Event

This mini-symposium will provide a forum to discuss the objectives of the interdisciplinary field of Artificial Life’s, overarching theoretical frameworks, main achievements and shortcomings, and prospects for the coming decades of scientific inquiry into what life is and could be—in silicon, in laboratories, and perhaps beyond Earth.

Some of the themes and topics that we will cover include (but are not restricted to):

• What are the objectives of A-Life as an interdisciplinary field? What can the history of A-Life teach us about which questions to carry forward and which to retire?
• What does the field of A-Life offer that is unique or of value to the philosophy of science?
• What role does the study of self-organisation play in research into artificial life?
• What distinguishes strong A-Life (genuine instantiation of life) from weak A-Life (simulation and modelling)? How can we determine the threshold between them? 
• When does a simulation or synthetic system constitute evidence of the general properties of life-as-it-could-be?
• Which overarching conceptual/theoretical frameworks have proven most fruitful in A-Life investigations, and why?
• What are A-Life’s genuine successes, and by what criteria should they be judged?
• What has A-Life contributed to adjacent disciplines (e.g., cell and developmental biology, evolutionary biology, cognitive science, origins-of-life research, astrobiology, and artificial intelligence) that those fields could not have produced on their own?
• Which empirical findings in A-Life defy the soundness of our extant theoretical frameworks, and how can our theoretical frameworks be better tested experimentally?
• What are the main empirical challenges currently facing the field of A-Life?
• Whither A-Life research? What trajectories are in store for the field?

Invited Speakers

• Mark Bedau (Reed College)
• Liedewij Laan (TU Delft)
• Andrea Loettgers (University of Vienna)
• Gry Oftedal (University of Oslo)
• Juli Peretó (University of Valencia)
• Ricard Solé (Pompeu Fabra University)

Abstract deadline: 23 October 2026