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This symposium was 11th in the series of Herbstakademie meetings dedicated to the topic of complex systems in psychology and related disciplines. Information on previous meetings of the Herbstakademie community is provided here. In continuation of the Gstaad Herbstakademie of March 1997 and the Ascona Herbstakademie of October 2000, the topics of this meeting have centered on dynamical systems concepts of cognition and action. proceedings: Tschacher W & Dauwalder J-P (eds.) (2003). The Dynamical Systems Approach to Cognition. Singapore: World Scientific.
The focal point of this symposium was to fathom out approaches to cognition on the basis of a dynamical systems framework. This dynamical approach has emerged in, and has been applied to, various fields stretching from psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, AI and A-Life research, to philosophy of mind and systems theory.
In recent years, we have witnessed a growing and stimulating discussion of concepts and ideas in these fields. Novel concepts have turned up, such as autonomous agents design, embodiment, emergent properties, situatedness, and the interactivist perspective. The perennial questions of cognitive science — representation, consciousness, intentionality, and the relationship between cognition/action and context — have been reframed using such concepts. The phenomenon of self-organization in complex systems, a core theme of all Herbstakademie meetings, may be a candidate to support the resolution of such questions.
INVITED LECTURES
Mark H. Bickhard (cognitive science, Lehigh University, USA) Luc Ciompi (psychiatry, Lausanne, Switzerland) Andy Clark (cognitive science, Indiana University, USA) Karl Grammer (ethology, Boltzmann Institute, University of Vienna, Austria) Hermann Haken (synergetics/physics, University of Stuttgart, Germany) Jürgen Kriz (clinical psychology, University of Osnabrück, Germany) Rafael Nunez (cognitive science, University of California at San Diego, USA) Rolf Pfeifer (robotics, University of Zürich, Switzerland, University of Tokyo, Japan)
ORGANIZERS
Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Tschacher Psychiatry Services, University of Bern, Laupenstrasse 49, CH-3010 Bern tschacher@spk.unibe.ch
Prof. Dr. Jean-Pierre Dauwalder Department of psychology, University of Lausanne, BFSH 2, CH-1015 Lausanne Jean-Pierre.Dauwalder@ip.unil.ch
additional Herbstakademie series organizers: Prof. Dr. E. J. Brunner (Jena, Germany), Prof. Dr. G. Schiepek (Aachen, Germany)
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