harnad@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (S. R. Harnad) (02/06/90)
Call for contributors: (1) Workshop on the Symbol Grounding Problem (2) Symposium on Searle's Chinese Room Argument I am organizing a workshop on the Symbol Grounding Problem -- the problem of how words and other kinds of symbols inside an organism or a robot can be connected to the objects and states of affairs they refer to in the world -- at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology [SPP] at the University of Maryland, College Park, June 11 - 14 1990. Please nominate people who might serve as speakers or discussants. The relevant fields that should be represented are: (1) AI (2) Robotics (3) Neural Networks (4) Neurobiology (5) Psychophysics (6) Perception and Cognition (7) Developmental Psycholinguistics (8) Philosophy, Logic and Foundations of Computation At the same meeting there will also be a Symposium on Searle and the Chinese Room Argument. Although the two topics are related, the focus is very different. The Grounding workshop is meant to be empirical, and concerned with the actual problems of grounding symbols, words, robots, in the real world of objects. The Searle symposium is on the logic and implications of Searle's critique. Please suggest individuals I should invite, for both the workshop and the symposium. They should have some stature in the field, or should have made some salient contribution, experimental or theoretical, to the topics under discussion. In prior years, the incentive that has drawn important speakers to these SPP workshops and symposia has been that they always furnish a very sophisticated and active audience of philosophers (and representatives of other disciplines who wish to display their wares before the philosophers) who provide an extremely high level of critical analysis and discussion. Active members and past presidents of SPP include Dan Dennett, Zenon Pylyshyn, Jerry Fodor, Pat Churchland, and the current president is Paul Churchland. Prior SPP speakers have included N Chomsky, W Quine, H Putnam, JJ Gibson, SJ Gould, RL Gregory, R Schank, Oliver Sacks, RJ Herrnstein, D Hofstadter, and S Ullman. Please send me your nominations (including self nominations), together with addresses (email and Usmail) of your nominees. -- Stevan Harnad Department of Psychology Princeton University harnad@clarity.princeton.edu srh@flash.bellcore.com harnad@elbereth.rutgers.edu harnad@pucc.bitnet (609)-921-7771