Corpora: Final Call: Conference on Consciousness and Cognition

Robert L. Campbell (campber@CLEMSON.EDU)
Mon, 15 Mar 1999 15:29:10 -0500

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Please distribute; apologies for any duplicate postings

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! "Mind-IV: TWO SCIENCES OF MIND" !
! Final Call !
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Keynote addresses:

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! Bernard Baars !
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! The Compassionate Implications of Brain Imaging of !
! Conscious Pain: New Vistas in Applied Cognitive Science. !
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! Stuart Hammeroff !
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! Quantum Computing and Consciousness !
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"Mind-IV: TWO SCIENCES OF MIND"

Dublin City University

Monday 16th - Thursday 19th August, 1999

http://www.compapp.dcu.ie/~tdoris/mind4.html

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The invited talks also include:

David Galin "The Experience of 'Spirit' in Cognitive Terms."

Jacob Needleman "Inner and Outer Empiricism in
Consciousness Research"

Steve Nachmanovitch "Creativity and Consiousness"

Each of these talks will be followed by a panel discussion discussing
respectively, consciousness as explored experientially, through
scientific investigation, and in the arts.

Conference chair; Sean O Nuallain

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Stream 1:

Co-chairs:

Sean O Nuallain
Dublin City University,
Dublin 9,
Ireland
sonualla@compapp.dcu.ie

Bernard Baars
Wright Institute, Berkeley, Ca
Baars@cogsci.berkeley.edu
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! Outer and Inner empiricism in consciousness research !
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This stream will feature papers that attempt to show how "inner" states
can be elucidated with reference to external phenomena. "Inner
empiricism" designates experience, or qualia. They are shaped (somehow)

by brain processes or states which sense and interpret the external
phenomena. The physical nature of these processes or states may tell
us much about consciousness. Likewise, the argument that we are
conscious of only one thing at a time because of the gating action of
the nuclei reticularis thalami (Taylor, Baars, etc) is indicative of
the kind of thinking we are trying to encourage. In this vein, pain
experience and its imperfect relationship to neural activity are
similarly relevant. We particularly welcome papers that feature
empirical data, or, lacking these data, show a grasp of the range of
disciplines necessary to do justice to the topic.

Papers are also invited that

- Interpret qualia in terms of a quantum-mechanics based
panpsychism (or, in current terms, pan-protopsychism)

- Establish links with developments like Whitehead's
pan-experientialism and process thought

- Interrelate physiological processes at the neural level with
current thought in QM

- Emphasize "relational empiricism", ie second-person
considerations

- Investigate the brain processes or states giving rise to
qualia at whatever level the writer considers appropriate
(eg intra-cellular cytoskeletal activities and/or
quantum-level phenomena).

- Involve studies of central pain states as well as other
curiosities like allodynia, spontaneous analgesia, pain
asymbolia, and hypnotic analgesia.

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Stream 2:

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! Foundations of Cognitive Science !
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Co-chairs:

Sean O Nuallain
Dublin City University,
Dublin 9,
Ireland
sonualla@compapp.dcu.ie

Robert L. Campbell
Department of Psychology,
Clemson University,
Clemson,
SC USA
campber@clemson.edu

WHAT THE STREAM IS ABOUT

Though deep and contentious questions of theory and metatheory have
always been prevalent in Cognitive Science--they arise whenever an
attempt is made to define CS as a discipline--they have frequently
been downrated by researchers, in favor of empirical work that
remains safely within the confines of established theories and methods.

Our goal to is redress the balance. We encourage participants in this
stream to raise and discuss such questions as:

* the adequacy of computationalist accounts of mind

* the adequacy of conceptions of mental representation as structures
that encode structures out in the environment

* the consequences of excluding emotions, consciousness, and the social
realm from the purview of cognitive studies

* the consequences of Newell and Simon's "scientific bet" that
developmental constraints do not have to be studied until detailed
models of adult cognition have been constructed and tested

* the relationship between cognitive science and formal logic

A wide range of theoretical perspectives is welcome, so long as the
presenters are willing to engage in serious discussion with the
proponents of perspectives that are different from their own:

* Vygotskian approaches to culture and cognition

* Dynamic Systems theories

* Piagetian constructivism

* interactivism

* neuroscience accounts such as those of Edelman and Grossberg

* accounts of emergence in general, and emergent knowledge in
particular

* perception and action robotics

* functional linguistics

* genetic algorithms

* Information ProcesSing

* connectionism

* evolutionary epistemology

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Submission details:

Contributors will be asked to submit short papers (3000 word limit) in
the form of ASCII text files (HTML files are also welcome, but are
optional) to Robert Campbell (for stream 2) and Sean O Nuallain
(stream
1).

E-mails
campber@CLEMSON.EDU

sean@compapp.dcu.ie

The deadline is April 5, 1999. We will email notification of
acceptance
or rejection by April 19.

The standard presentations during the streams will be 20-minute talks
and poster sessions.

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Publication of Proceedings:

The "MIND" conferences have normally had their proceedings published by
John Benjamins. We have already been approached by prospective
publishers for Mind 4. All accepted papers and posters will be
included
in a preprint.
Previous publications; (Both John Benjamins)
"Two Sciences Of Mind"; ed O Nuallain et al(1997) (proceedings of
Mind 1)
"Spatial cognition and multimedia" ed O Nuallain(in press)
(proceedings of Mind 3)
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Program Committee:
Bernard Baars
Mark Bickhard
Robert Campbell
Christian de Quincey
Stuart Hammeroff
Paul Mc Kevitt
Kathy McGovern
Steven Nachmanovitch
Jacob Needleman
Sean O Nuallain
Yoshi Nakamura
Max Velmans
Terry Winegar

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Mind-4 is the official annuual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society of
Ireland. The other CSSI conference is;

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! !
! "LANGUAGE, VISION & MUSIC" !
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! The Eighth International Workshop on the !
! Cognitive Science of Natural Language Processing (CSNLP-8) !
! !
! National University of Ireland, Galway (NUI Galway) !
! GALWAY, IRELAND !
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! Monday 9th - Wednesday 11th August, 1999 !
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! (http://www.it.ucg.it/csnlp8/) !
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Robert L. Campbell
Professor, Psychology
Brackett Hall 410A
Clemson University
Clemson, SC 29634-1511 USA
phone (864) 656-4986
fax (864) 656-0358
http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~campber/index.html
Editor, Dialogues in Psychology
http://hubcap.clemson.edu/psych/Dialogues/dialogues.html