Friday, April 22, 2011

Congrats, Richard!

Winner of a UoW Vice-Chancellor's Award. 

Now if we can only persuade him to channel all that work for the good guys...

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Extended Cognition Workshop -- Amsterdam, June 27th-28th 2011

To mark the end of Catarina Dutilh Novaes’ VENI-project on formal languages and
the new appointment of Julian Kiverstein at the philosophy department of the
University of Amsterdam, a workshop on extended cognition will take place in
Amsterdam on June 27th--28th (afternoon on the 27th, whole day on the 28th), in
the Oudemanhuispoort building of the university. The focus will be on
conceptions of extended cognition in the spirit of ‘second-wave EM’ (Sutton) or
‘cognitive integration’ (Menary).

Invited speakers:
        * Richard Menary (Wollongong), TBA
        * Julian Kiverstein (Edinburgh/Amsterdam), TBA
        * Helen de Cruz (Leuven), "Extended cognition in mathematical practice: The
case of Chinese algebra"
        * John Protevi (LSU), "Extended Cognition, extended responsibility: cyborgs in
modern warfare"
        * Catarina Dutilh Novaes (Amsterdam), "Formal languages in logic and extended
cognition"

Contributed papers:
        * Bryce Huebner (Georgetown), "Responsibility for socially scaffolded minds"
        * Joel Krueger (Copenhagen), "Extended cognition and shared emotions"
        * Erik Myin (Antwerp), "Bound by parity?"
        * Jurgis Skilters et al. (Latvia), "Extended selves in distributed social
networks"
        * Mirko Farina (Edinburg), "Finding my Mind: a Case for Extended Cognition"


REGISTRATION: The workshop is open to all, but please register by sending an
email to  cdutilhnovaes [youknowwhat] yahoo.com no later than June 13th (a small
registration fee of EUR 10 will be charged on the spot to cover for catering).
For further inquiries, contact Catarina Dutilh Novaes at cdutilhnovaes
[youknowwhat] yahoo.com

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Computation in Action by Erik Myin

COGNITION IN ACTION LECTURE SERIES


"Computation in Action "
by  Erik Myin
(Universiteit Antwerpen)


Monday April 18, at 4.30 pm
Room 104
University of Milan, via Festa del Perdono 3


Abstract
In this talk, I contrast the idea of computation as an overt activity of a person, as when someone calculates on a blackboard, with the  idea of computation as inner activity that can be carried out by neurons or neural networks. I argue that the active notion is fundamental, both in a logical and a historical sense. That is, Turing’s concept of mechanical computation was derived from the idea of active computation, and the latter remains necessary to make sense of the former. It follows from all this, so I will argue, that the concept of inner computation, as allegedly carried out by neurons or neural networks, has a much more restricted range of application than usually assumed. Then I turn to the question whether the notion of active computation can be applied beyond its paradigmatic context or norm-bound symbol manipulation, to perception. Can persons be said to compute three-dimensional depth by moving their eyes, heads and bodies? Finally, I address the question whether and in what sense overt computational activity whether can be ‘internalized’, for example when a person performs mental arithmetic.


More info: http://neurophilosophy.unimi.it/


Corrado Sinigaglia
Department of Philosophy
University of Milan
via Festa del Perdono 7
20122 Milano - Italy
e-mail corrado.sinigag...@unimi.it
http://dipartimento.filosofia.unimi.it/index.php/corrado-sinigaglia/
http://neurophilosophy.unimi.it
http://moregeometrico.unimi.it