interpretation. However a key challenge for encoding and using the structure of novel expressions in real time is moving between the constituents of the representation in a structure-sensitive but efficient manner. In this talk I will discuss how structurally sensitive real time processes are and present three experimental case studies that illustrate where structure-dependent grammatical constraints succeed and where they fail. In particular I will argue that there are important architectural distinctions between prospective, predictive structure building mechanisms and retrospective, retrieval-based structure building mechanisms that influence how decisions are made to analyze the input. Evidence from behavioral studies on the formation of wh-dependencies and the establishment of subject-verb agreement supports the idea that prospective processes are generally most faithful to the grammar, while retrospective processes are prone to the intrusion of ungrammatical analyses. In support of this distinction, I will situate the behavioral findings in the context of results from formal memory models as well as neurocomputational models of combinatorial representation. Mapping the border between grammatical fidelity and grammatical fallibility in timecourse studies.
February 28, 2008 at 7:06 pm · Filed under Events, Perception & Consciousness
The Columbia Society for Comparative Philosophy invites you to a panel discussion on:
The Reflective Self: Egological Versus Non-Egological Approaches to Consciousness
Panelists include:
Dan Zahavi
Georges Dreyfus
Evan Thompson
John Dunne
When: Saturday - March 1, 2008, 1:00-6:00 pm
Where: 301 Philosophy Hall, Columbia University
Website: http://www.cbs.columbia.edu/cscp/the-reflective-selfbr-ego.html
Reservations: Seating is limited. Please register now by sending an RSVP with your name, affiliation, and field of study to: cdk2001@columbia.edu
February 14, 2008 at 7:22 pm · Filed under Talks, Motor Control
When: Mon Feb 18, 2008 1:40pm to 3:40pm
Where: Rutgers, Psychology Building, Room 101
Abstract: In recent work we showed that observers' estimates of the location and orientation of occluded contours are not always consistent with one another (Fulvio, Singh, & Maloney, 2008). This 'dissociation' in visual processing of occluded contours is reminiscent of dissociations between perception and action claimed by Milner & Goodale (1998). I will present a study that extends previous perceptual work (Singh & Fulvio, 2005) to the motor domain. Subjects make speeded reaches, recorded by an Optotrak motion tracking device, to intersect a moving dot along its extrapolated trajectory with their fingertip. The extrapolated dot trajectories vary as a function of curvature, speed, and extrapolated distance. I will discuss the subjects' success in terms of these variables. I will also describe the kinematics of the movements and what they reveal about the underlying representations guiding them. Finally, I will relate the results back to the previous perceptual work to compare the role of task -- perception versus action -- and goal -- perceptually complete versus reach the dot for a reward -- on the nature of the extrapolated trajectories.
January 22, 2008 at 7:20 pm · Filed under Talks, Language
When: Tue Jan 29, 2008 13:00 to 14:00
Where: Rutgers, Psychology Building, Room 101
Abstract: A long-standing goal of computational linguistics is to build a system for answering natural language questions. A successful QA system has to recognize semantic relations between sentences. If the user would like to know the answer a question such as Did Shackleton reach the South Pole?, the system should recognize that the sentence Shackleton failed to reach the South Pole contains the answer. None of the current search engines is capable of delivering a simple NO answer in such cases. The system I will describe in this talk does make the correct inference. It is the Bridge system (a bridge from language to logic) developed at the Palo Alto Research Center.
January 8, 2008 at 9:59 am · Filed under Conferences, Events, Learning & Memory, Language, Perception & Consciousness
When: June 26th – June 29th , 2008
Where: University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA
Event Description:
Annual SPP conference with invited speakers: Lila R. Gleitman, Jerry Fodor, Zenon Pylyshyn, Paul Rozin. Invited symposia include:-
- Neuroethics: What can neuroscience do, and what should neuroscience do?
- Addiction & Responsibility
- Bayesian Rationality: Philosophical and Psychological Investigations
Call for papers. Submitted papers are refereed and selected on the basis of quality and relevance to philosophy, psychology and other sciences of the mind. Papers must not exceed a length of 3,500 words and should be accompanied by an abstract (of less than 300 words).
Deadline for submission of papers is 1-Feb-08
January 8, 2008 at 2:32 am · Filed under Philosophy of Mind, Language, Perception & Consciousness, Resources, Neuroscience, Evolution
David Pereplyotchik reports:
I recently ran across a truly wonderful website, which I thought would be of interest to readers of the Cogblog. The site contains hundreds of video-taped talks, each of which is about 25 minutes long. The purpose of each talk is to outline, in a clear and understandable fashion, some recent advance in either science, technology, entertainment, or design. Many of the talks are engaging and informative, though often less technical and detailed than one might have hoped. Below are links to some examples of talks that fall well within the cognitive science arena:
December 8, 2007 at 7:07 pm · Filed under Talks, Philosophy of Mind, Perception & Consciousness
UPDATE: Now with abstract!
When: Wed. 12, 2007 4:15pm to 6:15pm
Where: The Graduate Center, Room 9206/9207
Abstract: It is plain that an individual’s being conscious and an individual’s being conscious of various things are both crucial for successful functioning. But it is far less clear how, if at all, it is also useful for an individual’s psychological states to occur consciously, as against their occurring but without being conscious. Restricting attention to cognitive and desiderative states, a number of suggestions are current about how the consciousness of those states may be useful. It has been thought that such consciousness enhances processes of rational thought and planning, intentional action, executive function, and the correction of complex reasoning. I examine these proposals in the light of various empirical findings and theoretical considerations, and conclude that the consciousness of cognitive and desiderative states is unlikely to be useful in these or related ways. This undermines a reliance on evolutionary selection pressures in explaining why such states so often occur consciously in humans. I briefly conclude with an alternative explanation, on which cognitive and desiderative states come to be conscious as a result of other highly useful psychological developments involving language use. But on this explanation the consciousness of these states adds no significant functionality to that of those other developments.
The Graduate Center is located at 35th St. and 5th Ave. in Manhatten. Because of security concerns you will have to sign in at the front desk, but that is only a minor inconvenience. Just let them know you are going to room 9206 for the philosophy colloquiuum. There will be a reception/end of the semester party afterwards! All are welcome.
November 13, 2007 at 11:11 am · Filed under Events, Talks, Perception & Consciousness, Neuroscience, Cognitive Development
When: Mon Nov 19, 2007 1:30pm to 2:30pm
Where: Rutgers, Psychology Building, Room 101
Abstract: We use a developmental strategy to study the neural mechanisms underlying perception. Infants see poorly. Given normal visual experience, vision develops to adult levels over months or years after birth. By comparing behavioral and neural changes during development we seek to identify the mechanisms that limit perceptual performance. In this talk, I will describe behavioral and neurophysiological studies of the development of motion perception in macaque monkeys. We have identified immaturities in the early visual pathways – from the LGN through MT – in young animals that reflect sensitivity as measured behaviorally. However, these are not uniformly sufficient to explain the poor visual performance of infants. Therefore, there must be additional sites downstream in the visual pathways that impose limits on perceptual development.
October 26, 2007 at 11:47 am · Filed under Philosophy of Mind, Language, Resources, Cognitive Development, Evolution
Interdisciplines is “a website for interdisciplinary research in philosophy, cognitive science and social science. The site allows for the organization of interdisciplinary conferences”. In particular, it allows one to read conference contributions, and to participate in online discussions.
Of particular interest to readers of the Cogblog, Interdisciplines is currently hosting an online conference on ‘Adaptation and Representation‘. Previous conferences that might also be of interest include: ‘Coevolution of Language and Theory of Mind‘, ‘Referring to Objects‘, and ‘What Do Mirror Neurons Mean?‘
October 25, 2007 at 9:51 pm · Filed under Conferences, News, Cognitive Development, Evolution, Social Cognition
Some of us in the philosophy department here at Rutgers are participating in a weekly discussion group on the subject of social learning and cultural evolution. We’re starting out by reading some of the recent work in cognitive, developmental and comparative psychology on social learning — including work by Tomasello, Gergely, Csibra, and Keil. We welcome additional participants, particularly from outside of philosophy. If you’re interested, please email Alex for more information.
October 25, 2007 at 9:06 pm · Filed under Uncategorized, Philosophy of Mind, Perception & Consciousness, Resources
David Chalmers and David Bourget recently announced the launch of MindPapers, “a new website with a bibliography covering around 18000 published papers and online papers in the philosophy of mind and the science of consciousness. This site grew out of a combination of David Chalmers’ old bibliography in philosophy of mind and his page of online papers on consciousness, but it is much larger and has many new capacities, programmed by David Bourget”. The site can be found here.
October 25, 2007 at 2:54 pm · Filed under Conferences, Events, Computation, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Science
When: Thu Jul 10, 2008 to Sat Jul 12, 2008
Where: Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana
Event Description: This year's conference theme addresses the limits of computation. As such, individual sessions will ask questions that range over several problem domains where computers and computation are having an impact. Possible questions include: Are there limits to automatic programming? Is quantum computing subject to the same limits as Turing machine computation? Is it possible to build an ethical machine? How do computers facilitate learning? To what extent is the computational metaphor helpful or harmful for describing cognition? How might the capacity of computers to create elaborate visualization techniques enhance cognition? What are the implications of experiments run in virtual worlds like Second Life? Can a musical or literary composition written by a computer be considered a work of art? To what extent, does computer networking enhance or impede the achievement of democratic ideals? What is the overall impact of social networking on our interpersonal relationships and social practices?
The deadline for submissions is February 1st, 2008. Details will be sent in a separate CFP sometime in early December, 2007. They will also be posted to the IACAP website at
http://ia-cap.org/conferences.php
October 23, 2007 at 11:50 pm · Filed under Uncategorized, Learning & Memory, Language, Resources, Neuroscience, Philosophy of Science
The PNP Program at Washington University in St. Louis has compiled a set of online annotated bibliographies on the interdisciplinary study of memory and language. Each bibliography is meant to provide an introduction to the respective topic, including references to primary texts and review articles, with a brief summary of each entry provided. The bibliographies are structured around 4 themes:
- Computational Modeling and Cognitive Neuroscience approaches to Memory and Language
- Memory: Collective and Individual Approaches
- Language acquisition and learning to read in English and Chinese
- Theoretical issues in Multilevel Explanation
This looks like an incredibly useful resource. It can be found here.
October 13, 2007 at 8:03 pm · Filed under Events, Talks, Language, Neuroscience
When: Thu Oct 18, 2007 4:30pm to 5:30pm
Where: Schultz 107, Princeton University
Abstract: Vocal learning is a critical behavioral substrate for spoken human language and is a rare trait found in three distantly related groups of birds -songbirds, parrots, and hummingbirds- and in at least four distantly related groups of mammals -humans, cetaceans, bats, and elephants. Remarkably the three bird groups have similar forebrain vocal nuclei for vocal learning behavior and their pathways may be similar to those in humans used for speech. These findings led me to hypothesize that vocal learning brain pathways evolved independently from a common ancestor of vocal learners, but under pre-existing constraints. Now we believe we have discovered a genetic constraint, a pre-existing motor pathway. Using behavioral molecular mapping, we discovered that in songbirds, parrots, and hummingbirds, nearly all vocal learning brain nuclei are embedded in or adjacent to seven discrete anterior and posterior brain regions active during limb and body movements. Similar to the relationships between vocal nuclei activation and singing, activation in the adjacent regions correlates with the amount of movement performed and is independent of auditory and visual input. These same movement-associated brain areas are also present in female songbirds that have atrophied vocal nuclei and do not learn vocalizations and in vocal non-learning birds that do not have forebrain vocal nuclei. Based upon these findings, I propose a motor theory for the origin of vocal learning, this being that the brain areas that are specialized for vocal learning in vocal learners evolved out of a pre-existing motor pathway that controls movement.
October 10, 2007 at 1:29 am · Filed under Talks, Philosophy of Mind, Perception & Consciousness
When: Thu Oct 18, 2007 7.30pm
Where: Seminar Room, Philosophy Dept., 26 Nichol Ave. New Brunswick
Link
October 9, 2007 at 2:57 pm · Filed under Events, Talks, Semantics, Language
When: Fri Oct 12, 2007 3pm to 4pm
Where: Room 108, 18 Seminary Place, New Brunswick
Link
October 9, 2007 at 11:23 am · Filed under Events, Talks, Learning & Memory, Evolution
When: Tue Oct 16, 2007 13:00 to 14:00
Where: Rutgers, Psychology Building, Room 101
Abstract: There is no good functional explanation for the fact that we experience our past ("mental time-travel") rather than just learn from past experience. Here I outline an evolutionary explanation, based on independently established premises. [1] Memory systems are geared to selection of appropriate behavior. [2] Episodic memory produces phenomenological records with activation of (a) semantic information and (b) affective-emotional neural circuitry. [3] Episodic memory certainly evolved in relation to increasingly efficient planning in hominids. [4] Human cooperation is both indispensable to survival and thwarted by (among other factors) time-discounting. The new hypothesis is that episodic memories bring about affective-emotional experience of the past that cannot be revised in view of current goals. This provides a context in which there is adaptive value to the activation of episodic memories as quasi-experiences. The model may also explain some design features of autobiographical memory.
October 3, 2007 at 11:36 pm · Filed under Events, Talks, Semantics, Philosophy of Mind, Language
When: Thu Oct 11, 2007 12pm to 1pm
Where: Rutgers, Psychology Building, Room 101
Abstract: The received view in contemporary philosophy of language is that sortals are not needed for reference: the reference of a term, especially that of a directly referential term can be fixed without the help of a sortal. In this talk I will present a range of new linguistic generalizations that indicates that reference to abstract objects (such as facts, propositions and numbers) and certain derived objects (such as collections) does indeed require a sortal and cannot be achieved by a 'nonreferential' expression alone, such as a that-clause, a plural like 'the children', or a numeral like 'eight'.
Moltmann's homepage
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