The 2008 North American Conference on

Computing and Philosophy

July 10-12 at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana 

NA-CAP@IU 2008: The Limits of Computation

The International Association for Computing and Philosophy is pleased to announce its 2008 North American Conference to be held July 10th – 12th at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. This year's conference theme addresses the limits of computation. As such, individual sessions will ask questions that range over several problem domains where computers and computation are having an impact. Target areas include: 

Aesthetics / Computer Creativity

Artificial Intelligence / Artificial Life / Robotics

Cognitive Science / Philosophy of Mind

Computer and Machine Ethics

Computers and Education

Computers as Epistemic Tools (e.g., modeling, visualization, etc.)

Cultural and Political Issues (e.g., social networking, eDemocracy, etc.)

Formal / Computational Issues

Conference Highlights

The Herbert A. Simon Keynote Address: Paul Thagard,  "Can Computers Understand Causality"

Paul Thagard is Professor of Philosophy, with cross appointment to Psychology and Computer Science, and Director of the Cognitive Science Program, at the University of Waterloo.  He is a graduate of the Universities of Saskatchewan, Cambridge, Toronto (Ph. D. in philosophy) and Michigan (M.S. in computer science). He is the author of Hot Thought: Mechanisms and Applications of Emotional Cognition (MIT Press, 2006), Coherence in Thought and Action (MIT Press, 2000), How Scientists Explain Disease (Princeton University Press, 1999), Mind: Introduction to Cognitive Science (MIT Press, 1996; second edition, 2005), Conceptual Revolutions (Princeton University Press, 1992), and Computational Philosophy of Science (MIT Press, 1988); and co-author of Mental Leaps: Analogy in Creative Thought (MIT Press, 1995) and Induction: Processes of Inference, Learning, and Discovery (MIT Press, 1986). He is also editor of Philosophy of Psychology and Cognitive Science (Elsevier, 2007). 

Dr. Thagard was Chair of the Governing Board of the Cognitive Science Society, 1998-1999, and President of the Society for Machines and Mentality, 1997-1998. He has held a Canada Council Killam fellowship, and in 1999 was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2003, he received a University of Waterloo Award for Excellence in Research, and in 2005 he was named a University Research Chair. In 2006, he became an Associate Editor of the journal Cognitive Science, and was selected a Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society. In 2007 he received a Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize. 

The Herbert A. Simon Keynote Address was established in 2001 at Carnegie Melon University in honor of the CMU faculty member to acknowledge his contributions to research in computing and philosophy. Past Simon lecturers include Luciano Floridi, "Open Problems in the Philosophy of Information," 2001; Richard Scheines, "Web-based Courseware for Causal and Statistical Reasoning," 2001; Patrick Suppes, "A Retrospective on Instructional Computing," 2002. Patrick Grim, "Computational Imaging for Philosophical Research," 2004; Paul Churchland, "Chimerical Colors: Some Phenomenological Predictions from Computational Neuroscience," 2005; William J. Rapaport, "Philosophy of Computer Science: What I Think It Is, What I Teach, & How I Teach It," 2006; and Richard Stallman, "Free Software in Ethics and in Practice," 2007.

Special Session on Automatic Programming and Human Creativity

Thagard's keynote address will be followed by a special session that is partially supported by the National Science Foundation's CreativeIT program. This grant makes possible an exploratory investigation of human creativity in the area of computer programming, with the hope of exploiting study of human creativity in order to eventually make significant contributions to automatic programming. In order to try to break through present limits, session organizers, Selmer Bringsjord (Rensselaer Polytechnic) and Konstantine Arkoudas (MIT), are particularly concerned with understanding what conditions are conducive to discovering highly innovative programming solutions. Sample topics include: 1)  Case studies in human creativity and computer programming; 2) Application of prior work in AI and creativity to the automatic programming problem; 3) New approaches to automatic programming based on systematic study of human ingenuity, discovery, and creativity; 4) Understanding the role of diagrammatic thinking and reasoning in visualizing data structures and transformations on such data structures during the creative/exploratory part of programming; and 5) Determining the role of non-deductive reasoning in programming creativity. Bringsjord and Arkoudas are hoping to develop a book or special journal issue based on submissions to this track. Papers and proposals are being accepted up to March 1st, 2008. See the submissions page for details.

The Douglas C. Englebart Keynote Address: Ronald Arkin, "Ethics and Lethality in Autonomous Robots"

Ronald C. Arkin received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1987. He then assumed the position of Assistant Professor in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology where he now holds the rank of Regents' Professor and is the Director of the Mobile Robot Laboratory. During 1997-98, Professor Arkin served as STINT visiting Professor at the Centre for Autonomous Systems at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden. From June-September 2005, Prof. Arkin held a Sabbatical Chair at the Sony Intelligence Dynamics Laboratory in Tokyo, Japan and then served as a member of the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Group at LAAS/CNRS in Toulouse, France from October 2005-August 2006. Dr. Arkin's research interests include behavior-based reactive control and action-oriented perception for mobile robots and unmanned aerial vehicles, hybrid deliberative/reactive software architectures, robot survivability, multiagent robotic systems, biorobotics, human-robot interaction, robot ethics, and learning in autonomous systems. He has over 170 technical publications in these areas. 

Prof. Arkin has written a textbook entitled Behavior-Based Robotics published by MIT Press in May 1998 and has co-edited (with G. Bekey) a book entitled Robot Colonies published in 1997. Funding sources have included the National Science Foundation, DARPA, U.S. Army, Savannah River Technology Center, Honda R&D, C.S. Draper Laboratory, SAIC, NAVAIR, and the Office of Naval Research. Dr. Arkin serves/served as an Associate Editor for IEEE Intelligent Systems and the Journal of Environmentally Conscious Manufacturing, as a member of the Editorial Boards of Autonomous Robots, Machine Intelligence and Robotic Control, Journal of Intelligent Service Robotics, Journal of Field Robotics, International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems, and the Journal of Applied Intelligence and is the Series Editor for the MIT Press book series Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents. 

The Douglas C. Englebart Keynote Address was established in 2002 at Oregon State University in honor of the OSU alumnus and computer science pioneer who invented the computer mouse. Past Englebart lecturers include Douglas Englebart, "Augmenting Collective Intelligence," 2002; Larry Hinman, "Using Computer Technology to Teach Ethics," 2004; Mark Bedau, "Computational Models of Evolutionary Creativity," 2005; Eric Dietrich, "After the Humans are Gone," 2006; and Peter Suber, "What is Open Access to Research," 2007.

Special Session on Morality and Machines: Is Ethics Computable?

Following Arkin's talk on ethics in autonomous robots, the conference will feature a special, two-hour panel session asking whether ethics can be computed. Organized by Michael Anderson (University of Hartford), the panel will be populated by people who are well-versed in the issues, some of whom are largely responsible for introducing philosophy (at least) to the moral problems and perils, not only of autonomous robots, but also of computers more generally. In addition to Michael Anderson and Ronald Arkin himself, the panel members include Colin Allen (Indiana University), Susan Anderson (University of Connecticut), Marcello Guarini (University of Windsor, Canada), Tom Powers (University of Delaware), John Sullins (Sonoma State University) and Jim Moor (Dartmouth College), who also contributed greatly to the early organization of the system of conferences now sponsored by the IACAP. The matter of creating moral (ro)bots is becoming more and more pressing as automated agents are quickly becoming commonplace in our world. The need is clearly there, but do we have a way to do it? The session, especially in light of Arkin's keynote, promises to be provocative.

Indiana University Showcase Session on Computing and Philosophy

The IACAP is grateful to Indiana University for hosting this year's NA-CAP conference. The setting in Bloomington is particularly appropriate, given the contributions to computing and philosophy that have emerged from this institution over the years by such figures as Douglas Hofstadter, John Barwise, Andy Clark, and Timothy van Gelder. Bloomington remains home to Hofstadter's Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, and IU's Cognitive Science Program and its School of Informatics continue to provide a rich climate of exploration concerning the philosophical issues raised by modern computing practices. The conference organizers are planning a special opening session to highlight recent work on campus that ties to the conference theme. Details are forthcoming and will be posted on this site as they become available.

Program Director: Tony Beavers (afbeavers at gmail dot com), University of Evansville

Conference Host: Colin Allen (colallen at indiana dot edu), Indiana University

NA-CAP Director: Selmer Bringsjord, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

NA-CAP Steering Committee:

Tony Beavers, University of Evansville

David Stern, University of Iowa

Mara Harrell, Carnegie Mellon University

IACAP President: Luciano Floridi, University of Hertfordshire & University of Oxford

The 2008 NA-CAP conference is sponsored by the Cognitive Science Program, the Department of Computer Science, the Department of Philosophy and the Office of the Vice President for International Affairs at Indiana University, Bloomington.

This conference is one of several regional conferences associated with the International Association for Computing and Philosophy. To learn more about the IACAP, including its other conferences and membership details, visit the organization's website at http://ia-cap.org.