January 31 to February 2, 2005 at Collegium Budapest

Organizer: Eörs Szathmáry, Britta Glatzeder

Parmenides Workshop 12 was arranged as a forum for the research teams at the Parmenides Center and the theoretical biology group of Eörs Szathmáry at Collegium Budapest to get to know each other. Eörs Szathmáry and his group are one of the most important cooperative partners of the Parmenides Center. The theoretical biology group has experience in fields that are of crucial relevance for the research of the Parmenides Center: evolutionary theory, transition analysis, and biological evolution of complexity and language.

Eörs Szathmáry’s main interest is theoretical evolutionary biology and focuses on the common principles of the major steps in evolution, such as the origin of life, the emergence of cells, the origin of animal societies, and the appearance of human language. Together with his mentor, John Maynard Smith, he has published two important books which serve as the main references in the field (The Major Transitions in Evolution, Freeman, 1995, and The Origins of Life, Oxford University Press, 1999).

The main questions discussed in this workshop were: What are the constraints on language evolution as inferred from biological scenarios? How far can statistical learning account for language acquisition? What are the neural implementations of Bayesian learning? How can language competence evolve in a population of neuronal networks, with highly biomimetic genetic encoding? What will the selected architectures look like?

• Chrisantha Fernando, computational neuroscience, University of Sussex
• Thomas Filk, theoretical physics, University of Freiburg, and Parmenides Center
• Britta Glatzeder, philosophy, Parmenides Center
• Peter Ittzes, biology, computer science, Collegium Budapest
• Ulrich Kühne, philosophy of science, Parmenides Center
• Chris Langton, artificial life, complexity theory, Parmenides Center
• Albrecht von Müller, philosophy, Parmenides Center
• Michael Öllinger; cognitive psychology, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, and Parmenides Center
• Gergo Orban, neuroscience, Collegium Budapest
• Helge Ritter, neuroinformatics, University of Bielefeld, Germany
• Szabolcs Szamado, theoretical biology and ecology, Collegium Budapest
• Eors Szathmary, evolutionary biology, Collegium Budapest
• Zoltan Szatmary, neuroscience, computer science, Technical University of Budapest

• The evolution of networks and learning (Thomas Filk)
• Evolutionary neurogenetic algorithm (Peter Ittzes and Zoltan Szatmary)
• Evolutionary algorithms in large search spaces (Chris Langton)
• John von Neumann and Artificial Life (Chris Langton – public talk)
• The modularity of complex thinking operations (Albrecht von Müller)
• On the evolution of basic cognitive operations (Michael Öllinger)
• A Bayesian approach to rule learning (Gergo Orban)
• Elements of intelligent systems (Helge Ritter)
• Scenarios for the origin of language (Szabolcs Szamado)
• The problem of language (Eors Szathmary)