Representation And Reality In Humans Other Living Organisms And Intelligent Machines

This book enriches our views on representation and deepens our understanding of its different aspects. It arises out of several years of dialog between the editors and the authors, an interdisciplinary team of highly experienced researchers, and it reflects the best contemporary view of representation and reality in humans, other living beings, and intelligent machines. Structured into parts on the cognitive, computational, natural sciences, philosophical, logical, and machine perspectives, a theme of the field and the book is building and presenting networks, and the editors hope that the contributed chapters will spur understanding and collaboration between researchers in domains such as computer science, philosophy, logic, systems theory, engineering, psychology, sociology, anthropology, neuroscience, linguistics, and synthetic biology.

This is the first attempt to delineate the synthetic field of the theoretical study of information, treating information as the basic phenomenon on the fundamental level of the world, encompassing nature, technology, individuals and society. The exploration of information is done within Info-computational approaches, to natural and social phenomena such as Bioinformatics, Information Physics, Informational Chemistry, Computational Physics, Cognitive and Social sciences, with special emphasis on interdisciplinary, crossdisciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge.The book presents results of collaboration across research fields within info-computational and info-structural frameworks, in attempt to better theoretically and conceptually capture the phenomenon of information and its dynamics (such as computation and communication), as they appear on different levels of organization, on different scales and in different contexts.

This book gathers contributions from the fourth edition of the Conference on "Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence" (PT-AI), held on 27-28th of September 2021 at Chalmers University of Technology, in Gothenburg, Sweden. It covers topics at the interface between philosophy, cognitive science, ethics and computing. It discusses advanced theories fostering the understanding of human cognition, human autonomy, dignity and morality, and the development of corresponding artificial cognitive structures, analyzing important aspects of the relationship between humans and AI systems, including the ethics of AI. This book offers a thought-provoking snapshot of what is currently going on, and what are the main challenges, in the multidisciplinary field of the philosophy of artificial intelligence.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, Living Machines 2018, held in Paris, France, in July 2018.The 40 full and 18 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 60 submissions. The theme of the conference targeted at the intersection of research on novel life-like technologies inspired by the scientific investigation of biological systems, biomimetics, and research that seeks to interface biological and artificial systems to create biohybrid systems.

The unique compendium re-assesses the value of future and emergent computing technologies via artistic and philosophical means. The book encourages scientists to adopt inspiring thinking of artists and philosophers to reuse scientific concepts in their works.The useful reference text consists of non-typical topics, where artistic and philosophical concepts encourage readers to adopt unconventional approaches towards computing and immerse themselves into discoveries of future emerging landscape.Related Link(s)

This book reports on the results of the third edition of the premier conference in the field of philosophy of artificial intelligence, PT-AI 2017, held on November 4 - 5, 2017 at the University of Leeds, UK. It covers: advanced knowledge on key AI concepts, including complexity, computation, creativity, embodiment, representation and superintelligence; cutting-edge ethical issues, such as the AI impact on human dignity and society, responsibilities and rights of machines, as well as AI threats to humanity and AI safety; and cutting-edge developments in techniques to achieve AI, including machine learning, neural networks, dynamical systems. The book also discusses important applications of AI, including big data analytics, expert systems, cognitive architectures, and robotics. It offers a timely, yet very comprehensive snapshot of what is going on in the field of AI, especially at the interfaces between philosophy, cognitive science, ethics and computing.

The topic of this book is mental representation, a theoretical concept that lies at the core of cognitive science. Together with the idea that thinking is analogous to computational processing, this concept is responsible for the "cognitive turn" in the sciences of the mind and brain since the 1950s. Conceiving of cognitive processes (such as perception, reasoning, and motor control) as consisting of the manipulation of contentful vehicles that represent the world has led to tremendous empirical advancements in our explanations of behaviour. Perhaps the most famous discovery that explains behavior by appealing to the notion of mental representations was the discovery of 'place' cells that underlie spatial navigation and positioning, which earned researchers John O'Keefe, May-Britt Moser, and Edvard I. Moser a joint Nobel Prize in 2014. And yet, despite the empirical importance of the concept, there is no agreed definition or theoretical understanding of mental representation. This book constitutes a state-of-the-art overview on the topic of mental representation, assembling some of the leading experts in the field and allowing them to engage in meaningful exchanges over some of the most contentious questions. The collection gathers both proponents and critics of the notion, making room for debates dealing with the theoretical and ontological status of representations, the possibility of formulating a general account of mental representation which would fit our best explanatory practices, and the possibility of delivering such an account in fully naturalistic terms. Some contributors explore the relation between mutually incompatible notions of mental representation, stemming from the different disciplines composing the cognitive sciences (such as neuroscience, psychology, and computer science). Others question the ontological status and explanatory usefulness of the notion. And finally, some try to sketch a general theory of mental representations that could face the challenges outlined in the more critical chapters of the volume.