IMPORTANT INFORMATION
- Full program now available
- Download: Workshop handout with contributors' full papers
TOPIC, GOALS & METHODS
The topic of the workshop is the status, research agenda and conceptual discussion of simulation models of autonomous systems, as one of the main goals of Artificial Life and a key notion for the understanding and modeling of biological and cognitive organization.
The main goals of the workshop are:
- a) to clarify conceptually and pragmatically the notion of autonomy (and related concepts such as autopoiesis, closure to efficient causation, meaning, etc.),
- b) to overview and evaluate past achievemets/failures on the simulation of autonomous systems,
- c) discussion of “in principle” difficulties of computability/simulation of autonomy,
- d) discussion of a possible roadmap for future research agendas.
On the methodological side we will encourage discussions based on simulation models; as conceptual tools to delve into the recursive, integrated and embodied nature of autonomous systems. The idea is to avoid, as much as possible, speculative discussion without a clear synthetic background for clarification and hypothesis testing. Contributions will be opened to simulation models of basic/autopoietic/metabolic (biological) autonomy as well as neural/sensorimotor/behavioral (cognitive) autonomy. A more limited number of papers dealing with historical reviewing and philosophical or mathematical approaches will also be accepted.
