|
The
2008 North American
Conference on
Computing
and Philosophy
NA-CAP@IU
2008: The Limits of Computation
Submission
Instructions
Deadline:
March 1st, 2008
This
year, NACAP will be using a system for
electronic submission and review. Please
submit your papers and proposals online at http://ia-cap.org/na-cap08/openconf/openconf.php.
Specific guidelines for
content appear below.
Please
note that proposals for the Special Session
on Automatic Programming and Human Creativity
should not be submitted via this Openconf
link. Guidelines for submission to this
session are included in the CFP
below.
Call for Papers and Proposals
The
International Association for Computing and
Philosophy is seeking papers and proposals
for 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. Possible
questions include: Are there limits to
automatic programming? Is quantum computing
subject to the same limits as Turing machine
computation? Is it possible to build an
ethical machine? How do computers facilitate
learning? To what extent is the
computational metaphor helpful or harmful
for describing cognition? How might the
capacity of computers to create elaborate
visualization techniques enhance cognition?
What are the implications of experiments run
in virtual worlds like Second Life? Can a
musical or literary composition written by a
computer be considered a work of art? To
what extent, does computer networking
enhance or impede the achievement of
democratic ideals? What is the overall
impact of social networking on our
interpersonal relationships and social
practices?
We
welcome submissions for papers, panels and
demonstrations of computing and philosophy
applications. Papers and demonstrations will
be allotted 30 minutes including time for
questions. 90-minute slots are available for
panels and can be divided as the panelists
see fit.
For
papers, please limit submission length to
3,000 words, keeping in mind that the IACAP
discourages participants from reading their
papers to the audience. (Many presenters
prepare slides using PowerPoint or some
other software package. However, these need
not be submitted with your original paper.)
Include also a 250-word abstract. If you
wish your paper to be reviewed blindly,
please make sure that it is devoid of all
identifying marks, except for those on a
cover page.
The
IA-CAP discourages "show-and-tell"
demonstrations, but welcomes submissions
that show a new and interesting application
of computers to philosophy. Submissions in
this category should consist of a 1,500-word
abstract outlining what is innovative about
the application and the questions pertinent
to philosophy that your demonstration will
raise.
For
panels, please submit a 1,000-word summary
of the panel as a whole, along with 300 to
500-word abstracts for each of its various
components.
The
deadline for submissions is March 1st, 2008.
Submissions will be handled electronically
this year. Details will be posted to this
page as they come available.
CFP
for the Special Session on Automatic
Programming and Human Creativity
From
session organizers Selmer Bringsjord
(selmer@rpi.edu) and Konstantine Arkoudas (konstantine@alum.mit.edu):
Please
consider submitting to present in the
special track "Automatic Programming
and Human Creativity," at the North
American Computing and Philosophy
Conference, to be held at Indiana University
July 10-12, 2008.
The
conference theme is "The Limits of
Computation," and we are particularly
interested in how study of human creativity
might allow for the current limits on
automatic programming (a venerable area of
AI devoted to producing computer programs
that automatically write significant
computer programs) to be exceeded. Prior
techniques (such as deductive program
automation and genetic programming) have had
little success.
This
track is partially supported by a grant from
the National Science Foundation, through its
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 addition, this
investigation should pave the way toward
educational technology to better teach
computer programming, and to encourage a
greater percentage of talented youth to
pursue careers in, and based on,
programming. Our perception is that many
young students often incorrectly conceive of
computer programming as the sterile
antithesis to "creative" careers
in, say, entertainment and the arts.
Human
Creativity
In
order to try to break through present
limits, we are particularly concerned with
understanding what conditions are conducive
to discovering highly innovative programming
solutions. Provided with a description of
the sorting problem (arranging a given list
of numbers in increasing order), for
instance, most computer science
undergraduates could easily come up with the
naive algorithm for solving the problem. But
what does it take to come up with an
algorithm as brilliant as quicksort, or as
clever as mergesort? Is it mostly a mixture
of luck and unanalyzable - almost mystical -
genius?
Or
are there specific enabling patterns and
conditions that usually obtain and which can
facilitate creative programming work?
Sample
Topics
- The
following is not an exhaustive list, but
gives some samples.
-
- Case
studies in human creativity and computer
programming.
-
- Application
of prior work in AI and creativity to
the automatic programming problem.
-
- New
approaches to automatic programming
based on systematic study of human
ingenuity, discovery, and creativity.
-
- What
is the role of diagrammatic thinking and
reasoning in visualizing data structures
and transformations on such data
structures during the
creative/exploratory part of
programming?
-
- What
is the role of non-deductive reasoning
in programming creativity?
Logistics
Should
you accept this invitation (by return email
ASAP), we would need to receive an extended
abstract for NA-CAP 2008 by March 1 2008.
All
submissions will be multiply refereed, and
authors of accepted abstracts will be
expected to modify their submissions to take
into account any cogent referee
recommendations that emerge.
Special
Journal Issue or Book
We
plan to have a select number of
abstracts-expanded-to-full-papers constitute
a special issue of a journal (or possibly an
edited book) on creativity and automatic
programming. Be advised even now that
submissions for such venues will need to be
pdf generated from underlying La-Tex, with
any figures in pdf format. Authors will need
to submit hard (snail mail to Bringsjord)
and electronic (attachments by email to
Bringsjord) copy.
|