"Tales of Predication"

Radu Bogdan
Bilkent University and Tulane University
Nisan/April 13, 2007, Cuma/Friday 15:00
TB 250

Abstract

At the heart of human thinking, as the ability to attribute a property to an object or a relation to two or more objects or an action to an agent, predication has long been puzzling to philosophers and psychologists. Three of its most essential but often neglected properties -- descriptiveness, predicate-to-subject directedness, and topic-comment format -- elude standard explanations in formal, grammatical, mentalese, and conceptual terms. Attempts to find predication in animal or infant minds fail because they cannot demonstrate the presence of the same essential properties.

Radu Bogdan, currently a visiting professor at Bilkent University, is a professor of philosophy and cognitive science at Tulane University in New Orleans and a regular guest professor at the University of Bucharest. He has also taught at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. He has his Ph.D. from Stanford University and has written extensively in philosophy of mind, the foundations of cognitive science and in recent years on naive psychology and its impact on the design of the human mind. He is the author of three books, GROUNDS FOR COGNITION (1994), INTERPRETING MINDS (1997) and MINDING MINDS (2000), the latter two with MIT Press/Bradford Books. His talks on predication will eventually morph into another book.

"The Social Ontogeny of Predication"

Radu Bogdan
Bilkent University and Tulane University
Nisan/April 16, 2007, Pazartesi/Monday 17:00
TB 250

Abstract

The explanation I propose is that the mental ability to predicate is uniquely human and is assembled gradually in early childhood out of several independent developments, mainly in child-adult communication, naive psychology (or theory of mind), and word acquisition. Generated and shaped by these diverse developments, the child's mental scheme of representing deliberate and explicit naming of jointly attended targets becomes the child's initial mental template for predication -- first, ostensively, combining what is perceived and what is named, and then intralinguistically in word-to-word predications.

Radu Bogdan, currently a visiting professor at Bilkent University, is a professor of philosophy and cognitive science at Tulane University in New Orleans and a regular guest professor at the University of Bucharest. He has also taught at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. He has his Ph.D. from Stanford University and has written extensively in philosophy of mind, the foundations of cognitive science and in recent years on naive psychology and its impact on the design of the human mind. He is the author of three books, GROUNDS FOR COGNITION (1994), INTERPRETING MINDS (1997) and MINDING MINDS (2000), the latter two with MIT Press/Bradford Books. His talks on predication will eventually morph into another book.

"What children can tell us about the mind: Belief and the ascription of belief"

David R. Olson
Prof. Emeritus, University of Toronto
Nisan/April 20, 2007, Cuma/Friday 17:00
TB 250

Abstract

When they are about five years of age, children begin to ascribe beliefs to themselves and others. The implications of this achievement for the Representational Theory of Mind will be examined.

Born in Saskatoon, David Olson lived on the family farm at Wynyard until his parents moved to Saskatoon to provide a university education for their four sons in 1947. David attended Victoria Public School and Nutana Collegiate and completed his education at Radville Christian College, Radville, Saskatchewan. He received his Bachelor of Education degree from the University of Saskatchewan in 1960. He received his Ph.D. in Eduational Psychology from the University of Alberta in 1963. After a brief stay at Dalhousie University, he became a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard University's Center for Cognitive Studies working with Jerome Bruner, a relationship that continues to this day. Indeed, Bruner's most recent book The Culture of Education is dedicated to Dr. Olson.

He returned to Canada in 1966 to become Professor of Applied Cognitive Science at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education where he has taught ever since. He has held Fellowships at Harvard's Center for Cognitive Studies, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences and Stanford's Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Gottenberg, Sweden, and was the winner of the Canadian Education Association's "Whitworth Prize" in 1995. His research on relations between language, literacy and mind has resulted in over 200 research publications, two of which became "Citation Classics" and 10 authored or edited books including Cognitive Development (1970; second edition, 1996), Spatial Cognition (1980), Literacy, Language and Learning (1985), Developing Theories of Mind (1986), Literacy and Orality (1990), Scripts and Literacy (1995), Handbook on Human Development and Education (1966) and Modes of Thought (1966). His latest book The World on Paper: The Conceptual and Cognitive Implications of Writing and Reading was published by Cambridge University Press in 1994 and has been extremely well received and widely reviewed. Several of his books have been translated into Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.

"A Lexical Perspective on Discourse Structure and Semantics"

Prof. Bonnie Webber
University of Edinburgh
Mayis/May 8, 2006, Pazartesi/Monday 14:00
TB 250

Abstract

To date, Language Technology has derived its greatest success from words and word-level techniques. Since discourse is so much more than words, is it beyond the potential of this technology? This talk will suggest that the answer is "no", arguing that the lexicon provides a robust basis for low-level discourse structure and semantics as well.

I start by reviewing some previous proposals regarding discourse structure and semantics, and then describe a lexicalised approach modelled on Lexicalised Tree-Adjoining Grammar. What is attractive about this approach from a linguistic perspective, is the range of phenomena that it is able to explain.

On the other hand, interesting phenomena are not necessarily common phenomena. So to provide an empirical base for low-level research on discourse, I have been working with colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania on the "Penn Discourse TreeBank", which recently saw its first release (http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~pdtb/). I will conclude the talk by describing features of this resource and what it might allow researchers to discover.

"Plans and the Computational Structure of Language"

Prof. Mark Steedman
University of Edinburgh
Mayis/May 9, 2006, Sali/Tuesday 14:00
TB 250

Abstract

Linguistics has been a computational science for almost fifty years, since Chomsky first used formal language theory to characterize structure and complexity in natural language. Yet researchers continue to appeal to new kinds of computational thinking as they frame problems and results in the science of language. This talk focuses on two case studies of particular recent interest, whose common goal is to explain language in its broader evolutionary and biological context. The first case study concerns an account for the structure of language. Here computational approaches to agency---which showcase close parallels between language use in dialogue and other kinds of collaborative real-world activity---promise to link the grammatical representations implicated in language use to the the more general symmetric representations of ones' own and others' real-world actions that are the hallmark of primate social cognition. The second case study concerns an account of language processing. Here computational frameworks for approximate probabilistic inference---informed by striking correlations between the time-course of linguistic processing and the dynamics of uncertainty in the evidence available to the processor---suggest how the mechanisms of language use could simultaneously arise from more general neural or cognitive mechanisms.

"Lexical Integrity and Lexical Organisation"

Doc. Dr. Cem Bozsahin
ODTU Bilissel Bilim Programi
METU Cognitive Science Program
3 Mart/March 2006, Cuma/Friday 14:00
BTS Kriton Curi Konferans Salonu

"Thinking Computers"

Prof. Dr. Varol Akman
Bilkent University Department of Philosophy
6 Nisan/April 2005 Çarsamba/Wednesday 14:00-16:00
BTS Kriton Curi Konferans Salonu

"Syntax of Information Structuring in Turkish"

Asst.Prof. Yilmaz Kiliçarslan
Trakya Üniversitesi-Bilgisayar Mühendisligi
March 28, Friday 10:00-12:00
TB 250

"Dipole Source Localization of Brain Activity: A Dynamic Neuroimaging"

Prof.Dr. Ahmet Ademoglu
Bogaziçi Üniversitesi - Biyomedikal Mühendisligi Enstitüsü
March 7, Friday 10:00-12:00 North Campus, Institute of Biomedical Engineering,
KB118

"Kognitif nörobilim: Kognitif Islevler ve Beyin Iliskileri"

Prof.Dr. Öget Öktem Tanör
Istanbul Üniversitesi-Tip Fakültesi
October 23, Wednesday 14:00-16:00
BTS Kriton Curi Konferans Salonu

"Expression of causal relations in narrative: A Cross-linguistic and Developmental Account"

Asst.Prof. Aylin Küntay
Koç Üniversitesi-Psikoloji Bölümü
November 7, Thursay 11:00-13:00
TB 250

"Measuring the size of working memory in very young children: The Imitation Sorting Task"

Assoc.Prof. Ercan Alp
Bogaziçi Üniversitesi-Psikoloji Bölümü
November 20 and 27, Wednesday 14:00-16:00
BTS Kriton Curi Konferans Salonu

"Word Sense Disambiguation"

Asst.Prof. Zeynep Altan
Kadir Has Üniversitesi - Bilgisayar Mühendisligi Bölümü
December 12, Thursday 11:00-13:00
TB 250