The Convention is now over. Many thanks to everyone who attended and made the event a success.

The AISB Convention consists of a number of symposia on a wide variety of topics in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science. Please see the indvidual symposium pages, linked at the end of the descriptions below, for details of each symposium.

List of Symposia

• AI and Games. The AI and Games Symposium acts as a meeting place for researchers and practioners from academia, education and industry who are involved with the design, developments and evaluation of AI in the context of games. Organisers: Daniela Romano (University of Sheffield) and David Moffat (Glasgow Caledonian University). Symposium Webpage
• Updating the anti-representation debate: Behavior-oriented perspectives. The goal of the symposium consists in bringing to the fore key issues pertaining to the representationalism/anti-representationalism debate from a behavior-oriented perspective. These issues appear under at least three main questions that respond to each other and are mostly overlapping: (1) Is behavior the main purpose of cognition? (2) Is there a difference between behavior and moving? (3) When does the explanation of behavior require the use of representations? Organiser: Martin Flament Fultot (Université Paris Sorbonne, CNRS, SND). Symposium Webpage
• 8th AISB Symposium on Computing and Philosophy: The Significance of Metaphor and Other Figurative Modes of Expression and Thought. The aim is to engage the disciplines of computing and philosophy jointly on the topic of figurative expression and thought. "Figurative" here is intended to include metaphorical, metonymic, ironic, hyperbolic and other modes of figuration. The Symposium is interested in figuration in any medium: figurative thinking (figuration within the mind) or external figurative expression in language, gesture, pictures, diagrams, music, dance, or whatever. The Symposium is also particularly concerned to encourage new thinking about the generation of figurative expression as well as about its understanding. Organisers: John Barnden and and Andrew Gargett (University of Birmingham). Symposium Webpage
• Computational Creativity. Over the last few decades, computational creativity has attracted an increasing number of researchers from both arts and science backgrounds. Philosophers, cognitive psychologists, computer scientists and artists have all contributed to and enriched the literature. Many argue a machine is creative if it simulates or replicates human creativity (e.g. evaluation of AI systems via a Turing-style test), while others have conceived of computational creativity is an inherently different discipline, where computer generated (art)work should not be judged on the same terms, i.e. being necessarily producible by a human artist, or having similar attributes, etc. This symposium aims at bringing together researchers to discuss recent technical and philosophical developments in the field, and the impact of this research on the future of our relationship with computers and the way we perceive them: at the individual level where we interact with the machines, the social level where we interact with each other via computers, or even machines interacting with each other. Organisers: Mohammad Majid al-Rifaie, Jeremy Gow and Stephen McGregor (QMUL). Symposium Webpage
• Fourth International Symposium on "New Frontiers in Human-Robot Interaction". Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) is a quickly growing and very interdisciplinary research field. Its application areas will have an impact not only economically, but also on the way we live and the kinds of relationships we may develop with machines. Due to its interdisciplinary nature different views and approaches towards HRI need to be nurtured. In order to help the field to develop, this symposium will encourage submissions in a variety of categories, thus giving this event a unique character. The symposium will consist of paper presentations, panels and, importantly, much time for open discussions which will distinguish this event from regular conferences and workshops in the field of HRI. Organisers: Maha Salem (University of Hertfordshire), Astrid Weiss (Vienna University of Technlology), Paul Baxter (Plymouth University), and Kerstin Dautenhahn (University of Hertfordshire). Symposium Webpage.
• From Mental "Illness" to Disorder and Diversity: New Directions in the Philosophical and Scientific Understanding of Mental Disorder. This symposium builds on our two previous symposia on this topic, at the AISB conventions in Exeter (2013) and London (2014). Our focus is, again, on new perspectives arising from philosophy of mind and psychiatry—most notably from enactive philosophy and supporters of Clark and Chalmers' extended-mind hypothesis—as well as from cognitive science questioning the traditionally dominant biopsychiatric model. Although there are a range of perspectives being offered that challenge that model, what most if not all have in common is an inclination to see mental processes as physically realized but not necessarily physically localized in the way that biological processes are. Too, as represented notably by the solutions focused approach, there is a move away from diagnostic labelling and what might be seen as an over-reliance on psychotropic drugs in favour of whatever improves the subject's sense of well being at the same time as allowing the person to make the usually expected contribution to society. In place of pathology, illness, and disease, one finds instead disorder—albeit disorder that takes account of the subject's interaction with her physical and social environment in an active, border-transgressing way—and, in very many cases, cognitive diversity. In place of reductionism of mind to brain, one has varieties of non-reductive physicalism where mind extends in substantive ways into environment. In place of aspirin-like mitigation or masking of symptoms, one has a re-examination of underlying causal factors; in place of a simple linear causal model, one has a far more complex picture involving circular causality and a great deal of irreducible interaction. What was a number of scattered dissenting "lone voices" has become an emergent new paradigm. This interdisciplinary symposium and the field it represents touches on many key themes of the AISB: the nature of the mind in relationship to its environment, the application of computer models to these matters, the breadth of cognitive science from theoretical philosophical explorations to concrete applications and new directions in treatment. Organisers: Joel Parthemore (University of Skövde), and Blay Whitby (University of Sussex). Symposium Webpage.
• Social Aspects of Cognition and Computing. This symposium falls into the new area on the intersection of computer science and social sciences known as social computing with far reaching consequences for many fields including AI and philosophy. In order to have a fruitful discussion we intend social computing in a broad sense to explore different levels of social behavior in computational systems, both natural and artifactual. Organisers: Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic (Mälardalen University), Yasemin J. Erden (St. Mary's University), Raffaela Giovagnoli (Pontifical Lateran University). Symposium Webpage.
• Embodied Cognition, Acting and Performance. The four branches of radical cognitive science—embodied, embedded, enactive and ecological—focus on post-cognitivist approaches to understanding the embodied mind-in-society; de-emphasising the computational and representational metaphors; embracing new conceptualisations grounded on the dynamic interactions of "brain, body and world". In this endeavour radical cognitive science reaches out to areas of scholarship also explored in the fields of actor-training and performance studies. This one day symposium aims to facilitate a new inter- and transdisciplinary discourse in which to jointly share and explore common reactions of embodied approaches to the lived mind. Organisers: Mark Bishop (Goldsmiths), Deirdre McLaughlin (RCSSD), Experience Bryon (RCSSD), Marco Gillies (Goldsmiths).