Representation and Reality: Humans, Animals and Machines

As part of the AISB-50 Annual Convention 2014 to be held at Goldsmiths, University of London, on April 1th-4th 2014

https://sites.google.com/site/representationofreality/home

The convention is organized by the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB)

http://www.aisb50.org

OVERVIEW:

Our symposium could be considered as the continuation of a part of the symposium “Computing Nature” organized by Gordana Dodig – Crnkovic and Raffaela Giovagnoli in the AISB/IACAP World Congress 2012. We would like to offer an occasion to discuss the problem of “representation” in humans, other animals and machines. It is closely related to the question what capacities can be plausibly computed and what are the most promising approaches that try to solve the problem.

TOPICS OF INTEREST

We aim to discuss the following interesting topics related to the problem of representation:

(1) The point of view of connectionism and dynamical systems (Scheutz, Clark, Juarrero, Kaneko and Tsuda, O’Brien, Horgan, Trenholme) namely the different proposals about the possibility to rule out representation.

 (2) A plausible strategy to analyze the problem of representation from a philosophical perspective implies the comparison between human and machine capacities and skills. Searle presented an interesting theory of representation based on the mind’s capacities to represent objects and to the linguistic capacities to extend the representation to social entities. Putnam, on the contrary, criticizes the role of images in representational activity. The Kantian notion of representation is inherited by authors such as McDowell and Campbell. Differently, we can intend the notion of representation in inferentialist terms as introduced by Brandom. For machine representation current results in AI and cognitive robotics are of interest.

(3) Evolutionary aspects of the development of increasingly complex capacities in (embodied, embedded) living organisms to process information in the interaction with the environment and as a consequence develop new morphological structures – morphogenesis, meta-morphogenesis.

INVITED SPEAKERS

Gianfranco Basti (Pontifical Lateran University, Rome)

Gordana Dodig-Crncovic (Mälardalen University, Sweden)

Hector Zenil (Paris 1 Sorbonne-Pantheon/ENS Ulm/CNRS)

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Jeremy Wyatt (University of Birmingham)

Zoe Demery (University of Birmingham)

Veronica Arriola-Rios (Universidad Autonoma de Mexico)

Gianfranco Basti (Pontifical Lateran University, Rome)

Gordana Dodig-Crncovic (Mälardalen University, Sweden)

Hector Zenil (Paris 1 Sorbonne-Pantheon/ENS Ulm/CNRS)

Raffaela Giovagnoli (Pontifical Lateran University, Rome)

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Raffaela Giovagnoli (Pontifical Lateran University, Rome), [email protected]

Veronica Arriola-Rios (Universidad Autonoma de Mexico), [email protected]

Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic (Mälardalen University, Sweden), [email protected]