ISSA Summer School
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 (some of the lecturers
listed below, as well as other teachers, such as Jun Makino, Mitsu
Okada, Hayato Saigo and Shigeru Taguchi). We will organize a three-week
Summer School, with plenary lectures in the morning and parallelsessions in the afternoon, in which the lecturers will lead study groups
that may result in original research.
We are using the notion of awareness in a broad sense: we include
consciousness in general as well as self-awareness, and responsivenessof autonomous agents in complex systems to each other and to theirenvironment. We thus include neuroscience; cognitive science; artificialintelligence; artificial life and robotics; logic and philosophy, inparticular phenomenology. We also include high performance computing andother techniques and methodologies, useful in the areas mentioned above.
This is a trial project, to see how we can effectively integrate allthese 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 withincognitive science or philosophy. We expect the students and postdocs toattend 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 <http://www.elsi.jp/>,the Earth-Life Science Institute at Tokyo Institute of Technology; by
EON <http://eon.elsi.jp/>, the ELSI Origins Network funded by the John
Templeton Foundation; by AICS
<http://www.aics.riken.jp/en/overview/lab>, the RIKEN Advanced Institutefor Computational Science; and the KAKENHI<http://decisions.naist.jp/english/index.html> program on Prediction andDecision Making.
As part of the summer school, students will attend the EON Workshop on"The Spontaneous Emergence of Autonomous Agents in Complex Systems" on
August 12-14. The ELSI Origins Network (EON) <http://eon.elsi.jp/> is a
new initiative launched by the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI)<http://www.elsi.jp/> at Tokyo Institute of Technology<http://www.titech.ac.jp/english/>. EON's goal is to promote Origins ofLife 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 andaddress the most important questions in the field. This first workshop
addresses the spontaneous 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 theorigin of cultural institutions. By participating in the workshop,
students will gain a deeper understanding of the questions at theinterface 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 <https://www.cps-jp.org/access/?ml_lang=en>(CPS),
7-1-48, Minamimachi, Minatojima, Chuo-ku, Kobe 650-0047, JapanPROGRAM:DAILY SCHEDULE for the first two weeks:(only on the first day: 9:00 - 9:30: Introduction)
09:30 - 10:30

lecture10:30 - 11:00

coffee break

11:00 - 12:00

lecture12:00 - 13:30

lunch + free time

13:30 - 15:00

five parallel discussion groups, each one discussing someof the questions that a lecturer brought up in the morning
15:00 - 15:30

tea break

15:30 - 16:30

each of the five groups gives a short presentation,roughly 10 minutes with 5 minutes questions, about their conclusions
16:30 - 17:00

tea break

17:00 - 18:00

a session for more technical follow-up discussions withthe lecturer(s)(only on the first day: 18:00 - : Welcome party!)

PROGRAM OF LECTURES for the first two weeks:First Week:
8/3: Overview: Nao Tsuchiya (2 lectures):
Towards understanding consciousness/awareness: an overview
8/4: Melanie Wilke (2 lectures):
Neural correlates of (visual) consciousness on different spatial andtemporal scales;

Approaches to evaluate the causal contribution of brain regions and coding
principles
for conscious perception;
8/5: Shaun Gallagher (2 lectures):
Intentionality and pre-reflective consciousness;
Bodily affect and phenomenal consciousness
8/6: Masako Myowa (2 lectures):
Emergence of self: Development of social cognition from perinatal period;
Ontogeny and its evolutionary foundation of human mind
8/7: Kenji Doya (2 lectures):
Learning algorithms and the brain architecture;
Bayesian inference and mental simulation

Second Week:
Monday, August 10
9:00-10:00: Minoru Asada:
Artificial Empathy
10:00-10:30: discussion
10:30-11:00: coffee break
11:00-12:00: Yukie Nagai:
Emergence of self awareness in robot based on predictive learning
12:00-12:30: discussion
12:30-14:00: lunch break
14:00-15:00: Kaoru Amano:
Toward the neural cause of visual perception
15:00-15:30: discussion
15:30-16:00: tea break
16:00-17:00: Shinji Nishimoto:Experimental approaches to deciphering perceptual experiences
17:00-17:30: discussion
Tuesday, August 11:
10:00 - 13:00: Emergent Robotics Lab tour, by Minoru Asada and Yukie Nagai:[Group A]
10:00-11:30 (at F1-401): Introduction by Minoru Asada
Robot demos (Affetto, fetus simulator/robot, Lingua)
11:40-13:00 (at U1w-616):
Robot demos (iCub, ASD simulator, child-robot interaction)[Group B]
10:00-11:30 (at U1w-616): Introduction by Yukie Nagai
Robot demos (iCub, ASD simulator, child-robot interaction)
11:40-13:00 (at F1-401):
Robot demos (Affetto, fetus simulator/robot, Lingua)
13:00 - 14:30: lunch break
14:30 - 17:30: CiNet lab tour, by Kaoru Amano and Shinji Nishimoto:
14:30 - 15:30

7T MRI, MEG tour (all participants)[Group A]
15:30 - 16:30

Amano group tour

16:30 - 17:30

Nishimoto group tour

[Group B]
15:30 - 16:30

Nishimoto group tour

16:30 - 17:30

Amano group tour

August 12-14: EON workshop on "The Spontaneous Emergence of Autonomous Agentsin Complex Systems"
8/12: Giovanna Colombetti (2 lectures):
The embodied mind;

Philosophy and emotions

8/13: Nathaniel Virgo:
Towards an Enactive Origin of Life
8/13: Nicholas Guttenberg:
Collective effects and the emergence of robust behavior
8/14: Eric Smith (2 lectures):
Biogenesis I.

The planetary context for questions about the origin oflife.
Biogenesis II. Error and robustness; individuals and ecosystems:
the place of autonomous agents in the biosphere.
Third Week:
8/17-18: Students write drafts for research proposals, in small groups
8/19: Students give presentations about their drafts for research proposals
9:30 - 9:45: poster presentation by Karen Yamazaki
9:45 - 10:00: art and science presentation by Aya Tsuboi (Kavli-IPMU)
10:00 - 10:45: 1st research proposal presentation
10:45 - 11:15: coffee break
11:15 - 12:00: 2nd research proposal presentation
12:00 - 13:30: lunch + free time
13:30 - 14:15: 3rd research proposal presentation
14:15 - 15:00: 4th research proposal presentation
15:00 - 15:30: tea break
15:30 - 16:15: 5th research proposal presentation
16:15 - 17:00: 6th research proposal presentation
8/20: Piet Hut: The Mind as a Lab: What is Reality, that it can show
so many faces?
(afternoon structure as in the first week, with discussion groups)
8/21: general discussion about the future of ISSA in terms of a grassroots initiative, by the student/postdoc participants(C) 2015 Earth-Life Science Institute All Rights Reserved.