The study of signs and contemporary questions on human nature

The Wittgenstein research-group at the

Department of philosophy, University of Bergen and

Centre de coopération franco-norvégienne en sciences sociales

et humaines (MSH, Paris) invites you to the Workshop:

“The study of signs and contemporary questions on human nature”

TIME: Friday November 13th. 2009

PLACE: Room 218, Sydnesplassen 12/13

Why has the project of studying culture as formation and circulation of signs and meanings never been dominant within the humanities and sociology? One answer is that other models have occupied the scene; theories of rational choice, cognitivism, variants of functionalism and naturalism etc. But it may also be that the project (in for instance Saussure or Cassirer) was not sufficiently clear and that in philosophy the reference to language (“the linguistic turn”) has been somehow magical. What is lacking is not a theory of science but a theory of signs addressing questions on human nature on a new basis.

PROGRAMME:

9.15 – 10.50: Jacques Coursil, FWI/Cornell: The dialogical structure of signs

Commentary: Amund Børdahl (Department of philosophy,UoB)

11.00 – 12.30: Maïa Ponsonnet, Univ. of Paris8 (Saint-Denis): Language, truth and rules in the Dalabon and Kriol languages of Northern Australia.

Commentary: Knut Rio (Department of social anthropology, UoB)

Lunch at the Faculty of law

13.30 – 15.00: Clarisse Herrenschmidt, Collège de France:  The desymbolization in the general history of written signs.

Commentary: Alois Pichler ( The Wittgenstein Archives / Department of philosophy, UoB)

Coffee

15.15 – 16.15: Arild Utaker (Department of philosophy, UoB):  Symbolization and the irreducibility of signs (From Wittgenstein to philosophical anthropology).

Commentary: Claus Huitfeldt (Department of philosophy, UoB)

16.15 – 17.15: Kevin Cahill (Department of philosophy, UoB): Modernity, Epistemology and Pourous Selves

Commentary: Harald Johannessen (Department of philosophy , UoB)