16.37, Calls: Semantics/USA; Cognitive Science/Italy

Tue Jan 11 19:24:49 UTC 2005

LINGUIST List: Vol-16-37. Tue Jan 11 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.37, Calls: Semantics/USA; Cognitive Science/Italy

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1)
Date: 09-Jan-2005
From: Guido Boella < guido at di.unito.it >
Subject: 2005 AAAI Fall Symposium, Roles, an interdisciplinary perspective

2)
Date: 05-Jan-2005
From: Stephen Cowley < s.j.cowley at herts.ac.uk >
Subject: Towards Social mechanisms of Android Science: A CogSci2005 Workshop

-------------------------Message 1 ----------------------------------
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 14:21:09
From: Guido Boella < guido at di.unito.it >
Subject:  2005 AAAI Fall Symposium, Roles, an interdisciplinary perspective

Full Title: 2005 AAAI Fall Symposium, Roles, an Interdisciplinary Perspective
Short Title: Roles05

Date: 03-Nov-2005 - 06-Nov-2005
Location: Arlington (Virginia), United States of America
Contact Person: Guido Boella
Meeting Email: guido at di.unito.it
Web Site: http://normas.di.unito.it/zope/roles05

Linguistic Field(s): Semantics

Call Deadline: 03-May-2005

Meeting Description:

The notion of role is ubiquitous not only in many areas of artificial intelligence, but also in many
other areas of computer science, like programming languages, software engineering, coordination
and databases, multiagent systems, computational linguistics and conceptual modelling, and also
in other scientific fields, like formal ontology, sociology, cognitive science, organizational science
and linguistics.

In sociology, on the one hand roles are often described as expected behavior of entities or agents,
on the other hand roles are seen also as presentations of selves. In organizational science roles
encompass more formal aspects such as rights and duties. Three different main viewpoints
characterize research on roles:

    * roles as named places in relationships (especially in linguistics, databases and conceptual
modelling)
    * roles as dynamic classification of entities (especially in programming languages and
databases)
    * roles as instances to be adjoined to the entities which play the role (especially in ontologies,
multiagent systems and programming languages).

Undisputed distinguishing features of roles seem to be their dependence on some other entities
and their dynamic character (Sowa 1984). These properties contrast roles with the notion of
natural types. Natural type seems to be essential to an entity: if an entity changes its natural type,
it loses its identity; in Guarino (1992)'s terms, roles lack the rigidity which natural types possess.
Masolo et al. (2004) elaborate the relational nature of roles, highlighting their definitional
dependence on other concepts.

Discussions on roles are important not only to have a better understanding of theories using this
notion, but also from the applicative point of view. E.g., integration of ontologies, programming
languages, databases, simulation can benefit from the introduction of a well founded notion of
role.

However, as, e.g., Steinmann (2000) witnesses, there is no common agreement yet about what
roles are, which are their properties and how they can be modelled in a uniform way in the
different areas. One likely reason is that roles are discussed in very different contexts, so that
interested researchers have little opportunity to meet with each other. Even if there are events
where roles are discussed, they always appear as a sub-topic within the framework of more
general issues (like the AOSE workshop about agent oriented software engineering, or the recent
CoOrg05 workshop at Coordination05); hence, there are few venues for research integration.
With this symposium we propose to gather researchers working across the boundaries of their
subfields to explore new formal and computational techniques and research methodologies for
integrating research results. For this reason this symposium will provide time for discussion
besides paper presentations.

Submissions

Researchers interested in making a presentation should submit a paper about theoretical or
applicative issues (not to exceed 5,000 words). Other participants should submit either a position
paper or a research abstract in order to be involved in the discussion. Submissions should be sent
to Guido Boella (guido at di.unito.it). Papers will be published in the symposium proceedings and
the best papers of the symposium will be selected for publication on some renowed journal.
Participants from all parts of the AI community as well as from other fields are encouraged.
Instructions for authors can be found at website http://aaai.org/Symposia/Fall/fall-symposia.html
Deadlines

    * May 3, 2005: Submission due to organizers
    * May 24, 2005: Notifications of acceptance sent by organizers
    * November 3-6, 2005: Symposium

Website

http://normas.di.unito.it/zope/roles05
Pdf version

Organizing Committee

Guido Boella - Dipartimento di Informatica, Universita' di Torino
guido[at]di.unito.it

James Odell - Agentis, Ann Arbor (MI) USA
mailbox[at]jamesodell.com

Leendert van der Torre - CWI Amsterdam, Netherlands
torre[at]cwi.nl

Harko Verhagen - DSV, KTH/SU, Sweden
verhagen[at]dsv.su.se

References

N. Guarino. Concepts, attributes and arbitrary relations. Data and Knowledge Engineering (8),
1992.

C. Masolo and L. Vieu and E. Bottazzi and C. Catenacci and R. Ferrario and A. Gangemi and N.
Guarino. Social roles and their descriptions. Procs. of KR04, 2004.

J.F. Sowa. Conceptual structures. Addison Wesley, NY. 1984.

F. Steimann. On the representation of roles in object-oriented and conceptual modelling. Data and
Knowledge Engineering (35), 2000.

Authors

    * Guido Boella
      Dipartimento di Informatica Universita' di Torino
    * Joris Hulstijn
      Utrect Universiteit
    * Luigi Sauro
      Dipartimento di Informatica Universita' di Torino
    * Leendert van der Torre
      CWI Amsterdam
    * Harko Verhagen
      DSV, K

-------------------------Message 2 ----------------------------------
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2005 14:21:14
From: Stephen Cowley < s.j.cowley at herts.ac.uk >
Subject:  Towards Social mechanisms of Android Science: A CogSci2005 Workshop

Full Title: Towards Social mechanisms of Android Science: A CogSci2005 Workshop

Date: 25-Jul-2005 - 26-Jul-2005
Location: Stresa, Italy
Contact Person: Karl MacDorman
Meeting Email: kfm at ams.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp
Web Site: http://www.androidscience.com

Linguistic Field(s): Cognitive Science

Call Deadline: 01-Feb-2005

Meeting Description:

The Worshop will launch the interdisciplinary field of Android Science.  It will be of interest to,
among others, linguists who are interested in using androids to explore hypotheses about the
mechanisms that underpin language, speech and real-time understanding.

Theme and goals
The embodiment of social and cognitive theories in interactive robots sets a high bar for their
evaluation. Theories that reify descriptions relying on a human interpreter for their grounding
cannot be implemented in autonomous systems. The demands of coherently integrating
responses cross-modally and coping with open, socially complex environments limit the
applicability of theories that ''grew up in the laboratory.'' Androids will be confronted with
circumstances that exhibit complex closely-coordinated social dynamics, where stable patterns
emerge at various spatial and temporal scales, and expectations depend in part on a histories of
interaction that are unique to individual relationships.

We define an android to be an artificial system that has humanlike behavior and appearance and
is capable of sustaining natural relationships with people. Although people may know that an
android is not human, they would treat it as if it were, owing to the largely subconscious responses
it would elicit. To pass the Total Turing Test, an android would need have the inclination toward
''mind reading'' that is characteristic of people. The development of androids is beyond the scope
of mere engineering because, to make the android humanlike, we must investigate human activity,
and to evaluate theories of human activity accurately, we need to implement them in an android.
Thus, we need an android science.

The aim of this workshop is to begin to lay a foundation for research in android science, a new
field that integrates the synthetic approach from robotics with the empirical methodologies of the
social sciences. Participants, coming from engineering and the social, cognitive, and biological
sciences seek fundamental principles underlying cognition and communication between
individuals. Cognition is not viewed as solely a property of brains, to be understood at a micro-
structural level, nor as socially-definable and separable from biomechanical or sensorimotor
constraints. By highlighting agent-world relations, androids have the potential for helping
researchers to bridge the gap between cognitive neuroscience and the behavioral sciences,
leading to a new way of understanding human beings. Thus, we hope to find principles that will
apply equally well to androids and Homo sapiens.

Topics of interest
- The role of affect and motivation in social development or communication
- Empathic relationships among people and/or robots
- Inter-species co-evolution, cooperation, and empathy
- Processes of socialization and enculturation
- Extended relationship
- Social learning and adaptation, especially from people
- The evolution, development, and nature of agency, intentionality, or social intelligence
- Software architectures for embodied social interaction
- The grounding, emergence, or acquisition of communicative signs or symbols
- Mimesis and its role in communication and development
- The development or implementation of hierarchies of meaning
- Models of personal, interindividual, group, or cultural norms
- Cross-modal synchronization or stabilized plasticity in speech and/or gesture
- Learning with and from machines
- Androids working alongside people as peers
- Applications in human environments
- Ethical issues concerning androids

- Intentional, contingent, and autonomic movement and their relation to conscious and
nonconscious processing

- The generation of natural, humanlike movements
- Perception of naturalness, attractiveness, or charisma
- The relationship between appearance and perceived behavior
- Android personalities
- Emotional intelligence
- The Total Turing Test

Target participants
Robotics engineers and computer scientists with an interest in artificial intelligence, machine
learning, pattern recognition, and control, especially those whose target platform includes
humanoid robots; psychologists and sociologists who are concerned with real-time embodied
communication or social development; cognitive scientists who are concerned with the relationship
between brain processes and social dynamics; social and comparative biologists; linguists and
philosophers.

The workshop is of interest to the target participants because androids will provide a critical test
bed for social and cognitive theories in the future, and research in this domain depends on
interdisciplinary collaboration between engineers and natural and social scientists.

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