• January 10th - Dr Nicholas Shea (University of Oxford, Centre for Neuroethics): "Representational Content for Cognitive Science: Some New Developments"
• January 17th - Prof David Spiegelhalter (University of Cambridge Statistical Laboratory): "Communicating risk and uncertainty"
• January 24th - Dr Nathaniel Virgo (Max Plank Institute for Biogeochemistry): "From Molecules to Minds"
• January 31st - Prof Mike Oaksford (Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck College, University of London): "A Probabilistic Approach to the Psychology of Conditional Reasoning."
• February 7th - Dr Joel Parthemore (University of Lund, Centre for Cognitive Semiotics): "Putting Theories of Concepts to the Test"
• February 14th - Dr David Leavens (University of Sussex, Dept Psychology): "Intentional Communication by Great Apes; Implications for Language Origins"
• February 21st - Prof Maggie Boden (University of Sussex, COGS): "Could Neuroscience Explain Creativity?"
• February 28th - Dr Tom Khabaza: "Data Mining and Cognition" - Video available
• March 13th - Dr Xabier Barandarian (University of the Basque Country, eSMCs group): telepresentation of "From systematicity of thought to systemicity of habits"

Date: January 10th

Speaker: Dr Nicholas Shea (University of Oxford, Centre for Neuroethics)

"Representational Content for Cognitive Science: Some New Developments"

In the face of the considerable difficulty of understanding the nature of representational content in complex cases like human beliefs and desires, one promising tactic is to attempt to understand the representational contents present in much simpler systems. This talk focuses on the representations involved in low-level rapid decision-making for probabilistic rewards, where there is strong evidence that choice behaviour is driven by a temporal-difference learning algorithm, with much known about its neural implementation. This paper examines the reasons for thinking such a low level system has representational content at all. It goes on to argue that the reward prediction error signal, implicated in temporal-difference learning algorithms and discovered empirically through neurophysiological methods, has metarepresentational content. The surprising conclusion is that promising accounts of low-level representational content, although by no means leading automatically to meta-level contents, do admit of low-level varieties of metarepresentational content. Metarepresentation as such is a less sophisticated cognitive achievement than it has often been thought to be.

Date: January 17th

Speaker: Prof David Spiegelhalter (University of Cambridge Statistical Laboratory)

"Communicating risk and uncertainty"

Date: January 24th

Speaker: Dr Nathaniel Virgo (Max Plank Institute for Biogeochemistry)

"From Molecules to Minds"

When driven by an external thermodynamic gradient, non-biological physical systems can exhibit a wide range of behaviours usually associated with living systems. In this talk I will demonstrate some of the life-like properties that such structures can have, and I will argue that studying them can help us understand the nature of both life and cognition in the biological world. I will explore the structure of living systems from a physical point of view, from chemical self-production in the form of autocatalysis up to the systemic level of an individual interacting with its environment. In particular I will focus on the question of how both life and adaptive behaviour first arose. The talk will be of interest to anyone with an interest in the enactive/embodied/extended approach to cognitive science or in the origins of life.

Date: January 31st

Speaker: Prof Mike Oaksford (Department of Psychological Sciences, Birkbeck College, University of London)

"A Probabilistic Approach to the Psychology of Conditional Reasoning."

Date: February 7th

Speaker:Dr Joel Parthemore (University of Lund, Centre for Cognitive Semiotics)

"Putting Theories of Concepts to the Test"

'Theories of concepts' are a branch of philosophy of mind that tries, rationally and scientifically, to understand the general nature and specific properties of structured thought: the way, for example, that it is seemingly both systematic and productively creative. Recent years have seen a number of competing such theories: Eleanor Rosch's prototype theory, Jerry Fodor's informational atomism, Jesse Prinz's proxytypes theory of concepts, and Lund University's own Peter Gärdenfors' conceptual spaces theory of concepts. For all of the theorizing, however, little if any empirical investigation has been done into the competing theories' merits. Some philosophers would claim that theories of concepts, by their nature, cannot be tested empirically. In this talk, I will argue that, although it is true that theories of concepts cannot be tested directly and conclusively, nonetheless indirect methods of investigation can provide strong circumstantial evidence for or against a theory.

Date: February 14th

Speaker: Dr David Leavens (University of Sussex, Dept Psychology)

"Intentional Communication by Great Apes; Implications for Language Origins"

Here I will review the empirical evidence on intentional communication in great apes, summarising relevant findings pertaining to both manual gestures and calls. As Brinck (2000) put it: "Intentional communication is purposeful or deliberate, goal-intended, and about something else than the sender herself." In both comparative and developmental psychology the empirical study of intentional communication therefore involves measurements of goal-directed activities in which the signaller manipulates the perceptions of a social partner, for example by drawing the interlocuter's attention to a particular locus.

Observational and experimental research in the last 20 years has demonstrated that humans' nearest living relatives, the great apes, display intentional communication with their manual gestures. These findings refute a pervasive claim that only humans communicate intentionally; apes are, in fact, perfectly capable of referring to things in their environments. Thus, at least some animals display denotation in their uses of their gestural signals; they explicitly indicate particular elements in the environment for another being.

However, there remains a persistent idea that humans are the only primates with volitional control over their vocal behaviour, which renders our species uniquely capable of referring to entities with sounds. Vocalisations in non-humans are widely believed to exclusively comprise reflexive expulsions in the presence of evolutionarily relevant stimuli. Recent studies of great apes suggest that this is not strictly true. In particular, there are two areas of research that implicate intentional control of vocal communication: (a) the apparent tactical use of attention-getting signals and (b) audience effects on vocal emissions.

I will argue, on the basis of this evidence, that referential communication by apes occurs in both visual and auditory modalities. This is bad news for a number of contemporary theories of language origins, which take as a starting assumption that every functional aspect of language evolved since we split from the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees, about 6 million years ago. But this is good news for Darwinian theorists, because it substantially increases the available time for hypothetical evolutionarily adaptive scenarios for the evolution of language.

Date: February 21st

Speaker: Prof Maggie Boden (University of Sussex, COGS)

"Could Neuroscience Explain Creativity?"

Date: February 28th

Speaker: Dr Tom Khabaza (khabaza.com)

"Data Mining and Cognition"

Data mining delivers immense benefits and the required methodology is well-known, but it is less well understood is why the data mining process must have the properties that it does. The 9 Laws of Data Mining provide a platform for theories in this area. In this presentation I will focus on those of the 9 laws whose explanations appeal to our understanding of cognition, and explain why data mining is the first intelligence amplifier." 

Date: March 13th

Speaker: Dr Xabier Barandarian (University of the Basque Country, eSMCs group)

A telepresentation of "From systematicity of thought to systemicity of habits"