[FOM] CfP: Symposium on the History and Philosophy of Programming - Birmingham 5-6 July 2012

[gprimiero at libero.it]

CALL FOR PAPERS

Symposium on the History and Philosophy of Programming
5-6 July 2012

http://www.computing-conference.ugent.be/hapop12

as part of

AISB/IACAP World Congress 2012 - Alan Turing 2012
2-6 July 2012

http://events.cs.bham.ac.uk/turing12/index.php

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OCCASION
As part of the AISB/IACAP World Congress programme, the Centre for Logic
and Philosophy of Science at Ghent University organizes a one day
Symposium on the History and Philosophy of Programming. 

On the Occasion of the Turing Centennial, from 2-6 July 2012, the AISB
(The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of
Behaviour) and the IACAP (The International Association for Computing
and Philosophy) merge their annual symposia/conferences to the
AISB/IACAP World Congress. The Congress serves both as the year's AISB
Convention and the year's IACAP conference. The Congress has been
inspired by a desire to honour Alan Turing, and by the broad and deep
significance of Turing's work to AI, to the philosophical ramifications
of computing, and to philosophy and computing more generally. The
Congress is one of the events forming the Alan Turing Year  

http://www.mathcomp.leeds.ac.uk/turing2012/

The intent of the Congress is to stimulate a particularly rich
interchange between AI and Philosophy on any areas of mutual interest,
whether directly addressing Turing's own research output or not. 

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SCOPE
This Symposium follows the organization of the International Conference
on History and Philosophy of Computing, held at the University of Ghent
from 7 to 10 November 2011 

www.computing-conference.ugent.be 

A historical awareness of the evolution of computing not only helps to
clarify the complex structure of the computing sciences, but it also
provides an insight in what computing was, is and maybe could be in the
future. Philosophy, on the other hand, helps to tackle some of the
fundamental problems of computing.  The aim of this conference is to
zoom into one fundamental aspect of computing, namely the foundational
and the historical problems and developments related to the science of
programming. 
 
Alan Turing himself was driven by the fundamental question of “what are
the possible processes which can be carried out in computing a
number” [Turing, 1936]. His answer today is well-known, and today we
understand a program as a rather complex instance of what became known
as the Turing Machine. What is less well-known, is that Turing also
wrote one of the first programming manuals ever for the Ferranti Mark I,
where one feels the symbolic machine hiding on the back of the
Manchester hardware. This was only the beginning of a large research
area that today involves logicians, programmers and engineers in the
design, understanding and realization of programming languages.

That a logico-mathematical-physical object called `program' is so
controversial, even though its very nature is mostly hidden away, is
rooted in the range of problems, processes and objects that can be
solved, simulated, approximated and generated by way of its execution.
Given its widespread impact on our lives, it becomes a responsibility of
the philosopher and the historian to study the science of programming.  


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TOPICS

The historical and philosophical reflection on the science of
programming is the main topic at the core of this Symposium and we
expect contributions about the following topics and their intersections:

1. The history of computational systems, machines and programs
2. Foundational issues and paradigms of programming (programming logics,
semantics and proof-theories for distributed, secure, cloud, functional,
object-oriented, etc.)

Our wish is to bring forth to the scientific community a deep
understanding and critical view of the problems related to the
scientific paradigm represented by the science of programming. Possible
and in no way exclusive questions that might be of relevance to this
Symposium are:

- What was and is the significance of hardware developments for the
development of software (and vice versa)?   
- In how far can the analogue and special-purpose machines built before
the 40s programs and what does this mean for our conception of “program”
today? 
- How important has been the hands-off vs. the hands-on approach for the
development of programming? 
- What is the influence of models of computability like Church's
lambda-calculus on the development of programming languages?
- Which case studies from the history of programming can tell us today
something about future directions? 
- Is programming a science or a technology? 
- In how far does it make sense to speak about programming paradigms in
the sense of Kuhn?  
- What are the novel and most interesting approaches to the design of
programs? 
- What are the most interesting formal properties of procedural
semantics, typed systems, etc?
- What is correctness for a program? Issues in Type-checking,
Model-checking, etc.
- What is the common structure of Proofs and Programs? Logic of Proofs
and Curry-Howard Isomorphism.
- What are the current logical issues in programming?
- How do we understand programs as syntactical-semantical objects?
- What is the nature of the relation between algorithms and programs? -
What is a program? 
- Which problems are the most pressing ones and why are they relevant to
more than just programmers?
- How can epistemology profit from the understanding of programs'
behavior and structure?
- What legal and socio-economical issues are involved in the creation,
patenting or free-distribution of programs?  


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SUBMISSION DETAILS:
The programme will consists of 2 Invited Lectures and up to 8
Contributed Papers. It will takes place in the afternoon session of the
5th and the morning session of the 6th of July. We cordially invite
researchers working in a field relevant to the main topics of the
conference to submit an extended abstract of minimum 2 and maximum 5
pages to 
 
computing.conference at ugent.be

Please mention "ABSTRACT HAPOP" in the subject line. Abstracts must be
written in English. Please note that the format of submitted files must
be .pdf or .rtf. Only unpublished material will be considered for
presentation. 

IMPORTANT DATES:
Submissions Deadline: 1 February 2012
Acceptance/rejection Decisions: 1 March 2012
Final versions of abstracts for inclusion in proceedings: 30 March 2012.
Symposium: 5 July (afternoon) and 6 July (morning)

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INVITED SPEAKERS:
Gerard Alberts (Universiteit van Amsterdam)
Julian Rohrhuber (Robert Schumann Hochschule Duesseldorf)


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SYMPOSIUM ORGANIZERS:
Liesbeth De Mol and Giuseppe Primiero


PROGRAMME COMMITTEE:

S. Artemov (City Univeristy of New York)
M. Bullynck (Universite' de Paris 8)
L. de Mol (CLPS UGent)
V. de Paiva (Reardem Commerce)
H. Durnova (Masarykova Univerzita Brno)
R. Kahle (Universidade Nova de Lisbona)
B. Loewe (Universiteit van Amsterdam)
F. Kamareddine (Heriot-Watt University Edinburgh)
G. Primiero (CLPS UGent)
R. Turner (University of Essex)


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PROCEEDINGS
There will be a separate proceedings for each symposium, produced before
the Congress. Each delegate at the Congress will receive, on arrival, a
memory stick containing the proceedings of all symposia.


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CONTACT AND INFORMATION:
For further information please contact us at:

 
computing.conference at ugent.be

or have a look at our website:
http://www.computing-conference.ugent.be/hapop12


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RELATED EVENTS

The Symposium on History and Philosophy of Programming will be followed
by a Roundtable on topics in the Philosophy of Computer Science on the
day after. Confirmed participants include:

Raymond Turner, University of Essex, UK (MODERATOR)
Rainhard Bengez, TU München, Germany
Manfred Broy, TU München, Germany,
Marcelo Dascal, University of Tel Aviv, Israel
Ruth Hagengruber, University of Paderborn, Germany
Giovanni Sartor, EUI – European University Institute, Florence, Italy
Dov M. Gabbay, King's College, London, UK
Jean-Gabriele Ganascia, University Pierre and Marie Curie, Paris, France
Gilles Dowek, l'Ècole polytechnique, Paris, France 
Jan van Leeuwen, Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands
Lothar Philipps, University of Munich, Germany
Giovanni Sartor, EUI – European University Institute, Florence, Italy
Kevin Ashley, University of Pittsburgh, USA
Hennry Prakken,  Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands
Erich Schweighofer, University of Vienna, Austria
Yoshino Hajime, Meiji Gakuin University, Tokio, Japan
Douglas Walton, University of Windsor, Canada


Topics include:
*Philosophical approaches to Computer Science
*Just Counting Machines? From Leibniz via Lovecraft and Babbage to
Turing, Zuse and von Neumann.
*Which kinds of logic and mathematical concepts are suitable for
machines and humans to understand machines?


Everyone is cordially invited