Connectionists: Interactivist Summer Institute 2nd CFP

[Mark H. Bickhard]

GENERAL INFORMATION

Interactivist Summer Institute 2015

June 20 - 23, 2015

Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey

 
The Interactivist Summer Institute is dedicated to exploring the frontiers of understanding of life, mind, and cognition. There is a growing recognition - across many disciplines - that phenomena of life and mind, including cognition and representation, are emergents of far-from-equilibrium, interactive, autonomous systems. In such a view, mind and biology, mind and agent, are re-united. The classical treatment of cognition and representation within a formalist framework of encodingist assumptions is increasingly recognized as a fruitless maze of blind alleys. From neurobiology to robotics, from cognitive science to philosophy of mind and language, dynamic and interactive alternatives are being explored. Dynamic systems approaches, enactivist and autonomous agent research join in the effort.

The interactivist model offers a theoretical approach to matters of life and mind, ranging from evolutionary- and neuro-biology (including the emergence of biological function) through representation, perception, motivation, memory, learning and development, emotions, consciousness, language, action theory, rationality, sociality, personality and psychopathology, and ethics. This work has developed interfaces with studies of central nervous system functioning, the ontology of process, autonomous agents, philosophy of science, and all areas of psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science that address the person.

The conference will involve both tutorials addressing central parts and aspects of the interactive model, and papers addressing current work of relevance to this general approach. This will be our eighth Summer Institute:

Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 2001

IT University, Copenhagen, Denmark 2003

Clemson University, South Carolina 2005

The American University in Paris, Paris 2007 

Simon Fraser University, Vancouver 2009

University of the Aegean, Syros, Greece 2011

University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, Fl 2013

The Summer Institute is a biennial meeting where those sharing the core interests and ideas of interactivism will meet and discuss their work, try to reconstruct its historical roots, put forward current research in different fields that fits the interactivist framework, and define research topics for prospective graduate students. People working in philosophy of mind, linguistics, social sciences, artificial intelligence, cognitive robotics, theoretical biology, and other fields related to the sciences of mind are invited to send their paper submission or statement of interest for participation to the organizers.

http://www.lehigh.edu/~interact/isi2015/index.htm


Mark H. Bickhard
Lehigh University
17 Memorial Drive East
Bethlehem, PA 18015
mark at bickhard.name
http://bickhard.ws/

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