[SydPhil] MQ Philosophy Seminar on Tuesday the 11th of April: Regina Fabry (Gießen)

[Adam Hochman]

TURING REVISITED: ENCULTURATION, COMPUTATION, AND SYMBOL-BASED MATHEMATICAL PRACTICES

Regina Fabry (Gießen)

Date: Tuesday, 11th of April
Time: 13:00 - 14:00
Venue: W6A 708, Macquarie University

Many of our cognitive capacities are shaped by enculturation. Enculturation is the temporally extended transformative acquisition of cognitive practices such as reading, writing, and symbol-based mathematics. Enculturation is associated with significant changes to the organization and connectivity of the brain and to the functional profiles of embodied actions and motor programs. Furthermore, it has a profound socio-cultural dimension, because it relies on cumulative cultural evolution and on the socially scaffolded acquisition of cognitive norms governing the interaction with mathematical symbols and other epistemic resources. In this talk, I will trace the phylogenetic and ontogenetic trajectory of enculturation in the case of symbol-based mathematical practices. Phylogenetically, symbol-based mathematical practices are the result of concerted organism-niche interactions that has led from approximate numbers estimations to the emergence of discrete, symbol-based mathematical operations. Ontogenetically, symbol-based mathematical practices are associated with plastic changes to neural circuitry and motor programs. It relies on previously acquired capacities such as subitizing and counting. With these considerations in place, I will argue that computations, understood in the sense of Turing (1936), are a specific kind of symbol-based mathematical practice that can be realized by human organisms, computing machines, or by hybrid organism-machine systems. As a test case, I will consider statistical data analysis in experimental psychology. I will argue that statistical data analysis is most commonly realized by hybrid computational systems, which are constituted by enculturated human organisms and digital computers running data analysis software. This can shed new light on symbol-based mathematical practices, their phylogenetic and ontogenetic background conditions, and their fluent application in statistical reasoning.

Contact: Adam Hochman (adam.hochman at mq.edu.au<mailto:adam.hochman at mq.edu.au>) or Mike Olson (michael.olson at mq.edu.au<mailto:michael.olson at mq.edu.au>)

A google calendar with details of other events in this series is available for viewing and subscription by following this link: goo.gl/3Iu7hk<https://goo.gl/3Iu7hk>



---

Adam Hochman
Lecturer in Philosophy & Macquarie University Research Fellow

Department of Philosophy | W6A, Room 733
Macquarie University, NSW 2109, Australia

Staff Profile | http://www.mq.edu.au/about_us/faculties_and_departments/faculty_of_arts/department_of_philosophy/staff/adam_hochman/

Academia.edu Page | https://mq.academia.edu/AdamHochman

Philpapers Page | http://philpapers.org/profile/48626

Personal Website | adamhochman.com

T: +61 2 9850 8859<tel:%2B61%202%209850%206895>  |  arts.mq.edu.au<http://arts.mq.edu.au/><http://arts.mq.edu.au/><http://mq.edu.au/>

[Macquarie University]<http://mq.edu.au/>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.sydney.edu.au/pipermail/sydphil/attachments/20170407/f820ed56/attachment-0001.html>