Marc Slors (Radboud, Philosophy)
24.11.2020 – 14:00 – 15:30 – online via zoom
Zoom-Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85618798486?pwd=SWhDanA5ZFp3anY1TCtoVSs0K3Judz09 Meeting-ID: 856 1879 8486; Password: K86RgY
Dr. Sabrina Coninx & Prof. Dr. Albert Newen
Interdisciplinary Reading Club & Colloquium: Recent Debates on Situated Cognition
Felipe De Brigard (Duke University)
Times imagined and remembered.
26.11.2020, 16:15-17:45 CET (UTC+01:00).
Online Lecture via zoom.
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https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82970505769?pwd=NGpHL3VHUUg0bktTbnBIT2kxMWVYZz09
Abstract: Recent evidence suggests that episodic memory, episodic counterfactual and episodic future thinking share common cognitive and neural mechanisms. Some researchers interpret these findings as supporting the more general claim that these three kinds of mental simulation recruit common neural structures because they share an adaptive purpose, namely to enable simulating possible events in order to hedge future uncertainty. But how exactly do these simulations help us at a later time? One possibility, inspired by the work of D.H. Ingvar, is that these kinds of mental simulations serve their future-oriented role only if one is able to properly recall them when the right time comes. These “memories for the future”, as Ingvar called them, have just recently become the object of experimental investigation. In this talk, I seek to contribute to this nascent literature by discussing how we encode and retrieve temporal information from episodic simulations.
Anja Berninger (Universität Stuttgart)
Collective memory, emotions and commitments.
19.11.2020, 10:00-11:30 CET (UTC+01:00).
Online Lecture via zoom.
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Abstract: It is a relatively common claim both in history and cultural studies that not only individuals, but also large groups of people such as religious communities or whole nations have some form of memory. Thus, for example, it is suggested that Germans remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, Americans remember the Vietnam war etc. These (and similar) cases are frequently discussed under the heading “collective memory”. From a philosophical perspective, two questions come up with respect to this phenomenon: Is it really memory that we are talking about here? And, if yes, what sort of memory is it? In response to these questions, I suggest that we should interpret most of these cases as involving semantic memory. Yet, as I will highlight in the first section of my talk, not just any form of collective semantic memory would count as collective memory in the historian’s sense of the term. I suggest that two further ingredients need to be integrated to characterize the form of memory we are after: First of all, I will suggest that this type of memory has an emotional component. Secondly, I will argue that there is a specific commitment structure associated with the type of memory in question. I use the rest of the presentation to spell out both aspects in more detail.
Christoph Hoerl (University of Warwick)
Perspective-taking in time.
13.11.2020, 14:00-15:30 CET (UTC+01:00).
Online Lecture via zoom.
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Zoom:
https://ruhr-uni-bochum.zoom.us/j/93607143813?pwd=d1A1QVhydTFkNnpHK2xrWHh2MEg1dz09
Abstract: Episodic memory can be thought of as involving a form of temporal perspective-taking. The remember imaginatively occupies a point in time in the past. This is also sometimes referred to as mental time travel. I will offer some reflections on what this human ability to engage in temporal perspective-taking consists in, including how it differs from spatial perspective-taking and how it might be related to counterfactual reasoning abilities.
Description:
Our minds possess the capacity to perceive our surroundings (visually, acoustically, etc.), but also the capacity to think and cognize, and the capacity to feel and being emotionally affected. An interesting and much-debated question is how perception and cognition interact. Does cognition penetrate and alter our perceptual uptake of the environment? And if yes, how? Beside cognitive penetration, there is an intriguing and much-less discussed question of whether affective and emotional states pentrate and alter our perceptual experience.
Such questions constitute the main topics of the 1st RUB-UFMG Philosophy workshop. Philosophers from the Ruhr-Universität Bochum and from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais will discuss and comment each others works.
Schedule:
14:30 – 15:30 Albert Newen (RUB) – Perception and Cognition Are Not Clearly Divided but Systematically Intertwined
Commentator: Marco Aurélio Alves (UFSJ)
15:30 – 16:30 Felipe Carvalho (UFMG) – Fearful Object Seeing and Defensive Organismic States
Commentator: Francesco Marchi (Antwerp)
14:30 – 15:30 André Abath (UFMG) – On Having a Concept and Knowing What Something Is
Commentator: Guido Robin Löhr (RUB – Radboud)
15:30 – 16:30 Alfredo Vernazzani (RUB) – How Artworks Modify Our Perception of the Everyday
Commentator: Veronica de Souza Campos (UFMG)
All times are CET!
Where?
The workshop will run on Zoom.
Login information: https://ruhr-uni-bochum.zoom.us/j/93454573230?pwd=N2pXalEvV2JYbEpDaVp1eXVRQWtxdz09 (password 219732).
Marya Schechtman (University of Illinois)
We’ll always have Paris: Memory, affect, and personal identity.
12.11.2020, 16:15-17:45 CET (UTC+01:00).
Online Lecture via zoom.
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Zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82970505769?pwd=NGpHL3VHUUg0bktTbnBIT2kxMWVYZz09
Abstract:
This paper explores an idea, commonly expressed in everyday life, that memories are “treasures” to be stored away and enjoyed later, cherished possessions, which are “ours forever”. The central task is to understand better what it is that people have in mind when they talk about memories in this way. What kinds of memories are they talking about? Why are they so cherished? I suggest that the relevant memories (1) are of events or life periods that we imbue with significance (2) are likely to involve and evoke powerful affect, and (3) that the value associated with these treasured memories is closely connected to the complicated role they can play in regulating mood and emotion. I argue also that the way in which they influence affect generates an experience of both diachronic continuity and discontinuity and hence of ourselves as continuing, multifaceted beings. Understanding how this is so helps to illuminate the often-suggested connection between memory and personal identity.