[alife] ALife 9 workshop "Rethinking Life"

[Mark Bedau]

Rethinking Life: Scientific and Philosophical Perspectives

A Workshop at Artificial Life IX

Boston, 12 September 2004


Motivation: The nature of life is an age-old issue that has proved 
remarkably difficult to resolve. It is considered a grand challenge of 
artificial life (Bedau et al. 2000). Fifteen years ago the advent of 
“soft” artificial life (computational systems with life-like 
properties) gave the issue a new face and generated new unresolved 
controversies. “Wet” artificial life (novel life forms synthesized 
biochemically) is now on the horizon (Szostak, Bartel, and Luisi 2001, 
Rasmussen et al. 2003), prompting yet another re-examination of what 
life is. One of the motivations for this workshop is to rethink the 
controversies about life in the light of the new developments in wet 
artificial life.

At least since the time of Aristotle the nature of life has engaged 
both scientists and philosophers, but these two communities work 
largely in isolation from each other. Building bridges between them 
would surely benefit each. The new developments in wet artificial life 
are bound to galvanize the general public’s attention and spark a 
variety of reactions. Scientists and philosophers have both an 
opportunity and a responsibility to provide informed and thoughtful 
reflection about life to the public. Promoting this process is a second 
motivation for the workshop.

Scope: The questions to be addressed by this workshop include:

-	How should we understand the question “What is life?”
-	Why, if at all, is this question interesting?
-	How should we go about answering it?
-	How will we know when we have found the answer?
-	What today are the key open problems about the nature of life?
-	What are examples of important recent progress on the issue?
-	What special role can “soft” or “wet” artificial life play in 
resolving it?
-	What role should philosophy play?
-	What are the social and cultural implications of rethinking the 
nature of life?

Format: The bulk of the workshop will consist of a number of 20-30 
minute presentations, each followed by 15 minutes of discussion. A 
round-table discussion with audience participation will close the 
workshop.

Participation: The workshop speakers will include both scientists and 
philosophers. Most speakers will be invited but interested parties are 
welcome to send an extended abstract (3 pp.) to the organizer. The 
invited speakers (*confirmed) include:

	Chris Adami, Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences
	Mark Bedau*, Department of Philosophy, Reed College
	Carol Cleland*, Department of Philosophy, University of Colorado, 
Boulder
	Claus Emmeche*, Center for the Philosophy of Nature and Science 
Studies,
		University of Copenhagen
	John McCaskill, Biomolecular Information Processing,
		Ruhr University of Bochum University
	Takashi Ikegami*, Department of Physics, University of Tokyo
	Norman Packard*, ProtoLife S.r.l.
	Evelyn Fox Keller*, Science, Technology, and Society Program, MIT
	Barry McMullin, School of Electrical Engineering, Dublin City 
University
	Robert Pennock*, Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University
	Kelly Smith*, Department of Philosophy, Clemson University
	Jack Szostak, Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School
	Peter Wills*, Department of Physics, University of Auckland

Publication: Workshop participants have the opportunity to publish a 
paper in the Artificial Life IX Workshops Proceedings. The deadline for 
submission of camera-ready copy for this Proceedings is 5 August 2004. 
The organizer intends to publish a report on the workshop in the 
Artificial Life journal.

Venue: The workshop will occur in Boston on Sunday, 12 Sept 2004, as 
part of Artificial Life IX, The Ninth International Conference on the 
Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems. Workshop participants are 
required to register for Artificial Life IX. See http://alife9.org for 
registration and other information.

Organization: The workshop is organized by Mark Bedau.
	Email: bedau at reed.edu
	Web: www.reed.edu/~mab

References
M. Bedau, J. McCaskill, N. Packard, S. Rasmussen, C. Adami, D. Green, 
T. Ikegami, K. Kaneko, T. Ray. Open problems in artificial life. 
Artificial Life 6 (2000), 363-376.
S. Rasmussen, L. Chen, D. Deamer, D. Krakauer, N. Packard, P. Stadler, 
M. Bedau. Transitions from nonliving and living matter. Science 303 
(2004), 963-965.
J. Szostak, D. Bartel, P. Luisi. Synthesizing life. Nature 409 (2001), 
383-390