Call for Papers for the
== BICA 2014 Symposium on Neural-Symbolic Networks for Cognitive Capacities ==


= WEBPAGE =

https://sites.google.com/site/bica2014nsncc/


= SCOPE =

Researchers in artificial intelligence and cognitive systems modelling continue to face foundational challenges in their quest to develop plausible models and implementations of cognitive capacities and intelligence. One of the methodological core issues is the question of the integration between sub-symbolic and symbolic approaches to knowledge representation, learning and reasoning in cognitively-inspired models.

Network-based approaches very often enable flexible tools which can discover and process the internal structure of (possibly large) data sets. They promise to give rise to efficient signal-processing models which are biologically plausible and optimally suited for a wide range of applications, whilst possibly also offering an explanation of cognitive phenomena of the human brain.
Still, the extraction of high-level explicit (i.e. symbolic) knowledge from distributed low-level representations thus far has to be considered a mostly unsolved problem.

In recent years, network-based models have seen significant advancement in the wake of the development of the new "deep learning" family of approaches to machine learning. Due to the hierarchically structured nature of the underlying models, these developments have also reinvigorated efforts in overcoming the neural-symbolic divide.

The aim of the symposium is to bring together recent work developed in the field of network-based information processing in a cognitive context, which bridges the gap between different levels of description and paradigms and which sheds light onto canonical solutions or principled approaches occurring in the context of neural-symbolic integration to modelling or implementing cognitive capacities.


= TOPICS =

We particularly encourage submissions related to the following non-exhaustive list of topics:

- new learning paradigms of network-based models addressing different knowledge levels
- biologically plausible methods and models
- integration of network models and symbolic reasoning
- cognitive systems using neural-symbolic paradigms
- extraction of symbolic knowledge from network-based representations
- challenging applications which have the potential to become benchmark problems
- visionary papers concerning the future of network approaches to cognitive modelling


= DATES & SUBMISSIONS =

The deadlines for submissions, author feedback, etc. are bound to the normal BICA 2014 deadlines (and, thus, are also subject to the same changes and extensions). Please also have a look at http://bicasociety.org/meetings/2014/cfp/ for possibly updated dates and deadlines.

The current schedule is:
- Paper submission due: May 26, 2014
- Paper review feedback: June 14, 2014
- Final papers due: August 1, 2014

Submissions can either be made in form of 500-word abstracts or as up to 6-page papers.

For details on the submission process, formats, etc., please refer to the BICA 2014 Call for Papers ( http://bicasociety.org/meetings/2014/cfp/ ) and the BICA 2014 submission guidelines ( http://bicasociety.org/meetings/2014/submission/ ).


= SYMPOSIUM CO-CHAIRS =

- Terrence C. Stewart, Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience, University of Waterloo, Canada
- Tarek R. Besold, Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrück, Germany