Machine Consciousness 2011: Self, Integration and Explanation -- Call For Papers

A symposium to be held in conjunction with Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behaviour 2011 (AISB 2011), April 4-7 2011, University of York, UK

IMPORTANT: NEW deadline for abstracts of January 18th

The original deadline of 31 December 2010 was extended to 9 January 2011, and messages were posted to various mailing lists and on the MC 2011 website to that effect. Owing to an administrative error, the central AISB 2011 website indicated that the extension of the MC2011 abstract deadline was until 18 January. Because of the pressures of time between now and the actual workshop, we have to send abstracts to external members of our Programme Committee for evaluation, now, rather than wait until the 18th January. However, because of the exceptional circumstances we will consider abstracts up to 18 January; nevertheless, precedence will be given to those that were submitted by the 9th.

Submissions are invited for presentation at a two-day symposium as part of the AISB 2011 Convention.

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

Specific Foci

We encourage submissions falling under one of more of these topics:

• MC and Self modelling
• MC and Information integration
• The explanatory power of MC models
• MC and Neuroscience
• MC and Functional versus phenomenal consciousness
• MC Ethics

Orientation

Machine Consciousness 2011 will favour submissions that are based on implemented models, either in the sense that they detail actual or potential artefacts or that they seriously engage with previous published work or models, either by critiquing or extending that work. We favour new work - even if preliminary - over work which has received multiple publication elsewhere.

For more information on the themes and background of MC2011, please consult the website at http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cogs/mc2011.

Symposium Dates

The symposium will be held over two days as part of the AISB 2011 Convention, 4-7 April 2011.

• 27/10/10: First CFP distributed
  
• 24/11/10: Second CFP distributed
  
• 15/12/10: Final CFP distributed
• 18/01/11: Extended Deadline for submission of abstracts (from 31/12/10)
• 31/01/11: Notification of accepted papers
  
• 14/02/11: Camera ready papers due (for inclusion in AISB proceedings)
  
• TBA: Early registration deadline (NB symposium attendees must register for the full convention)
  
• 4-7 April 2011: AISB 2011 convention.

Publication

All accepted papers will be published in an AISB proceedings produced for the Convention.

Selected papers from the symposium will form the basis of special issue (June 2011) of the International Journal of Machine Consciousness.

Student submissions

In previous years there have been awards for the best student paper, and limited student bursaries. Details TBA.

Symposium Co-Chairs

Ron Chrisley, Rob Clowes*, Steve Torrance

Centre for Research in Cognitive Science and School of Informatics, University of Sussex, UK
*IFL, Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Programme Committee

• Igor Aleksander - Imperial College, UK
• Raúl Arrabales - Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain
• Mike Beaton - Imperial College, UK and University of Sussex, UK
• Antonio Chella - University of Palermo, Italy
• Stan Franklin - University of Memphis, USA
• David Gamez - Imperial College, UK
• Pentti Haikonen - University of Illinois at Springfield, USA
• Germund Hesslow - Lund University, Sweden
• Owen Holland - University of Sussex, UK
• Takashi Ikegami - University of Tokyo, Japan
• Frédéric Kaplan - École Polytechnique Fédérale De Lausanne, Switzerland
• Benjamin Kuipers - University of Michigan, USA
• Riccardo Manzotti - University of Milan, Italy
• Thomas Metzinger - Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Gemany
• Ricardo Sanz - Universidad Politecnica de Madrid, Spain
• Murray Shanahan - Imperial College, UK
• John Taylor - King's College London, UK
• Jun Tani - RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Saitama, Japan
• Tom Ziemke - University of Skövde, Sweden

Submissions

Extended abstracts of not more than 500 words (plus references) should be submitted via the EasyChair system.

The EasyChair AISB-11 Web page is http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aisb11.

If you have no EasyChair account you should create an account, by clicking on the "I have no EasyChair account" link on the page.

Each abstract will receive at least two reviews.

Final papers should be no longer than eight pages.

Templates for full papers from a previous convention can be found at http://www.aisb.org.uk/convention/aisb10/styleFiles/

Websites

MC 2011 Symposium : http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cogs/mc2011
AISB 2011 Convention: http://www.aisb.org.uk/convention/aisb11/

Organised in association with: