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 is one of the main purposes for organizing the Symposium on Knowledge and Cognitive Science and Technologies: KCST 2014, in the context of The 5th International Multi-Conference on Complexity, Informatics and Cybernetics: IMCIC 2014. Other purposes are 1) to explore the possibility of organizing KCST 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 KCST; 3) to examine with KCST 2014 participants the feasibility of publishing a multiple author book on the KCST topics or on a cluster of them; and 4) to analyze the desirability and feasibility of organizing an international association on KCST 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, mainly including Cognitive Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, 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 in http://www.iiis-spring14.org/kcst) via co-regulative (negative feedback and feedforward) 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 in N. Callaos, 2014, Cognition and Knowledge, at http://www.iiis.org/Nagib-Callaos/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, at http://www.iiis-spring14.org/kcst). A detailed description regarding this issue can be found in Callaos, 2011, The Essence of Engineering and Meta-Engineering, at http://www.iiis.org/Nagib-Callaos/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 KCST 2014.

Figure 3 (at http://www.iiis-spring14.org/kcst)visualizes the systemic-cybernetic relationships between Artificial/Natural Cognition and Scientific-Engineering Knowledge. This relationships and its related elements support the main themes of KCST 2014 (and their respective main topics), proposed below.

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 KCST 2014 will be the following:

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, 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.

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, 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: Epistemology, 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.

Collocated Events

KCST 2014 is being organized in the context of IMCIC 2014 and collocated with other events as announced at http://www.iiis.org/current-deadlines.asp. Participants registered at any conference or symposia can attend sessions of any of the collocated events. Registered participants will receive a CD containing the proceedings of all the collocated events.

Virtual Sessions

Face-to-face sessions of all events will have associated virtual pre- and post-conference sessions where registered participants can comment each paper in a forum associated to it. Registered participant at any event will have a password to access any virtual session of any collocated event.

Organizational, Reviewing, and Selection of Best Papers Policies

Technical Keynote Speakers

Technical keynote speakers will be selected from early submissions because this selection requires an additional evaluation according to the quality of the paper, assessed by its reviewers, the authors' CV and the paper's topic.

Reviewing Process

All Submitted papers/abstracts will go through three reviewing processes: (1) double-blind (at least three reviewers), (2) non-blind, and (3) participative peer reviews. Final acceptance depends of the three kinds of reviews but a paper should be recommended by non-blind reviewers AND blind reviewers in order to be accepted for presentation at the conference and to be included in the respective conference proceedings. A recommendation to accept made by non-blind reviewers is a necessary condition, but it is not a sufficient one. A submission, to be accepted, should also have a majority of its double-blind reviewers recommending its acceptance. This double necessary conditions generate a more reliable and rigorous reviewing than a those reviewing methods based on just one of the indicated methods, or just on the traditional double-blind reviewing. More details regarding this issue can be found at http://www.iiis.org/peer-reviewing.asp.

The three kinds of reviews mentioned above will support the selection process of those papers/abstracts that will be accepted for their presentation at the conference, as well as those to be selected for their publication in JSCI Journal. Details regarding the Acceptance Policy can be found at http://www.iiis.org/acceptance-policy.asp.

Authors of accepted papers who registered in the conference can have access to the evaluations and possible feedback provided by the reviewers who recommended the acceptance of their papers/abstracts, so they can accordingly improve the final version of their papers. Non-registered authors will not have access to the reviews of their respective submissions.

Virtual Participation

Submissions for Face-to-Face or for Virtual Participation are both accepted. Both kinds of submissions will have the same reviewing process and the accepted papers will be included in the same proceedings. Pre-Conference and Post-conference Virtual sessions (via electronic forums) will be held for each session included in the conference program, so that sessions papers can be read before the conference, and authors presenting at the same session can interact during one week before and after the conference. Authors can also participate in peer-to-peer reviewing in virtual sessions.

Invited Sessions Organizers

Registration fees of an effective invited session organizers will be waived according to the policy described in the web page (click on 'Invited Session', then on 'Benefits for the Organizers of Invited Sessions'), where you can get information about the ten benefits for an invited session organizer. To propose the organization of an Invited Session, please visit the conference web site, and go to the menu option “Invited Sessions” and then to the menu sub-option “Invited Sessions Organizers.”

Best Papers

Authors of the best 10%-20% of the papers presented at the conference (included those virtually presented) will be invited to adapt their papers for their publication in the Journal of Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics.

One best paper of each session included in the program will be selected by the respective session’s co-chairs after consulting with the session’s audience. Invited Sessions organizers will select the best paper of the session they organized. If there is a tie in a given session, the paper that will be selected as the best session’s paper will be the one which have had the highest quantitative evaluations average according to its double-blind and non-blind reviews.

The selection process of the best 10%-20% to be also published in the Journal, will be based on the sessions’ best papers and the quantitative evaluation average made by its anonymous and non-anonymous reviewers.