Polish-Romanian Workshop on Scientific modeling and explanation. Philosophical & scientific perspectives from cognitive science and beyond
Institute of Anthropology Francisc I Rainer, Romanian Academy
Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest
Institute for Research in Humanities, University of Bucharest
invites you to the
Polish-Romanian Workshop on Scientific modeling and explanation
Philosophical & scientific perspectives from cognitive science and beyond
Model-based methods have become tools of choice in many sciences. However, their use still remains more art than science, and various ways understanding and explanation is made possible by various types of models is still not entirely clear. The workshop is part of an interacademic project (between Romania Academy, University of Bucharest and Polish Academy of Sciences) that aims to focus in particular on various types of models and their explanatory virtues, investigating the ways the representational power of models and possible explanatory usage depends on the kind of models (for example, immediate models, computer simulations, and mathematical models). This workshop brings together the results of recent work of a few young philosophers and scientific researchers (including a representative group from Polish Academy of Sciences) directed on the investigation of the explanatory virtues of different models and representations in cognitive science but also on the general topic of modeling and explanation from philosophy of science.
Program
Part I, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest, 26 June 2017, starting 10.00 am
Opening introduction: Richard David-Rus
First session 10.00-12.00
Paweł Gładziejewski, Polish Academy of Sciences
„Are Bayesian models of perception explanatory?”
Mateusz Hohol, Polish Academy of Sciences
„Explaining abstract concepts in the embodied mind”
Mira Marcinów, Polish Academy of Sciences
„Understanding mental disorders through computational models”
Jakub Matyja, Polish Academy of Sciences
„The Cartesian Theatre of the Musical Mind and its Chimeras”
12.00-13.30 lunch
Second session 13.30-15.00
Diana Stanciu, Institute for Research in Humanities, University of Bucharest
Conscious Agency and Embodied Cognition: A Few Research Questions
Bogdan Amuzescu, Faculty of Biology, University of Bucharest
Evolution and perspectives in modeling neural networks
Elena Druica, University of Bucharest
Simply clustering. Glimpses into Romanians’ mindfulness (original work coauthored with Rodica Ianole-Calin)
15.00 – 15.45
Marcin Miłkowski, Polish Academy of Sciences
„How to see whether a research program is degenerated?”
(invited talk also in the frame of the seminar Consciousness and Cognition: An Interdisciplinary Approach, coord. Diana Stanciu IRH-ICUB)
for further information please contact Dr. R. David-Rus at rusdavid@gmail.com
About the speakers:
Marcin Milkowski is Associate Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland. His work focuses on philosophy of cognitive science, in particular mechanistic and computational explanation in cognitive science. His recent publications include Explaining the Computational Mind (MIT Press 2013), for which he won the annual prize of the Polish National Science Center in the Humanities and Social Sciences in 2014. He also runs a project “Cognitive Science in Search of Unity” funded by the National Science Center.
Mira Marcinów earned her PhD in psychology from Jagiellonian University in Cracov (Poland). She received Prime Minister’s Award for the best PhD dissertation. She is currently a Post-Doc in the project ‘Cognitive Science in Search of Unity’ at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences. She is also an Affiliated Lecturer in the Institute of Clinical Psychology SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Warsaw. Her research interests focus on philosophy of psychiatry.
Paweł Gładziejewski is a Post-Doc in the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, funded from FUGA program of the National Science Center. He has published papers and a monograph on explanatory uses of mental representation.
Jakub Matyja is a PhD student at the Graduate School of Social Research (Polish Academy of Sciences), and his work focuses on explanatory uses of the notion of imagination in embodied music cognition from the mechanistic perspective.
Mateusz Hohol earned his PhD for his work on patterns of explanation in cognitive neuroscience. He is currently a Post-Doc in the project ‘Cognitive Science in Search of Unity’ at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, and works on explanations of geometrical cognition (his own book project funded also by National Science Center).
Diana Stanciu has been doing research and teaching at the University of Bucharest, the Central European University, the University of Athens, the University of Cambridge, the University of St. Andrews, the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, the Catholic University of Leuven and the University of Oxford. She is presently the convenor of a research seminar and a series of lectures on consciousness in philosophy and neuroscience at the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of Bucharest.
Bogdan P. Amuzescu, MD (1991), PhD (2003) for research in ion channel biophysical properties. Fellowships at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (2000-2003). Currently associate professor in Dept. Biophysics & Physiology, Faculty of Biology, University of Bucharest.
Elena Druica is full professor of Applied Econometrics with the University of Bucharest, Department of Economic and Administrative Sciences. She was trained as a mathematician, she holds a Ph Degree in Statistics and Probability Theory and another one in Economics. Her research relates to Behavioral Economics, in particular with the conformity of the Eastern European countries to the results obtained in previous research conducted in the West, and is currently focused on the relation between savings and consumption, and the differences between being focused on present, and present focus bias. Her interest in mindfulness is explained by the effectiveness of this practice on the documented negative effects triggered by over – consumption societies.
