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:: 16th January 2009.
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)