25.405, Calls: Cognitive Science, Neurolinguistics, Computational Linguistics/USA

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LINGUIST List: Vol-25-405. Fri Jan 24 2014. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 25.405, Calls: Cognitive Science, Neurolinguistics, Computational Linguistics/USA

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Date: Fri, 24 Jan 2014 10:46:50
From: Sean O Nuallain [eireann at yahoo.com]
Subject: Foundations of Mind: Cognition and Consciousness

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Full Title: Foundations of Mind: Cognition and Consciousness 
Short Title: FOM 

Date: 06-Mar-2014 - 07-Mar-2014
Location: UC Berkeley, USA 
Contact Person: Sean O Nuallain
Meeting Email: eireann at yahoo.com
Web Site: http://foundationsofmind.org/ 

Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science; Computational Linguistics; Neurolinguistics 

Call Deadline: 07-Feb-2014 

Meeting Description:

'The Foundations of Mind: Cognition and Consciousness' Conference
Mar 6-7 2014 UC Berkeley

Confirmed plenary speakers/panellists include

Stuart Kauffman (U Vermont)
Terry Deacon (UC Berkeley)
Henry Stapp (LBNL, UC Berkeley)
Ed Vul (UCSD)
Jacob Needleman (SFSU)
Jerome Feldman (ICSI, UC Berkeley)
Tom Griffiths (UC Berkeley)
Robert Campbell (Clemson U)
Mike Cole (UCSD)
José Acacio de Barros (SFSU/Stanford)
Mike Cole  ( UCSD)
Christian de Quincey (JFK)
Sean O Nuallain (UoI)
Fr. Robert Spitzer (Magis institute)
Tony Bell (UC Berkeley)

This will be held Mar 6-7 2014, Sproul Room at international house at UC Berkeley with Skype links to participants who cannot travel to the event.

2nd Call for Papers:

Foundations of Mind: Cognition and Consciousness
Call deadline: February 1, 2014

Cognitive science studies the mind as an informational system. In its 60 years of existence, it has accepted explanatory schemes involving Grammars, algorithms and – less precisely – concepts like Schemes, schemas and cognitive stages. It failed properly to address consciousness, leading to an autonomous but related field of consciousness studies. The latter includes insights from sensorimotor behaviour, and from quantum mechanics as well as information theory; the schema here would suggest that the higher achievements of consciousness require the kind of formation that German psychologists like Wundt tried and failed to systematize, and would be better studied in another context, perhaps one willing at times to swap the rigours of science for those of applied experientialism.

The breaking away of cognitive and social neuroscience has been altogether more problematic. Very quickly, neuroscience began to make the behaviorist mistake that gave rise to Cognitive science as a movement in psychology in the first place. It also attempted a new phrenology - the mapping of sophisticated mental attributes to locations in the brain.

There are a few in-principle arguments that pertain. The first was due to Chomsky and his followers; it is that human languages evince a systematic structure, and that this has a certain formal complexity. Cognitive science musts allow at least that tensors able to handle context-free grammars are used to model the brain. It also must eschew behaviorism as a program to explain all, and reinstate the algorithm as an explanatory device

The second is due to what we know about the more remote achievements of the human mind. Ricci flow involves a tensor of order 4; somehow great mathematicians can handle this. It is now absurd to suggest that the scalars used in fmri “explanation” are in any way adequate. In fact, no explanation of human cognitive function can be accepted that does not show formal capacity to handle all achievements of human cognition, as described formally.

So we need acquaintance with context free grammars, with partially recursive functions, and with the set theory that goes with them. It is almost inevitable that we eventually will need to understand how the metric tensor changes in curved space in order to understand both symbolic and sensorimotor behaviour, the latter in animals and the former also in biological codes like DNA uses.

Papers are invited for a special session which addresses these issues in a manner in conformity with academic freedom.

Inquiries and submissions for the conference should be sent to eireann at yahoo.com. Proposed papers/posters presenters should send a 500-word abstract to president at universityofireland.com by February 7, 2014.

We already have offers to publish the proceedings both from a peer-reviewed journal and an academic book publisher.







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