Final Call for Papers for:

Next Generation approaches to Machine Consciousness: Imagination, Development, Intersubjectivity, and Embodiment.

Abstract Submission by: November 7th 2004

Submissions are invited for presentation at a two-day symposium as part of the AISB 2005 Convention on Social Intelligence and Interaction in Animals, Robots and Agents (12-15 April, University of Hertfordshire, de Havilland Campus, Hatfield, England).

Machine Consciousness (MC) concerns itself with the study and creation of artefacts which have mental characteristics typically associated with consciousness such as (self-) awareness, emotion, affect, phenomenal states, imagination, etc.

Recently, developments in AI and robotics, especially through the prisms of behavioural and epigenetic robotics, have stressed the embodied, interactive and developmental nature of intelligent agents which are now regarded by many as essential to engineering human-level intelligence. Some recent work has suggested that giving robots imaginative or simulation capabilities might be a big step towards achieving MC. Other studies have emphasized 'second person' issues such as intersubjectivity and empathy as a substrate for human consciousness. Alongside this, the infant-caregiver relationship has been recognised as essential to the development of consciousness in its specifically human form.

Until now, most have considered these issues as, at best, tangential to the creation of artificial consciousness. This symposium proposes to bring them into greater focus and explore the contribution such work might make to next generation approaches to MC.

Submissions are especially invited on the following topics in their relation to MC:

• Imagination
• Development
• Enactive Approaches
• Heterophenomenology
• Synthetic Phenomenology
• Intersubjectivity
• Ethics
• General aspects (techniques, theories, constraints)

See http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cogs/mc-background for more information.

Preference will be given to submissions that are:

• Relevant: closely related to the themes of the symposium
• Implemented: based on working robotic or other implemented systems
• Novel: not previously presented elsewhere

However, it is not expected that all accepted submissions will meet all three criteria of preference.

Symposium Dates

Symposium will be held on the 12 and 13th April 2005 as part of the AISB,05 Convention.

**1 September 2004: First CFP distributed.
**20 October 2004: Second CFP distributed.
**31 October 2004: Final CFP distributed.
**7 November 2004: (Extended) deadline for submission of abstracts.
**25 November 2004: Notification of accepted papers will be sent out.
**17 December 2004: Camera ready papers due (for inclusion in AISB proceedings)
**14 January 2005: Early registration deadline (NB symposium attendees must register for the full convention)
**12-15 April 2005: AISB 2005 convention.

Publication

All accepted papers will be published as an AISB proceedings produced for the conference.

The Chairs intend to publish selected papers proceedings in a book or journal special issue to follow the conference.

Symposium Co-Chairs

Ron Chrisley - Centre for Cognitive Science (COGS), University of Sussex
Rob Clowes - Centre for Cognitive Science (COGS), University of Sussex

Scientific Committee

• Igor Aleksander - Imperial College, UK and COGS Sussex

• Giovanna Colombetti - York University, Canada

• Rodney Cotterill - Technical University of Denmark

• Pentti Haikonen - Cognitive Technology Group, Nokia Research Center, Finland

• Germund Hesslow - Department of Physiological Sciences, Sweden

• Owen Holland - University of Essex, UK

• Takashi Ikegami - University of Tokyo, Japan

• Miguel Salichs - University Carlos III Madrid, Spain

• Ricardo Sanz - Autonomous Systems Lab, Madrid, Spain

• Murray Shanahan - Imperial College, UK

• Matthias Scheutz - Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Laboratory, Austria

• Jun Tani - Brain Science Institute, Riken, Japan

• Steve Torrance - Department of Psychology, University of Middlesex, UK and COGS Sussex

• Tom Ziemke - School of Humanities and Informatics, University of Skövde, Sweden

Extended abstracts of not more than 500 words (plus references) should be submitted in plain text to :

Rob Clowes
Centre for Research in Cognitive Science.
University of Sussex
Falmer BN1 9QH
United Kingdom
+44 (0)1273 638317
Email : robertc at cogs.susx.ac.uk (please note '@' should be inserted for ' at '. This is as an attempt to avoid spam).

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