CFP: Varieties of Enactivism - A Conceptual Geography

1st – 4th April 2014, Goldsmiths, London, UK

A one-day symposium (exact date TBC) taking place as part of the 2014 convention of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour (the AISB).

Background

In its best-established guise, enactivism is an approach to cognition that challenges mainstream cognitive science by rejecting internal representation and ascribing a central role, instead, to the biological autonomy of cognitive agents and their ability to “make sense” of the world. The approach originates with Varela, Thompson and Rosch's (1991) book The Embodied Mind and has roots in earlier work on autopoiesis and phenomenology. From these origins, the canonical position has been developed and enriched in different ways by Varela, Di Paolo, Thompson and others. All assign an important role to the notion of autopoiesis.

In recent years, the 'enactivism' label has been applied more liberally, sometimes to accounts that ignore or downplay autopoiesis but share the original theory's emphasis on environmentally-situated bodily coupling in place of internal representation. One such theory is the enactive or sensorimotor account of perception, given perhaps its canonical statement by O'Regan and Noë (2001), and building on important work by Hurley (1998). More recent still is the 'radical enactivism' of Hutto and Myin (2013), which has just been given its first book-length statement.

About the symposium

"Varieties of enactivism: A conceptual geography" will chart this conceptual terrain. The symposium aims to clarify the key conceptual boundaries that hold both between different kinds of enactivism, and between enactivism and neighbouring accounts or approaches in embodied cognitive science. In the process, it aims to find out whether the term 'enactivism' denotes no more than a motley, or alternatively, whether there is some minimal framework that might unify enactivist accounts while usefully distinguishing them from neighbouring approaches.

We are looking for high quality submissions that closely reflect the stated aim of the symposium. The intended outcome is to publish the conference proceedings as a special issue, which will serve as a unique and valuable resource for anyone seeking greater clarity given the recent proliferation of diverse accounts bearing the enactivist name.

Talks will be 30 minutes long, but to facilitate eventual publication, submissions should take the form of papers of 6,000 – 8,000 words.

Papers should be prepared for blind review and submitted via: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=voe14

Submission Deadline: 7th January 2014

Outcomes will be notified by 7th February 2014

Invited speakers: TBA (See http://varietiesofenactivism.wordpress.com/ for announcements)

AISB-50

AISB-50, a convention commemorating both 50 years since the founding of the society for the study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour (the AISB) and sixty years since the death of Alan Turing, founding father of both Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, will be held at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK from the 1st to the 4th April 2014.

  Please direct any questions about the symposium or your submission to the organising committee:
David Silverman (University of Stirling): [email protected] Mario Villalobos (University of Edinburgh): [email protected] Dave Ward (University of Edinburgh): [email protected]