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June 2018

20180614
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Peter Gärdenfors

Date: 14.06.2018 - 15.06.2018
Place: Room 13
Contact: katarzyna.kijania-placek@uj.edu.pl

Section of Logical Rhetoric and the Department of Cognitive Science would like to invite everyone interested in the topic to participate in lectures by Professor Peter Gärdenfors (Lund University): "The evolution of teaching. How Homo became docens" and "A semantic theory of word classes". *** Peter Gärdenfors is a Professor of Cognitive Science at Lund University. His main research areas concern models of concept formation and semantics and their applications in robotics, as well as the evolution of thinking and language. His most important publications include "Conceptual spaces: the geometry of thought" (2000, MIT Press), "The dynamics of thought”, (2005, Springer) oraz "Geometry of meaning: semantics based on conceptual spaces" (2014, MIT Press). *** "The evolution of teaching. How Homo became docens" Abstract: Something happened during the evolution of Homo sapiens that also made us Homo docens – the teaching animal. Based on evidence about animal and hominin learning, I analyze the evolution of intentional teaching by a series of levels that require increasing capacities of mindreading and communication on the part of the teacher and the learner: (1) evaluative feedback, (2) drawing attention, (3) demonstrating, (4) communicating concepts, (5) explaining relations between concepts and (6) narrating. As regards the archaeological evidence for the different levels, I argue that even early stone tool technologies required intentional teaching by demonstration. *** "A semantic theory of word classes" Abstract: Within linguistics a word class is defined in grammatical terms as a set of words that exhibit the same syntactic properties. In this lecture the aim is to argue that the meanings of different word classes can be given a cognitive grounding. It is shown that with the aid of conceptual spaces, a geometric analysis can be provided for the major word classes. A universal single-domain thesis is proposed, saying that words in all content word classes, except for nouns, refer to a single domain.

 
Section of Logical Rhetoric and the Department of Cognitive Science would like to invite everyone interested in the topic to participate in the following lectures given by
 
 
Professor Peter Gärdenfors (Lund University):
 
14 June, 11:00, room 13: The evolution of teaching. How Homo became docens.

 

Abstract: Something happened during the evolution of Homo sapiens that also made us Homo docens – the teaching animal. Based on evidence about animal and hominin learning, I analyze the evolution of intentional teaching by a series of levels that require increasing capacities of mindreading and communication on the part of the teacher and the learner: (1) evaluative feedback, (2) drawing attention, (3) demonstrating, (4) communicating concepts, (5) explaining relations between concepts and (6) narrating. As regards the archaeological evidence for the different levels, I argue that even early stone tool technologies required intentional teaching by demonstration. 

 

15 June, 10:00, room 13: A semantic theory of word classes

Abstract: Within linguistics a word class is defined in grammatical terms as a set of words that exhibit the same syntactic properties. In this lecture the aim is to argue that the meanings of different word classes can be given a cognitive grounding. It is shown that with the aid of conceptual spaces, a geometric analysis can be provided for the major word classes. A universal single-domain thesis is proposed, saying that words in all content word classes, except for nouns, refer to a single domain.

 

Peter Gärdenfors is a Professor of Cognitive Science at Lund University. His main research areas concern models of concept formation and semantics and their applications in robotics, as well as  the evolution of thinking and language. His most important publications include "Conceptual spaces: the geometry of thought" (2000, MIT Press), "The dynamics of thought”, (2005, Springer) oraz "Geometry of meaning: semantics based on conceptual spaces"  (2014, MIT Press).