Workshop on connectionist-symbolic integration

[Ron Sun]

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                     The IJCAI Workshop 
                           on  
               Connectionist-symbolic Integration: 
                From Unified to Hybrid Approaches
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                     Montreal, Canada
                     August 19-20, 1995


There has been a considerable amount of research in integrating
connectionist and symbolic processing.  While such an approach has
clear advantages, it also encounters serious difficulties and
challenges.  Therefore, various models and ideas have been proposed to
address various problems and aspects in this integration. There is a
growing interest from many segments of the AI community, ranging from
expert systems, to cognitive modeling, to logical reasoning.

Two major trends can be identified in the state of the art: these are
the unified,  or purely connectionist, and the hybrid approaches to integration.
Whereas the purely connectionist ("connectionist-to-the-top") approach
claims that complex symbol processing functionalities can be achieved
via neural networks alone, the hybrid approach is premised on the
complementarity of the two paradigms and aims at their synergistic
combination in systems comprising both neural and symbolic components.
In fact, these trends can be viewed as two ends of an entire spectrum.

Up till now, overall, there is still relatively little work in
comparing and combining these fairly isolated efforts. This workshop
will provide a forum for discussions and exchanges of ideas in this
area, to foster cooperative work.  The workshop will tackle important
issues in integrating connectionist and symbolic processing.



** Organizing  Committee
Frederic Alexandre (co-chair)
John Barnden
Steve Gallant                
Larry Medsker
Christian Pellegrini
Noel Sharkey      
Ron Sun (co-chair)

** Program Committee
Lawrence Bookman
Michael Dyer
Wolfgang Ertel
LiMin Fu 
Jose Gonzalez-Cristobal 
Ruben Gonzalez-Rubio 
Jean-Paul Haton 
Melanie Hilario 
Abderrahim Labbi
Ronald Yager 


Workshop Schedule}
--------------------

August 19th, 1995

9:00 - 9:20 
Opening Remarks
R. Sun
F. Alexandre

9:20 - 11:30
Invited talks
Chair: Ron Sun

   9:20 - 10:20
   Invited Talk: Neuropsychology meets AI
   J. Hendler

   10:30 - 11:30
   Invited Talk: Neural computing and Artificial Intelligence
   N. Sharkey
 
11:30-12:00 
Panel responses and discussions
Chair: R. Sun
Panelists:  F. Alexandre, J. Austin, G. Cottrell/D. Noelle, R. Yager

Each panelist gives a 5 minute commentary,
with  questions and comments from the audience.
The invited speakers then give their responses.

1:30 - 2:30 
Interactive Session: Definitions of Approaches 
Chair: F. Alexandre

    Overview of strategies for neurosymbolic integration
    M. Hilario

    Cognitive aspects of neurosymbolic integration
    Y. Lallement and F. Alexandre

2:30 pm - 4:00 
Regular Session: Hybrid Approaches
Chair: C. Pellegrini

    A hybrid learning model of abductive reasoning
    T. Johnson and J. Zhang

    A hybrid learning model for reaction and decision making 
    R. Sun and T. Peterson

    A preprocessing model for integrating CBR and prototype-based
    neural network
    M. Malek and B. Amy

4:10 - 5:40
Regular Session: Unified Approaches
Chair: R. Sun

    Symbolic neural networks derived from stochastic grammar domain models
    E. Mjolsness

    Micro-level hybridization in DUAL
    B. Kokinov

    A unified connectionist model of instruction following
    D. Noelle and G. Cottrell



August 20th, 1995

9:00 - 10:30
Regular Session: Hybrid Approaches
Chair: J.P. Haton

    An integrated symbolic/connectionist model of parsing
    S. Stevenson

    A hybrid system framework for disambiguating word senses
    X. Wu, M. McTear, P. Ojha, H. Dai

    A localist network architecture for logical inference
    N. Park and D. Robertson

10:40 - 12:40
Regular Session: Unified Approaches
Chair: F. Alexandre

    Holographic reduced representation
    T. Plate

    Distributed representations for terms in hybrid reasoning systems
    A. Sperduti, A. Starita, C. Goller

    Learning distributed representation
    R. Krosley and M. Misra

    Distributed associative memory
    J. Austin

2:00 - 4:30 
Regular Session: Hybrid Approaches 
Chair: L. Medsker

    A distributed platform for symbolic-connectionist integration
    J. C. Gonzalez, J. R. Velasco, C. A. Iglesias

    Nessyl3L: a neurosymbolic system with 3 levels
    B. Orsier and A. Labbi

    A framework for hybrid systems
    P. Bison, G. Chemello, C. Sossai, G. Trainito

    A first approach to a taxonomy of  fuzzy-neural systems
    L. Magdalena

    Task structure and computational level; architectural issues in
    symbolic-connectionist integration
    R. Khosla and T. Dillon

4:40 - 5:30
Summary Panel
Chair: F. Alexandre
Panelists: R. Sun,   T. Johnson/J. Zhang, M. Hilario,
S. Gallant, J.P. Haton,  L. Medsker

5:30
Workshop ends


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For details, contact IJCAI-95, c/o AAAI, 455 Burgess Drive,
Menlo Park, CA 94025,  USA.
 


================================================================
Dr. Ron Sun                      
Department of Computer Science            phone: (205) 348-6363
The University of Alabama                 fax:   (205) 348-0219
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487                      email: rsun at cs.ua.edu
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