We are happy to announce that the first installment of this year’s inner speech series will take place on May 28th, with Gary Lupyan (University of Wisconsin-Madison) as our speaker. He will be giving a talk titled: “Do thoughts have a format?”. Further information and the abstract can be found below.
Date & Time: 28-05-25, 16:30-18:00 CEST
Link: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/345014069399153?p=RWDfS3OrNuOdEmFgGE
Abstract
People vary substantially in how they describe their thoughts: many report near-constant inner monologue and vivid visual imagery; some report sporadic and condensed inner speech; others report a near-absence of inner speech, often coupled with little visual imagery and claims of “thinking in concepts.” I will first address the possibility that these reports are mere confabulations, and argue that although it is possible to be wrong about one’s own subjective experience, there is good reason to think these differences are real, as evidenced by the internal reliability and predictive validity of people’s reports. I will then consider whether people think in different representational formats, and make an initial case that while thoughts have conceptual roles, the question of their representational format may be a category error.
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We hope to see many of you there!
Best regards,
Jonida Kodra, Daniel Müller and Mathijs Geurts (University of Osnabrück and Paris Lodron University Salzburg)