Path: bga.com!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!torn!nntp.cs.ubc.ca!unixg.ubc.ca!quartz.ucs.ualberta.ca!istvan From: istvan@psych.ualberta.ca (Istvan Berkeley) Newsgroups: sci.cognitive Subject: Cog Sci Foundations Workshop Date: 17 Dec 94 20:41:46 GMT Organization: Computer and Network Services, U of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada Lines: 386 Distribution: global Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: motion.psych.ualberta.ca <> <> <> <> <> <> Advance Announcement FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS AND PARTICIPATION AISB-95 Workshop on THE FOUNDATIONS OF COGNITIVE SCIENCE April 3rd/4th 1995 at the The Tenth Biennial Conference on AI and Cognitive Science (AISB-95) (Theme: Hybrid Problems, Hybrid Solutions) Halifax Hall University of Sheffield Sheffield, England (Monday 3rd -- Friday 7th April 1995) Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (SSAISB) Chair: Sean O Nuallain Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland & National Research Council, Ottawa, Canada Co-Chair: Paul Mc Kevitt Department of Computer Science University of Sheffield, England WORKSHOP COMMITTEE: John Barnden (New Mexico State University, NM, USA) Istvan Berkeley (University of Alberta, Canada) Mike Brady (Oxford, England) Harry Bunt (ITK, Tilburg, The Netherlands) Peter Carruthers (University of Sheffield, England) Daniel Dennett (Tufts University, USA) Eric Dietrich (SUNY Binghamton, NY, USA) Jerry Feldman (ICSI, UC Berkeley, USA) John Frisby (University of Sheffield, England) Stevan Harnad (University of Southampton, England) James Martin (University of Colorado at Boulder, CO, USA) John Macnamara (McGill University, Canada) Mike McTear (Universities of Ulster and Koblenz, Germany) Ryuichi Oka (RWC P, Tsukuba, Japan) Jordan Pollack (Ohio State University, OH, USA) Zenon Pylyshyn (Rutgers University, USA) Ronan Reilly (University College, Dublin, Ireland) Roger Schank (ILS, Illinois) NNoel Sharkey (University of Sheffield, England) Walther v.Hahn (University of Hamburg, Germany) Yorick Wilks (University of Sheffield, England) WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION The assumption underlying this workshop is that Cognitive Science (CS) is in crisis. The crisis manifests itself, as exemplified by the recent Buffalo summer institute, in a complete lack of consensus among even the biggest names in the field on whether CS has or indeed should have a clearly identifiable focus of study; the issue of identifying this focus is a separate and more difficult one. Though academic programs in CS have in general settled into a pattern compatible with classical computationalist CS (Pylyshyn 1984, Von Eckardt 1993), including the relegation from focal consideration of consciousness, affect and social factors, two fronts have been opened on this classical position. The first front is well-publicised and highly visible. Both Searle (1992) and Edelman (1992) refuse to grant any special status to information-processing in explanation of mental process. In contrast, they argue, we should focus on Neuroscience on the one hand and Consciousness on the other. The other front is ultimately the more compelling one. It consists of those researchers from inside CS who are currently working on consciousness, affect and social factors and do not see any incompatibility between this research and their vision of CS, which is that of a Science of Mind (see Dennett 1993, O Nuallain (in press) and Mc Kevitt and Partridge 1991, Mc Kevitt and Guo 1994). References Dennett, D. (1993) Review of John Searle's "The Rediscovery of the Mind". The Journal of Philosophy 1993, pp 193-205 Edelman, G.(1992) Bright Air, Brilliant Fire. Basic Books Mc Kevitt, P. and D. Partridge (1991) Problem description and hypothesis testing in Artificial Intelligence In ``Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science '90'', Springer-Verlag British Computer Society Workshop Series, McTear, Michael and Norman Creaney (Eds.), 26-47, Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. Also, in Proceedings of the Third Irish Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science (AI/CS-90), University of Ulster at Jordanstown, Northern Ireland, EU, September and as Technical Report 224, Department of Computer Science, University of Exeter, GB- EX4 4PT, Exeter, England, EU, September, 1991. Mc Kevitt, P. and Guo, Cheng-ming (1995) From Chinese rooms to Irish rooms: new words on visions for language. Artificial Intelligence Review Vol. 8. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer-Academic Publishers. (unabridged version) First published: International Workshop on Directions of Lexical Research, August, 1994, Beijing, China. O Nuallain, S (in press) The Search for Mind: a new foundation for CS. Norwood: Ablex Pylyshyn, Z.(1984) Computation and Cognition. MIT Press Searle, J (1992) The rediscovery of the mind. MIT Press. Von Eckardt, B. (1993) What is Cognitive Science? MIT Press WORKSHOP TOPICS: The tension which riddles current CS can therefore be stated thus: CS, which gained its initial capital by adopting the computational metaphor, is being constrained by this metaphor as it attempts to become an encompassing Science of Mind. Papers are invited for this workshop which: * Address the central tension * Propose an overall framework for CS (as attempted, inter alia, by O Nuallain (in press)) * Explicate the relations between the disciplines which comprise CS. * Relate educational experiences in the field * Describe research outside the framework of classical computationalist CS in the context of an alternative framework * Promote a single logico-mathematical formalism as a theory of Mind (as attempted by Harmony theory) * Disagree with the premise of the workshop Other relevant topics include: * Classical vs. neuroscience representations * Consciousness vs. Non-consciousness * Dictated vs. emergent behaviour * A life/Computational intelligence/Genetic algorithms/Connectionism * Holism and the move towards Zen integration The workshop will focus on three themes: * What is the domain of Cognitive Science ? * Classic computationalism and its limitations * Neuroscience and Consciousness WORKSHOP FORMAT: Our intention is to have as much discussion as possible during the workshop and to stress panel sessions and discussion rather than having formal paper presentations. The workshop will consist of half-hour presentations, with 15 minutes for discussion at the end of each presentation and other discussion sessions. A plenary session at the end will attempt to resolve the themes emerging from the different sessions. ATTENDANCE: We hope to have an attendance between 25-50 people at the workshop. Given the urgency of the topic, we expect it to be of interest not only to scientists in the AI/Cognitive Science (CS) area, but also to those in other of the sciences of mind who are curious about CS. We envisage researchers from Edinburgh, Leeds, York, Sheffield and Sussex attending from within England and many overseas visitors as the Conference Programme is looking very international. SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS: Papers of not more than 8 pages should be submitted by electronic mail (preferably uuencoded compressed postscript) to Sean O Nuallain at the E-mail address(es) given below. If you cannot submit your paper by E-mail please submit three copies by snail mail. *******Submission Deadline: February 13th 1995 *******Notification Date: February 25th 1995 *******Camera ready Copy: March 10th 1995 PUBLICATION: Workshop notes/preprints will be published. If there is sufficient interest we will publish a book on the workshop. WORKSHOP CHAIR: Sean O Nuallain ((Before Dec 23:)) Knowledge Systems Lab, Institute for Information Technology, National Research Council, Montreal Road, Ottawa Canada K1A OR6 Phone: 1-613-990-0113 E-mail: sean@ai.iit.nrc.ca FaX: 1-613-95271521 ((After Dec 23:)) Dublin City University, IRL- Dublin 9, Dublin Ireland, EU WWW: http://www.compapp.dcu.ie Ftp: ftp.vax1.dcu.ie E-mail: onuallains@dcu.ie FaX: 353-1-7045442 Phone: 353-1-7045237 AISB-95 WORKSHOPS AND TUTORIALS CHAIR: Dr. Robert Gaizauskas Department of Computer Science University of Sheffield 211 Portobello Street Regent Court Sheffield S1 4DP U.K. E-mail: robertg@dcs.shef.ac.uk WWW: http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/ WWW: http://www.shef.ac.uk/ Ftp: ftp.dcs.shef.ac.uk FaX: +44 (0) 114 278-0972 Phone: +44 (0) 114 278-5572 AISB-95 CONFERENCE/LOCAL ORGANISATION CHAIR: Paul Mc Kevitt Department of Computer Science Regent Court 211 Portobello Street University of Sheffield GB- S1 4DP, Sheffield England, UK, EU. E-mail: p.mckevitt@dcs.shef.ac.uk WWW: http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/ WWW: http://www.shef.ac.uk/ Ftp: ftp.dcs.shef.ac.uk FaX: +44 (0) 114-278-0972 Phone: +44 (0) 114-282-5572 (Office) 282-5596 (Lab.) 282-5590 (Secretary) AISB-95 REGISTRATION: Alison White AISB Executive Office Cognitive and Computing Sciences (COGS) University of Sussex Falmer, Brighton England, UK, BN1 9QH Email: alisonw@cogs.susx.ac.uk WWW: http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/christ/aisb Ftp: ftp.cogs.susx.ac.uk/pub/aisb Tel: +44 (0) 1273 678448 Fax: +44 (0) 1273 671320 AISB-95 ENQUIRIES: Debbie Daly, Administrative Assistant, AISB-95, Department of Computer Science, Regent Court, 211 Portobello Street, University of Sheffield, GB- S1 4DP, Sheffield, UK, EU. Email: debbie@dcs.shef.ac.uk (personal communication) Fax: +44 (0) 114-278-0972 Phone: +44 (0) 114-278-5565 (personal) -5590 (messages) Email: aisb95@dcs.shef.ac.uk (for auto responses) WWW: http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/aisb95 [Sheffield Computer Science] Ftp: ftp.dcs.shef.ac.uk (cd aisb95) WWW: http://www.shef.ac.uk/ [Sheffield Computing Services] Ftp: ftp.shef.ac.uk (cd aisb95) WWW: http://ijcai.org/) (Email welty@ijcai.org) [IJCAI-95, MONTREAL] WWW: http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/christ/aisb [AISB SOCIETY SUSSEX] Ftp: ftp.cogs.susx.ac.uk/pub/aisb VENUE: The venue for registration and all conference events is: Halifax Hall of Residence, Endcliffe Vale Road, GB- S10 5DF, Sheffield, UK, EU. FaX: +44 (0) 114-268-4227 Tel: +44 (0) 114-268-2758 (24 hour porter) Tel: +44 (0) 114-266-4196 (manager) SHEFFIELD: Sheffield is one of the friendliest cities in Britain and is situated well having the best and closest surrounding countryside of any major city in the UK. The Peak District National Park is only minutes away. It is a good city for walkers, runners, and climbers. It has two theatres, the Crucible and Lyceum. The Lyceum, a beautiful Victorian theatre, has recently been renovated. Also, the city has three 10 screen cinemas. There is a library theatre which shows more artistic films. The city has a large number of museums many of which demonstrate Sheffield's industrial past, and there are a number of Galleries in the City, including the Mapping Gallery and Ruskin. A number of important ancient houses are close to Sheffield such as Chatsworth House. The Peak District National Park is a beautiful site for visiting and rambling upon. There are large shopping areas in the City and by 1995 Sheffield will be served by a 'supertram' system: the line to the Meadowhall shopping and leisure complex is already open. The University of Sheffield's Halls of Residence are situated on the western side of the city in a leafy residential area described by John Betjeman as ``the prettiest suburb in England''. Halifax Hall is centred on a local Steel Baron's house, dating back to 1830 and set in extensive grounds. It was acquired by the University in 1830 and converted into a Hall of Residence for women with the addition of a new wing. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AT SHEFFIELD: Sheffield Computer Science Department has a strong programme in Cognitive Systems and is part of the University's Institute for Language, Speech and Hearing (ILASH). ILASH has its own machines and support staff, and academic staff attached to it from nine departments. Sheffield Psychology Department has the Artificial Intelligence Vision Research Unit (AIVRU) which was founded in 1984 to coordinate a large industry/university Alvey research consortium working on the development of computer vision systems for autonomous vehicles and robot workstations. Sheffield Philosophy Department has the Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies, founded in 1992, which runs a workshop/conference series on a two-year cycle on topics of interdisciplinary interest. (1992-4: 'Theory of mind'; 1994- 6: 'Language and thought'.) -- Istvan S. N. Berkeley, email: istvan@psych.ualberta.ca Biological Computation Project & Department of Philosophy, c/o 4-108 Humanities Center University of Alberta Edmonton, Alberta Tel: +1 403 492 4106 T6G 2E5, Canada Fax: +1 403 492 9160