Symbolic Systems Distinguished Speaker
Since 1991, the Symbolic Systems Program has annually hosted special lectures by speakers who have made distinguished contributions to the theory or applications of symbolic systems.
This year's Symbolic Systems Distinguished Speaker is...
Margaret Boden
Research Professor of Cognitive Science
University of Sussex
"Creativity and Computers"
Thursday, April 2, 2009
4:15 pm
Building 380, Room 380C (map)
(to be followed by an additional lecture on April 3)
Abstract:
Creativity is the ability to come up with ideas that are new, surprising, and valuable. It doesn't happen by
magic, but involves psychological processes that can be described by science. There are three ways of generating
creative ideas: combinational, exploratory, and transformational. Each of these can be modelled, at least up to a point,
in computers. Surprisingly, perhaps, combinational creativity is the least easy to model. Also
surprisingly, the main problem in modelling transformational creativity is not generating the transformations, but
evaluating the results. Computational concepts can help us to understand how creativity is possible. But no
scientific psychology (with or without neuroscience) could predict every new idea--nor even explain every one in
detail, post hoc.
Thursday, April 2, 4:15 pm, Building 380, Room 380C
Distinguished Speaker Lecture and Symbolic Systems Forum (Symbsys 10)
"Creativity and Computers"
Friday, April 3, 12 noon, Building 380, Room 380C
"Turing and Artificial Life"
Biography:
Maggie Boden was the founding-Dean of Sussex University's School of
Cognitive
and Computing Sciences, a pioneering centre for research into
intelligence and the mechanisms underlying it -- in humans, other
animals, or machines. The School's teaching and research involves an
unusual combination of the humanities, science, and technology.
Philosophy is studied within the School both as an undergraduate major
and as a postgraduate (MA and DPhil) subject. She holds numerous
academic honors and has lectured widely, to both specialist and general
audiences, in North and South America, Europe, India, the USSR, and the
Pacific. She has also appeared on many radio/TV programmes, in UK and
elsewhere. Her work has been translated into twenty foreign languages.
She was awarded an OBE. in the United Kingdom in 2001 (for
"services to cognitive
science"), and has three honorary
doctorates (from Bristol, Sussex, and the Open Universities).
Previous Distinguished Speakers have been:
| 1991 | Daniel Dennett | "Time and the Brain: Escape from the Theater of Consciousness" |
| 1992 | Douglas Hofstadter | "Errors as Clues to the Nature of Symbols in the Head" |
| 1993 | Patricia Churchland | "Exploring the Neurobiology of Consciousness" |
| 1994 | Donald Norman | "Applying Cognitive Science" |
| 1995 | Rodney A. Brooks | "Non-Symbolic Approaches to Intelligence" |
| 1996 | John Searle | "Consciousness and Cognitive Science" |
| 1997 | Jaron Lanier | "Post-Symbolic Systems" |
| 1998 | Steven Pinker | "Words and Rules" |
| 1999 | Michael Tanenhaus | "Using Eye Movements to Study Real-Time Spoken Language Comprehension" |
| 2000 | Doug Engelbart and Steven Johnson | "Augmenting the Human Intellect" (delivered Nov. 1999) |
| 2001 | Daniel Dennett | "Are We Explaining Consciousness Yet?" |
| 2002 | Stephen Wolfram | "A New Kind of Science" (delivered Feb. 2003) |
| 2003 | Ray Jackendoff | "Conscious and Unconscious Aspects of Language Structure" |
| 2004 | Daniel Kahneman | "Perception, Intuition, and Reason" Intro [.mov], Lecture [.mov], Q&A[.mov] |
| 2005 | Michael Gazzaniga | "Distributed Systems and Conscious Unity" Intro & Lecture [.mov] |
| 2006 | Nick Bostrom | "Are You Living in a Simulation?" |
| 2007 | Elizabeth Loftus | "What's the Matter with Memory?" |
| 2008 |
Ben Shneiderman | "Information Visualization for
Insight
and Communication" Part1
[.mov], Part2
[.mov] |