Bio: \;Jonathan's research falls in the intersection of psychology\, philosophy\, and linguistics\, and fits most easily within the broader umbrella of cognitive science. Much of the work he has done is related in one way or another to the psychological representation of modality &mdash\; the way our minds represent possibilities. He has also done research on theory of mind\, causal reasoning\, moral judgment\, formal semantics\, and happiness. \;
\nAbstract of the talk: This talk presents a new approach to connecting the growing body of work on the psychological representation of modality (the way humans \;construct and reason over sets of non-actual events) \;to work in linguistics/philosophy on the semantics of modals. The general capacity for modal cognitionplays a critical role in a wide diversity of high-level cognition\, e.g.\, causal reasoning\, moral judgment\, theory of mind\, decision making\, and so on. Critically\, humans are able to engage in much of this high-level cognition quickly and effortlessly. I'll provide empirical evidence that these aspects of human cognition are drawing on general-purpose\, default representations of what is possible in a given context. Importantly\, this research also provides clear evidence that the set of events represented by default is highly constrained by both descriptive and prescriptive \;normality. After reviewing this work\, I'll take up the question of how we might connect this picture of modality at a psychological level to the semantics we give for modals in natural language. I'll sketch a general approach from joint work with Angelika Kratzer and then end with a few new studies that provide provocative evidence thatthe domain of quantification even for epistemic modals is implicitly constrained by what we take to be the normal course of events rather than what is known or what is probable. \;
\nEveryone is most welcome.
ORGANIZER;CN=Simona Aimar;CN=Angelika Kratzer: METHOD:PUBLISH END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR