Cognitive Science - Heidelberg University Lecture Series (summer 24)

Introduction

As human beings, we have bodies and brains, but another integral part of us is something that appears non-physical, or immaterial to many people, something that we call ‘mind’. Equipped like this, we can experience, remember, forget, and learn, we can make strategic plans, daydream, do research or invent things and nonsense and tell our friends about it or visualize what we come up with to convey our ideas to others. How is it that we do all this?
Many disciplines contribute to the understanding of how our minds and brains work. The lecture series aims to reflect the broad range of perspectives on human and non-human cognition and provides an overview of approaches from a variety of disciplines, such as psychology, neurosciences, psychiatry, psycholinguistics, computer science, economics, philosophy, and others. It also provides exemplary insight into how the different disciplinary perspectives complement each other.

Topics of sessions

15.04. Julia Peters (Philosophy): Hegel on Embodied Cognition  

During the early modern period of philosophy, a primary objective was to construct a scientific framework explaining the functioning of the human mind and body comprehensively. This framework could be developed either in rationalist, or in empiricist form; in either case, the ensuing conception of human nature was a deterministic one, insofar as it was assumed that every episode of human thought and behavior could be exhaustively explained within the framework. By contrast, Kant insisted that human thought and action involves an irreducibly normative aspect that transcends any system of theoretical scientific knowledge. One way of understanding Hegel’s philosophical project is to conceive of it as attempting to offer a synthesis of these two approaches: while seeking to offer a systematic and scientific account of human mind and behavior – informed by the emerging empirical anthropological sciences of his time – he also wants to hold on to the idea that human cognitive and bodily activities are crucially informed by normative aims such as the search for knowledge, self-knowledge, and the good. This talk gives a sketch of Hegel’s project in the philosophy of mind by looking at how he integrates scientific findings of his time into his philosophical framework, and by drawing a parallel with the recent research program of embodied cognition.

22.4. Andreas Draguhn (Physiology): What does the brain tell us about the mind? On the nature (and limits) of neuroscientific contributions to cognitive science.

Neurosciences examine structures and functions of neural systems, including their role in cognitive processes (perception, memory formation and retrieval, decision making, social cognition and many others). In some sense, neuronal processes are causal for such cognitive processes, and claims have been made that Neurosciences explain our behavioral and ‘higher’ cognitive functions. It is, however, not entirely clear what ‘explaining’ means, and how we shall understand the relation between neuroscientific explanations and other, non-physical approaches, e.g. classical psychology, social sciences, pedagogics or law. We will discuss the role and importance of Neurosciences for our self-understanding as human beings, and their potential importance for other disciplines and perspectives. We will also address some major challenges related to the enormous complexity of the brain, the insufficient translation of knowledge into clinical practice, and the lacking consensus about the theoretical foundations of Neurosciences.

29.04. Jan Rummel (Psychology): Experimental approaches to the study of human cognition

Experimental methods are used in cognitive psychology research to test hypotheses about the mechanisms underlying human cognitive functions. In this lecture, an introduction to this method will be provided and the basic concepts of experimental cognitive research will be discussed. Building on these insights, classic theories and their corresponding experimental findings from different areas of cognitive psychology (attention, memory) will be described.

6.5. Sabina Pauen (Psychology): How to study the development of Mind and Brain (and the body) at a preverbal age

Long before we start to speak, we start to think. But how can we know what goes on in the head of an infant or young toddler if we cannot talk to them? This lecture will provide you with examples of intriguing infant studies addressing processes of visual perception, category formation, functional and causal thinking, problem solving, knowledge transfer, and creative thinking, using behavioral observations and EEG measures to explore young children's mind. You will learn how cognition develops during the first year of life and which role maturation of the brain and body, as well  experiences play in this context.

13.05. Alexander Gutschalk (Neurology): Can we study the neural basis of consciousness in cognitive neuroscience?

Consciousness has long been considered inaccessible to scientific study, but research over the last 30 years has established a taxonomy for such research. This lecture will start with basic definitions of consciousness. Next, disorders of consciousness in clinical neurology will be discussed, and how they are related to specific lesions within the brain. We will then review how basic setups in cognitive neurosciences have been used to study the neural basis of consciousness and in particular conscious perception. Here we will see the difficulty dissociating processes underpinning phenomenal consciousness from other cognitive processes such as attention and decision making. This will lead us to different theoretical models of consciousness that have been proposed in the context of this research. Finally, we will address predictions that some of these models make for consciousness in other species, and more controversially, for artificial intelligence.

27.05. Johannes Gerwien (Psycholinguistics): Real-time language processing – the psycholinguistic perspective

How do people extract the meaning of sentences, just as you do while reading this right now? And how do people transform thoughts into language while speaking? The lecture will provide a brief introduction into the main questions of psycholinguistic research and the methods that are most frequently used. I will focus on the topics 'language production' and 'language comprehension', and briefly touch upon the relation between language and non-verbal aspects of cognition.

3.6. Anette Frank (Computational Linguistics): Natural Language Processing and Language Models – and how do they relate to cognition?

In this session we will look at methods for the computational modeling of language processing and what we know about how they relate to the processing of language in the human brain.   I will start with the notion of layers of representation of language in linguistics and in computational linguistics – which recently celebrated its 61st anniversary.
Computational linguistics has gained solid knowledge of how language and linguistic processing can be modeled with mathematical formalisms and algorithms, by statistical modeling and recently, by way of deep neural network models. But to what extent do these computational models reflect actual cognitive processes in the human brain when it processes language? This question becomes ever more intriguing with recent successes of large language models that seem to reach human-like capabilities in language processing.   I will summarize well-established findings from neuro-scientific research on how the processing of syntax and semantics of language are reflected in specific brain areas – findings that are in accordance with how syntax is modeled in formal language theory.   I will then discuss the notion of meaning in context, illustrating how neural models can learn such meaning through specific learning objectives that seem close to how humans process word meaning, and how such contextualized meanings are represented in neural word embeddings. Again, I summarize findings from the literature on how such representations are reflected in the human brain when it processes language.   Overall, I will illustrate basic principles of how neural models can learn human language(s) jointly with other modalities. Yet, with the ever-increasing size and capabilities of these models, it becomes more and more difficult to trace their internal processes, to judge their ability to reason and generalize, and how far they are from true language understanding.

10.06. Jörg Zinken (Linguistics): Social interaction as an environment for cognition 

We spend a lot of the time we are awake engaged in social interaction, where we (mostly) act 'mindfully': We make decisions, we effortlessly understand others' intentions, and we implement purposive action ourselves. In this lecture, we examine data of actual social interactions in a variety of settings to explore how the sequential, temporal and material structures of social situations constrain and aid our 'thinking', and can be considered integral aspects of our extended minds. We also consider the philosophical idea that the felt transparency of others' intention might point us to some fundamental facts about our social minds.

17.06. Ullrich Köthe (Computer Science): How intelligent are the current AIs?

Advances in neural networks have created amazingly powerful artificial intelligence solutions, most notably large language models (e.g., ChatGPT) and photo-realistic image generators (e.g., Midjourney). This presentation first reviews recent results and explains some of their inner workings. It then lays out requirements for an artificial agent to be considered intelligent, which comprises capabilities like expertise, creativity, planning, goal definition, and understanding. In light of these requirements, it analyses the achievements of current AIs, contrasts them with human performance, and speculates a bit about future developments.

24.6. Christiane Schwieren (Economics): Cognition and Behavioral Economics

Behavioral Economics combines insights from psychology and economics, and relies to a large extent on experimental data. As the name says, it is mainly about behavior, sometimes making assumptions about cognitive processes, explicitly or implicitly. With concepts such as expectations, beliefs, or cognitive and non-cognitive skills, however, a large body of economics in fact deals with cognition, in a more or less systematic way. The lecture will give an overview of the various ways economists incorporate cognition in their empirical and theoretical work and the variety of methods used. It will end with a critical evaluation of "cognitive economic" research to date and discuss avenues for fruitful (interdisciplinary) research to deal with economic questions.

1.7. Filip Sadlo (Computer Science): Visual Data Analysis

In this lecture, we cover concepts and selected techniques in visual data analysis. We investigate approaches for data transformation, visual representation, and interactive exploration, and their role in visual sense-making.

8.7. Martin Gerchen (Psychology): Functional Topographies: Why Brain Mapping Works

The human brain is an extremely complex organ that follows a large spectrum of organizing principles at its diverse spatial levels. On the macroscopic level of the cortex a spatial organization of different functions and representations is prominent. While not necessarily expected, the existence of these functional topographies, which are broadly consistent between individuals, is one of the underlying reasons why brain mapping techniques like functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can provide insight into brain functions and allow for the identification of specific localized brain processes that correlate with psychological processes. In the lecture we will discuss neuroscientific evidence that functional topographies are a fundamental organizing principle of the brain, that functional topographies allow decoding of information from the brain, and we will ask what are the limits of trying to understand brain function based on functional topographies.

15.7. Thomas Fuchs (Philosophy/Psychiatry): Mind, Brain, and the Body

Theories of embodiment are based on the assumption that cognitive processes are intrinsically embodied; in other words, conscious processes are crucially based on the circular interaction of brain, body and environment. As a collective term for the different approaches to embodiment, the term "4E Cognition" has become common, namely (1) embodied, (2) enactive (realized through action) (3) extended into the environment, (4) embedded in situations and societies. 
4E approaches critically distinguish themselves from the classical paradigm of cognitive science, in which cognition is seen as generating internal representations of the external world. From an embodied and enactive perspective, the function of the brain is not to construct mental representations, but to provide the organism with possibilities for embodied action in the world. Thus, consciousness becomes an overarching, dynamic process that cannot be limited to the brain, but equally involves the living body and its environment.

22.7. Panel discussion

Institut für Übersetzen und Dolmetschen Plöck 57a, 69117 Heidelberg HS 211

Or online on Heiconf Audimax

Monday, 16:00 - 18:00

Link to Moodle (The password will be announced during the first session)

Infos on the Certificate of advanced studies "Cognitive Science"