Invited Speakers : Ellen Markman (Stanford University), Josep Call (MPI EVA, Leipzig), and the hosts: György Gergely & Gergely Csibra (CEU)

The conference will be held on January 14-15, 2011. Deadline for symposia: 10th September, 2010, Deadline for posters: 10th October, 2010. Call for symposium and poster submissions - Official website.

A workshop in Amsterdam (December 7-8 2010) entitled "From cognitive science and psychology to an empirically-informed philosophy of logic" will bring together logicians, philosophers, psychologists and cognitive scientists to discuss the interface between cognitive science and psychology, on the one hand, and the philosophy of logic on the other hand. More specifically, we wish to investigate the extent to which (if at all), and in what ways, experimental results from these fields may contribute to the formulation of an empirically-informed philosophy of logic, taking into account how human agents, logicians and non-logicians alike, in fact reason.

The goal of this 4th International Conference on Intercultural Pragmatics and Communication (web site: http://conference.clancorpus.net/) is to promote both theoretical and applied research in pragmatics. Three parallel sessions will be held according to the following topics:

Pragmatics theories: meaning, role of context, semantics-pragmatics interface, explicature, implicature, speech act theory, etc.
Intercultural aspects of pragmatics: research involving more than one language and culture or varieties of one language, lingua franca, intercultural misunderstandings, effect of dual language and multilingual systems on the development and use of pragmatic skills
Applications: usage and corpus-based approaches, teachability and learnability of pragmatic skills, pragmatic variations within one language and across languages, developmental pragmatics, etc.

The Encultured Brain conference will be held 8 October 2009 at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. This conference will promote neuroanthropology, which aims to integrate anthropology, social theory, and the brain sciences. As the first conference exclusively in this area, The Encultured Brain will provide a vision for the future of this line of integrative research, sparking conversations and establishing connections across disciplinary boundaries.

Abstracts must be submitted by September 4th, 2009.

The ESF Research Networking Programme "The Evolution of Social Cognition" (CompCog) (www.compcog.org) is proud to announce its opening meeting in Budapest, 13-16 May 2009.

Thanks to the support of leading scientists from around the world we have managed to put together an exciting program that covers many interesting areas of comparative social cognition with emphasis on

SOCIAL GENES, SOCIAL BRAINS AND SOCIAL MINDS

This is a call for scientists interested in the field to come to this meeting. There will be no registration fees, but participants have to cover their costs. We are happy to help in organising the travel as well as the accommodation through our partner company, Chemoltravel.

To celebrate this event and to support the best young and enthusiastic researchers in their early career our budget allows for providing financial support for 35 participants (Note that the support for travel costs is 250 Euros). Twenty applicants will also get the possibility to present their research in a short oral paper, others will have the opportunity to bring a poster.

In order to apply, we need applications by the 5th April 2009. Applicants are asked to fill in a form, with a brief CV, their research interest, and proposed abstract. All applications will be considered but there will be a preference for those that are judged to relate closer to the main topics of the meeting. Please consult the preliminary program.

Applications and any other correspondence should be sent to:

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

There is a limit for the total number of participants to 120 people. Apart from the supported applications other participants will be accepted on a "first come first served" basis. Therefore participation is bound to prior registration by sending in the following form. Participants will be informed whether their registration is accepted.

We are looking forward seeing you in Budapest.

Elena Jazin, Department of Development and Genetics, Uppsala University

Ádám Miklosi, Department of Ethology, Eötvös Loránd University

PS: You will find shortly a bit more information also at www.compcog.org

EXTENDED DEADLINE - DATE DE SOUMISSION REPOUSSEE

Cognitio 2009 - Changing Minds: Cultures and Cognition in Evolution
Montreal, Canada
June 4th, 5th & 6th 2006.

http://cognitio.uqam.ca/2009
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

[version française ci-après]

Cognitio 2009 invites graduate students and young researchers in cognitive science, anthropology, biology, psychology, computer science, philosophy, or any discipline concerned with cognition, evolution, and culture to present their work at the conference.

Suggested topics include:

• comparative psychology and animal cultures;
• culture and cognition in cross-cultural perspective;
• evolutionary psychology and the adapted mind;
• cognitive neurosciences and cultural learning;
• the modelisation of cultural evolution;
• the evolution and origins of language;
• the evolution of culture and cognition in the human lineage;
• epistemological issues related to the study of cognition, evolution, and culture.

Submission of proposals for the conference is done through the EasyChair system (see http://cognitio.uqam.ca/2009). We are only asking for 600 words abstracts. EasyChair will allow you to upload a PDF paper if you want to, but only your abstract will be evaluated.

Deadline for submission IS NOW MARCH 13th

Keynote speakers:

* Joseph Henrich
Canada Research Chair in Culture, Cognition, and Evolution
University of British Columbia

* Frédéric Bouchard
Philosophy Department
University of Montreal

Theme:

Cognitive Science, which now includes disciplines such as cognitive genetics, evolutionary developmental neuroscience and cognitive anthropology, is unfolding a fresh view of the mind and its relation to culture, fresh yet strangely reminiscent of pre-20th century conceptions of the mind, from Plato to Freud. According to this view, much of cognition is done by unconscious automatic processes, evolved by natural selection to solve specific adaptive problems faced by hominids and early humans. To ensure the replication of their genetic builders, some of these automatic processes may even produce aspects of culture as extended human phenotype. Many cognitive scientists add an adapting mind to this adapted mind, a conscious analytical rule-following processor that can, on occasion, override actions planned by the automated processes. The conscious processor's main task is to adapt the general goals of genes (replicate) to the local environment in which the individual bearing those genes finds herself. To do so, the conscious processor possesses a general learning mechanism that allows it to reproduce any identifiable cultural item(from local norms to local prosody and local food preferences), a learning mechanism that also opens it to rogue cultural items: mind viruses. The nature of the cultural items being copied and of the conscious processor's copying mechanism may even be such that a whole new type of evolutionary process is going on over our minds: the evolution of cultural variants, or memes. If this is so, we, that is our conscious self, are but a battleground in which genes and memes fight for the right to activate our muscles.

[french version]

Cognitio 2009 invite les étudiants des cycles supérieurs et les jeunes
chercheurs en sciences cognitives, anthropologie, biologie,
psychologie, informatique, philosophie ou tout autre discipline
abordant la cognition, l'évolution et la culture à présenter leurs
travaux lors du colloque. Les sujets proposés sont:

• la psychologie comparative et les cultures animales;
• la culture et la cognition dans une perspective transculturelle;
• la psychologie évolutionniste et l'esprit adapté;
• la modélisation de l'évolution culturelle;
• l'évolution et les origines du langage;
• l'évolution de la culture et de la cognition dans la lignée humaine;
• les questions épistémologiques liées à l'étude de la cognition, de l'évolution et de la culture.

La soumission de propositions de communication se fait à l'aide du
système EasyChair (voir http://cognitio.uqam.ca/2009). Un résumé de 600 mots doit être joint à la demande. EasyChair vous permet de joindre aussi un article en PDF si vous le désirez, mais seul votre résumé sera évalué.

La date limite pour l'envoi de résumés EST MAINTENANT LE 13 MARS.

Conférenciers invités :

Joseph Henrich
Chaire de recherche du Canada sur la culture, la cognition et l'évolution
Université de la Colombie-Britannique

Frédéric Bouchard
Département de philosophie
Université de Montréal

Thématique :

Les sciences cognitives, qui incluent maintenant des disciplines telles que la génétique cognitive, les neurosciences évolutionnistes du développement et l'anthropologie cognitive, mettent présentement de l'avant une nouvelle façon d'aborder la relation entre l'esprit et la culture. Cette nouvelle façon de voir n'est toutefois pas sans rappeler certaines conceptions de l'esprit qui prévalaient avant le 20e siècle, de Platon à Freud. Selon cette conception, une partie importante de la cognition est prise en charge par des processus inconscients qui ont évolué par sélection naturelle pour résoudre les problèmes auxquels étaient confrontés les hominidés et les premiers humains. Pour assurer la réplication de leurs véhicules génétiques, certains de ces processus pourraient même produire certains aspects de la culture, dès lors comprise comme un phénotype étendu. De nombreux chercheurs en sciences cognitives ajoutent à cet esprit adapté un esprit en adaptation : un processeur analytique conscient, capable de suivre des règles et, à l'occasion, de prendre le pas sur les actions planifiées par les processus automatiques. La principale tâche de ce processeur conscient est d'adapter l'objectif global des gènes (se reproduire) à l'environnement local dans lequel se trouve l'individu porteur de ces gènes. Pour ce faire, le processeur conscient possède un mécanisme d'apprentissage général qui lui permet de reproduire tout item culturel identifiable (qu'il s'agisse de normes, de prosodies ou de préférences alimentaires locales). Ce mécanisme d'apprentissage est toutefois vulnérable à des items culturels rebelles : les virus de l'esprit. La nature des items culturels copiés et du mécanisme de copie mise en oeuvre par le processeur conscient pourrait même mener à l'apparition dans nos esprits d'un tout nouveau type de processus évolutionniste: l'évolution de variantes culturelles, ou de mèmes. Si c'était le cas, nous (c'est-à-dire notre moi conscient) ne serions qu'un champ de bataille où gènes et mèmes s'affrontent pour déterminer qui a le droit d'activer nos muscles.

--
http://cognitio.uqam.ca/2009
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Workshop on Pragmatic Development, 22, April 2009, Lyon, France.
Call for Posters. Deadline: 13, February

How children come to understand and produce gestures and speech in context-specific ways is an issue addressed from different perspectives in a number of fields. The aim of the workshop is to bridge disciplinary and cultural boundaries in order to explore the developmental processes enabling humans to achieve complex communicative goals. We want to bring together researchers who specialise in relevant subfields of pragmatic development, others with expertise in relevant cognitive prerequisites, as well as linguists and philosophers who may analyse the importance of the data for existing pragmatics theories. Among others, we want to address the following issues: (1) Are there common principles and processes at play in the use of context in communication at all stages of early development? And, if so, which ones? (2) How could we better take into account cultural differences concerning pragmatic development? (3) Which are the theoretical frameworks that best allow us to explain the latest empirical findings? How do they compare to each other? Can they be teased apart empirically?

Invited speakers: Richard Breheny, György Gergely, Bart Geurts, Erika Nurmsoo, Napoleon Katsos, Aylin Küntay, Ulf Liszkowski, Ira Noveck, Dan Sperber

Organizers: Gerlind Große, Danielle Matthews, Nausicaa Pouscoulous, and Michael Tomasello

Changing Minds: Cultures and Cognition in Evolution - Cognitio 2009
Young researchers conference in cognitive science
Montréal, June 4th, 5th & 6th 2009

The goal of this conference is to show current (theoretical and empirical) trends in cognitive science, and to allow academic exchanges between young researchers of various disciplines interested by the same topics. Graduate students in cognitive science, psychology, linguistics, robotics, biology, philosophy, neuroscience and experimental economics will be presenting.

The theme for this year is the evolution of culture and cognition.

Submission of proposals for the conference is done through the EasyChair system. We are only asking for 600 words abstracts. EasyChair will allow you to upload a PDF paper if you want to, but only your abstract will be evaluated.

The deadline for submissions is February 20th, 2009.

Keynote speakers: Joseph Henrich and Frédéric Bouchard

The first "World Social Science Forum" organised by the International Social Science Council will take place in Bergen on May 10-12, 2009. It has the following goals:

• Topics shall be interdisciplinary and give proof of how different fields can provide complementary insights
• Some sessions will show how the social sciences are engaging with both the humanities and the natural sciences
• The empirical orientation will be broadly comparative, aimed at using cross-national data, historical diversity and the impacts of institutional variation to gain insight
• The Forum will demonstrate the relevance of social research for public policies and social interventions
• The issues addressed will have a broad public interest across countries and cultures and will encompass major current issues such as development or climate change
• The questions raised, approaches used and research presented should be scholarly, innovative and original, designed to re-examine established views by means of critical study and to contribute to generalisable knowledge

There is a Call for papers for a Poster Sessions

For the 'Visual Cognition in the History of Science' Symposium

To be held at the XXIII. International Congress of History of Science and Technology
Budapest, Hungary, 28th of July - 2nd of August, 2009

The scientific studies of science have, in the last decades, emphasized the diversity, richness and complexity of scientific practices. In this context, where people are departing from the initial restrictive focus on language, the role of visualization in science appears to be pervasive. Scientists look at the result of their experiments, they produce images and graphs for thinking about the phenomena they investigate and they communicate to their peers with visual artifacts. Tools for the generation of images, ranging from multiple types of microscopes and telescopes to computer generating graphs and 3D pictures, are constantly being developed and are often fully incorporated in scientific practices. Scientists and mathematicians often generate, interpret and manipulate them as part of their scientific work.