Jaroslav Daneš: On Internal Conflict
Jaroslav Daneš (University of Hradec Králové) On Internal Conflict ABSTRACT: A properly functioning society is a delicate balance of conflict and cooperation, dissent and consensus. A conflict as such appears to be a fundamental characteristic of politics since various agents have diverse and different interests and there are many cleavages in a society. It seems, then, that one of the most fundamental political problems may be formulated as how to manage or to handle a political conflict to make it fruitful instead of letting it be corrosive. The fifth-century Greeks used a term which covered many and various manifestations of political conflict – stasis (στάσις). In my lecture, I will ask about the causes of civil conflict in connection with various theories in the fields of ancient history, ancient political thought, and modern political science.
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Sander van der Linden: Psychological Inoculation Against Misinformation
Sander van der Linden (University of Cambridge) Psychological Inoculation Against Misinformation ONLINE TALK! Zoom link: https://cesnet.zoom.us/j/91813080382 ABSTRACT: Much like a viral contagion, misinformation can spread rapidly from one mind to another. Moreover, once lodged in memory, falsehoods are difficult to correct. Inoculation theory offers a natural basis for developing a psychological ‘vaccine’ against the spread of fake news and misinformation. Specifically, in a series of lab and field studies, I’ll show that it is possible to pre-emptively “immunize” millions of people against disinformation about a wide range of topics by pre-exposing them to severely weakened doses of the techniques that underlie its production. This process of ‘prebunking’ helps people cultivate cognitive antibodies in both simulated and real social media environments. I’ll showcase several interventions we developed and evaluated—with public health authorities and technology companies—to help citizens around the world recognize and resist unwanted attempts to influence and mislead. This LMS Centre talk is financially supported by the project OP JAK: Knowledge in the Age of Distrust, CZ.02.01.01/00/23_025/0008711.
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Keith Raymond Harris: Evidence Resistance and Control
Keith Raymond Harris (University of Vienna) Evidence Resistance and Control ABSTRACT: Evidence resistance occurs when individuals fail to update their beliefs in ways recommended by the evidence. Scholars representing a range of disciplines have offered various explanations of evidence resistance, including motivated reasoning, confirmation bias, and distrust toward sources of evidence. Even when taken together, these explanations do not fully account for evidence resistance as it manifests in the real world. I argue that a key causal factor in certain important cases of evidence resistance is suspicion about the way in which the evidence is controlled. Among other merits, this explanation explains how distrust can cause resistance to certain kinds of evidence and not others, why conspiracy theorists are especially prone to evidence resistance, and why novel technologies, especially generative artificial intelligence, promote resistance to certain kinds of evidence. The work is financially supported by the project OP JAK: Knowledge in the Age of Distrust, CZ.02.01.01/00/23_025/0008711.
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Julian Reiss: The Dilemma of Expertise
Julian Reiss (Johannes Kepler University) The Dilemma of Expertise You can also watch on: https://cesnet.zoom.us/j/91813080382 ABSTRACT: In this paper I explore the tension between the necessity of scientific input for complex political decisions that have a technical aspect (‘technical-political decisions’) and the inherent unreliability of expert judgement. While modern crises—such as climate change, pandemics, and socio-economic decline—require technical knowledge that citizens and politicians often lack, experts are frequently compromised by cognitive and motivational biases. Among the failings are: Cognitive Biases: Experts are prone to ‘confirmation bias’ and the ‘spiral of conviction’, where increased knowledge leads to greater dogmatism. Motivational Biases: Personal, financial, and political interests often colour scientific recommendations, particularly in medicine and economics. Numerical Illiteracy: Experts frequently struggle with statistical concepts, such as confusing relative and absolute risk reductions or committing the prevalence fallacy. To address these failures, I take up Jürgen Habermas’s democratic models but reject both technocratic approaches that grant experts a political monopoly, and Habermas’ own democratic approach. Instead, I advocate a decisionist model characterised by competition. By consulting multiple competing experts, the political system can better identify the spectrum of scientific discourse while incentivising experts to reduce their individual biases. This […]
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LMS Centre Program: Spring 2026
LMS Centre invites everyone to internal seminars and invited talks in the Spring semester 2026. The seminars are regularly held in the room SM4 and start at 14:05. The activity of LMS Centre is financially supported by the project OP JAK: Knowledge in the Age of Distrust, CZ.02.01.01/00/23_025/0008711.
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Robert McKenna: Science Communication as Propaganda
Robert McKenna (University of Liverpool) Science Communication as Propaganda You can also follow us on: https://cesnet.zoom.us/j/91813080382 ABSTRACT: There is a tension at the heart of science communication. On the one hand, its advocates often say that it simply aims to inform the public about relevant advances in science, along with providing them with scientific information that is relevant to their lives and choices (getting vaccinated, buying an electric vehicle, etc.). On the other hand, some public science communication seems more geared towards persuading the public of things (the need to get vaccinated or to buy an electric vehicle) than simply informing them. Moreover, science communication also occurs in the context of public policy making, where the role of the science communicator is not simply to inform policy makers of relevant scientific knowledge but to offer guidance and recommendations. Science communication is therefore intertwined with the technocratic structure of many modern societies. In this talk I suggest that viewing certain forms of science communication as a distinctive kind of propaganda is a helpful way of understanding the tension at the heart of science communication. One reason why it is helpful is it provides a plausible explanation of the […]
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Carlo Brentari: A collective fixation of meaning. Susanne Langer’s theory of the origin of language on the background of her philosophical anthropology
Carlo Brentari (University of Trento) A collective fixation of meaning. Susanne Langer’s theory of the origin of language on the background of her philosophical anthropology ABSTRACT: My talk for the LMS Centre will focus on the philosophical-anthropological theory of the origin of language developed by the American philosopher Susanne K. Langer (1895-1985). Langer traces human language – and, in particular, its denotative and communicative functions – back to the expressive vocal utterances of the primates from which humanity has derived. In her inquiry, Langer refers to the work of the language psychologist J. Donovan, who outlines a possible scenario of the birth of language out from pre-linguistic utterances: the spontaneous gatherings that hominids would have dedicated to emotionally relevant events and objects (the death of a conspecific, a killed predator or enemy). Besides being convincing in itself, Langer’s reflection on the origin of language allows us to highlight a question of particular importance in anthropology: how should evolutionism be rethought so that it can account for the emergence of biological phenomena which, like language, were probably not particularly advantageous at their first appearence?
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Alberto Acerbi: Digital Age: The Long View
Alberto Acerbi (University of Trento) Digital Age: The Long View ONLINE TALK! Zoom link: https://cesnet.zoom.us/j/91813080382 ABSTRACT: In my talk, I will discuss how cultural evolution – an umbrella term for evolutionary and cognitive approaches to human culture – can provide a useful framework for understanding how information is produced, transmitted, and selected in contemporary online digital media. A key implication of this perspective is that it suggests, contrary to common concerns, that we are generally wary learners who are not easily influenced. The (limited) spread of online misinformation can be understood in this perspective by focusing on the idea that some cultural traits can be successful because their content taps into general cognitive biases. More generally, given that only a small fraction of online content is misinformation, and, despite the abundance of accurate information, people are often overskeptical or uninterested, I will argue that research should focus more on the spread of reliable news. I will present recent work showing that, like misinformation, factual news exploits evolved cognitive biases, with negative, group-oriented, and dominance-oriented contents consistently predicting engagement. This LMS Centre talk is financially supported by the project OP JAK: Knowledge in the Age of Distrust, […]
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LMS Centre Program: Fall 2025
LMS Centre invites everyone to internal seminars and invited talks in the Spring semester 2024/2025. The seminars are regularly held in the room SM4 and start at 14:05. The activity of LMS Centre is financially supported by the project OP JAK: Knowledge in the Age of Distrust, CZ.02.01.01/00/23_025/0008711.
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Armin W. Geertz: From mental representations to embodied cognition: The cognitive science of religion past and present
Armin W. Geertz (Aarhus University) From mental representations to embodied cognition: The cognitive science of religion past and present ABSTRACT: In this lecture, I will provide a brief introduction to the foundational theories and approaches of the cognitive science of religion (CSR) followed by an overview of what has happened since the 1990’s. The CSR has expanded exponentially into a variety of fields and approaches. During the past decade, exciting developments in our understanding of human cognition has led to the rise of embodied approaches under the influence of the so-called 4E movement. This development seems to attract scholars from the humanities, especially historians. Thus, the early skepticism against the CSR seems to be giving way to a more balanced and less confrontational future.
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