Evolution of Human Capacities to Know and to Act: International Conference

At the end of October, the Faculty of social sciences with the Institute of Scientific Information on Social Sciences of RAS (INION RAS) and the magazine “Znanie – sila” are organizing a multidisciplinary conference "Evolution of Human Capacities to Know and to Act". The question — "How to convert knowledge into power?” — runs as the subtitle of the conference.

The theme of the conference is related to cognitive and semiotic research, with new multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to the study of the relationship between basic cognitive abilities of people and specialized methodological innovations in science.

Participants of the conference are scientists from HSE and other Russian research centers, as well as foreign researchers from Armenia, Australia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA. Most of them entirely or indirectly adhere to the traditions of the Tartu-Moscow semiotic school, and the conference itself is designed to present the modern possibilities of its rich methodological approaches and practices.

The conference will continue for three days from 28 to 30 October. On the opening day, Bob Hodge, one of the founders of social semiotics, will give a lecture "Knowledge, power and complexity" to HSE students, participants and guests of the event. In the following days, the conference participants will present their contributions in three sections: "Fundamental ways of learning and knowing", "Meaning and cognition in a transdisciplinary perspective", and "Political action, collective knowledge and social semiosis". In addition, three round tables will be held within the framework of the conference. The theme of the first — “How to ascend and descend the stairs of thought and signification”, the second — “What are the origins, history and prospects of social semiotics?”, the third — “How to perform actions with signs?”. The last day of the conference will open with a plenary report by Bob Hodge "Multimodality and a new typology of signs".

The organizers and the participants welcome colleagues to join the discussions at the conference.

Programme:

Evolution-of-Human-Capacities-to-Know-and-to-Act_Programme