June 16 2022, ABSTRACT:
In the philosophy of emotions some theories describe emotions as either essentially cognitively simple and embodied or as cognitively complex states. Furthermore basic emotions like fear are sometimes perceived as evolutionarily hardwired, while other theories may describe emotions generally as socially developed. Given the lack of unity on what emotional states actually amount to even for the case of human animals, work on animal emotions face the difficulty of how to cognitively describe the positive and negative valences that are identified in other species such as rats, farm animals and other primates. The workshop aims to discuss this issue with researchers from different fields working on different species. Based on the discussion on the nature of emotions the goal is to to derive if, why and how emotions play a role in human and nonhuman social learning and interaction.
Invited speakers are: Jessie Adriaense (University of Zurich), Elodie Briefer (University of Copenhagen), Constant Bonard (University of Geneva), Thibaud Gruber (University of Geneva)
The number of participants is limited. If you are interested in participating, please send an email to: christine.sievers@unibe.ch
Explaining Human Nature 