-------- Original-Nachricht -------- Betreff: Workshop on Machine Self-Replication/ALife X Conference Datum: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 23:13:23 -0800 Von: William R. Buckley bill.buckley@gmail.com Organisation: "OptimaNumerics" An: Computational Science Mailing List computational.science@lists.optimanumerics.com
Dear Reader:
This email is sent to you in announcement of the Call for Participation respecting the recently accepted Workshop on Machine Self-Replication, to be held in association with the Tenth International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems (ALife X). The workshop will be held on June 3, 2006 at the venue of Indiana University, in the city of Bloomington, Indiana, USA.
It is my request that you each take opportunity to post a printed copy of the Call for Participation (found just below this statement) in the halls of your respective institutions, and to forward a copy of this email both to colleagues of other institutions in your same field of study, and to such other departments within your institution as may find the subject of the workshop to be of interest. Examples of other departments include mathematics, biology, and engineering.
With your help, news of this workshop can achieve total world-wide distribution, and the input of every interested researcher can be heard.
Recipients of forwarded copies of this email are also requested to assist in the distribution of the attached Call for Participation.
Thank you very much for your kind attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
William R. Buckley Member of the Organising Committee Workshop on Machine Self-Replication
=================================================== Call For Participation - Workshop on Machine Self-Replication ===================================================
ALife X
Indiana University June 3, 2006
Workshop on Machine Self-Replication
to all biologists, systems and molecular; and chemists, bio or not; to computer scientists, and mathematicians; to handlers of systems complex; to philosophers, and those in work artificial
A Call to Participate
An age of self-replicating machines will soon be upon us, diverse in form and scale; a new state in the existence of man, made possible by biotechnology, electro-mechanical robotics, nanotechnology, and other applied sciences. The act of self-replication may not constitute sufficient basis upon which to judge a machine as living. Yet, by reductionist conception, biological organisms are self-replicating machines. Whether self-replication represents to life a ceiling, or a floor, is an open question.
Is self-replication sufficient grist for the natural selection mill that life necessarily emerges?
If not, there must be some character missing from our machine model. This is the purpose of this workshop, a debate of the role of information, and of self-entailment, and development of the reductionist view since the expression of self-replication given by von Neumann. It will be by well developed knowledge that the difference between very complex machines and living organisms can be judged.
Is the appeal of robotic life limited to anthropomorphism?
There is no topic more timely, nor more broadly appealing, than is self-replication in machines.
The reader is invited to submit an abstract of from three to five pages, exclusive of references, treating any aspect of machine self-replication, machine being broadly construed to include abstract automata, electro-mechanical devices, molecular structures, etc. Abstracts may address, but are not limited to such topics and questions as:
- Implementations in logical or physical (especially chemical) systems.
- In what ways are the definitions of machine self- replication given by von Neumann, Turing and others inadequate?
- How are these definitions similar to, or different from, biological self-replication?
- By what criteria shall we differentiate trivial versus non-trivial self-replication?
- Mathematical analysis of machine self-replication.
- What insights for machine self-replication can be drawn from the field of evolutionary development (evo-devo)?
- What characteristics of a substrate are critical for the emergence of living systems?
- The role of information and self-entailment.
- Are there other features of biological self-replication that are important for understanding life? If so, what are they?
- Could these features also be built into a more robust self-replicating machine? How?
- How should we understand the "development of form" in biological organisms?
- The requirements for machine epigenesis; for an "embryo machine."
Any aspect of machine self-replication is of interest. Abstracts must be submitted in PDF format, and conform with the ALifeX conference specified formatting instructions for authors; see the website:
http://www.alifex.org/submissions/instructions.pdf
Important Dates
Abstract submission: March 18, 2006
Notification of abstract acceptance: April 1, 2006
Camera-ready abstracts: April 15, 2006
See the conference website for registration deadline dates:
http://www.alifex.org/registration/
Abstracts should be submitted by email to the address:
wrb@calevinst.org
Requests for additional information about the workshop should also be directed to the above email address. Workshop participants shall have the opportunity to publish a paper in a special issue of the Journal of Cellular Automata, or in the International Journal of Unconventional Computing.
A paper will also be published in a suitable journal that summarises the results of the workshop.
Organising Committee
Andrew Adamatzky University of the West of England, Bristol William R. Buckley California Evolution Institute, San Francisco Cliff Joslyn Los Alamos National Laboratory Hod Lipson Mechanical Engineering and Computing & Information Science at Cornell University Robert T. Pennock Lyman Briggs School of Science, and Department of Philosophy, and Department of Computer Science and Engineering, and Ecology, Evolutionary Biology and Behavior Michigan State University Tom Ray Zoology/University of Oklahoma
Science Committee
Adrian Bowyer Mechanical Engineering/University of Bath Gregory S. Chirikian Mechanical Engineering/Johns Hopkins University Terrence Deacon Anthropology/University of California, Berkeley John R. Koza Consulting Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering Stanford University George Khushf Department of Philosophy/University of South Carolina Barry McMullin Electronic Engineering/Dublin City University Tom Ray Zoology/University of Oklahoma Jim Reggia Computer Science/University of Maryland Hiroki Sayama Bioengineering/Binghamton University Wei-Min Shen University of Southern California Jacqueline Signorini Computer Science/University of Paris 8 Tihamer Toth-Fejer General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems Michigan Research Center Robert E. Ulanowicz Chesapeake Biological Laboratory/University of Maryland Bruce Weber Chemistry and Philosophy/CalState Fullerton and Bennington College
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