Language, Computation, Cognition (PHLING)

PHLING (short for Philosophy & Linguistics) is a reading/research group that has been meeting for the past couple of months to discuss the nature of computation and its role in understanding cognitive phenomena, in particular how the representational/computational resources of the language faculty is similar/different to those of other cognitive faculties. Thus far, we have only barely scratched the surface of the many questions in this domain. With Winter Storm, we would like to begin looking at a specific set of problems surrounding the individuation and quantification of events. This domain touches on philosophical issues in ontology and metaphysics, on linguistic issues of verb phrase representation and comparative quantification, and on psychological issues of (multiple) object perception and tracking. We will investigate to what extent the description of an event or series of events impacts how that event or those events are perceived and quantified, with a view to developing a novel research project.

For more information (or to get copies of the readings), please contact Alexis. Note that the particulars of the following schedule may be subject to change depending on the group's interests.

Reading for Tuesday, January 11th: Chapter 1 of Marr's Vision. Leader: Deepak.

Reading for Thursday, January 13th: Pietroski, Lidz, Hunter, Halberda 2009, "The meaning of 'most': Semantics, numerosity and psychology". Group discussion.

Reading for Tuesday, January 18th: Barner, Wagner, Snedeker 2008, "Events and the ontology of individuals: Verbs as a source of individuating mass and count nouns." Leader: Alexis.

Readings for Thursday, January 20th: Scholl 2007, "Object persistence in philosophy and psychology", and an article (TBD) that will review findings from the object tracking literature. Leader: Brendan.

Group Leader

Alexis Wellwood wellwood@umd.edu

Meeting Location

MMH 1401G

Group Members