International Association for Computing and Philosophy – Annual Meeting

June 21-23, 2018, Warsaw, Poland

CFP

The International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP) is delighted to announce that submissions are now being accepted for its 2018 annual meeting June 21-23, to be held at the Staszic Palace, Warsaw, the seat of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The meeting is being organized by Marcin Milkowski (the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences); keynote speakers include Ned Block (NYU) and Ed Zalta (Stanford).

Please note that IACAP 2018 is scheduled to dovetail with the 22nd meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, June 26-29, Kraków, which Professor Milkowski is co-organizing (http://theassc.org/assc-22/).

The International Association for Computing and Philosophy promotes philosophical dialogue and interdisciplinary research on all aspects of the computational and informational turn. Coming to these issues from a rich variety of disciplines, IACAP’s members have a tradition of helping to shape philosophical and ethical debates about the nature, development, application, and limits of computation, information technologies, and artificial intelligence.

IACAP’s 2017 meeting will gather philosophers, ethicists, logicians, roboticists, computer scientists, and cognitive scientists to explore topics including,

Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Life
Automated Warfare
Cognitive Science, Computation, and Cognition
Computational Modeling in Science and Social Science
Computer-Mediated Communication
Ethical Problems and Societal Impact of Computation and Information
Ethics and Epistemology of Big Data
History of Computing
Information Culture and Society
Metaphysics and Epistemology of Computation
Philosophy of Computer Science
Philosophy of Information
Philosophy of Information Technology
Philosophy of Mind
Robotics
Virtual Reality
… and related issues

We invite submissions of papers and proposals for symposia.

Important Dates:

Symposia:

Submission: January 15, 2018
Notification of Acceptance: February 1, 2018

Papers:

Submission: February 15, 2018
Notification of Acceptance: March 15, 2018

Paper and symposia submissions should be provided at: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iacap2018

Paper submissions should:

• Be prepared for blind review;
• Be between 3000 and 6000 words; and,
• Provide an abstract of 150-250 words.

Proposals for symposia should indicate:

• The title of the proposed symposium;
• A description of the topic and of its relevance for the IACAP membership;
• A list the participants (indicating particularly those who have confirmed their participation); and,
• The number of hours required.

Program Committee:

Patrick Allo
Brian Ballsun-Stanton
Paul Bello
Don Berkich
Selmer Bringsjord
Elizabeth Buchanan
Charles Ess
Luciano Floridi
Nir Fresco
Frances Grodzinsky
John Licato
Patrick Lin
Steve Mckinlay
Marcin Milkowski
Keith Miller
James H. Moor
Gualtiero Piccinini
Thomas Powers
Giuseppe Primiero
Miguel Angel Sicart
Judith Simon
Johnny Søraker
John Sullins
Mariarosaria Taddeo
Herman Tavani
Orlin Vakarelov
Shannon Vallor
Wendell Wallach
Marty Wolf

Dear Colleagues,

After many discussions about how best to respond to the selective Muslim travel ban in the U.S.–about which please see http://www.iacap.org/the-muslim-travel-ban-and-iacap-2017/–IACAP’s executive board has among other things opted to create a special track at IACAP 2017 (Stanford University, June 26-28) on Information Technology and Democracy, viz., the corrupting or preserving roles IT has played and could play, and the roles IT ought to play.

Submissions for the Information Technology and Democracy track in the form of extended abstracts (800+ words) should be submitted by March 15th via https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iacap2017. Decisions will be made by April 15th.

Topics might include, but certainly are not limited to,

1. The fabrication and dissemination of “fake news”:

• Fabrications created/disseminated through social media and blogs.
• News-like advertising.
• Conflict of interest in advertising and editorial processes.
• The obligations of social media companies.

2. The creation of “alternative facts” in a “post-truth” world:

• ‘Truth’ and the authoritarian uses of IT.
• Exploiting confirmation bias.
• Creating readily manipulable online communities.
• The epistemic obligations of citizens.

3. The role of IT in evidence-gathering and verification:

• Manipulating photographic and video evidence.
• IT methods of creating and preserving trust.
• Protecting and disseminating scientific data.
• System hacking, leaks, and the obligations of whistle-blowers.

4. Trolling:

• Trolling vs. engaging in online discussion.
• Anonymity and sowing distrust.
• Political and corporate online astro-turfing.
• Protecting and promoting online democratic deliberation.

5. Democratic processes:

• Poll-monitoring.
• Digital voter verification.
• Trust in voting mechanisms.
• Online plebiscites.

6. Technology, protest, and political resistance:

• Online civil disobedience.
• Creating and coordinating protest movements.
• Democratic controls on Big Data in massive digital surveillance.
• Digital footprints and citizen vulnerability.

Dear Colleagues,

In light of the deplorable Muslim travel ban and the inspiring petitions to boycott conferences held in the States in response, IACAP’s executive board has been weighing our alternatives as we prepare for the 2017 meeting at Stanford University. Given the timing and the work that has already gone into preparing for the conference, we have decided to move forward with the conference as planned, with the final submissions deadline of February 15th fast approaching.

In doing so we seek neither to carry on as if business were as usual–it decidedly is not–nor in the slightest way to repudiate or ride roughshod over the concerns of those who choose to honor the boycott–with whom, frankly, we entirely agree.

We will do the best we can under the circumstances. To wit, we plan to

1. Develop a special track on the role of information technology in protecting and corrupting democracy (an announcement and call for extended abstracts forthcoming shortly);
2. Arrange for remote presentations from those affected by the travel ban, facilities permitting;
3. Live stream the conference for the same, again facilities permitting; and,
4. Take up a resolution at the conference business meeting–open to all members–whether to move future North American IACAP meetings to Canadian and Mexican venues, at least for the time being.

Respectfully Yours,

IACAP’s Executive Board

Don Berkich, President
Steve McKinlay, Executive Director
John Licato, Membership and Promotions Coordinator
Tom Powers, Director for Minds and Machines S.I.G.
Rosaria Taddeo, Member at Large and Past President
Giuseppe Primiero, Member at Large
Judith Simon, Member at Large

Dear Colleagues,

It is my privilege to announce that the International Association for Computing and Philosophy’s executive board has selected Andrea Scarantino for the 2017 Herbert A. Simon Award for Outstanding Research in Computing and Philosophy, which specifically recognizes scholars at an early stage of their academic career whose research is likely to reshape debates at the nexus of Computing and Philosophy.

Andrea Scarantino is Professor in the Department of Philosophy and in the Neuroscience Institute at Georgia State University, where he has served since 2005. He holds doctorates in History and Philosophy of Science (University of Pittsburgh, 2005) and Economics (Università Cattolica di Milano, 2000). Professor Scarantino has been awarded a John Templeton Foundation Grant on the Philosophy and Science of Self-Control (2016) and a Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany (2015-ongoing).

He is the editor of the forthcoming Routledge Handbook of Emotion Theory, a unique interdisciplinary resource that features chapters on all central theoretical challenges of contemporary emotion theory in a variety of disciplines. Professor Scarantino also serves as editor of Emotion Researcher (www.emotionresearcher.com), the sourcebook of the International Society for Research on Emotions, the main online reference resource on emotions currently available.

Professor Scarantino’s work encompasses two main topics: information and emotion. His primary objective has been to provide an explicative definition for both concepts that sharpens them while serving useful theoretical purposes. In more recent times, Scarantino has started to connect the two principal strands of his research. He is exploring what kinds of information the expression of an emotion broadcasts and how emotional expressions may have provided our ancestors with an informational infrastructure for the emergence of language.

With respect to information, Scarantino has argued that we are dealing with a mongrel concept in need of disambiguation, and offered a general theory of (natural) information as consisting of anything that makes a probabilistic difference to an uncertain outcome. This probabilistic understanding of information is shown to derive from converging insights of Shannon’s theory of communication and Bayesian confirmation theory and to be satisfactory with respect to the desiderata of contemporary cognitive science.

Some of his most significant articles on the nature of information and the role it plays in communicative episodes include “Information as a Probabilistic Difference Maker” (Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2015), “Contextually Variable Signals Can Be Functionally Referential,” co-authored with Zanna Clay (Animal Behavior, 2014), “Rethinking Functional Reference” (Philosophy of Science, 2013), “Animal Communication as Information Mediated Influence,” in Animal Communication Theory: Information and Influence (2013, Ulrich Stegmann, ed.), “Information Processing, Computation and Cognition,” co-authored with Gualtiero Piccinini (Journal of Biological Physics, 2011), and “Information Without Truth,” co-authored with Gualtiero Piccinini (Metaphilosophy, 2010).

Professor Scarantino has also written extensively about emotions, arguing that the field has gone astray in trying to define emotions as either cognitions or feelings. As an alternative, Scarantino has proposed a general theory of emotions as action control systems, arguing that it is the only theory that makes sense of the distinctive way in which emotions motivate us to act, namely with urgency and with only a partial assessment of the information relevant to the decision at hand.

Some of his most significant articles on the nature of emotions and their complex connections to actions include “Do Emotions Cause Actions, and If So How?”(Emotion Review, 2017), “The Philosophy of Emotions and Its Impact on Affective Science”, in The Handbook of Emotions (2016, Lisa Feldman Barrett, Michael Lewis, and Jeanette Haviland-Jones, eds.), “Voodoo Dolls and Angry Lions: How Emotions Explain Arational Actions”, co-authored with Michael Nielsen (Philosophical Studies, 2015), “The Motivational Theory of Emotions”, in Moral Psychology and Human Agency (2014, Daniel Jacobson and Justin D’Arms, eds.), “Basic Emotions, Psychological Construction and the Problem of Variability,” in The Psychological Construction of Emotion (2015, James Russell and Lisa Feldman Barrett, eds), and “Insights and Blindspots of the Cognitivist Theory of Emotions” (British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 2010).

Professor Scarantino will present the Simon Award Keynote Address at IACAP 2017, June 26-28, Stanford University. See http://www.iacap.org/iacap-2017/ for conference information and submission guidelines.

Please join us at IACAP 2017 to congratulate Professor Scarantino on this well-deserved award.

Best Wishes,

Don Berkich
IACAP President

Dear Colleagues,

Due to numerous requests, the executive board of the International Association for Computing and Philosophy has authorized an extension of the deadline for paper submissions from January 15 to February 15 for its June 26-28 meeting at Stanford University.

Symposia proposals should, however, still be submitted by the original January 15 deadline.

Blind reviews will commence promptly for papers submitted by January 15.

For submission guidelines and the updated CFP, please see

http://www.iacap.org/iacap-2017/

Paper and symposia proposals may be submitted to

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iacap2017

Best Wishes,

Don Berkich
IACAP President

The International Association for Computing and Philosophy’s Covey Award recognizes senior scholars with a substantial record of innovative research in the field of computing and philosophy broadly conceived.

IACAP’s Executive Board is delighted to announce that Professor Raymond Turner will be presented with the Covey Award at IACAP 2017, June 26-28, Stanford University, where he will present the Covey Award Keynote Address.

Professor Turner is Professor Emeritus of Logic and Computation in the School of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the University of Essex, where he has served since 1985. Holding doctorates in Mathematical Logic and Theoretical Computer Science (Queen Mary College, London, 1973) and Philosophy (Bedford College, London, 1981). Professor Turner has also been a Sloan Research Fellow at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (1982) and CSLI, Stanford University (1984). He was Visiting Professor and Research Fellow at the University of Texas-Austin (1984 and 1987) and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (1984 and 1986). Currently he serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Logic and Computation and, for the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, as Editor of Logic and Computation.

Professor Turner’s work in Theoretical Computing Science and the Philosophy of Computer Science has been field-defining and ground-breaking. His books include Computable Models (Springer 2010), Constructive Foundations for Functional Languages (McGraw Hill 1991), Truth and Modality for Knowledge Representation (MIT Press 1990), and Logics for Artificial Intelligence (Pitman, 1984). His publications include “A Theory of Properties”, (Journal of Symbolic Logic, 1987), “The Foundations of Specification” (Journal of Logic and Computation, 2005), “Type Inference for Set Theory” (Theoretical Computer Science, 2001), “Specification”, (Minds and Machines, 2011), “Programming Languages as Technical Artefacts”, (Philosophy and Technology, 2014), “Logics of Truth” (Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 1990), and “The Philosophy of Computer Science”, (Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, 2013).

As Professor Turner describes his research,

The philosophy of computer science is concerned with those philosophical issues that arise from within the academic discipline of computer science. It is intended to be the philosophical endeavour that stands to computer science as philosophy of mathematics does to mathematics and philosophy of technology does to technology. Indeed, the abstract nature of computer science, coupled with its technological ambitions, ensures that many of the conceptual questions that arise in the philosophies of mathematics and technology have computational analogues. In addition, the subject will draw in variants of some of the central questions in the philosophies of mind, language and science.

In contrast, I take the central task of Theoretical Computing Science to be the construction of mathematical models of computational phenomena. Such models provide us with a deeper understanding of the nature of computation and representation. For example, the early work on computability theory provided a mathematical model of computation itself. Turing’s work is of fundamental importance here. Adapting Gödel’s diagonalization argument, he demonstrated that there are problems that do not admit of an algorithmic solution. He thus provided a mathematical model of computation that displayed its limitations. Later work on the semantics of programming languages enabled a precise articulation of the underlying differences between programming languages and led to a clearer understanding of the distinction between semantic representation and implementation. Early work in complexity theory supplied us with abstract notions which formally articulated informal ideas about the resources used during computation. I take this model building endeavour to be the central and fundamental role of theoretical computer science.

Please join us at IACAP 2017, June 26-28, Stanford University to congratulate Professor Turner on this well-deserved award.

http://www.iacap.org/iacap-2017/

Best,

Don Berkich
IACAP President

Our local hosts, Professors Marcello D’Agostino and Matteo D’Alfonso, have kindly provided video of the conference keynote addresses:

• Mario Piazza: abstract; video
• Luciano Floridi (Copernicus Lecture): abstract; video
• Jack Copeland (Covey Award Lecture): abstract; video
• Marcin Milkowski (Simon Award Lecture): abstract; video

Videos courtesy of the Centro e-Learning d’Ateneo dell’UNiversità di Ferrara and Sara Gusberti, videographer.

We are grateful to Michael Stadler and Matteo d’Alfonso for providing a convenient, navigable pdf of the program for this week’s meeting in Ferrara, Italy.

Please see this page to download the pdf to your favorite device.

Logistics

(Please note that the conference schedule is currently being finalized and will be published as soon as it is available.)

Venue

IACAP 2016 will be held at the
Department of Economics and Management
Via Voltapaletto 11
44121 – Ferrara
http://eco.unife.it/en/home#null
Map

Transportation

From Bologna Airport to Ferrara Centre there is a shuttle (for 10 €): http://www.ferrarabusandfly.it/en/.

If you need a car with driver from Bologna Airport (about 80 €) you can book it by Cosepuri:http://www.cosepuri.it/en/divisione-auto.

From all other Airports or Cities in Italy (Venice, Milan, Rome etc.) you should take the Shuttle to the closest Railway Station and from there a train to Ferrara.

There are two railways companies in Italy: Trenitalia (trip planner) and Italo (trip planner).

Banquet

Ristorante “La Provvidenza”
Corso Ercole I d’Este, 92,
44121 – Ferrara FE
http://www.ristorantelaprovvidenza.com
Map

Lodging

Hotels	Contact	Rooms	Rates
Annunziata P.zza Repubblica, 5-Ferrara	Tel. 0532-201111 Mail: info@annunziata.it (city tax euro 2,50) http://www.annunziata.it/	Single room Double for 1 person Double room	? ? ?
Duchessa Isabella	Tel. +39.0532.19.14.293 (city tax euro 2,50) http://www.duchessaisabellaferrara.it	Single room DUS Double room	€ 104,00 € 114,00 € 124,00
Principessa Leonora Via Mascheraio 39- Ferrara	Tel. 0532-1915190 Mail: info@principessaleonoraferrara.it (city tax euro 2,50) http://www.principessaleonoraferrara.it/	Single room DUS Double room	€ 89,00 € 99,00 € 109,00
Borgoleoni 18 Room & Breakfast Via Borgo dei Leoni 18 – Ferrara	Tel. 0532-243128 E-Mail: info@borgoleoni18.it http://www.borgoleoni18.it/it/	Single room DUS Double room Suite	€ 85 € 95 € 140 € 240
Hotel Orologio Via Darsena 67	Tel: +39 0532 769576 Fax: +39 0532 769544 Mail: info@hotelorologio.com http://www.hotelorologio.com/	Single room DUS Double room Suite	€ 80-140 € 100-166 € 115-120 € 150-325
Europa Corso Giovecca, 49-Ferrara	Tel. 0532-205456 Mail: info@hoteleuropaferrara.com http://www.hoteleuropaferrara.com/	Single room DUS Double room	€ 52 -59,00 € 62- 69,00 € 75- 84,00
Hotel De Prati Via Padiglioni 5- Ferrara	Tel. 0532-241905 Mail: info@hoteldeprati.com http://www.hoteldeprati.com/	Single room DUS Double room	€ 52,00 € 72,00 € 85,00
Hotel Carlton Via Garibaldi 93 – Ferrara	Tel. 0532-211130 Mail: info@hotelcarlton.net http://www.hotelcarlton.net/	Single room DUS Double room	€ 54-64,00 € 64-74,00 € 74-80,00
Hotel Touring Viale Cavour 11 – Ferrara	Tel. 0532-206200 Mail: info@hoteltouringfe.it http://www.hoteltouringfe.it/	Single room DUS Double room	? 64.00 85.00
Hotel S.Stefano Boccacanale di Santo Stefano, 21	http://www.hotelsantostefanofe.it/it/prezzi-camere-hotel-ferrara_5c6.html	Single room DUS Double	€ 38,- 60,00 € 48-100,00 € 78- 150,00
San Paolo Via Baluardi 9	Tel. 0532-762040 http://www.hotelsanpaolo.net/	Single room Double for 1 person Double room	€ 50.00 € 60.00 € 80.00
Bed and Breakfast	Contact	Rooms	Rates
Locanda della Biscia Via Palestro 57	http://www.locandadellabiscia.it/	Single room Double room Flat with kitchen	€ 40 € 50 € 60
Astrolabio Via Borso, 28	http://www.bbastrolabio-ferrara.it/index.html	Single room Double room	€ 35-40 € 60-70
Avogli Trotti	http://www.bedavoglitrotti.it/37-prezzi	Double for 1 person Double room	€ 50 € 80
Alloggio 2.0	http://www.alloggio2punto0.it/	Double for 1 person Double room Flats for 2 people	€ 49 € 59 € 65
Foresterie/Guest House/Studentati	Contact	Rooms	Rates
Guest House il Cenacolo Giuseppe Fabbri 414	info.cenacolo@camplusliving.it http://www.camplusliving.it/guest-house/cenacolo	Single room with private bathroom Double rooms with private bathroom	€ 32 per night (less than 4 nights, B&B service); € 28 per night (equal or more than 5 nights, B&B service) € 45 per night (less than 4 nights, B&B service); € 40 per night (equal or more than 5 nights, B&B service)
Students Hostel Corso Biagio Rossetti n.24	+39 0532 20 11 58 +39 0532 21 74 39 info@ostelloferrara.it http://en.ostelloferrara.it/		€ 17-49 (different type of rooms)
ERGO students residences City center (different parts)	https://servizionline.er-go.it/alloggi/borsino?SEDE_ERGO=fe	Single room with private bathroom Double rooms with private bathroom Flats	€ around 30 (different type of rooms) Booking online

Please note that extending the due date for paper submissions from 11 January 2016 to 1 February 2016 made it necessary to likewise extend the notification deadline from 25 February 2016 to 15 March 2016. The program committee appreciates your patience as we strive to complete the review process.