题目：Cognitive Penetration and Predictive Coding in Social Cognition

报告人：Prof. Albert Newen

Prof. Albert Newen is a professor from Institute of Philosophy in Ruhr-Universit?t Bochum, Germany. The main focus of the research group of Prof. Newen lies on the areas philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. Adjacent areas like epistemology, logic, ontology and theory of emotion and action and philosophy of science are partly included into the research projects.

时间：2015年09月02日 星期三 15:00-16:00

地点： 北京大学王克桢楼1115室

In the first part I argue that in understanding others, we essentially rely on person models. Very early in life we develop non-conceptual person schemata: A person schema is a system of sensory-motor abilities and basic mental dispositions related to one human being (or a group of humans) while the schema remains implicit. Step by step we also develop explicit person images: A person image is a system of consciously registered mental and physical dispositions as well as situational experiences (like perceptions, emotions, attitudes, etc.) related to one human being (or a group). It will be argued that even in basic processes of understanding others, e.g. face-based recognition of emotion, our experience is influenced by higher cognitive processes (e.g. stored mental images or semantic background information), i.e. cognitive penetration can be shown to take place even in basic social cognition. Furthermore, it will be outlined how this penetration can be described in more detail to fit into the framework of predictive coding. The latter especially needs to presuppose levels of priors which influence the evaluation of the incoming signals. I will offer a theory of the most significant levels of social understanding which fit into the framework of predictive coding.