Philosophy’s Relevance in Information Science: Call for Papers

The University of Paderborn organises the symposium on Philosophy’s Relevance in Information Science in association with the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP) and SIG Philosophy and Informatics.

The conference aims to present the multilayered reciprocal effects between philosophical basic reflection and applied research in the context of Philosophy and Information Science. It addresses a larger public and offers a forum of discussion between experts from different specialist areas. [From Philosophy's Relevance in Information Science 2008]

 

The submission deadline is 15 August 2008.

Philosophy and Computing at E-CAP 2008 in Montpellier, France

The European chapter of the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP) held its yearly conference E-CAP in Montpellier, France. I am still delighted and honoured to have been invited to the conference again. This year, I did not give a talk, but became a member of the E-CAP steering committee.

This conference introduced for the first time Wiki-Debate, a new tool that allows commenting and discussing the accepted abstracts. E-CAP 2008 was a trial run for this new kind of conference preparation and participation. At last year’s E-CAP 2007 (see my blog entries [1], [2], [3], and [4]) I was lucky to discuss the concept of Wiki-Debate with Jean Sallantin, this year’s conference chair. I had pointed Jean to Stéphane Lauriére at XWiki. After that, Jean and I had, unfortunately, lost contact to each other. I was happily surprised about seeing Wiki-Debate implemented. I look forward to working on its improvement as Wiki-Debate is intended to be used at E-CAP 2009 organised by Jordi Vallverdú in Barcelona.

The programme of the conference was manifold. Typical for a multi-disciplinary conference.

Introduction and closing were a bit too informal for my liking, but one got used to this stress-free way of running a conference over the three days

Initially, it was planned to organise the agendas of days two and three according to the interests stated in Wiki-Debate by conference participants. But as the implementation was running a bit late a prepared agenda needed to be used instead. There were several complaints from participants that they had trouble to plan their travel itineraries because there was no agenda outline whatsoever on the website. We will take care of this and a lack of transparency about what was going on next year.

From the many interesting talks I would like to mention just two:

Carson Reynolds, MIT alumni and Assistant Professor at the University of Tokyo, discussed the question of whether perception is bodily and how perception can be manipulated. Migraines and artificial sensors such as cochlear implants (hearing aide) give evidence that perception is bodily. Additional support is provided by artificial synesthesia or fusion of senses, e.g., when sounds are smelled or colours are heard. The goal of this research is to use the ability of our body to learn to react to new stimuli, to produce new sensations / perception that do not exist yet. Carson showed a short (and quite funny) video where test participants wore blindfolds. Around the head they wore a number of sensor-actor units that can detect the distance of another object. The closer an object is to the head the stronger the actor vibrated. The test person easily avoids other objects based on which sensors vibrates and how strong the vibration is. They learn to use the new sensation. Very entertaining and very interesting.

Another very interesting talk was given be Jean-Gabriel Ganascia, Professor at Paris VI university, on “The Soul-Machine Quarrel”. This talk was in part lecture-like, in the most positive sense as it wrapped up philosophical discussions of a few thousand years with a clear focus. Jean-Gabriel compared definitions of “soul” given by Descartes as well as Aristotle, where the first attributes a soul only to humans and the latter distinguished three levels of soul. He then poses the question whether machines can possess a soul and of which kind that possibly would be. In the end, the talk left the answer open, but the talk was nevertheless thought-provoking.

I am looking very much forward to next years conference with the full intention of submitting an abstract this time.

[More photos on my flickr account: E-CAP 2008 and Montpellier]

5th International Workshop on Philosophy and Informatics WSPI 2008

Already several weeks ago my 5th International Workshop on Philosophy and Informatics took place at the new institute building in Kaiserslautern. The workshop started with a very well received and very well attended keynote talk by Prof. Luciano Floridi on “Understanding the information turn: the fourth revolution”. Luciano presented the coming of the information age as information revolution where we become inforgs, informational organisms, living in an infosphere. The information revolution can be seen as the fourth revolution after humanity moved away from a heliocentric world view (first revolution), learned that humans evolved from common ancestors over time (second revolution), and recognised the power of our unconsciousness (third revolution). His discussion of the effects of this revolution for our future were thought-provoking and left a deep impression with the attendees as I learned in quite a few discussions even weeks later.

The keynote set the tone for the rest of the workshop. Most presentations are available from the agenda at workshop homepage. The proceedings are available online as CEUR workshop proceedings, Vol-332.

1st Sino-German Symposium on Knowledge Handling

[Update: Here is the link to the symposium website!]

Klaus Mainzer, philosophy professor at University of Augsburg, and Jiyou Jia, professor at the department of educational technology at Peking University, organised this interdisciplinary symposium at the Sino-German Center for Research Promotion (see also here). The event provided me with the opportunity to get in contact with quite a lot of interesting people, and I took this opportunity

Over the course of two and a half days 28 presentations where given, 14 by each delegation. The presentations ranged from natural language processing and e-learning over cognitive systems, knowledge theory, and embodiment to knowledge management, supply-chain management, and human computer interaction.

I gave a talk “On explanation: Supporting the Use of Complex Information Systems”, which got quite some response. One participant voiced definitive interest. We will have to work out how to collaborate.

One of the presented systems I liked immediately and which I like to promote here is GroupMe!:

It combines Semantic Web technologies and Web 2.0 technologies, and demonstrates a new kind of social tagging system.

There were a lot more interesting going on. A website with the presentations will be set up at Peking University and I will link the information here as soon as it is available. You can find pictures from symposium participants on my flickr account (here and here).

The symposium closed with a visit of the National Laboratory of Pattern Recognition and a walk through the beautiful Peking university campus (photos).

5. International Workshop on Philosophy and Informatics, WSPI 2008

The next workshop on Philosophy and Informatics, WSPI 2008, will take place on April 1–2, 2008, in Kaiserslautern. It is organised by the special interest group on Philosophy and Informatics and the Department of Philosophy, University of Kaiserslautern.

I am very proud to announce that Luciano Floridi, president of the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP), accepted the invitation to give a keynote talk at the workshop.

[composed and posted with ecto]

ECAP, Day #3

[UPDATE] I have been asked by Susan Stuart, E-CAP director, to become member of the E-CAP Steering Committee. Of course, I accepted!

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The long second day with lots of talks and the very nice conference dinner last evening wore me down. My concentration this morning was lousy …

As the keynote talk “Empirical databases, networks, and their logic” by Giovanni Boniolo from the Department of Philosophy, Padova / European Scholl of Molecular Medicine, Milano / Firc Institute of Molecular Oncology, Milano, was outside my scope of research work I could not really appreciate it. But according to comments and questions it was quite good

There is only one other talk I’d like to mention, a talk that got me worked up a bit: “The concept of the Semantic Web and its flaws” by Jean Robillard from Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). It was again one of those talks promising the failure of the Semantic Web. I hope I got the point across that the Semantic Web does not exist yet and not (only) in the way he described, and that it is a bit premature to state or predict its failure.

Thinking about his claims afterwards I think the main problem with his talk is the premise that there exists a “concept of the Semantic Web”. As I understand Tim Berners-Lee and Co’s Scientific American article and his keynote talk last year at AAAI-06 in Boston, the Semantic Web is a vision for the future, a vision many people are working towards. There are many interpretations. And the interpretation that Jean Robillard chose is indeed questionable to become reality.

More presentations are to come. Some more business with the E-CAP organisers needs to be done until I can drive home in the evening.

P.S.: I am an IACAP member as of today.

[composed and posted with ecto]

ECAP, Day #2

And still more from the European Computing and Philosophy Conference ECAP 2007 …

The second day of ECAP is quite packed. Since nine o’clock in the morning until after seven in the evening three tracks are firing one presentation after the other on me. Some discussions I can follow …

The morning started with the keynote talk “The unsolved mystery of why evolution is so creative” by Mark A. Bedau from Reed College, Portland / European Center for Living Technology, Venice / ProtoLife SRL, Venice. Mark Bedau presented the arrow of complexity hypothesis: “Evolution inherently creates increasingly complex adaptive organisations”. There is no answer to this hypothesis yet, but by capturing the essence of complex systems in computer models and observing robust regularities we may come up with a model of evolutionary creativity. This talks very much showed how important models and the task of modelling have become.

On the panel on “The future of artificial intelligence”, chaired by Jordi Vallverdú, Paul van der Vet, Anton Nijholt, Susan Stuart, Mark Bedau, and I presented previous and current work, and how we look at the future of AI. My main point: Future AI is coupled to the (Social & Semantic) Web! (see slides)

Now, more presentations to go, and a conference dinner to enjoy!

[composed and posted with ecto]

ECAP, Day #1, morning

I am at the European Computing and Philosophy Conference ECAP 2007 at the University of Twente, The Netherlands.

Already yesterday I met by chance next year’s organiser, Jean Sallantin, Research Director at LIRM (Montpellier Laboratory of Computer Science, Robotics, and Microelectronics). He has some interesting and challenging ideas on Wiki-usage for preparing the next conference. As he thinks already about using XWiki, Stéphane Laurière, my trusted colleague in the Nepomuk project, was the logical connection to make. And there are some other interesting ideas.

The conference started with some introductions and welcome notes. One was given by Luciano Floridi, President of the International Association of Computing and Philosophy IACAP, which is doing quite good on “the market of philosophical thinking”. He provided an overview of the IACAP structure with the three chapters (Asian Pacific) APCAP, (European) ECAP, and (North American) NACAP, each with their own successful conference. Expansion plans are under work for creating a Latin American chapter (LACAP) and for including China, Japan, and India. Going for a non-profit organisation is another important step, a step IACAP needs to take in order to give the association a legal form. Luciano Floridi asked us to advertise IACAP. Well: Become a member, dear reader, and support IACAP.

The conference’s first and very interesting keynote talk was given by Jeroen van der Hoven (Delft University of Technology and Australian National University) on “The ethics of Wideware Engineering”. Wideware (or “cognitive scaffolding”) encompasses more than hardware or software. At least, that is my understanding now. Quoting Clark and Chalmer’s “extended mind hypothesis”, “the mind leaks into the environment. […] Where does the mind stop and where does the rest o the world begin?”. This corresponds quite well to the semantic desktop and its metaphor of a “semantically enlarged supplement to [human] memory”.

Thought-provoking, at least for me, was Jeroen van der Hoven’s analysis of “epistemic enslavement”. For example, a flight operator in his epistemic niche (his technical environment, which provides data on flight paths etc.) needs to believe what is presented to him screen. In his epistemic niche there is no opting-out for the narrowly embedded user of the system. “If I believe that the system provides the output (p) on good grounds, then I myself have good grounds to believe that (p).” This is called epistemic dependence. The user here has no cognitive ability to find non-obvious defeaters! From all that follows epistemic enslavement. “Non-compliance with system output constitutes taking a moral risk the user cannot justify at the moment of non-compliance.” For example, the flight operator cannot think for himself. He needs to rely on the system.

The basic ethical issue, thus, in Wideware Engineering is: “Do we get epistemic enhancement/engineering at the expense of our moral autonomy (”think for yourself“)?” I believe my research on explanation heads exactly into that direction where decision support systems are concerned, in order to provide the user with the information to lessen the moral risk mentioned above. Of course, such real-time systems in flight control are an extreme, but expert or decision support systems in medicine also need to deal with the issue of responsibility.

So much for now …

[composed and posted with ecto]

All I want to be

John Maeda’s Haiku [1] got me thinking …

[1] Maeda’s SIMPLICITY: Think-Make-Think

[composed and posted with ecto]

E-CAP 2007: Panel on “The Future of Artificial Intelligence”

I have been invited for participating in the plenary panel on ‘The Future of Artificial Intelligence’ at E-CAP 2007. The fifth European Conference on Computing and Philosophy (ECAP) will be held on the campus of the University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands. (See also my special interest group on Philosophy and Informatics.)