Workshop CCiL Master 2010

Program

9.30-10.00: Welcome

10.00-10:50: Massimo Piattelli Palmarini (University of Arizona)

Towards a physics of the mind

10:50-11.30: Coffee break

11.30-12.20: Marta Jorba (UB)

Thinking and phenomenality

12.20- 13.10: Kristof Strijkers (UB)

The intention of speech: An early dissociation in brain activity between semantics and words

13.10- 14.40: Lunch

14.40- 15:30: Josefa Toribio (UAB/ICREA)

What we do when we judge

15.30-16.20: Jordi Fortuny (UAB)

Abstract computations and processing: on the different nature of successive cyclicity and center-embedding restrictions

16.20-17:10: Joan López Moliner (UB)

Do actions need an interpreted world?

17.10: Coffee

Venue: Casa de Convalescència (click to see a map), Recinte de l'Hospital de Sant Pau, c/ Sant Antoni Maria Claret, 171, 08041 Barcelona

 

ABSTRACTS

Marta Jorba, Thinking and Phenomenality

The topic I want to focus on in this talk is thinking and phenomenality. My aim is to put forward a concrete debate at stake in the Philosophy of mind: the phenomenology of thinking (PT) debate, also referred to as the phenomenology of cognition or cognitive phenomenology. Firstly I introduce the question and the main points of discussion. The problem is whether there is phenomenality connected to thinking experiences and if so, how should we account for it. If we accept that there is a phenomenology for thought, one core theme is whether it is reducible to other kinds of familiar phenomenologies or not (sensory, linguistic, emotional, bodily, etc). I examine the reductionist and the anti-reductionist positions in their different guises focusing overall in the linguistic reduction (the phenomenology of inner speech). I then argue that these other kinds of phenomenologies do not suffice to explain the phenomenology of thought.

Kristof Strijkers, The intention of speech: An early dissociation in electrical brain activity between semantics and words

In this talk I will first focuss on some recent advances for tracing the time-course of word retrieval in the study of speech production. Then, I will show how such chronometric information can be used to investigate the brain dynamics underlying our ability to speak. Here I will especially highlight the temporal and functional effects speech intention excercises on the neuronal responses underlying word activation.

Josefa Toribio, What we do when we judge

In this talk I argue that, contrary to a certain form of judgment voluntarism, judging is specifically a type of non-voluntary mental action. Judging is non-voluntary, I contend, because it is partially constituted by the exercise of a non-reason-governed skill. This skill is not grounded in rationality, but neither is it irrational. It consists of an unreflective, pattern-recognition ability to spot the kind of situations in which the rationally relevant reflective abilities, also partially constitutive of the mental act of judging, should be deployed. We are responsible for our judgments, I conclude, because, in our a-rational way of spotting those situations that demand the deployment of our reflective capacities, we reveal the kind of epistemic agents we are

Jordi Fortuny, Abstract computations and processing: on the different nature of successive cyclicity and center-embedding restrictions

In this talk I will begin by stating two central and related tenets in Transformational Generative Grammar: configurationality and displacement. I will subsequently focus on illustrating how displacement is currently analyzed and on arguing for two of its attributed properties: successive cyclicity and the existence of restrictions on center-embedding constructions. Our ultimate objective will be to review some well-known arguments in the literature that lead to the conclusion that these two properties must be derived from principles of different nature: whereas successive cyclicity cannot be derived from processing factors (and is arguably related to constraints minimizing abstract computations), center-embedding restrictions cannot be derived from purely syntactic constraints (and thereby are arguably attributed to processing difficulties). 

Joan López Moliner, Do actions need an interpreted world?

In order to explain our motor acts (reaching, interception) the main view is characterized by neglecting any interpretation of the world. Therefore, actions would be guided without the need of any conscious or unconscious inference. I would review evidence accumulated by our group and other researchers that casts serious doubts on this perspective and put forward a view in which inferring, at least partly, ambiguous world images cannot be circumvented.