Cognitive Science Speaker Series
Starting in the autumn of 2021, the Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies will run a Cognitive Science Speaker Series. There is no overarching theme for these talks. Rather, these talks will showcase a variety of cutting edge topics across the cognitive sciences.
Details for further talks will be posted as the year develops.
For more information about the series please contact Gerardo Viera.
Starting in the autumn of 2021, the Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies will run a Cognitive Science Speaker Series. There is no overarching theme for these talks. Rather, these talks will showcase a variety of cutting edge topics across the cognitive sciences.
Details for further talks will be posted as the year develops.
For more information about the series please contact Gerardo Viera.
Schedule of Talks
This schedule will be periodically updated. See below for more details for each event.
2022-2023 Academic Year
23 May 2023: Nicolò Cesana-Arlotti (Yale University), Foundations of Logical Thought in Human Infants
26 June 2023: James Chamberlain (The University of Sheffield), Towards a Humean Theory of Moral Intuitions
2021-2022 Academic Year
12 October 2021: Kevin Lande (York U. Canada), Ecological Form: The Semantic Significance of Perceptual Structure.
12 November 2021: David Strohmaier (Cambridge), DL4ELSA: Deep Learning for Exploring Lexical Semantic Acquisition.
23 February 2022: Kristin Andrews (York U. Canada), "All animals are conscious": A new premise in the cognitive science of consciousness.
CANCELED 22 March 2022: Keith Wilson (Oslo), TBD talk on the temporal structure of experience.
26 April 2022: Dan Williams (Cambridge), Scaffolding Motivated Cognition
3 May 2022: Nicolas Porot (Mohammed VI Polytechnic University), Fluency Alone Does Not Explain Illusory Truth
POSTPONED 25 May 2022: Will Morgan (University of Bristol), Reduction and Identity in the Biological Sciences
28 June: Two talks on Moral Judgment. Yuhan (Felicity) Fu (Sheffield), Can AI make moral judgements? Yes!. James Brown (Sheffield), Expressivism, propositions, and mixed disjunctions.
This schedule will be periodically updated. See below for more details for each event.
2022-2023 Academic Year
23 May 2023: Nicolò Cesana-Arlotti (Yale University), Foundations of Logical Thought in Human Infants
26 June 2023: James Chamberlain (The University of Sheffield), Towards a Humean Theory of Moral Intuitions
2021-2022 Academic Year
12 October 2021: Kevin Lande (York U. Canada), Ecological Form: The Semantic Significance of Perceptual Structure.
12 November 2021: David Strohmaier (Cambridge), DL4ELSA: Deep Learning for Exploring Lexical Semantic Acquisition.
23 February 2022: Kristin Andrews (York U. Canada), "All animals are conscious": A new premise in the cognitive science of consciousness.
CANCELED 22 March 2022: Keith Wilson (Oslo), TBD talk on the temporal structure of experience.
26 April 2022: Dan Williams (Cambridge), Scaffolding Motivated Cognition
3 May 2022: Nicolas Porot (Mohammed VI Polytechnic University), Fluency Alone Does Not Explain Illusory Truth
POSTPONED 25 May 2022: Will Morgan (University of Bristol), Reduction and Identity in the Biological Sciences
28 June: Two talks on Moral Judgment. Yuhan (Felicity) Fu (Sheffield), Can AI make moral judgements? Yes!. James Brown (Sheffield), Expressivism, propositions, and mixed disjunctions.
12 October 2021
Speaker: Kevin Lande; Assistant Professor at York University (Canada), member of the Philosophy Department and the Vision Science Center.
TITLE: Ecological Form: The Semantic Significance of Perceptual Structure
ABSTRACT: Mental states are complex. The state I am in when I see a maple leaf consists in having a representation of the leaf’s orange color and a representation of its articulated shape. My representation of the leaf’s shape is itself complex, consisting in representations of the peaks, valleys, and sides that make up the leaf’s outline. Focusing on vision, I argue that perceptual representations have what I will call ecological form. There are domain-specific constraints on how perceptual representations can combine, such that the very structure of a complex perceptual state––the mode of composition of its representational parts––imposes substantive commitments about the things represented. Perceptual representations are structurally limited, roughly, to represent circumstances that would plausibly occur in our normal environment. The way shape representations and color representations can and cannot combine reflects regularities in how shapes and colors are co-instantiated in our normal environments. The way representations of contour segments can and cannot combine into representations of whole outline shapes reflects regularities in how contours actually do and do not operate in our environment. I conclude by discussing how the ecological form of perceptual states may contribute to perceptual warrant and its relation to the “logical form” of propositional attitudes.
LOCATION: Hicks Building, Hicks - LT 10
DATE: Tuesday, 12 Oct, 2021
TIME: 16:30 - 18:30
Speaker: Kevin Lande; Assistant Professor at York University (Canada), member of the Philosophy Department and the Vision Science Center.
TITLE: Ecological Form: The Semantic Significance of Perceptual Structure
ABSTRACT: Mental states are complex. The state I am in when I see a maple leaf consists in having a representation of the leaf’s orange color and a representation of its articulated shape. My representation of the leaf’s shape is itself complex, consisting in representations of the peaks, valleys, and sides that make up the leaf’s outline. Focusing on vision, I argue that perceptual representations have what I will call ecological form. There are domain-specific constraints on how perceptual representations can combine, such that the very structure of a complex perceptual state––the mode of composition of its representational parts––imposes substantive commitments about the things represented. Perceptual representations are structurally limited, roughly, to represent circumstances that would plausibly occur in our normal environment. The way shape representations and color representations can and cannot combine reflects regularities in how shapes and colors are co-instantiated in our normal environments. The way representations of contour segments can and cannot combine into representations of whole outline shapes reflects regularities in how contours actually do and do not operate in our environment. I conclude by discussing how the ecological form of perceptual states may contribute to perceptual warrant and its relation to the “logical form” of propositional attitudes.
LOCATION: Hicks Building, Hicks - LT 10
DATE: Tuesday, 12 Oct, 2021
TIME: 16:30 - 18:30
12 November 2021
SPEAKER: David Strohmaier, Research Associate in the Natural Language and Information Processing Group at the University of Cambridge.
TITLE: DL4ELSA: Deep Learning for Exploring Lexical Semantic Acquisition
ABSTRACT: How do language learners acquire the meaning of words? How are mental concepts changed when we learn a second language? In this talk, I propose a research program into these cognitive linguistic questions, which will use neural networks to investigate the lexical semantic acquisition process. Specifically, I claim that recent deep learning technologies can trace how our mental concepts develop during the second language learning process. As part of the talk, I will present preliminary research results supporting my claim.
LOCATION: Hicks LT 10
DATE: 12 November 2021
TIME: 14:00 - 16:00
SPEAKER: David Strohmaier, Research Associate in the Natural Language and Information Processing Group at the University of Cambridge.
TITLE: DL4ELSA: Deep Learning for Exploring Lexical Semantic Acquisition
ABSTRACT: How do language learners acquire the meaning of words? How are mental concepts changed when we learn a second language? In this talk, I propose a research program into these cognitive linguistic questions, which will use neural networks to investigate the lexical semantic acquisition process. Specifically, I claim that recent deep learning technologies can trace how our mental concepts develop during the second language learning process. As part of the talk, I will present preliminary research results supporting my claim.
LOCATION: Hicks LT 10
DATE: 12 November 2021
TIME: 14:00 - 16:00
23 February 2022
SPEAKER: Kristin Andrews, York Research Chair in Animal Minds and Professor of Philosophy, York University.
TITLE: "All animals are conscious": A new premise in the cognitive science of consciousness
ABSTRACT: Are honeybees natural zombies? Is there something it is like to be a garden snail? Can crabs feel pain? These are among the questions being asked in a resurgence of interest in the Distribution Question with a shift of focus from mammals and birds to questions about invertebrates such as cephalopods, insects, and crustaceans. Colin Allen introduced the Distribution Question as one of two core epistemic goals of animal consciousness research: Can we know which animals beside humans are conscious? (Allen 2000). That it is an epistemic goal is clear, especially given the current resurgence of interest in the topic. Whether it is an achievable epistemic goal is another question—and it is one that Allen and Trestman raise in their recent discussion of the question (Allen and Trestman 2020).
In this paper I argue that the current approach to answering the Distribution Question all but guarantees a positive answer to the question. The current best practices rely on a version of a marker approach, which seeks to find some observable features that indicate consciousness. While agreeing that there is not currently a better way to study animal consciousness, I will argue that this method will always find some evidence of consciousness in any animal that warrants asking the question about. This makes answering the Distribution Question—distinguishing between those animals who have consciousness and those who may not—a currently unachievable epistemic goal. What will turn it into an achievable goal is to have a robust theory of consciousness, but for that, we must adopt the premise that all animals are conscious.
LOCATION: Diamond, DIA - LT 8
DATE: Wednesday 23 February 2022
TIME: 16:00 - 18:00
SPEAKER: Kristin Andrews, York Research Chair in Animal Minds and Professor of Philosophy, York University.
TITLE: "All animals are conscious": A new premise in the cognitive science of consciousness
ABSTRACT: Are honeybees natural zombies? Is there something it is like to be a garden snail? Can crabs feel pain? These are among the questions being asked in a resurgence of interest in the Distribution Question with a shift of focus from mammals and birds to questions about invertebrates such as cephalopods, insects, and crustaceans. Colin Allen introduced the Distribution Question as one of two core epistemic goals of animal consciousness research: Can we know which animals beside humans are conscious? (Allen 2000). That it is an epistemic goal is clear, especially given the current resurgence of interest in the topic. Whether it is an achievable epistemic goal is another question—and it is one that Allen and Trestman raise in their recent discussion of the question (Allen and Trestman 2020).
In this paper I argue that the current approach to answering the Distribution Question all but guarantees a positive answer to the question. The current best practices rely on a version of a marker approach, which seeks to find some observable features that indicate consciousness. While agreeing that there is not currently a better way to study animal consciousness, I will argue that this method will always find some evidence of consciousness in any animal that warrants asking the question about. This makes answering the Distribution Question—distinguishing between those animals who have consciousness and those who may not—a currently unachievable epistemic goal. What will turn it into an achievable goal is to have a robust theory of consciousness, but for that, we must adopt the premise that all animals are conscious.
LOCATION: Diamond, DIA - LT 8
DATE: Wednesday 23 February 2022
TIME: 16:00 - 18:00
CANCELED 22 March 2022
SPEAKER: Keith Wilson, Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oslo and visiting researcher at the Institute of Philosophy.
TITLE: TBD (topic: The temporal structure of experience)
ABSTRACT: TBD
LOCATION: Arts Tower, AT LT09
DATE: Tuesday 22 March 2022
TIME: 14:00 - 16:00
SPEAKER: Keith Wilson, Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oslo and visiting researcher at the Institute of Philosophy.
TITLE: TBD (topic: The temporal structure of experience)
ABSTRACT: TBD
LOCATION: Arts Tower, AT LT09
DATE: Tuesday 22 March 2022
TIME: 14:00 - 16:00
26 April 2022
SPEAKER: Dan Williams, Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, and an Associate Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence.
TITLE: Scaffolding Motivated Cognition
ABSTRACT: Most research on motivated cognition is individualistic: it assumes that individuals form and maintain motivated beliefs primarily through biases in how they seek out and process information. Against this, I argue that many of the most consequential forms of motivated cognition are socially scaffolded, dependent for their success on social practices that function to promote and protect motivated irrationality. Specifically, I identify and explore a common form of motivated cognition that results from group identification. In such cases, motives to form group-favoured beliefs become widespread among group members and create an incentive structure—a pattern of social rewards and punishments—that influences the production and transmission of information in ways conducive to generating, protecting, and rationalising such beliefs. In addition to clarifying this phenomenon, I identify its implications for several topics of interest to philosophers of mind and social epistemologists.
LOCATION: Workroom 2, 38 Mappin St
DATE: Tuesday 26 April 2022
TIME: 16:00 - 18:00 [note change of time]
SPEAKER: Dan Williams, Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, and an Associate Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence.
TITLE: Scaffolding Motivated Cognition
ABSTRACT: Most research on motivated cognition is individualistic: it assumes that individuals form and maintain motivated beliefs primarily through biases in how they seek out and process information. Against this, I argue that many of the most consequential forms of motivated cognition are socially scaffolded, dependent for their success on social practices that function to promote and protect motivated irrationality. Specifically, I identify and explore a common form of motivated cognition that results from group identification. In such cases, motives to form group-favoured beliefs become widespread among group members and create an incentive structure—a pattern of social rewards and punishments—that influences the production and transmission of information in ways conducive to generating, protecting, and rationalising such beliefs. In addition to clarifying this phenomenon, I identify its implications for several topics of interest to philosophers of mind and social epistemologists.
LOCATION: Workroom 2, 38 Mappin St
DATE: Tuesday 26 April 2022
TIME: 16:00 - 18:00 [note change of time]
03 May 2022
SPEAKER: Nicolas Porot, Assistant Professor, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University
TITLE: Fluency Alone Does Not Explain Illusory Truth
ABSTRACT: Four experiments look at the contributions of fluency and familiarity to illusory truth. Traditional work in this area has largely assumed that increased processing fluency due to familiarity explains illusory truth. In the present research, we pit exposure versus fluency and find that exposure is the main driver of illusory truth. Fluency still had some effect however as disfluency (compared to fluency) reduced truth judgments when introduced at test, but not when introduced at encoding, and it also reduced confidence on some measures. This pattern of results supports the hypothesis that brute repetition (rather than fluency) explains illusory truth. We discuss an alternative explanation of illusory truth, according to which it results from a first-order strategy of consulting one’s actual beliefs—in line with Spinozan accounts of belief fixation.
LOCATION: Workroom 2, 38 Mappin St
DATE: Tuesday 03 May 2022
TIME: 16:00 - 18:00 [note change of time]
SPEAKER: Nicolas Porot, Assistant Professor, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University
TITLE: Fluency Alone Does Not Explain Illusory Truth
ABSTRACT: Four experiments look at the contributions of fluency and familiarity to illusory truth. Traditional work in this area has largely assumed that increased processing fluency due to familiarity explains illusory truth. In the present research, we pit exposure versus fluency and find that exposure is the main driver of illusory truth. Fluency still had some effect however as disfluency (compared to fluency) reduced truth judgments when introduced at test, but not when introduced at encoding, and it also reduced confidence on some measures. This pattern of results supports the hypothesis that brute repetition (rather than fluency) explains illusory truth. We discuss an alternative explanation of illusory truth, according to which it results from a first-order strategy of consulting one’s actual beliefs—in line with Spinozan accounts of belief fixation.
LOCATION: Workroom 2, 38 Mappin St
DATE: Tuesday 03 May 2022
TIME: 16:00 - 18:00 [note change of time]
25 May 2022 POSTPONED
SPEAKER: Will Morgan, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Bristol
TITLE: Reduction and Identity in the Biological Sciences
ABSTRACT: A topic in contemporary biology and the philosophy of biology is reduction. Reduction is often taken to be a relation holding between one entity and another, where it is said that one entity ‘reduces’ to the other: a gene reduces to a stretch of DNA, for example, or an instance of pain reduces to a brain state. Reduction, however, is also taken to be a relation holding between one thing and many things, in a particular, between a whole and its parts.
Reductionists say, for example, that a cell or an organism reduces to many molecules or that a protein reduces to many amino acids. This talk is concerned with the one-many variety of reduction and asks the following: what is it for a thing to be reduced to its parts?
A popular view says that reduction entails identity: if A reduces to B, or to many entities the Bs, then A is identical to B or the Bs. I will argue that this understanding of reduction is committed to two mereological theses - Mereological Essentialism and Unrestricted Composition – which are highly controversial for biology and the philosophy of biology. Mereological Essentialism, for instance, implies that many claims about organisms inside and outside of biology are false, and is in tension with a popular definition of the organism in the philosophy of biology, whilst Unrestricted Composition causes problems for performing counting operations in biology such as measuring the spread of a trait in a population, and distinguishing a multicellular organism from is symbionts. The upshot is that if we want a theory of reduction in biology that is not committed to these controversial theses, then reduction must entail a weaker relation than identity.
LOCATION: TBA
DATE: POSTPONED
TIME: TBA
SPEAKER: Will Morgan, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Bristol
TITLE: Reduction and Identity in the Biological Sciences
ABSTRACT: A topic in contemporary biology and the philosophy of biology is reduction. Reduction is often taken to be a relation holding between one entity and another, where it is said that one entity ‘reduces’ to the other: a gene reduces to a stretch of DNA, for example, or an instance of pain reduces to a brain state. Reduction, however, is also taken to be a relation holding between one thing and many things, in a particular, between a whole and its parts.
Reductionists say, for example, that a cell or an organism reduces to many molecules or that a protein reduces to many amino acids. This talk is concerned with the one-many variety of reduction and asks the following: what is it for a thing to be reduced to its parts?
A popular view says that reduction entails identity: if A reduces to B, or to many entities the Bs, then A is identical to B or the Bs. I will argue that this understanding of reduction is committed to two mereological theses - Mereological Essentialism and Unrestricted Composition – which are highly controversial for biology and the philosophy of biology. Mereological Essentialism, for instance, implies that many claims about organisms inside and outside of biology are false, and is in tension with a popular definition of the organism in the philosophy of biology, whilst Unrestricted Composition causes problems for performing counting operations in biology such as measuring the spread of a trait in a population, and distinguishing a multicellular organism from is symbionts. The upshot is that if we want a theory of reduction in biology that is not committed to these controversial theses, then reduction must entail a weaker relation than identity.
LOCATION: TBA
DATE: POSTPONED
TIME: TBA
28 June 2022
Moral judgment: Natural and artificial
Theme: What is the meaning of moral judgments? What mental states do these judgments express, and how do they bring about motivation? These are some of the key questions in meta-ethics and moral psychology. Typically, these questions have been addressed by investigating "natural" moral judgments, that is, the moral judgments produced by creatures like us. In this workshop, we will discuss some cutting-edge ideas on the semantics and psychology of natural moral judgments, but we will also explore the possibility of "artificial" moral judgments. Can AI make moral judgments? And if it can, what is the relation between natural and artificial moral judgments?
Speaker: James Brown (Sheffield),
TITLE: Expressivism, propositions, and mixed disjunctions.
ABSTRACT: Expressivism about moral language is the view that the meanings of declarative sentences are explained in terms of the mental states they express and that moral sentences express desire-like mental states. There are many ways in which to cash out these two theses. This talk motivates one such way, which I will call propositional expressivism. This view holds that the meanings of declarative sentences are explained in terms of the contents of the mental states they express; but whereas ordinary factual sentences express beliefs with representational propositional content, moral sentences express beliefs with non-representational propositional content. After outlining what I take to be the most promising way of developing this view, the remainder of the talk responds to a challenge to the view. The challenge is to explain mixed disjunctions, which include both a moral and non-moral disjunct. I argue that the challenge rests upon an atomistic picture of content-determination that the propositional expressivist has independent reason to reject.
Speaker: Yuhan (Felicity) Fu (Sheffield)
TITLE: Can AI make moral judgements? Yes!
ABSTRACT: In this talk, I will argue that AI machines are already able to make moral judgements, although AI does not acquire moral norms in the same way as humans do, and AI’s moral judgements do not have the same moral motivational forces as human moral judgements do. In order to better illustrate and discuss the question, I will use one AI system: Delphi, as an example.
Carrying on, I will consider two potential objections coming from two prominent views on moral judgements: the first is Kantian rationalism, which contends that AI such as Delphi does not have the self-reflectively reasoning capacity required for moral judgements. I will show that the rationalism standard of moral judgements is too high: even humans cannot meet the criteria; the second objection comes from judgement sentimentalism, which argues that moral judgements are about expressing moral thoughts that involve sentiments, which AI machines do not possess (yet). I will show that sentiments are not necessarily required for moral judgements anyway, and non-cognitive expressivism is wrong about moral judgements. After responding to the potential objections and reassuring my audience that Delphi can make moral judgements, I will wrap up my talk by exploring the implications that this question have brought to moral philosophy.
Talk Schedule:
12:00 - 13:30: Talk 1 - Yuhan Fu
13:30 - 14:00: Break
14:00 - 15:30: Talk 2 - James Brown
LOCATION: TBA
DATE: Tuesday 28 June, 2022
TIME: 12:00 - 15:30
Moral judgment: Natural and artificial
Theme: What is the meaning of moral judgments? What mental states do these judgments express, and how do they bring about motivation? These are some of the key questions in meta-ethics and moral psychology. Typically, these questions have been addressed by investigating "natural" moral judgments, that is, the moral judgments produced by creatures like us. In this workshop, we will discuss some cutting-edge ideas on the semantics and psychology of natural moral judgments, but we will also explore the possibility of "artificial" moral judgments. Can AI make moral judgments? And if it can, what is the relation between natural and artificial moral judgments?
Speaker: James Brown (Sheffield),
TITLE: Expressivism, propositions, and mixed disjunctions.
ABSTRACT: Expressivism about moral language is the view that the meanings of declarative sentences are explained in terms of the mental states they express and that moral sentences express desire-like mental states. There are many ways in which to cash out these two theses. This talk motivates one such way, which I will call propositional expressivism. This view holds that the meanings of declarative sentences are explained in terms of the contents of the mental states they express; but whereas ordinary factual sentences express beliefs with representational propositional content, moral sentences express beliefs with non-representational propositional content. After outlining what I take to be the most promising way of developing this view, the remainder of the talk responds to a challenge to the view. The challenge is to explain mixed disjunctions, which include both a moral and non-moral disjunct. I argue that the challenge rests upon an atomistic picture of content-determination that the propositional expressivist has independent reason to reject.
Speaker: Yuhan (Felicity) Fu (Sheffield)
TITLE: Can AI make moral judgements? Yes!
ABSTRACT: In this talk, I will argue that AI machines are already able to make moral judgements, although AI does not acquire moral norms in the same way as humans do, and AI’s moral judgements do not have the same moral motivational forces as human moral judgements do. In order to better illustrate and discuss the question, I will use one AI system: Delphi, as an example.
Carrying on, I will consider two potential objections coming from two prominent views on moral judgements: the first is Kantian rationalism, which contends that AI such as Delphi does not have the self-reflectively reasoning capacity required for moral judgements. I will show that the rationalism standard of moral judgements is too high: even humans cannot meet the criteria; the second objection comes from judgement sentimentalism, which argues that moral judgements are about expressing moral thoughts that involve sentiments, which AI machines do not possess (yet). I will show that sentiments are not necessarily required for moral judgements anyway, and non-cognitive expressivism is wrong about moral judgements. After responding to the potential objections and reassuring my audience that Delphi can make moral judgements, I will wrap up my talk by exploring the implications that this question have brought to moral philosophy.
Talk Schedule:
12:00 - 13:30: Talk 1 - Yuhan Fu
13:30 - 14:00: Break
14:00 - 15:30: Talk 2 - James Brown
LOCATION: TBA
DATE: Tuesday 28 June, 2022
TIME: 12:00 - 15:30
23 May 2023
SPEAKER: Nicolo Cesana Arlotti (Yale, Psychology)
TITLE: Foundations of Logical Thought in Human Infants
ABSTRACT: Humans' disposition for rational learning, planning, and decision-making is unparalleled in the natural world. Foundational views in the cognitive sciences hold that to learn, think and talk as we do, we rely upon a "language of thought" – a capacity for framing ideas in abstract logical structures and for drawing the inferences they support. Yet, we know little about the foundations of logical thought in the ontogeny of the mind: are learning, education, or the mastery of language required for logical cognition? In this talk, I will present my answer to this question. First, I discuss a developmental primitive of logical reasoning: infants make inferences by contrasting and eliminating alternatives. Through a series of studies, I will examine the nature of this preverbal logical capacity and its function in knowledge acquisition. Next, I will present newer work investigating the breadth of infants' and children's uncharted logical resources: (i) the presence of other fundamental logical representations, (ii) their abstractness and domain-generality, and (iii) the capacity to integrate distinct logical operations. My goal will be to share with you works that shed light on the developmental foundations upon which thought is built and made possible.
LOCATION: Jessop Building 116
DATE: Tuesday 23 May, 2023
TIME: 2 - 4 PM
SPEAKER: Nicolo Cesana Arlotti (Yale, Psychology)
TITLE: Foundations of Logical Thought in Human Infants
ABSTRACT: Humans' disposition for rational learning, planning, and decision-making is unparalleled in the natural world. Foundational views in the cognitive sciences hold that to learn, think and talk as we do, we rely upon a "language of thought" – a capacity for framing ideas in abstract logical structures and for drawing the inferences they support. Yet, we know little about the foundations of logical thought in the ontogeny of the mind: are learning, education, or the mastery of language required for logical cognition? In this talk, I will present my answer to this question. First, I discuss a developmental primitive of logical reasoning: infants make inferences by contrasting and eliminating alternatives. Through a series of studies, I will examine the nature of this preverbal logical capacity and its function in knowledge acquisition. Next, I will present newer work investigating the breadth of infants' and children's uncharted logical resources: (i) the presence of other fundamental logical representations, (ii) their abstractness and domain-generality, and (iii) the capacity to integrate distinct logical operations. My goal will be to share with you works that shed light on the developmental foundations upon which thought is built and made possible.
LOCATION: Jessop Building 116
DATE: Tuesday 23 May, 2023
TIME: 2 - 4 PM
26 June 2023
SPEAKER: James Chamberlain (The University of Sheffield, Philosophy)
TITLE: Towards a Humean Theory of Moral Intuitions
ABSTRACT: It is now widely accepted that paradigmatic moral reasoning and judgement involve intuitions: mental states that are produced via non-conscious, fast, and automatic processes, and which typically comprise, or are accompanied by, some degree of positive or negative feeling or affect. The precise nature of moral judgements, however, remains puzzling. Paradigmatic moral judgements appear to be intuitions, but they also sometimes appear to be produced via slow, consciously controlled processes of reflective reasoning. Furthermore, many people implicitly assume that wrong actions are consistently related to harm, but most people morally disapprove of at least some harmless actions. Drawing on Hume’s sentimentalist theory of moral judgement, I argue that we can resolve these puzzles if we accept the following Humean Thesis: Paradigmatic moral judgements are intuitions, activated by a thought or perception of an action or intention of a type which the judger generally associates with causing happiness (for positive moral judgements) or harm (for negative moral judgements).
LOCATION: Jessop Building 116
DATE: Monday 26 June, 2023
TIME: 1 - 3 PM
SPEAKER: James Chamberlain (The University of Sheffield, Philosophy)
TITLE: Towards a Humean Theory of Moral Intuitions
ABSTRACT: It is now widely accepted that paradigmatic moral reasoning and judgement involve intuitions: mental states that are produced via non-conscious, fast, and automatic processes, and which typically comprise, or are accompanied by, some degree of positive or negative feeling or affect. The precise nature of moral judgements, however, remains puzzling. Paradigmatic moral judgements appear to be intuitions, but they also sometimes appear to be produced via slow, consciously controlled processes of reflective reasoning. Furthermore, many people implicitly assume that wrong actions are consistently related to harm, but most people morally disapprove of at least some harmless actions. Drawing on Hume’s sentimentalist theory of moral judgement, I argue that we can resolve these puzzles if we accept the following Humean Thesis: Paradigmatic moral judgements are intuitions, activated by a thought or perception of an action or intention of a type which the judger generally associates with causing happiness (for positive moral judgements) or harm (for negative moral judgements).
LOCATION: Jessop Building 116
DATE: Monday 26 June, 2023
TIME: 1 - 3 PM