[alife] 2nd Call for Abstracts: The Biological Foundations of Enactivism

Eran Agmon agmon.eran at gmail.com
Fri Apr 22 05:09:06 PDT 2016


Dear Friends and Colleagues,

This is a call for abstracts for a workshop on “The Biological Foundations
of Enactivism,” which will be held at ALIFE XV in Cancun, Mexico.

While enactivism is a growing force in cognitive science, we believe it is
time to revisit its contributions to biology, and particularly to the
origins of life. While the ongoing maintenance of autonomous systems has
received a great deal of attention in the enaction community, we wish to
draw attention to how such systems could originate and more broadly, the
role of autonomy in the origin(s) of life. The workshop will bring together
researchers in enactive cognition, computational modeling, biology and
philosophy to revisit the biological foundations of enactivism. The main
aims are (1) to revitalize the discussion of autonomy, with the goal of
grounding it in quantitative definitions based in observable physical
phenomena, and (2) to revisit the topic of the origins of life from an
enactive perspective, by focusing on the question of how a new autonomous
agent can emerge where none existed before; or perhaps equivalently, how
normativity can first emerge from the abiotic physical world.

*Submissions to the workshop are extended abstracts (1 or 2 pages). *Abstracts
should be prepared following the ALife XV paper format. Contributions may
be original or previously published. Please be aware that selection will be
largely on the basis of how directly the abstract addresses the main themes
of the meeting. Accepted abstracts will be placed on the workshop’s web
site for free download. Authors of accepted submissions will present their
project to the workshop in a 5-10 minute talk.

*Submission deadline is May 13, 2016. There will be no extensions.* Please
send your abstract to: agmon.eran at gmail.com

*Notifications will be sent by May 27, 2016.  *

Please consult the website for more information:
https://biologicalenactivism.wordpress.com

Best regards,
Eran Agmon
Nathaniel Virgo
Tom Froese
Matthew Egbert

-- 
Eran Agmon
Cognitive Science and Complex Systems, Indiana University
http://eagmon.tumblr.com/


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