Workshop: Emotion and Relevance

26.06.2018 14:00 – 18:00

This interdisciplinary workshop will explore possible bridges and overlaps between neuro-psychological, linguistic pragmatic and philosophical accounts of the relation between relevance and emotion.

Although these disciplines approach relevance in different ways and with different purposes, they all highlight the important role of this notion in emotional experience. In contemporary neuro-psychological accounts, relevance is usually thought to play a key role in the triggering of emotions, since the latter are believed to emerge when the emotional system evaluates a given stimulus as relevant to its concerns. In philosophy, emotional relevance sparks interest in terms of its relation to value: as such, the concept of relevance is suited to assess the role of emotions in ethical, aesthetical and epistemological issues. In contemporary pragmatics, relevance plays a fundamental role in the communication of propositional meaning; recently, however, researchers in the field have started to discuss its contribution to the communication of non-propositional and affective contents.

During the workshop, invited speakers will first present how the notion of relevance plays out in their own accounts of daily emotional experience and then engage in the discussion of possible interfaces between disciplines. The goals of this event are thus to explore the different facets of the relationship between emotion and relevance and, crucially, to discuss further possible interdisciplinary directions of research on the topic.

The workshop is organised by Daniel Dukes (Universities of Geneva and Amsterdam) and Steve Oswald (University of Fribourg) and is proudly and generously sponsored by the Swiss Center for Affective Science and Swissuniversities. The event will be held at the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, University of Geneva on the 26th June from 2-6pm. Participation is free but registration is mandatory. If you would like to register, please contact missing email before the 19th June.

14:00-14:10 Introduction (with Daniel Dukes and Steve Oswald)
14:10-14:30 Neuroscience and psychological theories of emotion and relevance (David Sander)
14:30-14:50 Questions and Clarifications
14:50-15:10 Break
15:10-15:30 Philosophical theories of emotion and relevance (Constant Bonard)
15:30-15:50 Questions and Clarifications
15:50-16:10 Pragmatics, theories of emotions and relevance (Tim Wharton)
16:10-16:30 Questions and Clarifications
16:30-16:50 Break
16:50-18:00 Summary and Discussion

Lieu

Bâtiment: Campus Biotech

Room H8.01 D

entrée libre

Fichiers joints

EmoRev_final.pdf

6.51 MB