International Symposium on Cognition/Knowledge Science and Engineering: CKSE 2013

In the context of The 7th International Conference on Knowledge Generation, Communication and Management: KGCM 2013

Main Purposes

Alvin Goldman affirms that “epistemology [which] is concerned with the prospects of human knowledge…must work hand in hand with cognitive science.” (Goldman, 1999, “Epistemology and cognition,” in Wilson & Keil (Eds.), The MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Sciences, The MIT Press, p. 280).

This statement needs further attention, and such is one of the main purposes for organizing the Symposium on Cognition/Knowledge Science and Engineering: CKSE 2013, in the context of the The 7th International Conference on Knowledge Generation, Communication and Management: KGCM 2013. Other purposes are to: 1) to explore the possibility of organizing CKSE 2014 as a collocated conference by its own, not in the context of another one; 2) to identify the interest that there might be regarding special issues in the Journal of Systemic, Cybernetics, and Informatics (JSCI) on CKSE; 3) to examine with CKSE 2013 participants the feasibility of publishing a multiple author book on the CKSE topics or on a cluster of them; and 4) to analyze the desirability and feasibility of organizing an international association on CKSE and/or of publishing a related Journal. Other motivations and purposed are briefly resumed below, along with associated references related to this issue.

Motivations, Intellectual Perspective, and Aims

Cognitive Science and Engineering (CSE) have expanded and diversified into an increasing number of disciplines, mainlysome major ones including Cognitive Neuroscience, and Psychology, Complexity Theory, Artificial Intelligence, Modeling and Simulation, Linguistics, and Philosophy. Consequently, CSE is, by nature, a multi-disciplinary domain oriented and requiring inter-disciplinary communication. On the other hand, the notion of ‘knowledge’ is, by nature, a trans-disciplinary one. Almost all (if not all) academic disciplines and trans-disciplines, and professional activities are based on some kind of knowledge. Cognition is one of the most important ingredients in knowledge generation, and vice-versa;, previous knowledge supports and, to some degree, determines cognition. Knowledge and cognition are cybernetically related (Figure 1) via co-regulative (negative feedback and feedforward loops) and co-amplifying, synergic loops (positive feedback). A more detailed description of this kind of relationships and the concepts involved with them can be found at N. Callaos, 2013, Cognition and Knowledge.

‘Cognition and Knowledge’ are integrated and integrative. Both, independently or jointly, have shown a great potential of integrating Science and Engineering activities and, consequently, integrating both of them Society. As it is known, science and engineering produce different (even complementary or polar opposite) kinds of knowledge. Co-regulative and synergic cybernetics loops would be generated with adequate relationships among science, engineering, and society (Figure 2). A detailed description regarding this issue can be found in Callaos, 2011, The Essence of Engineering and Meta-Engineering.

To cybernetically relate cognition/knowledge and science/engineering would generate co-regulative and co-amplificatory (synergic) meta-loops, which will benefit both pairs: cognition/knowledge and science/engineering and each component of them. To open the possibilities of such cybernetic loops and meta-loops, through disciplinary and inter-disciplinary presentations and to foster inter-disciplinary communication for cross-disciplinary fertilization via analogical thinking is the main purpose of the Organizing Committee of CKSE 2013.

Main Themes

It is hoped that this event will seed future conferences and publications in such an integrated and meta-integrated intellectual domain. Consequently, the main themes, or tracks, of CKSE 2013 will be the following (categories are not rigid but are presented for heuristic purposes, only):

The process - generator of knowledge – the mind

• Cognitive Science : Cognitive Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Linguistics, Social Cognition, Social Neuroscience, Cognitive Science and the Learning Sciences, Anthropology and Cognitive Science, Naturalistic Decision Making, Synthetic Psychology, Neuroscience, Perception, Inference, Analogical Thinking, etc.

• Philosophy of Cognition : Consciousness, Mind Philosophy, Cognition and Moral Decision Making, Innateness and Cognition, Critiquing Thought as Computation, Logical Structures, Cognitive Architecture, Mind and Computer, Artificial Consciousness?, Cognition, Morality, and Free Will, Ethical and Societal Issues of Social Cognition and Neuroscience, etc.

• Cognitive Engineering and Technologies: Cognitive Systems Engineering, Robotics, Artificial Perception, Artificial Inference, Computational Models, Computational, Cognitive, and Neural Models of Decision-Making, Analysis and Design of Human-Machine Systems, Automation, Cognition Simulation, Synthetic Environments, Synthetic psychology, Design of Complex and Hybrid Cognitive Systems.

The object - product of the mind - knowledge

• Knowledge Engineering: Knowledge-Based Systems Engineering, Knowledge Management Systems Engineering, Collaborative Work, Knowledge-Bases and Expert Systems, Web, Text and

Data Mining, Web-Based Knowledge Management, Decision Support Systems, Semantic Web, Intelligent Problem Solving, Knowledge Acquisition and Representation, Human-Machine Cooperation, Knowledge Reengineering, Enterprise Ontology, Knowledge Quality Assessment, Knowledge-based software engineering, Content, Data mining and knowledge discovery, etc.

• Knowledge Science: Cognitive Foundations of Knowledge, Methodologies for Meta-Knowledge Acquisition, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Formal analysis of knowledge, Knowledge complexity and knowledge metrics, Commonsense knowledge and uncertainty in knowledge, Knowledge in complex systems.

• Knowledge Philosophy: Eepistemology, Logics of Knowledge, Theory of Knowledge, Plural Epistemologies, Systemic Epistemology, Nature of Knowledge, Criteria for Knowledge, Object of Knowledge, Extent of Knowledge, Types of Knowledge, Scientific and Engineering Knowledge, Theories of Knowledge, Philosophy of science, Philosophy of Engineering, Philosophy of Language, etc.