CFP: Concept Acquisition and the Role of Language

We invite submissions from graduate students/post-doctoral researchers for papers to be presented at a workshop aimed at bringing together research from across discipline boundaries.

Abstracts for submission for either workshop should be no more than 750 words (exc. Bibliography), prepared for blind review. Please include a separate cover page including name, address, contact information, current institution, publications, and current position. Abstracts should be suited for a presentation of no longer than 25 minutes. Abstracts should be submitted in Microsoft Word, PDF or similar. Please e-mail submissions to [email protected]. We hope to have at least three slots per workshop for graduate speakers.

Deadline for submissions: 4th March 2013.

Applicants will be notified of whether their papers have been accepted or not by the end of March.

Some funding for graduate speakers to help cover travel and accommodation costs may be available (with thanks to the Analysis Trust). All accepted speakers will be considered for funding.

Speakers: Susan Carey (Harvard), Maggie McGonigle (Edinburgh), Wolfram Hinzen (Durham)

Historically, issues concerning concept acquisition have focused around the nativism/empiricism debate. The central concern was to give an account of how new concepts are formed, and what influence the external world has on such processes (if any). More recently however, a trend in the literature has focused on the way that the nature of concepts might change throughout development. Questions emerge as to how the cognitive abilities in animals and human infant cognition relate to the later developing complex conceptual capacities of adults.

This workshop looks to assess the recent literature on these questions with particular focus on the role of language acquisition in the developmental process. We look to investigate these issues with an interdisciplinary approach, utilising research in linguistics, psychology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, comparative cognition, and other related fields.