Artificial Life Workshop Announcement

[Arantza Etxeberria]

       "Artificial Life: a Bridge towards a New Artificial Intelligence"

                      Palacio de Miramar (San Sebastian, Spain)
                          December 10th and 11th, 1993


                           Workshop organised by the
                Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science,
                          Faculty of Computer Science
                                       &
        Institute of Logic, Cognition, Language and Information (ILCLI)
                                    of the
                  University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU)

                                  Directors:
               Alvaro Moreno (University of the Basque Country)
                        Francisco Varela (CREA, Paris)


    This Workshop will be dedicated to a discussion of the impact of works  on
Artifical Life in  Artificial Intelligence. Artificial  Intelligence (AI)  has
traditionally attempted to  study cognition  as an  abstract phenomenon  using
formal tools, that is,  as a disembodied process  that can be grasped  through
formal operations, independent of the nature  of the system that displays  it.
Cognition appears  as an  abstract representation  of reality.  After  several
decades of  research  in this  direction  the field  has  encountered  several
problems that have taken it to  what many consider a "dead end":  difficulties
in understanding autonomous and situated agencies, in relating behaviour  in a
real environment,  in studying  the  nature and  evolution of  perception,  in
finding a  pragmatic  approach to  explain  the operation  of  most  cognitive
capacities such as natural language, context dependent action, etc.
    Artificial Life  (AL)  has  recently  emerged  as  a  confluence  of  very
different fields  trying  to study  different  kinds of  phenomena  of  living
systems using  computers  as  a  modelling  tool,  and,  at  last,  trying  to
artificially (re)produce a living or a population of living systems in real or
computational media.  Examples of  such phenomena  are prebiotic  systems  and
their evolution, growth and  development, self-reproduction, adaptation to  an
environment, evolution  of  ecosystems  and natural  selection,  formation  of
sensory-motor loops,  autonomous  robots. Thus,  AL  is having  an  impact  on
classic life sciences  but also on  the conceptual foundations  of AI and  new
methodological ideas to Cognitive Science.
    The aim  of this  Workshop is  to  focus on  the last  two points  and  to
evaluate the influence of the methodology and concepts appearing in AL for the
development of a new ideas about cognition that could eventually give birth to
a new Artificial Intelligence. Some  of the sessions consist on  presentations
and replies on  a specific subject  by invited speakers  while others will  be
debates open to all participants in the workshop.


MAIN TOPICS:

    * A review of the problems of FUNCTIONALISM in Cognitive Science
        and Artificial Life.
    * Modelling Neural Networks through Genetic Algorithms.
    * Autonomy and Robotics.
    * Consequences of the crisis of the representational models of cognition.
    * Minimal Living System and Minimal Cognitive System
    * Artificial Life systems as problem solvers
    * Emergence and evolution in artificial systems


SPEAKERS

    S. Harnad
    P. Husbands
    G. Kampis
    B. Mac Mullin
    D. Parisi
    T. Smithers
    E. Thompson
    F. Varela

Further Information:

Alvaro Moreno
Apartado 1249
20080 DONOSTIA
SPAIN

E. Mail:    biziart at si.ehu.es
Fax:        34 43 311056
Phone:      34 43 310600 (extension 221)
            34 43 218000 (extension 209)