Workshop: Distributed Cognition and Distributed Agency

Where: Macquarie University, Sydney

When: March 14-16 (with a day off between)

Deadline for submissions: February 10

Keynote speakers:
Amanda Barnier (Macquarie)
Erik Myin (Antwerp)
Robert Rupert (Colorado)

Call for Papers
Debates about embodied, extended, and distributed cognition now address not only metaphysical issues about the location and boundaries of the mind, but also broader questions about culture and cognition, agency, and the self. These debates make points of contact with diverse philosophical traditions (including phenomenology, pragmatism, and moral psychology), with diverse social scientific fields (such as science studies, cognitive ethnography, and studies of interaction and material culture), as well as with cognitive, social, and developmental psychology, and the cognitive neurosciences.

For this workshop we seek theoretical and empirically-informed papers which fill out or broaden the conceptual tools available for understanding the nature and mechanisms of distributed or embodied cognition. We particularly welcome proposals which address the integration of environmental resources (social and cultural as well as material and technological) into cognitive practices. Papers can either contribute to mainstream debates about cognitive integration, complementarity, and 2nd-wave extended mind, or apply these concepts to specific domains and topics, such as (but not limited to) narrative and self, agency, embodiment and skilled movement, language and gesture, communication and interaction, memory, collective intentionality, performance, and cognitive niche construction.

Abstracts of proposed papers, of between 250 and 500 words, should be sent to Michael Kirchhoff at michael.kirchhoff@students.mq.edu.au by Friday 10th February. Decisions on acceptance/ rejection will be communicated by 17th February.

We anticipate scheduling longer and shorter paper sessions. In submitting your abstract, please indicate which one you would prefer if accepted, or if either option is fine. Graduate students are encouraged to submit.

There will be no registration fee for attending the conference, but advance registration will be required.

Enquiries to the workshop organizers: Richard Menary
(richard.menary@mq.edu.au) or John Sutton (john.sutton@mq.edu.au)

Hosts and sponsors:
CCD (Centre for Cognition and its Disorders)
CAVE (Centre for Agency, Values, and Ethics)
Australian Research Council

Rolf Zwaan and Teun van Dijk on discourse, memory, cognition and action

The issue 14 of Discursos del Caos (UPF, Barcelona) presents a special broadcast, which consists of the conversation among researchers Rolf Zwaan and Teun van Dijk, who discuss about cognitive processes and mental representations and the role of these in the field of discourse production and comprehension. Among other topics, talk about the situation models, the notion of affordances and cognition of narrative texts. 

Source: Discursos del Casos, UPF

Must-read paper on embodied memory, perception and action

In a previous issue of Behavioral and Brain Sciences (vol 20, issue 1, March 1997), “What memory is for”, an impressive and provocative article by Arthur Glenberg (available here).

The abstract begins: “Let’s start from scratch in thinking about what memory is for, and consequently, how it works. Suppose that memory and conceptualization work in the service of perception and action. In this case, conceptualization is the encoding of patterns of possible physical interaction with a three-dimensional world. These patterns are constrained by the structure of the environment, the structure of our bodies, and memory. Thus, how we perceive and conceive of the environment is determined by the types of bodies we have. Such a memory would not have associations. Instead, how concepts become related (and what it means to be related) is determined by how separate patterns of actions can be combined given the constraints of our bodies. I call this combination “mesh.” To avoid hallucination, conceptualization would normally be driven by the environment, and patterns of action from memory would play a supporting, but automatic, role. A significant human skill is learning to suppress the overriding contribution of the environment to conceptualization, thereby allowing memory to guide conceptualization. The effort used in suppressing input from the environment pays off by allowing prediction, recollective memory, and language comprehension. I review theoretical work in cognitive science and empirical work in memory and language comprehension that suggest that it may be possible to investigate connections between topics as disparate as infantile amnesia and mental-model theory.

Dubrovnik Conference on Cognitive Science – DuCog IV: Memory control and retrieval

Call for papers

Where: Dubrovnik, Croatia

When: May 10-13

Deadline for submission (posters only): February 1

The conference is open for scholars and students doing research on all aspects of cognitive science.  The poster sessions will cover various fields of cognitive science, but the focus will be on posters related to the main focus of the conference.

Keynote Speakers

Paul W. Burgess, University College London, UK

Martin A. Conway, University of Leeds, UK

Ken A. Paller, Northwestern University, USA

Lars Nyberg, Umea Center for Functional Brain Imaging, Sweden

Invited speakers

Antonino Vallesi, International School for Advanced Studies, Italy

Simon Hanslmayr, University of Konstanz, Germany

Ines Wilhelm, University of Lübeck, Germany

Mihály Racsmány, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary

The DubrovnikConference on Cognitive Science - DuCog is a small-medium size annual conference with up to 80 participants. Every year a specific topic is covered by keynote speakers and invited speakers.

Poster sessions

The core of the conference will consist of student research reports in the form of peer reviewed posters. The posters shall be organized around discussion groups chaired by senior scholars. Posters will be grouped around one central topic. Sessions will be chaired by a senior scholar assigned by the organizing committee. Poster selection will be based on quality, however in case of equal contributions posters related to the conference's topic and from Central Europe will be preferred.

Keynote Talks

The keynote talks given by the keynote speakers concentrate on a given area of memory control and retrieval. The talks are not merely presentations of some specific new research, but a survey of the keynote’s own research, or of their fields, providing a general framework and message.

Invited speakers

Invited speakers will provide a short talk reviewing their own recent research in the field of memory control and retrieval.

New publication: Memorias compartidas, conversación de familia e interacción

Bietti, L. (2011). Memorias compartidas, conversacion de familia e interaccion [translation by Amanda Vallejo Morales]. Discurso & Sociedad 5 (4), 749-794.

Interdisciplinary Workshop: Personal and Shared Intentions

Where: Berlin

When: May 3-5, 2012
Deadline for submissions (posters only): February 15

Workshop Description

In recent decades, philosophers and cognitive scientists have focused intensively on various aspects of personal opposed to shared intentions and their role in individual and/or joint actions. In this workshop, we bring together scientists from different disciplines to discuss the pros and cons of traditional approaches and studies as well as novel models and experiments that shed new light on open questions and contribute fruitfully to the ongoing debate.  The common theme of our workshop shall be the following question: How do personal and shared intentions interrelate, and what are the differences between them?

Possible subtopics concern:

Cognitive mechanisms

What are the cognitive mechanisms that underlie personal and shared intentions in individual and/or joint actions? Should we account for - joint or individual - intentional action in terms of intentions as mental states of individual agents on a par with beliefs and desires?

Individual vs. shared intentional action

What are the conceptual preliminaries of ‘intention’ we need to account for in individual opposed to joint actions? Are shared intentions nothing but the sum of personal intentions, and if not, how else do they differ? Are intentional actions irreducibly social?

What are the criteria to judge adequately whether we or another person has performed a particular action intentionally or not? How does our belief whether we interact with a cooperative, competitive or naive partner influence our perception of humanness and the ascription of intentions? How do we determine cooperativeness and competitiveness in interactive settings?

Moral dimension: relationship between individual and shared intentions

Is the ability to act on the basis of shared intentions a core constituent of adequate moral judgment and moral  motivation?

Which role do moral and self-referential emotions play in individual and joint actions? How does our emotional  affectedness influence our sense of agency, attribution of intentions, and interactive behaviour patterns?

Contact:

Max Planck Institute for Human Development

Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition

E-Mail: intentions@mpib-berlin.mpg.de

Further Information:

http://www.mpibberlin.mpg.de/de/aktuelles/veranstaltungen/interdisciplinary-workshop-personal-and-shareintentions

Culture, Communication and Cognition: Explaining Cognitive-Cultural Components of Media and Communication

Call for papers 

Where: Lublin, Poland

When: 7-9, May 2012

DAVID R. OLSON 
Keynote Speaker 

Conference Aims and Topics 
The conference is to provide a platform for an interdisciplinary discussion of the interrelations between culture, cognition and communication, with special attention to the cultural and cognitive roles of writing and other media. Anthropologists, communication studies researchers, sociologists, psychologists, philosophers and cognitive scientists are encouraged to challenge ideas concerning the cognitive and cultural functions of communication, language and media – thereby building upon the work of such scholars as Innis, McLuhan, Goody, Havelock, Ong, Olson and Vygotsky. Of particular interest are submissions that explore the interrelations between cognitive science and theories of media and communications, which might be pursued from any of a number of theoretical positions, including: media ecology, medium theory and literacy-orality theory, speech-act theory, critical discourse analysis, semiotics of culture, theory of communicative action and communicology. 

Topics on which we would like to focus during conference include: 
- Conceptual, methodological and theoretical problems faced by theories of media and communication – technological determinism, cognitive relativism, ethnocentrism, etc. 
- Media versus cultural practices 
- Semiotic analyses of language, speech, discourse, metaphor, etc. 
- The cognitive perspective on communication phenomena 
- Thinking through language, tools, instruments, information technologies and media 
- Media and extended mind  (situated cognition) 
- Human-computer communication 
- Modes and models of rationality in media, communication undertakings and environments 
- Cognitive Science in a historical perspective: logical empiricism and its contribution to understanding of language and communication 
- Intercultural perspectives on communication – contrastive studies on media and discourse, global communication studies, intercultural clashes and misunderstandings 

ABSTRACTS between 300 – 500 words are to be accepted till February 29th, 2012 
Abstracts are double-blind peer-reviewed 
Language of the presentations:  English or Polish. 
Are to be submitted by easy chair conference  system. In order to make a submission follow the link:
https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ccc2012 

Conference website: http://culturecommcog.wordpress.com/ 

ORGANIZERS: 
* Faculty of Philosophy and Sociology, Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Poland 
* Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw, Poland 
* Polish Society for Cognitive Science

Body memory and the self

In this talk given at the University of Heidelberg, Thomas Fuchs claims that the basic continuity of the self does not result from the store of explicit knowledge that we have about ourselves and about our auto-biography. Such continuity throughout time is grounded in a deeper level of our self which basically consists of the sedimentation and growth of an embodied memory at different time-scales which remains implicitly present in every moment of our life. 

Click here to have access to the video

Source: Body memory project, University of Heidelberg

Towards a Common Past? Conflicting Memories in Contemporary Europe

CALL FOR PAPERS

Where: Lund, Sweden

When: May 14-16, 2012

Deadline for submission: March 1, 2012

Since the 1980s Memory Studies have developed intensively as a creative, interdisciplinary and well-established field of research. Yet the field remains fragmented: national research environments tend to focus on representations of cultural memory within specific national contexts, and researchers coming from different disciplines are frequently holding on to their own theoretical and methodological approaches. We hope that the conference will generate discussions about the state of the art in Memory Studies as well as the future of the research in the field.  How can we consolidate Memory Studies? What kind of new directions within the field we can identify today?  We would also like to involve you in the discussion on the idea of ‘European Memory’,  what it is and how it relates to the memories of nations, regions, migrant communities and the world outside Europe. Drawing on recent theoretical insights pointing to the importance of memory migration and mediation, the influence of new media, changing cultural contexts, and memory as a source of transcultural ethics, the conference will explore how memory works as a transcultural and transnational force, mainly but not solely in Europe.

We welcome papers that aim to explore the tension between attempts by European cultural and political elites to create some form of common European memory or at least a unitary memory ethos on one hand and numerous ‘memory conflicts’, caused by divided and contested memories of oppression and violence on the other. Understanding the conflict-provoking potential of this memory legacy and exploring how it may be managed in a reconciliatory fashion constitute an acute challenge to interdisciplinary Memory Studies. We are convinced that the future of Memory Studies lies in interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary cooperation, however difficult such an endeavor might be. Hence we warmly welcome to our conference scholars from different disciplines – the humanities, political and social sciences (including psychology and communication studies), history, etc.  

© Lucas Bietti 2008

Keynote speakers for this three-day conference include

Claus Leggewie – Professor of Political Science at Justus-Liebig University Giessen

Daniel Levy – Associate Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University 
Leyla Neyzi, Professor of Social Anthropology, Sabanci University in Istanbul

Jeffrey Olick, Professor of Sociology at University of Virginia

James E. Young, Professor of English and Judaic Studies at University of Massachusetts

 

The papers at the conference will be presented and discussed in thematic workshops.  If you are interested in participating in one or more of the following workshops please contact the chair of the workshop directly (see the contact details below).  If you are not sure which workshop is most suitable for your paper please send a short abstract to the coordinator niklas.bernsand@slav.lu.se for suggestions. A selection of the papers presented at the conference will be subsequently published.

WORKSHOPS

1) Remembering forced migrations and ethnic cleansings in Europe (Chair: Barbara.TornquistPlewa@slav.lu.se)

2) Memory and Place in European Cities (Chair: Bo.Larsson@cfe.lu.se

3) Memory, Emotions and Politics (Chair: Tea.Sindbaek@cfe.lu.se) 

4) Asymmetric memories in Europe (chair: Conny.Mithander@kau.se)

5) Transnational cultural memory (chair: John.Sundholm@kau.se) 

6) Remediating memory (chair: Maria.Holmgren.Troy@kau.se)

7) Memory and Literary Representation (Chair: Alexandre.dessingue@uis.no)

8) Nordic realms of memory (Chair: Peter.Stadius@helsinki.fi)

9) Memory in News Media (Chair: Niklas.Bernsand@slav.lu.se)

Deadline

The deadline for submitting your abstract to a Workshop Chair (with a copy to the conference coordinator niklas.bernsand@slav.lu.se is March 1, 2012.

We look forward to seeing you in Lund in 2012. Please notice that no conference fee is required. 

Conference Chair: Barbara Törnquist-Plewa (e-mail: Barbara.Tornquist-Plewa@slav.lu.se)

Conference Coordinator:  Niklas Bernsand (e-mail : Niklas.Bernsand@slav.lu.se)

Ed Hutchins at LSE: The Cultural Practices of Cognition

Ed Hutchins talks about the role of history, culture and the social and material environment in cognition at the Institute of Social Psychology, LSE.

Click here to listen to the Podcast

Source: Institute of Social Psychology, LSE