These are the current conferences that are featured. You can read the texts online and take part in the discussions.
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Brave New Interfaces
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Discuss policy-probing issues while interweaving practices from various scientific disciplines, from different innovative companies and from the arts. Convinced that this combination of methodologies and backgrounds is an inspiring stepping-stone towards innovation and creativity, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel launched CROSSTALKS in 2003.
CROSSTALKS offers a cross-disciplinary platform to researchers, thinkers and decision makers. They can meet in an open, yet compelling public space (by means of a conference, a workshop, a text or cyberspace) where in the first place a common ground is created through exchanging knowledge, visions and perspectives.
Since interfaces define the way we work, learn, live, communicate, play and love, CROSSTALKS invited an impressive range of academics, corporate leaders, designers, architects and artists to express their vision on the challenges of future interfaces. We didn’t need to verbalize whether we thought a crossdisciplinary approach should be taken up, but rather, as one of our editorial discussants described it: “ The question is no longer ‘Whether it should be done?’ the question is rather ‘What is the best way to do it’?”
A mind-broadening congress, workshops and a publication were devoted to the thematic of “Brave New Interfaces” last year. CROSSTALKS asked them to focus on the conditions, processes and methods that might lead to better design concepts and products and to formulate critical reflections on the systems and processes on which we depend so much today.
The next step now is to share the most relevant insights, emerging common issues and the most provoking presentations with the rest of the world and instigate further debate.
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These conferences are no longer open for debate. However, you can still read the papers and discussions. Remember, because they are archived, you won't be able to intervene in the discussions.
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Adaptation and Representation
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The notion of representation plays a central role in philosophy, biology, ethology, linguistics and neuroscience. However, despite its importance, it still has not received an entirely satisfactory definition.
One crucial question is whether it can be given a biological basis, or, in more philosophical terms, whether it can be naturalized.
- If there are innate representations, are they adaptations, i.e., are they optimal relative to the environmental pressures, which are supposed to have triggered them?
- If, as seems possible, the notion of adaptation should be modified, what would the consequences be for an adaptation-based notion of representation?
- If one adopts an externalist view of adaptation in as much as representational systems are optimal responses to external (environmental) pressures, does that automatically leads to an externalist semantic view according to which the content of a representation is determined by the external object being represented?
Given all these queries, it is high time to synthesize the point of view of biologists and their work on the notion of adaptation with the considerations of the scientists who work on the evolved knowing systems. It is at least relevant if not necessary to redefine the notions of 'evolving' system and 'cognitive' system.
It is the goal of the present web conference to engage these pressing questions and to bring together the points of views of theoretical biologists and philosophers on the notion of adaptation and of the scientists which use it in everyday practice to formulate experimental protocols, which, hopefully, will lead to explanations of animat or animal behavior.
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Art and Cognition
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Welcome to the Art and Cognition virtual conference. The event took place between November 2002 and February 2003 and is no longer active. However, all texts and discussions are archived and can be read.
The conference is organized by the Euro-edu Association and sponsored by DRRT Ile-de-France.
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Art and Cognition Workshops
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The Department of Cognitive Studies at the Ecole Normale Supérieure organizes on this page a series of workshops on Art and Cognition. Each month, new papers will be open to discussion on a specific issue. Discussion is open to all who wish to contribute and the forum is moderated. A bibliography and a list of links are also available on the site by clicking on bibliography and links
The current workshop explores the issue of:
Pictures in Cognition and Science
Pictures are non-linguistic external representations; as such, they can exploit the fineness of grain that normally comes with perceptual acquaintance, as opposed to verbal description. But how does this distinctive trait of pictures translate into a form of meaning? What is the role of concepts and depth-perception in understanding pictures? What is the semantic status of perceiving images while having the multimodal experience of films or virtual simulations? (Topic I) Beyond such questions, how do we make use of pictures? The conference will concentrate on the use of pictures in science, be they drawings, diagrams or photographs. Pictures are genuine vehicles of scientific content, but the reasons why they play such an indispensable role are poorly understood. Sometimes, pictures are data. Does this mean that the observation of pictures has the same epistemic value as the observation of natural scenes? Can pictures be more than cognitive facilitators in scientific contexts? Can they be parts of arguments, or are arguments strictly linguistic? How can they depict (parts of) theoretical models? (Topic II)
A previous edition of an Art and Cognition Workshop is archived on this site.
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Causality
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David Hume famously claimed that causality is the cement of the universe. Today, we can re-interpret his claim by saying that causality is the cognitive cement of the universe. It is indeed a central notion in the representation of action that governs the observed behaviour in many different species. It links eventualities and predicts the consequences of action. It is the origin of behaviours that allow animals, notably human animals, to act upon and thus shape their environments. Causality is also the cognitive basis for the acquisition and the use of categories and concepts in the child. As such, it is the basis for rationality.
The workshop will bring together psychologists, philosophers, primatologists, linguists to explore the difference between animal and human causality, the role of language in shaping our causal reasoning as well as the role of association and memory in causal understanding.
Starting from March 1st 2005, a new paper will be open to discussion every two weeks.
This workshop is organized by the Institute for Cognitive Science in Lyon and the University of Geneva.
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Enaction
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Action and perception are intertwined in complex ways. Perception controls action; action helps perception. But how strong is the tie, and how complex? Would there be perception without action, or action without perception? A current trend in cognitive studies endows action with a wide role in determining perception.
The term enaction has been coined to characterize this peculiar approach to perception.
In the framework of the VI PCRD of the European Commission, participants to the Network of Excellence on Enactive interfaces will debate the import and the consequences of the enactive approach to perception.
Guidelines for contributing to the Virtual Workshop
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Issues in Coevolution of Language
and Theory of Mind
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The relation between language and theory of mind remains in need of clarification, both at the level of language evolution, language acquisition and the very content of theory of mind. This raises the question of the very nature of theory of mind. Is it a monolithic, more or less modular mental faculty; or is it a combination of different mechanisms, some of which may be rather low-level? How much theory is there in theory of mind and how much is needed to evolve a language? Very much the same questions apply to language acquisition. This workshop will attempt to analyse the coevolution of these two uniquely human capacities, their co-dependence and interaction.
The Workshop is organized by the Institut des Sciences Cognitives CNRS, Lyon. Starting from February 2004, a new paper will be put on line and open to discussion every two weeks.
The research presented in this
workshop is supported in the framework of the European Science
Foundation EUROCORES programme.
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Mo.Ve Workshop 2003
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Mo.Ve is a Permanent International Non-Governmental Observatory on Sustainable Mobility.
A panel of international experts selected by the organizing committee and coordinated by Guido Martinotti, urban sociologist and Pro-Rector of the Milano-Bicocca University, discusses and comments on Martinotti's position paper on Governance, Technologies and Social Exclusion in the New Metropolis.
To visualize the text and take part into the discussion, click on the title of the paper.
Read all the details about the Mo.Ve Observatory 2003 and the on line supporting papers for the present discussion
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On Secularism: A Round Table
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What is the role of secularism in contemporary politics, and what does it mean to be tolerant towards others' religious or non-religious views? Micromega is presenting a two-week long round-table to discuss these issues, with Roberta De Monticelli, Daniel Dennett, Paolo Flores d'Arcais, Marcel Gauchet, Sam Harris, Avishai Margalit, Thomas Nagel, Fernando Savater, Dan Sperber
Participation is open only to invited discussants, but you can follow the debate by clicking on the title on the right.
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Referring to Objects
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Various notions of material objects play a key role in the study of different sectors of cognition. Infants appear to parse the world in object-like chunks; language makes predominant reference to objects; visual perception is attuned to objects; primates appear to be able to manipulate and modify objects. Yet the notions of objecthood used in the corresponding disciplines are not always aligned and are at times in need of conceptual clarification. The 2004 Summer School on "Reference to objects" tried to address these and related issues, under the direction of Paul Bloom, Daniel Povinelli, François Recanati, and Zenon Pylyshyn. The present workshop moves from papers developed at the School and furthers the discussion on the theme of the role of objects in cognition.
The workshop as part of the Ecole Thématique 2004 on "Reference to Objects" is sponsored by the CNRS, by institut Nicod, by RESCIF, by the European Science Foundation as part of the ESF-OMLL project "Mindreading and the Emergence of Human Communication", by the Indo-French programme of the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris, and by the University of Eastern Piedmont at Vercelli
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Rethinking Interdisciplinarity
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Social scientists, philosophers, historians, anthropologists and cognitive scientists will share their experience on the matter and will focus on the impact of new forms of communication on interdisciplinary research.
Starting from February 9th 2004, a general discussion is open by the moderators.
Previous texts, by Dan Sperber, Helga Nowotny, Pierre Jacob, Catherine Garbay, Steve Fuller, Dominique Pestre; Howard Gardner and Veronica Boix-Mansilla and Ian Hacking are archived at the botton of this page.
This seminar is supported by the C.N.R.S. project Society of Information
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The Future of Web Publishing
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The conference is a virtual complement of the Centre Jacques Cartier conference : The Future of Web Publishing that has been held in Lyon from 9th to 11th December 2002. The correspondent virtual conference has been active from December 2002 to March 2003. Texts and discussions are available on the site. All the texts are also available at the on line archive Archivesic
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Understanding Suicide Terrorism
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Who are the suicide bombers? What are the causes of suicide attacks? What are the possible lines of defence? Two papers, one by the American anthropologist Scott Atran, the other by the Turkish sociologist Nilüfer Göle, have been open to discussion for a month by a panel of invited discussants. Two different ways of understanding the phenomenon of suicide terrorism.
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What Do Mirror Neurons Mean?
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The discovery of mirror neurons in the frontal lobes of macaques and their implications for human brain evolution is one of the most important findings of neuroscience in the last decade. Mirror neurons are active when the monkeys perform certain tasks, but they also fire when the monkeys watch someone else perform the same specific task. There is evidence that a similar observation/action matching system exists in humans. The mirror system is sometimes considered to represent a primitive version, or possibly a precursor in phylogeny, of a simulation heuristic that might underlie mindreading.
Today, mirror neurons play a major explanatory role in the understanding of a number of human features, from imitation to empathy, mindreading and language learning. It has also been claimed that damages in these cerebral structures can be responsible for mental deficits such as autism. The virtual workshop will address the theoretical implications of the discovery of mirror neurons. The discussion will try to set the explanatory scope of the phenomenon, and evaluate to what extent it can provide a new empirical ground for a variety of human mental abilities.
This workshop has been sponsored by the European Science Foundation as a network activity of the Programme Origins of Man, Languages and Language (OMLL).
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