Modeling Meaning and Knowledge, Spring 2016

A series of mini-symposia entitled Modeling Meaning and Knowledge started on Monday, 25th of January. During the spring 2016, the topic is handled in a multidisciplinary fashion. In linguistics, philosophy of language, cognitive science, psychology, sociology, artificial intelligence, information systems design and some other scientific discipline or application areas, it has been of primary interest to study knowledge. What does it mean to know? How is knowledge acquired? How are knowledge and meaning related? How is prototypical meaning different from contextual meaning? What are the characteristics of explicit and implicit knowledge? Is there knowledge beyond language? What kind of approaches have been taken to model knowledge in computer science and artificial intelligence? Can computational modeling be used to test philosophical ideas related to knowledge and meaning? What is the relationship of these questions with digital humanities? Can large data and text collections, i.e. so called big data, be used to extract knowledge automatically? What kind of practical, ethical and societal consequences does the chosen approach have? The series addresses questions like this.

Timo Honkela gave a short introduction and discussed professor Terry Wingrad career from SHRDLU to the book on syntactic processing in NLP and all the way to the role in the advent of Google. Juha Himanka gave a talk "Fernando Flores reads Heidegger". He described how Flores had met Stafford Beer in the times of hopeful developments in Chile and how they were dramatically abrupted. Flores later collaboparted with Winograd and they authored an influential book together. Pirjo Kukkonen discussed dynamic semiotics providing a wide range of theoretical and practical views on the complexity of synbolic communication. Based on her long experience on the topic, Terttu Nevalainen presented in-depth views on linguistic variation.

Juha Himanka

The agenda for the spring is given below. The sessions are held in the Auditorium IV of the main building of the University of Helsinki.

• Jan 25 (14.15-16.00):
  Complexity of meaning and knowledge dynamic semiotics, prof. Pirjo Kukkonen
  linguistic variation, prof. Terttu Nevalainen
  Tutorial: A story of syntax, semantics and pragmatics from Syntax I to phenomenology and Google; guest speaker Dr. Juha Himanka
• Feb 1 (14.15-16.00):
  Knowledge representation
  networks of knowledge, prof. Eero Hyvönen (Aalto)
  spaces of knowledge, prof. Timo Honkela
  Tutorial: An introduction to artificial intelligence
• Feb 8 (14.15-16.00):
  Conceptual change
  cognitive view, prof. Ismo Koponen
  historical view, prof. Mikko Tolonen
  Tutorial: Study of words and concepts – Qualitative and quantitative approaches
• Feb 15 (14.15-16.00):
  Knowledge over language borders
  prof. Jörg Tiedemann
  prof. Liisa Tiittula
  Tutorial: An intellectual obituary of Melissa Bowerman
• Feb 22 (14.15-16.00):
  Interactive session
  Tutorial: Independent component analysis of signals and texts
• Feb 29 (14.15-16.00):
  From data to knowledge with machine learning
  prof. Tapani Raiko (Aalto)
  Tutorial: A history of machine learning and neural networks research
• Mar 14 (14.15-16.00):
  Studying understanding and emotions through brain research
  prof. Mikko Sams (Aalto)
  prof. Arto Mustajoki
  Tutorial: An introduction to ambiguity and vagueness
• Mar 21 (14.15-16.00):
  Meaning in art
  Automating literary creativity, prof. Hannu Toivonen
  Tutorial: Metaphors, analogies and conceptual blending
• Apr 4 (14.15-16.00):
  Creating scientific knowledge as a social process
  Dr. Nina Janasik-Honkela
  Dr. Arho Toikka
  Tutorial: Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions and Gärdenfors’ Conceptual Spaces
• Apr 11 (14.15-16.00):
  Uncertain knowledge of the future
  Dr. Mikko Rask
  Tutorial: An introduction to futures studies
• Apr 18 (14.15-16.00):
  Knowledge of society
  prof. Mika Pantzar
  Sakari Virkki (Competence Map Solutions)
  Tutorial: Modeling evolutionary and dynamical systems
• Apr 25 (14.15-16.00):
  Legal and wellbeing knowledge
  Anna Ronkainen (TrademarkNow)
  Dr. Krista Lagus (TBC)
  Tutorial: Text mining of document collections and social media discussions

Small changes are possible.