ISSA Summer School (8/3-21)

ISSA Summer School

OVERVIEW

Announcement:An ISSA Summer School, August 3-21, 2015, in Kobe, Japan
Title:Towards an Integrative Approach to the Study of Awareness

Summary:
The Initiative for a Synthesis in Studies of Awareness, ISSA for short, is the product of a small group of scientists and scholars advocating an integrative approach to the study of awareness. We will organize a three-week Summer School, with plenary lectures in the morning and parallel sessions in the afternoon, in which the lecturers will lead study groups that may result in original research.

We are using the notion of awaress in a broad sense: we include consciousness in general as well as self-awareness, and responsiveness of autonomous agents in complex systems to each other and to their environment. We thus include neuroscience; cognitive science; artificial intelligence; artificial life and robotics; logic and philosophy, in particular phenomenology. We also include high performance computing and other techniques and methodologies, useful in the areas mentioned above. This is a trial project, to see how we can effectively integrate all these different fields, by forming a forum to present many different approaches.

Participants are expected to have a strong interest, as well as at least some experience, in neuroscience, or in AI, or in some field within cognitive science or philosophy. We expect the students and postdocs to attend the summer school for the full three weeks, to maximize interactions across the many different fields of expertise that they bring in. The summer school is sponsored by ELSI, the Earth-Life Science Institute at Tokyo Institute of Technology; by EON, the ELSI Origins Network funded by the John Templeton Foundation; by AICS, the RIKEN Advanced Institute for Computational Science; and the KAKENHI program on Prediction and Decision Making.

As part of the summer school, students will attend the EON Workshop on “The Emergence of Autonomous Subsystems in Complex Systems” on August 12-14. The ELSI Origins Network (EON) is a new initiative launched by the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Tokyo Institute of Technology. EON’s goal is to promote Origins of Life as a scientific field and as a global community, and to support research that addresses its most fundamental questions. This workshop is the first in a planned series of ten, each of which will bring together leading scientists and promising students and postdocs, to formulate and address the most important questions in the field. This first workshop addresses the emergence of autonomy in a very broad sense, from the origin of life on Earth and possibly elsewhere in the universe, to the origin of plants and animals as more complex forms of life, all the way to the origin of intelligence and self-awareness, as well as the origin of cultural institutions. By participating in the workshop, students will gain a deeper understanding of the questions at the interface between the physical, life and cognitive sciences, as well as having the opportunity to contribute to an expected publication.

Contact:Piet Hut, email: piet@ias.edu
LOCATION:Each day, except on Aug. 11:
Center for Planetary Science (CPS),7-1-48, Minamimachi, Minatojima, Chuo-ku, Kobe 650-0047, Japan

PROGRAM:

DAILY SCHEDULE for the first two weeks:

only on the first day: 9:00 – 9:30: Introduction

PROGRAM OF LECTURES for the first two weeks:

First Week:

Second Week:

Monday, August 10

Tuesday, August 11:

August 12-14: EON workshop on “The Emergence of Autonomous Subsystems in Complex Systems”

TENTATIVE PROGRAM for the third week: