ELFT HÍRADÓ

[Gömöri Márton <gomorim AT gmail.com>]

Logic and Philosophy of Science Seminar
Department of Logic, Institute of Philosophy
Eötvös Loránd University
Budapest, Múzeum krt. 4/i Room 224
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P R O G R A M

The seminar is held in hybrid format, in person (Múzeum krt. 4/i Room 224)
and online. Zoom link
<https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84594385686?pwd=a7KPWoNLrPg11xNTi5Ug91YR5mHmmS.1>


17 April (Friday) 4:15 PM  Room 224 + ONLINE

Klaus Kellerwessel
Eötvös Loránd University, Department of Logic
Title: The Restless Mind – A Story of Cognitive Becoming
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ABSTRACT:

What makes a system cognitive rather than merely adaptive? Where should we
draw the boundary between simple responsiveness to environmental change and
genuine cognition? Must cognition be tied to paradigmatically human
capacities such as language, tool use, or self-awareness, or do even the
simplest living systems instantiate minimal forms of it?

The issue is not merely terminological: how cognition is defined
fundamentally shapes our understanding of learning, evolutionary processes,
animal minds, and humanity’s place within the natural order. Definitions
that are overly restrictive risk obscuring non-human forms of intelligence,
while overly permissive accounts threaten to broaden the concept to the
point of explanatory uselessness.

This presentation proposes a theoretically robust framework for minimal
cognition grounded in experience-based predictive modelling and in two
embodied expectations: an inductive expectation that the future will
resemble the past, and a sceptical expectation that it will not do so
perfectly. It further argues that these predictive dynamics are
recapitulated across levels of biological organization, emerging both in
evolutionary processes at the population level and in learning processes
within individual organisms.

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The seminar is open to everyone, including students, visitors, and
faculty members from all departments and institutes! Format: 60 minute
lecture, coffee break, discussion.
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Organizers: Márton Gömöri and Zalán Molnár
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LPS - Logic and Philosophy of Science (Student and Faculty Seminar)
Department of Logic, Institute of Philosophy
Eötvös University Budapest
http://phil.elte.hu/lps