About the Symposium

INTRODUCTION

This symposium offers an occasion to discuss the problem of <representation> and its connections to <reality> in humans, other animals and machines. More specifically, we are interested in what capacities can plausibly be understood in computational terms and what are the most promising approaches that try to solve the problem.

WE AIM TO DISCUSS THE FOLLOWING TOPICS RELATED TO THE PROBLEM OF REPRESENTATION:

1. The point of view of connectionism and dynamical systems (Scheutz, Clark, Juarrero, Kaneko and Tsuda, O’Brien, Horgan, Trenholme), namely the different proposals including those that argue for the possibility to rule out representation and in some cases also question the computational character of the underlying processes.
2. A plausible strategy to analyze the problem of representation from a philosophical perspective which implies the comparison between the capacities and skills in humans, other living organisms and machines. Searle presented an interesting theory of representation based on the mind’s capacities to represent objects and to the linguistic capacities to extend the Representation to social entities. Putnam, on the contrary, criticizes the role of images in representational activity. The Kantian notion is inherited by authors such as McDowell and Campbell. Differently, we can intend the notion of representation in inferentialist terms as introduced by Robert Brandom. We look at some interesting results in AI and AL in this context as well.
3. Evolutionary aspects of the development of increasingly complex capacities in (embodied, embedded) living organisms to process information in the interaction with the environment and as a consequence develop new morphological structures – morphogenesis, meta-morphogenesis.