<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><br></div><div><span lang="EN-US">Dear colleagues,<o:p></o:p></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">It is my pleasure to announce you the release of the latest issue of the IEEE CIS Newsletter on Autonomous Mental Development, available at:</span></p><div><a href="http://www.cse.msu.edu/amdtc/amdnl/AMDNL-V8-N1.pdf">http://www.cse.msu.edu/amdtc/amdnl/AMDNL-V8-N1.pdf</a></div><div><br></div><div>This month's dialog, initiated by John Weng, continues the dialog on symbol grounding held in this newsletter last year. John Weng asked "Are natural languages symbolic in the brain?". This question directly addresses a quite controversial but fundamental issue: is the symbol grounding problem a real problem? Are symbols really fundamental for understanding human cognitive development, or are they just a modern conceptual invention of modern human culture? The answers, written by Stevan Harnad, Jürgen Schmidhüber, Aaron Sloman, Angelo Cangelosi, and Yuuya Sugita and Martin Butz, interestingly mix philosophical and mathematical arguments, showing how recent technical advances can illuminate old questions and vice versa, how philosophical theories can either question or support the assumptions and concepts of modern technical approaches.</div><div><div><span lang="EN-US"></span><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><div>Then, a new dialog is proposed by Yaochu Jin and Yan Meng about the interaction between phylogeny, ontogeny and epigenesis, as well as about the interaction between morphological and mental development, urging us to explore new areas in developmental robotics: "Evolutionary developmental robotics - The next step to go?". Those of you interested to react are welcome to submit a response (contact <a href="mailto:pierre-yves.oudeyer@inria.fr">pierre-yves.oudeyer@inria.fr</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: medium; ">) by September 1st, 2011. The length of each response should be between 300 and 500 words (including references).</span></div><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div>I take the opportunity of this email to encourage everyone to take a look at the latest articles published in IEEE Transactions in Autonomous Mental Development:</div><div><a href="http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isnumber=4815436">http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isnumber=4815436</a></div><div><br></div><div>I also encourage you to come and participate to the first joint IEEE ICDL-Epirob conference, to be held in Frankfurt on 24th-27th August 2011:</div><div><a href="http://www.icdl-epirob.org/">http://www.icdl-epirob.org/</a></div><div><br></div><div>I wish you a stimulating reading !<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; ">Best regards,</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; ">Pierre-Yves Oudeyer,<br><i>Editor of the IEEE CIS Newsletter<span> </span>on Autonomous Mental Development<o:p></o:p><br>INRIA, France<o:p></o:p><br><a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.pyoudeyer.com">http://www.pyoudeyer.com</a></i></p><div><a href="http://flowers.inria.fr">http://flowers.inria.fr</a></div></div></div></body></html>