Call for Abstracts:

“Life As It Could Be: 
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Artificial Life”

7–8 December 2026

Mini-Symposium
Aula Symbiosis, BioScience Center, KU Leuven,
Celestijnenlaan 200R, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
https://hiw.kuleuven.be/clps/events/symposium-lifeasitcouldbe/home

Deadline: October 23rd 2026

KU Leuven Organizers: Lendert Gelens (Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine), Bart Smeets (Department of Biosystems), Alejandro Fábregas-Tejeda (Institute of Philosophy), Grant Ramsey (Institute of Philosophy), and Sylvia Wenmackers (Institute of Philosophy)

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), and Ricard Solé (Pompeu Fabra University)

This mini-symposium will provide a forum for discussion of A-Life’s objectives, 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.

We welcome contributions from theoretical and empirical researchers—philosophers and scientists alike—interested in fostering interdisciplinary dialogues on the past, present and future of A-Life as a scientific field.  We invite submissions of abstracts (max. 500 words) for presentations. Abstracts must include affiliation and contact information. Please send the abstracts to Alejandro Fábregas-Tejeda via email (alejandro.fabregastejeda@kuleuven.be). Deadline: October 23rd 2026. Notifications of acceptance: October 30th 2026.

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-organization play in research into artificial life?
- What distinguishes strong A-Life (genuine instantiation of life) from weak A-Life (simulation and modeling)? How to 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 theories 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?
More information is available on this website: https://hiw.kuleuven.be/clps/events/symposium-lifeasitcouldbe/home

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