Connectionists: Workshop on Conceptual and Mathematical Foundations of Embodied Intelligence

[Keyan Ghazi-Zahedi]

Dear Connectionists-list members,

we want to draw the attention of cognitive and computational neuroscientists interested in embodied intelligence to the following workshop.

 Conceptual and Mathematical Foundations of Embodied Intelligence

 Leipzig, February 27 - March 01, 2013
 Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences


We welcome registration at 
http://www.mis.mpg.de/calendar/conferences/2013/ei.html

There is no registration fee to attend the workshop. The registration will be confirmed or rejected until December 15, 2012, depending on the total number of registrations. All registrations submitted before November 30, 2012, will be considered with higher priority.


Speakers

 - Randall D. Beer (Indiana University, USA)
 - Paul Bourgine (École Polytechnique, France)
 - Karl Friston (University College London, United Kingdom)
 - David Krakauer (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA)
 - Thomas Metzinger (Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany)
 - Kevin O'Regan (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, France)
 - Frank Pasemann (Universität Osnabrück, Germany)
 - Daniel Polani (University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom)
 - Helge Ritter (Universität Bielefeld, Germany)
 - Jürgen Schmidhuber (Istituto Dalle Molle di Studi sull'Intelligenza Artificiale, Switzerland, and Technische Universität München, Germany)
 - Naftali Tishby (The Hebrew University, Israel)


Abstract

In the last few decades, an overwhelming number of case studies produced the evidence that intelligent behavior of naturally evolved agents efficiently involves the embodiment as part of the underlying control process. Nowadays, there is no question that the exploration and exploitation of the embodiment represent important mechanisms of cognition. The shift from the classical view to the modern embodied view, also referred to as the cognitive turn, not only framed a novel way of thinking about intelligence but also identified a number of fundamental principles that intelligent systems obey. Well known examples are the principle of cheap design, morphological computation, and information self-structuring. Although there is general consensus on the intuitive meaning of such principles, the field of embodied intelligence currently lacks a formal theory. We think that the mathematical foundations of the core concepts have to be advanced and unified, in order to be able to realize and better understand cognitive systems that exploit their embodiment in an autonomous and completely intrinsic way. Information theory, dynamical systems theory, and information geometry already turned out to be useful in this regard. However, there is much more, and also much more to do.

Summarizing, the goal of the workshop is to identify the core concepts and to advance the theoretical foundations of embodied intelligence.


Non-exhaustive list of topics

Concepts
 - system environment distinction/separation
 - levels of embodiment and agency
 - sensori-motor contingencies
 - morphological computation
 - information self-structuring
 - learning and adaptation
 - ...

Formal methods
 - information theory
 - information geometry
 - dynamical systems
 - Bayesian networks
 - causal information flows
 - ...

Apologies if you receive multiple copies of this email, but please forward this email to anyone you consider interested.

With best wishes,
Nihat Ay, Ralf Der, Keyan Ghazi-Zahedi, Georg Martius