AISB Symposium on Computing and Philosophy

AISB Symposium on Computing and Philosophy

In conjunction with the 2008 AISB Convention

Date: 4th April 2008

Location: University of Aberdeen, Scotland

Overview

The convergence of computing and philosophy has a lineage going back to Leibniz but it is not until the work of Alan Turing and the appearance of electronic computers in the mid-20th century that we arrive at a practical intersection between computing and philosophy. Precursors to the theories and programs of interest to this AISB Symposium on Computing and Philosophy include the Turing Test as outlined in Turing's seminal reflection on thinking machines; the AI work of Herb Simon and Alan Newell with the Logic Theorist; Rosenblatt's Perceptron - a biologically inspired pattern matching device - and Grey Walter's Turtle - an early example of embodied Cybernetic Artificial Intelligence (A.I).

The purpose of this symposium is to advance the philosophical study of computing in general by exploring the philosophical analysis of central concepts in computer science, the application of computational principles to traditional philosophical problems and computational modelling of philosophical assumptions and we welcome papers exploring any of these issues; however in recent years there has been a growing interest in the convergence of themes from Constructivism, Enactivism, Dynamic Systems Theory and Second Order Cybernetics and symposium organisers are particularly interested in receiving contributions from these areas.

Areas of interest

The include, but are not limited to:

• constructivism;
• enactivism;
• second order cybernetics
• dynamic systems;
• theories of cognition;
• sensorimotor theories of perception;
• artificial life;
• computer modelling in biology;
• simulation of behaviour ;
• machine understanding;
• Searle's Chinese room argument;
• the Turing test;
• biosemiotics;
• embodied A.I.;
• robotics ;
• virtual reality;
• computer-mediated communication;
• philosophy of information / technology;
• information and computer ethics ;
• metaphysics (distributed processing, emergent properties, formal ontology, network structures, etc.) .

Submission and Publication Details

Submitted contributions shall be sent by electronic mail to (m.bishop@gold.ac.uk).

All articles shall be sent electronically as PDF files to this address.

Text editor templates can be found at http://www.aisb.org.uk/convention/aisb08/download.html .

We request that submitted papers are limited to eight pages.

Each paper will receive at least two reviews.

Selected papers will be published in the general proceedings of the AISB Convention, as long as at least one author comes to the symposium to present the paper and participate in the discussions and symposium activities.

Important Dates

Submission deadline: 14 January 2008

Notification of acceptance: 15 February 2008

Camera ready copy due: TBA

Symposium: 4th April 2008

Publication

All papers from the AISB convention will be published in the AISB proceedings. We will further investigate the possibility of publishing the best papers in a journal special issue or book form.

Additional Information

A "Best Student Paper" award will be given to the best student written paper submitted to the convention.

The AISB will also fund three student scholarships. See here for further details.

Organisers

Peter Baumann Department of Philosophy, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK. Email: p.baumann@abdn.ac.uk tel: +44 (0) 1224 272368

Mark Bishop Dept. Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK. SE14 6NW. Email: m.bishop@gold.ac.uk tel: +44 (0) 2070 785048

Luciano Floridi Department of Philosophy, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK. Email: luciano.floridi@philosophy.ox.ac.uk tel: +44 (0) 1707 284000

Steve Torrance School of Health and Social Sciences, Middlesex University, UK. Email: S.Torrance@mdx.ac.uk tel: +44 (0) 1273 873754

Programme Committee

Peter Baumann (Aberdeen University, UK)
Mark Bishop (Golsmiths, University of London, UK)
Ron Chrisley (University of Sussex, UK)
Luciano Floridi (University of Hertfordshire & St. Cross College Oxford University, UK)
John Preston (University of Reading, UK)
Murray Shanahan (Imperial College, UK)
Colin Schmidt (Université du Maine, France)
Keith Stenning (The University of Edinburgh, UK)
Steve Torrance (Middlesex University & University of Sussex, UK)
Michael Wheeler (University of Stirling, UK)