Logic List Mailing Archive

Special Issue on non-conceptual content (European Review of Philosophy: Deadline May 1, 2005)

Call for Papers

European Review of Philosophy - Foundational issues in cognitive science

Special issue: "The structure of non conceptual content"

Deadline for submission: 1 May, 2005.

The European Review of Philosophy, a journal edited at the Institut
Jean-Nicod and published by CSLI, is publishing a special issue about the
internal structure of non conceptual representations. For more information
about the ERP, see on the journal website (http://www.erp-review.org).

The debate about the definition of non conceptual content (further
shortened as NCC), or for that matter its existence as well as the
relevance of the notion, is not settled yet. We would like to tackle this
debate from the angle of the structure of NCC: how far can one carry the
homomorphism between non conceptual and conceptual content (further
shortened as CC)?

On the one hand, in order to explain the transition from the former to the
latter, one may want to maximize the analogy between the two structures.
For instance, NCC has been said to be describable in terms of
"protopropositions", a claim that deserves to be formally developed. On
the other hand, NCC should retain its specificity, if it makes sense to
defend its existence. This implies to minimize the analogy. Their
propositional character characterizes both NCC and CC. However, does it
necessarily mean that they both have a predicative structure and if so,
how could we distinguish NCC and CC? And is there any empirical evidence
that argues for the fact that NCCs are apprehended as structured, rather
than as undifferentiated wholes? There is thus a need both for the
"conceptualist" and for the "non-conceptualist" to elaborate their ideas
on the structure of NCC. More particularly, the former may want to develop
arguments against NCC based on problems caused a priori by any attempt to
describe its structure, while the latter would have to specify the
conditions of possibility of the transition between NCC and CC.

Authors are invited to submit electronically their paper as an attachment
(preferably pdf) to one or the other of the following addresses:

christine.vangeen@univ-rouen.fr
f.vignemont@ucl.ac.uk

The paper should include the name of the author, her or his affiliation,
the title of the paper and an abstract of up to 200 words. Papers should
not exceed 8000 words. For more detailed guidelines, see the ERP website
(http://www.erp-review.org). Please include with your submission your
contact information (postal address, e-mail address, telephone and fax
numbers). All papers will be blind reviewed.

Deadline for submission: 1 May, 2005.

Christine van Geen (Universit? de Rouen -- Institut Jean Nicod)
Fr?d?rique de Vignemont (University College London -- CNRS)