Onlife

The first issue of the new, joint Newsletter of the GPI (research Group in Philosophy of Information, UH) and IEG (Information Ethics research Group, Oxford) is available online at: http://philosophyofinformation.net/centre/gpi/newsletter.html

What is the ultimate nature of reality? In an article just published in Synthese , I argue in favour of an informational ontology. With a slogan: "To be is to be information". Well,, it's a bit more complicated than that, so, if you are curious, you can read the preprint online . And here is the abstract: This is the revised version of an invited keynote lecture delivered at the 1st Australian Computing and Philosophy Conference (CAP@AU; the Australian National University in Canberra, 31 October – 2 November, 2003). The paper is divided into two parts. The first part defends an informational approach to structural realism. It does so in three steps. First, it is shown that, within the debate about structural realism (SR), epistemic (ESR) and ontic (OSR) structural realism are reconcilable. It follows that a version of OSR is defensible from a structuralist-friendly position. Second, it is argued that a version of OSR is also plausible, because not all relata (structured e...

A two-day intensive training course in biomedical ontology will be held in Buffalo on 12-13 April, 2008 under the auspices of the National Center for Biomedical Ontology. The course will provide an introductory survey of methods and an overview of current developments and best practices in ontology in the life sciences. No prior knowledge of ontology is presupposed. Further details are available here: http://ontology.buffalo.edu/08/TrainingCourse/index.htm

The University of Twente is an entrepreneurial research university, located in Enschede, the Netherlands. Distributed over 5 faculties, the UT offers 20 educational programmes ranging from applied physics and public administration to communication studies and biomedical technology. Research takes place within the context of institutes and focuses, among other things, on nanotechnology, information and communication technology, biomedical technology, policy studies, human behaviour, and mechanics, processes and control. More than 7,500 students and 2,700 staff members live, work and recreate at the UT, the Netherlands’ only campus university. The Faculty of Behavioural Sciences offers the following Bachelor programmes: Educational Design, Media and Management (EDMM), Communication Studies (TCW) and Psychology (PSY), the following Master programmes: Educational Science and Technology (EST), Philosophy of Science, Technology and Society (PSTS), Communication Studies (CS), Psychology (...

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION 1st Computer Cooking Contest CCC 2008 @ ECCBR 2008 September 1, 2008, Trier (Germany) www.computercookingcontest.net Who says that only human beings are able to cook delicious meals? We aim to teach our computers the haute cuisine and therefore we need your creativity and ideas! Come to the European Conference on Case-Based Reasoning (ECCBR'08) in Trier and participate in the Computer Cooking Contest (CCC)! Write your own software application for the live competition. Show that your program is more creative than the average kitchen user. Let your computer's recipe creations be evaluated by a professional cook and an international jury of scientists! Rationales Once upon a time in the past, when we still were students, we wondered whether there could be a software which would relieve us from the task of matching the content of our fridge to a dish. Given a restricted set of ingredients, the task is t...

Tony Beavers has created an unofficial group on Facebook for any IACAP member who might be signed on to that service. This is intended as a bit of an experiment. Anyone interested in Philosophy and Computing/Information is welcome. As Tony acknowledges "I am aware that there are both pros and cons concerning the idea. (On the Pro side, for instance, Facebook allows for easy communication and sharing of interests. On the Con side, using Facebook in this way may obscure boundaries between the professional and the private.) Be that as it may, the experiment is open to those who with to participate." You can find the Facebook group at http://evansville.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8269689537&ref=nf