Joulia on Trees

Une image de l’Arbor scientiae

Joulia Smortchkova

Raisonnement Diagrammatique et Diagrammes à Arbre

Le but de la présentation de Joulia a été d’explorer la possibilité d’une théorie des diagrammes à arbres. Pour le faire, ella a d’abord essayé d’esquisser les caractéristiques principales des diagrammes à arbre, pour ensuit présenter des hypothèses sur le type de manipulations des données qui sont facilitées par l’usage des diagrammes à arbre. L’approche était centrée sur le sujet et ses habilités cognitifs qui trouvent une facilitation dans un certain type de représentation graphique plutôt qu’une autre.

Le  travail est la suite d’un mini stage fait au premier semestre sous la direction de Valeria Giardino et Roberto Casati.

Pour télécharger le power point, cliquez ici.

Thinking about thought experiments: are they different from real ones?

In her talk, Margherita discussed the cognitive interest in discussing thought experiments. Do we have a definition for them? Do we need such a definition?
Moreover, if thought experiments are really producing knowledge, which kind of knowledge do they produce? Do they represent an heuristics or a justification for some particular reasoning?

If our question is about what a subject is engaged in when she is performing a thought experiment, then the problem about mental experiments becomes a cognitive problem. Furthermore, the narrative aspect about mental experimentation (that is, when the subject describes what happened in her thought experiment) makes the mental experiment an intentional product.

One question is the role of recreative imagination in the creation of mental experiments: as Cohen (2005) suggests, “the clearer the picture, the stronger the image, the better the experiment”.

To see Margherita slides (in French!), you can download them here.

In the discussion, some problematic aspects emerged.

Lundi 27: Margherita on Thought Experiments

Monday 27 April we are going to start with the new sessions.

Margherita will talk about

“Gedankenexperimente and Imagination: sketching a cognitive approach to thought experimentation”

The talk will be in French.

Abstract:

Methodological speculations and debates on thought experiments (Gedankenexperimente, GEs) have focused primarily on the problem of informativeness (Kuhn’s paradox), and more precisely on the proper function of GEs from an epistemological rather than a cognitive perspective. I claim that by opening the “cognitive black-box” of GEs we could shed light on their epistemic function.

In this talk, I will begin by giving a brief overview of the debate over thought experimentation, by focusing on three key questions (What is a GE? What is its function? How does a GE fulfil its function?), and by stressing the points of agreement and disagreement that emerge.

My aim is to show that:
I. Differences aside, the literature is unanimous in indicating as the function of GEs;
II. The question of how a GE accomplishes its aim is the more controversial and less developed of the three. Nonetheless, closer inspection provides a lead, insofar as both the standard literature, and what I refer to as “Mach’s tradition”, indicate imagination as a notion of central importance relative to GEs.

In the second part, I will show how the work of cognitive scientists and philosophers on imagination is useful in order to sharpen some distinctions left vague in the traditional debate on GEs. Moreover, I will claim that imagination itself could be seen as the key to the GE’s “cognitive black-box”. This could take us a step closer to a cognitive account of GEation.

Elena on Cinema as a multimodal medium

12 Janvier 2009

Elena Pasquinelli (Institut Jean Nicod, CNRS-EHESS-ENS)

Cinema as a multimodal medium: how and why do spectators re-associate sound and images

Abstract:

The problem of the association of sound and images has been at the center of the attention of theories and critics of cinema since the appearance of sound films. The result is a debate about the use and relative role of synch and non-synch sounds, which appears purely technical and stylistic.

But the answer to the problem of the choice of sounds and of their association with images cannot be all-internal to the esthetics of cinema, since the question raises issues which are pertinent for cognitive sciences too. In the terms of the cognitive sciences, the question could be translated as such: which are the reasons which compel cinema’s spectators to hold together sounds and images that do not come from the same source and cause?

The present paper purports to fill the gap between esthetics and cognitive sciences in relationship to the spectators’ capacities of associating sound and images that are unlikely to share one and the same natural and causal source. The claim is that cinema exploits both perceptual and narrative information in order to guide spectators’ imagination into the construction of multi-modal (audio-visual) objects. Certain perceptual and narrative cues thus become prescriptions that the spectators are meant to follow, if they want to correctly understand the movie. The further hypothesis is that the capacity of melding images and sounds in unlikely, creative ways partly depends on the fact that spectators are aware of the fictional and mediated nature of their experience. As a consequence, spectators accept to believe sounds and to meld sounds and images that they would rather not believe or meld in the real world. This is for me the essence of the suspension of disbelief.

Mukherji on Language Reference Vision

15 December 2009

Nirmalangshu Mukherji (Delhi University)

Language Reference Vision

Abstract:

Assume the following as a framework:

Grammaticality: By ‘language’ we (very narrowly) mean the grammatical system of human languages that generate <PF, LF>, where ‘PF’ is the phonetic form and ‘LF’ is the linguistic logical form (not to be confused with philosophical logical form a la Russell).
Internalism: Scientific/biological accounts of organisms do not mention factors external to the organism.
No-Semantics: Classical study of semantics as the study of language-world relations does not have explanatory value since it assumes what needs to be explained.
Grammar and Use: Beyond LF, issues of meaning, content, external significance, intentionality, etc. reduce to issues of how language is put to use by the organism in an environment (without violating (2)).
How do we explain the phenomenon of reference—the ability of humans to talk about the world—within this framework?

It follows from (1) that reference can be studied only as a post-LF phenomenon. Hence, the grammatical system must be interfacing with other systems to give rise to the phenomenon.

By (2), it follows that we can only describe the (sequence) of post-grammatical mental/internal systems in terms of a series of representations. If the resultant representation ‘matches’ the world, the reference is achieved, otherwise it fails. Throughout, we are trying to figure out what the organism ‘knows’.

By (3), we cannot postulate a reference/denotation relation to formulate post-grammatical representations; these representations need to be formulated so as to ‘take’ the representation to the world, as it were.

By (4), the familiar tool-metaphor emergres. Language/grammar is viewed as a tool that is put to a variety of uses. One of these is the achievement of reference.

Restricting the domain

Even with the preceding restrictions, the issue is too vast for proper controls. Some further restrictions may be obtained by narrowing the domain of inquiry on some principled basis.

In some sense, the general notion of reference could be viewed as a normative one: we find it useful to adopt the norm that what we say (typically) does pick out aspects of the world—the use of language is typically world-bound. The norm is most explicit in scientific discourse, although it is implicit in varying degrees in ‘common’ discourse as well (more explicit in legal discourse, less in fiction). The scientist typically engages in elaborate—often formal—discourse because she is interested in identifying real joints of nature. Notice it is just a norm/hope that, after rigorous empirical investigation, ‘electron’ picks out something in the world, ‘phlogiston’ unfortunately didn’t.

It seems that, insofar as reference is broadly viewed as a norm of discourse, the language promoting that discourse need not have the entire structure of human languages. Thus, Quine proposed a regimented (first-order, formal) language to show that all scientific talk can be conducted in the language. Most notably, this regimented language does not contain singular terms such as proper names, definite descriptions in the singular, demonstrative phrases in the singular; these are eliminable. Its only ‘referential device’ is the bound variable which ‘refers’ with systematic ambiguity.

Perhaps this is all that is required for a ‘language of science’. However, it is clear by now that these singular terms are not eliminable from natural languages: that is, natural languages are not regimented languages. So, if the notion of a regimented language suffices to capture the norm of reference, what are these singular terms specifically doing in natural languages? By asking this question, we align our concern with some classical philosophical concerns on names, descriptions and indexicality. We focus exclusively on these.

Tools and Instructions

Supposing these singular terms to be specific tools for (achieving) reference, we note that tools have at least a design and constrained uses based on that design (Wittgenstein). In order to put a tool to use, there are either overt or covert instructions about how to use them. The following questions arise.

(A)   What are the design features of these tools such that each of them can be discriminated on that basis to show that these are different tools?
(B)    Which part of the design is grammatical and whch part(s) is/are endowed by other systems of the mind?
(C)    What are the specific instructions encoded with respect to each of the tools in conformity with its design?
(D)   What are the instructions to? Just as PF is viewed as an instruction to the acoustic systems, can we view LF at least in part as instructions to the visual system (among other things)?
(E)    What is the evidence/literature for discriminating between these items in terms of instructions to the visual system (if at all)?
Some of these questions will be discussed.

Sandro on Levinson

17 Novembre 2008

Alessandro Pignocchi (Institut Jean Nicod, CNRS-EHESS-ENS)

La théorie historico-intentionnelle de Levinson comme une caractérisation opérationnelle du concept d’oeuvre d’art

Abstract:

Vers la moitié du 20ème siècle, les idées des Investigations philosophiques de Wittgenstein pénétraient la philosophie analytique de l’art sous la forme d’une remise en question de la légitimité du projet consistant à définir le concept d’œuvre d’art. Pour les wittgensteiniens, l’utilisation de ce concept n’est pas contrôlée par l’intériorisation tacite d’une liste de conditions indépendamment nécessaires et conjointement suffisantes que le philosophe pourrait mettre au jour. Au contraire, chaque nouvel emploi du concept d’œuvre d’art mobilise les facultés d’induction et de décision. Plus précisément, lorsqu’on se demande si une chose est ou n’est pas de l’art, on commence par évaluer plus ou moins explicitement sa ressemblance avec les œuvres d’art prototypiques que l’on connaît ; ensuite, si on estime la ressemblance suffisante, on attribue le concept d’œuvre d’art à cette chose. Vu sous cet angle, la recherche de conditions nécessaires et suffisantes à l’application du concept d’œuvre d’art serait au mieux une tâche inintéressante, équivalente à une acrobatie logique sans rapport avec nos interactions réelles avec l’art.

Aujourd’hui, la question de la légitimité du projet définitionnel n’est toujours pas tranchée. Ni la philosophie de l’esprit, ni celle du langage, ni les sciences cognitives n’ont réussi à dessiner les contours d’un consensus autour des questions concernant le contenu des concepts, leur structure, les relations entre le contenu d’un concept, sa structure et son utilisation ou encore la dynamique de l’emploi des concepts dans différentes tâches . Les chercheurs ne savent pas non plus s’il est possible d’apporter des réponses à ces questions valables pour tous les concepts ou s’il faut plutôt un traitement au cas par cas. Lorsqu’on cherche à caractériser le concept d’œuvre d’art, aucun type de solution ne peut donc être exclu a priori. Toutefois, l’histoire a montré que certaines méthodes ont peu de chance d’aboutir. D’un côté, il semble qu’une définition qui énumère des propriétés intrinsèques des œuvres d’art soit nécessairement trop exiguë pour pouvoir couvrir toute la diversité des artefacts qui entrent dans l’extension du concept d’œuvre d’art. Inversement, une caractérisation qui ne fait allusion qu’à des décisions prises au cas par cas sur la base de relations de ressemblance paraît forcement trop floues pour expliquer, entre autres, pourquoi il nous arrive d’attribuer sans hésiter le concept d’œuvre d’art à un artefact (En prévision du bras cassé , par exemple), alors qu’on le refuse sans plus d’hésitation à un autre artefact qui lui ressemble en touts points (une pelle à neige, par exemple).

Entre la définition stricte en termes de propriétés intrinsèques et un traitement Wittgensteinien fondé sur des relations de ressemblance, toutes sortes d’intermédiaires restent cependant possibles. Cet article discute d’un de ces intermédiaires proposés par Jerrold Levinson. Selon cet auteur, lorsque nous appliquons le concept d’œuvre d’art à une chose, nous disons au minimum que cette chose « a été créée avec l’intention sincère qu’elle soit considérée comme une œuvre d’art, c’est-à-dire comme sont ou ont été considérées certaines œuvres d’art préexistantes  ». Cette proposition, dites « historico-intentionnelle », a la forme générale d’une définition classique, puisqu’elle caractérise l’intension du concept d’œuvre d’art à l’aide d’une condition à la fois nécessaire et suffisante à l’application correcte de ce concept. En revanche, elle partage avec les solutions wittgensteiniennes la mention faites aux « œuvres d’art préexistantes ». Contrairement aux définitions plus strictes, la condition proposée par Levinson ne fait pas allusion à des propriétés intrinsèques des artefacts, mais à certaines relations entretenues avec un élément particulier de leur processus de production : les intentions de leur créateur. Contrairement aux caractérisations purement Wittgensteiniennes, Levinson ne parlent pas de relation de ressemblance entre un artefact et des œuvres d’art existantes, mais d’une relation entre le contenu des intentions de l’artiste et des façons existantes de recevoir certaines œuvres d’art. La solution de Levinson occupe donc bien une situation intermédiaire entre la définition stricte et un traitement purement Wittgensteinien. De ce fait, elle ne peut pas être condamnée a priori sur la base d’arguments généraux développés contre l’un ou l’autre de ces types de réponse. En revanche, la théorie historico-intentionnelle a été la cible d’un certains nombres de critiques qui lui sont propres. Les plus dures, qui sont considérés par beaucoup d’auteurs comme décisives, sont aussi celles qui viennent peut-être le plus naturellement à l’esprit.

My (tentative) diagrammatic classification

10 November 2008

Valeria Giardino (Institut Jean Nicod, CNRS-EHESS-ENS)

Towards a diagrammatic classification

Abstract:

In this article I present and discuss some criteria to provide a diagrammatic classification. Such a classification is of use for exploring in detail the domain of diagrammatic reasoning. Diagrams can be  classified in terms of the use we make of them – static or dynamic – and of the correspondence between their space and the space of the data they are intended to represent. The investigation is not guided by the opposition visual vs. non visual, but by the idea that there is a continuous interaction between diagrams and language. Diagrammatic reasoning is characterized by a duality, since it refers both to an object, the diagram, having its spatial characteristics, and to a subject, the user, who interprets them. A particular place in the classification is occupied by constructional diagrams, which exhibit for the user instructions for the application of some procedures.

Casati on perspectival content (in pictures)

The seminar on Public Representations has begun!

27 Octobre 2008

Roberto Casati (Institut Jean Nicod CNRS EHESS-ENS, Paris)

Pictograms, axonometries and indeterminacies of perspectival content

Abstract : I apply the distinction between factual and perspectival content to pictures. I discuss some informational indeterminacies and show that they do not threaten the validity of the notion of perspectival content of pictures; indeed, they can help reclassifying pictures, in a way that neatly excludes diagrams, on the one hand, and accommodates axonometries and pictograms on the other.

Keywords: pictures, diagrams, pictograms, axonometries, perspectival content, informational indeterminacies

Excerpt:

The distinction between factual and perspectival content can be put to work so as to accomplish a welcome demarcation in the domain of public representations. Indeed, the presence of a perspectival dimension is what distinguishes pictures such as photographs or drawings from most other kinds of graphic representation. Diagrams and data-displays typically lack perspectival content (or, if they have it, it is in the norm inessential to them, as an added decoration): by looking at them, the perceiver is not able to situate herself in space relative to the represented object. No matter what the exact articulation of ‘situate herself’ is favored here (for instance, a kind of imagining seeing), the issue is that by looking at a picture the viewer can retrieve a viewpoint from which the object was presumably seen. And this retrieval is not applicable to graphics and data displays.