LINGUIST List 22.807 Thu Feb 17 2011 Calls: Philosophy of Language/Germany Editor for this issue: Alison Zaharee <alisonlinguistlist.org> LINGUIST is pleased to announce the launch of an exciting new feature: Easy Abstracts! Easy Abs is a free abstract submission and review facility designed to help conference organizers and reviewers accept and process abstracts online. Just go to: http://www.linguistlist.org/confcustom, and begin your conference customization process today! With Easy Abstracts, submission and review will be as easy as 1-2-3! Directory         1.     Jacob Daniel , Imagination: Functions of Virtual Experience Message 1: Imagination: Functions of Virtual Experience Date: 17-Feb-2011 From: Jacob Daniel <daniel.jacobromanistik.uni-freiburg.de> Subject: Imagination: Functions of Virtual Experience E-mail this message to a friend Full Title: Imagination: Functions of Virtual Experience Date: 12-Oct-2011 - 16-Oct-2011 Location: Potsdam, Germany Contact Person: Daniel Jacob Meeting Email: daniel.jacobromanistik.uni-freiburg.de Linguistic Field(s): Philosophy of Language Call Deadline: 20-Feb-2011 Meeting Description: Workshop held as a panel at the 13th International Congress of the German Society of Semiotics: 'Repräsentation - Virtualität - Praxis' This panel is concerned with specifying the relation between individual mental processes or images ('experience') and their external 'objective' substrate or analogon (sensu Sartre). Recently, significant differentiations have been discussed with regard to both sides of this dichotomy. On the external objective level, we are faced with a question that has been highly controversial from antiquity to the present day: to what extent does 'reality', as an object of perception, present itself as an objective entity in its own right, and to what extent is it the result of a communicative construction, and thus constituted collectively, through media and discourse? If, like Berger/Luckmann or Watzlawick, one favours the second position, one can further differentiate between a social reality that is collectively constructed in communication and can therefore be grasped objectively, and an imaginary world that stays within the boundaries of the virtual, the mediated and the discoursive. Even though the imaginary, as literature or art, can be seen as an 'anthropological constant', the profusion of virtual worlds in the new media appears to bring the fusion of the imaginary and reality to a new level. Since Cervantes sent his Don Quixote, who fancied himself a knight, on imaginary adventures, there have time and again been literary works (and, more recently, films) which blurred the boundaries between imagination and reality (e.g. Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Pirandello's Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore, Unamuno's Niebla, Fellini's Otto e mezzo, Cronenberg's eXistenZ). Concerning the issue of individual mental experience, a question that is becoming ever more pressing is where (if at all) we should draw a line between those forms of mental experience that have been induced by sensory perception of external phenomena, those that have been induced by discoursive (linguistic) events, and those that have been induced by wholly internal processes (such as dreams, memories, plans, wishes, counterfactual thinking, fantasies, etc.). Cognitive modelling (e.g. connectionist models) as well as neuroscientific findings suggest that there is significant overlap between these modes of mental experience. Finally, an important question is whether we should deduce from the fundamental limitation and unreliability of sensory perception that it is not the latter which mediates between internal cognition and an external substrate, but that it is individual imagination, as a prerequisite for internal construction and the emphatic projection of constructs on the minds of other individuals, which constitute the basis for a construction of external collective reality. Call for Papers: Extended deadline for abstract submission: February 20, 2011 We especially encourage contributions focussing on the issue from the perspective of semiotics, phenomenology, systems theory, cognitive studies or neuroscience, but other approaches from any of the disciplines involved in this field of study - from philosophy to neuroscience - are also highly welcome. The working languages of the congress are German and English. Abstracts (approx. 300 words) containing the names, email addresses, affiliations of the author(s) and five keywords should be submitted to Daniel Jacob (daniel.jacobromanistik.uni-freiburg.de). Contact and Submission Address: Prof. Dr. Daniel Jacob Romanisches Seminar Universitaet Freiburg Platz der Universitaet 79085 FREIBURG i. Br. Tel. +49-761-203 31 71 Sekr. +49-761-203 31 73 Fax +49-761-203 31 95 http://www.romanistik.uni-freiburg.de/jacob/ Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 17-Feb-2011       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.