BEGIN:VCALENDAR PRODID:-//Grails iCalendar plugin//NONSGML Grails iCalendar plugin//EN VERSION:2.0 CALSCALE:GREGORIAN METHOD:PUBLISH BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20261002T223545Z DTSTART;TZID=America/Toronto:20150319T233000 DTEND;TZID=America/Toronto:20150320T010000 SUMMARY:What is so special about human social cognition? UID:20261008T214335Z-iCalPlugin-Grails@fe80:0:0:0:d4d9:c3ff:fe86:f658%3 TZID:America/Toronto LOCATION:Western University\, 1151 Richmond St.\, London\, Canada\, N6A 5B8 DESCRIPTION:Abstract\n

I will argue for a three-tiered answer to the question.

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(1) Only humans are able to track the contents of others&rsquo\; false beliefs.

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(2) Only humans are able to engage in ostensive cooperative communicative actions.

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Since I assume that not all\, but much\, of the answer to the question is likely to come from the developmental investigation of the social cognitive capacities of preverbal human infants\, I will argue that there is evidence that (1) and (2) are true of preverbal human infants.

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Finally\, I will argue for (3):

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(3) The capacity to track the contents of others&rsquo\; false beliefs derives from the demands of ostensive cooperative communication.  \;

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For information on parking\, click here.

\nBiography\n

Pierre Jacob is a French philosopher of mind and the cognitive sciences. In the early 1980&rsquo\;s\, he published a couple of books in French devoted to the rise and fall of logical empiricism in the philosophy of science (L&rsquo\;empirisme logique\, ses anté\;cé\;dents\, ses critiques\, Paris\, Editions de Minuit\, 1980 et De Vienne à\; Cambridge\, l&rsquo\;hé\;ritage du positivisme logique\, Paris\, Gallimard\, 1980).

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In the 1990&rsquo\;s much of his work was devoted to the metaphysics of intentionality from a naturalistic perspective (including a book entitled What Minds Can Do\, Cambridge\, Cambridge University Press\, 1997\, whose French version is called Pourquoi les choses ont-elles un sens ? Paris\, Odile Jacob\, 1997. In 2004\, he published L&rsquo\;Intentionnalité\;\, problè\;mes de philosophie de l&rsquo\;esprit (Paris\, Odile Jacob\, 2004).

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In the past fifteen years\, his work has shifted from the metaphysics of intentionality to the philosophy of the cognitive sciences.

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In collaboration with the French cognitive neuroscientist Marc Jeannerod (who died in 2011)\, he co-authored a book devoted to the two-visual systems model of human vision (Ways of Seeing\, the Scope and Limits of Visual Cognition\, Cognitive Science Series\, Oxford University Press\, 2003).

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Recently\, he has published papers devoted to issues in human social cognition\, including the significance of the discovery of mirror neurons\, empathy\, mind-reading and moral cognition.

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He holds a CNRS position at the Institut Jean Nicod in Paris. He was director of Institut Jean Nicod (2001-2009). He was elected President of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology (2001-2003).

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Read more about Pierre Jacob.

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