2nd AISB Symposium on Computing and Philosophy

2nd AISB Symposium on Computing and Philosophy; in conjunction with the 2009 AISB Convention

Date: 9th April 2009
Location: Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, 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.

Topics: Areas of interest 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/aisb09/downloads.php . 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:: 19th December 2008 (negotiable).
Notification of acceptance:: TBC.
Camera ready copy due:: TBC,
Symposium: 9th April 2009.
Registration: TBC
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:
Mark Bishop
Dept. Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK.
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
Department of Informatics, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.
Email: stevet@sussex.ac.uk
tel: +44 (0) 1273 873754

Tillmann Vierkant
Department of Philosophy, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
Email: T.Vierkant@ed.ac.uk
tel: +44 (0) 1316 513748


Programme Committee

Alison Adam (University of Salford, UK) Mark Bishop (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK) Ron Chrisley (University of Sussex, UK) Amnon Eden (University of Essex, UK) Luciano Floridi (University of Hertfordshire, UK) Julian Kiverstein (University of Edinburgh, UK) Slawek Nasuto (University of Reading, UK) John Preston (University of Reading, UK) Murray Shanahan (Imperial College, UK) Susan Stuart (The University of Glasgow, UK) Steve Torrance (University of Sussex,UK) Tillman Vierkant (University of Edinburgh, UK) Michael Wheeler (University of Stirling, UK)