[PHILOS-L] PhiLang Seminar with Ryan Nefdt, 18.03.2026
Piotr Stalmaszczyk
CAUTION: This email originated outside of the University. Do not click links unless you can verify the source of this email and know the content is safe. Check sender address, hover over URLs, and don't open suspicious email attachments. |
The PhiLang Seminars on Linguistics and Philosophy of Language
From the University of Lodz
Inform Inspire Integrate
After a longer than expected break, The PhiLang Seminars are back. Each seminar features a talk by a distinguished figure in research and a discussion session where participants can raise questions and expand the range of the debate. The events take place online via the Teams platform and are open to everyone, upon registration.
Wednesday, 18th March, 18.00 CET
University of Cape Town
Linguistic Agency in the World
Abstract
Language is an essential aspect of what makes us human. Linguists and philosophers of language have used it to conceptually separate humans from other cognitive creatures for centuries. In this talk, I want to explore the raw power of language as a proxy for cognition. I will argue that linguistic processing (or competence) suitably amplified and trained exclusively on language can approach the functions of other cognitive systems (such as reasoning and planning). This I claim is due to two factors. Firstly, language encodes information in the most efficient manner (Rothschild 2025) capturing important real patterns (Dennett 1991, Nefdt 2023). Secondly, the human cognitive system has built-in evolutionary redundancies which converge in biological terms. I'll use modern transformer-based LLMs as my case study.
The PhiLang Seminars series, from the University of Lodz, provides a unique opportunity to listen to leading figures in Linguistics, Philosophy of Language, and Argumentation present their research. Join the debate by registering here. You need only register once for the entire series.
Piotr Stalmaszczyk & Martin Hinton
https://www.filolog.uni.lodz.pl/philang
Department of Linguistics and Communication
Faculty of Philology
University of Lodz
Philos-L "The Liverpool List" is run by the Department of Philosophy, University of Liverpool https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/philosophy/philos-l/ Messages to the list are archived at http://listserv.liv.ac.uk/archives/philos-l.html. Recent posts can also be read in a Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/PhilosL/ Follow the list on Twitter @PhilosL. Follow the Department of Philosophy @LiverpoolPhilos To sign off the list send a blank message to philos-l-unsub...@liverpool.ac.uk.