ILLC News & Events

This position is part of the Distributed dynamic REpresentations for diAlogue Management (DREAM) Project, which is funded by an ERC Consolidator Grant and will eventually employ two PhD candidates and two postdoctoral researchers.

The aim of the DREAM Project is to establish new computational models for dialogue agents that can learn from data about language use, integrating linguistic and perceptual information and leading to more human-like and effective communication. These models will be grounded in linguistic theories of dialogue, but exploit recent advances in artificial neural networks that will allow them to learn the representations that they manipulate directly from experience. Model analysis and interpretation are key aspects of the project.

Abstract:
In contemporary Western philosophy, destruction or deconstruction of metaphysics has been presented by prominent thinkers like Levinas, Derrida or Schürmann as the liberation of an an-archic way of thinking. The possibility of questioning and acting beyond the «arkhè», beyond the principle (commandment and beginning at the same time), has opened new perspectives in ontology and ethics. Levinas, for example, characterizes the relation to the Other in terms of «an-archic responsibility». Interestingly, such an ontological and ethical anarchy has always been strictly distinguished from political anarchism. Can we envisage a confrontation between the two traditions? Is "post anarchism" a satisfactory way of setting it up?