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       Workshop on architectures underlying motivation and emotion

                           CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

                            11-12 August 1993
                 Centre for Research in Cognitive Science
                       The University of Birmingham
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Aa small workshop (at most about 30 people) will be held at the
University of Birmingham on Wednesday 11th and Thursday 12th August 1993
to report on and discuss work on architectures and mechanisms underlying
motivator processing, emotions and control of attention. We invite
offers of contributions.

The workshop, to be held in one of the university halls on the
attractive Birmingham campus, will bring together people from a variety
of disciplines (e.g. AI, psychology, philosophy, psychiatry, animal
behaviour) who share an interest in the "design-based" study of mental
processes (as opposed to simply being concerned with collecting
empirical data, or investigating semantic issues such as how we use
emotion words).

The focus will be on architectural requirements for a COMPLETE
autonomous agent, combining the various sub-functions and sub-mechanisms
normally studied separately in AI and psychology, and including
asynchronous generation of new motivators by a variety of independent
processes. A lot of research on so called "reactive planning",
"rational agents", and "resource bounded agents"  may be relevant to
this workshop.

More precisely the workshop will attempt to address the following
questions:

    1. What sorts of phenomena will need to be explained by a
    design-based theory of mechanisms underlying the processing of
    motives and production of affective states? In particular: what
    sorts of *processes* needed to be explained: how do motives arise,
    what is their aetiology, what sorts of side effects can they have,
    including effects on diversion or control of attention, what sorts
    of pathologies can occur, and which forms of treatment help people
    with problems in this area? (It may prove useful to see how
    processing in "normal" adults differs from that in very young
    children, or people with brain damage or other sources of
    motivational, emotional or attention-control problems. It may also
    be useful to compare humans and other animals )

    2. Is there a unitary set of mechanisms underlying affective states
    such as
    - grieving for a lost child,
    - rejoicing in an election victory,
    - fearing that the Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims will never
      again live in peace,
    - looking forward to a holiday in the sun,
    - hoping that your boss will not discover the dreadful error you
      made,
    - exulting in a major mathematical discovery after weeks of effort,
    - terror as your car loses control at speed on the motorway,
    - joy at watching a child at play
    - claustrophic panic at being in an enclosed space
    - enjoying a beautiful sunset
    - being unwilling to lift a spider out of the bath and put it
      out through the window
    - revulsion at the sight of a tiger killing and eating a young
      deer
    - obsessive devotion to the task of preparing for a major
      competition or examination or other event (e.g. a wedding).

    Are there common mechanisms that produce these states, influence
    the ways they develop, and, in some cases, make them die down?

    Or are these largely unrelated phenomena with little in common?


    3. What kinds of architectures and mechanisms have so far been
    proposed to account for these and similar phenomena and to what
    extent are they successful, merely promising, or downright
    inadequate? Are the mechanisms unique to humans or are they shared
    with other animals? Could they be replicated in autonomous robots?

    4. What alternative new approaches are worth exploring? What are the
    most promising lines of attack, and what should be done to ensure
    that they are pursued effectively? In particular, can a design-based
    approach hope to hit on fruitful explanatory models by analysing
    such phenomena and using available knowledge about functions of the
    mind, or is the only hope to explore very much simpler architectures
    and mechanisms for the foreseeable future with the hope that one day
    we can return to these grand issues? Is analytical design feasible
    at all, or is the task so complex that only simulated evolution can
    possibly arrive at suitable models? Are the existing known
    architectures and mechanisms (including symbol-processing
    mechanisms, neural net mechanisms, and mixtures of the two) adequate
    to the task, or is something totally different required?

    If so what are the requirements to be satisfied by suitable
    alternatives and how can they be recognized when we find them?

The workshop will be supported by funds from a research council grant
awarded to Glyn Humphreys and Aaron Sloman, for the "Attention and
Affect" project, which is primarily concerned with investigating
design requirements for resource-limited and knowledge-limited
intelligent agents with multiple independent sources of motivation and
including mechanisms concerned with the control of attention. (See
appended references to some of our work.)

By restricting attendees to about 30 persons we shall be able to pay for
accommodation and meals for ALL participants. We may be able to make a
contribution towards travel costs for a SMALL number of participants
who find it difficult to obtain funds for travel, though funds are
severely limited.

All participants will be required to produce in advance (by the end of
July) a printed statement of between 500 about 2000 words, for
circulation to attendees at the conference. The statement could be
either a new attempt to answer some of the above questions, or else a
report on some aspect of your own work that is likely to be of interest
to attendees.

In addition to providing a written statement and taking part in the
discussions following talks there are three further possible levels of
participation:

    1. Presenting a short talk (20 minutes plus 10 minutes discussion)
        (I expect there will be space for eight or nine of these)
    2. Taking part in a panel discussion on the Wednesday evening
        after dinner. We'll have five or six panellists to
        introduce discussion.
    3. Chairing and reporting back from a working group meeting after
       lunch on the second day

If you are willing to attend please let me know whether you would like
to take one of these roles, or whether you'd prefer merely to be
a participant in the discussions. If you are willing to give a talk
please indicate which of roles 1 or 2 you'd prefer, and also give me a
title and a brief summary.

There will be a very small number of larger invited talks, and an
introductory talk by Aaron Sloman.

Space is limited, so if we have too many offerings, members of our
project will make a selection.

Please state whether your attendance is conditional on help with travel
expenses (probably only a small contribution will be possible.)

TIME TABLE:

1. Initial notifications of interest in attending. These can be received
in the format given below any time up to early July and will be
processed if there are still places left, or returned with a polite
refusal. The first wave of applications will be processed by about 11th
June, or earlier.

2. Notification of acceptance: usually within two weeks of submission.
Sometimes earlier.

3. Abstracts and statements of interest required for circulation at the
conference by Wed 28th July, either by Email (plain or Latex) or on
paper.

4. Workshop starts: approx 10 am Wed 11th Aug.

5. Workshop ends: mid or late afternoon Thurs 12th Aug.

The papers will NOT be published, although it is possible that one
outcome of the conference will be invitations to contribute to a
collection of papers to form a book.

A form for Email responses follows after some references. If for any
reason you prefer to communicate on paper, please post your submission
to

Aaron Sloman (August Workshop),
School of Computer Science,
The University of Birmingham,
Birmingham
B15 2TT,
England

Phone: +44-(0)21-414-3711       Fax:   +44-(0)21-414-4281
------------------------ SOME REFERENCES ------------------------
Here are some references to papers leading up to, or produced by
our project.

A.Sloman and Monica Croucher, `Why robots will have
emotions', in Proceedings 7th International Joint Conference on
Artificial Intelligence, Vancouver, 1981, (Morgan Kaufmann) also
available as Cognitive Science Research Paper 176, Sussex University,
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences.

A. Sloman, `Motives Mechanisms Emotions' in Cognition and Emotion
1,3, pp.217-234 1987, reprinted in M.A. Boden (ed) The Philosophy of
Artificial Intelligence ``Oxford Readings in Philosophy'' Series
Oxford University Press, pp 231-247 1990.

L.Beaudoin and A.Sloman, 1993, `A study of motive processing and
attention', in A. Sloman, D. Hogg, G. Humphreys, A. Ramsay, and D.
Partridge (Eds) Prospects for Artificial Intelligence IOS Press.)

------------------------FORM OF APPLICATION------------------------
Email

To: A.Sloman@bham.ac.uk
Subject: August Workshop on Architectures and Mechanisms

Name of Applicant:

Full Postal address:

Email address:

Phone number:

Status: (Student, researcher, teacher, etc.):

Area of research (1 to 10 lines):




Any other relevant information (e.g. list some of your publications,
or funded research projects):


I WOULD LIKE TO ATTEND THE WORKSHOP AND WOULD BE WILLING TO
(delete as appropriate):

1. Present a short talk (20 minutes) or take part in a panel, as
required:

    Title of Contribution:  ....

    Abstract: (300 to 1000 words)

2. Merely take part in discussions. Here is an account of my research

    Topic: ......

    Overview: (At most 1000 words)

3. Chair a discussion group.

4. If accepted I shall submit a summary of my talk, or a description of
my research work by July 28th, to be made available to attendees.

5. I understand that the workshop budget normally covers only meals and
accommodation for attendees. I do/do not require help with travel
expenses (give details).

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Aaron Sloman,
School of Computer Science, The University of Birmingham, B15 2TT, England
EMAIL   A.Sloman@cs.bham.ac.uk  OR A.Sloman@bham.ac.uk
Phone: +44-(0)21-414-3711       Fax:   +44-(0)21-414-4281