If we consider the kinds of intelligence generated by brain-body-environment systems, then such emergent minds may be vaster still in terms of their complex combinatorics, with the pinnacle of expressive power potentially being found in language with its “infinite use of finite means”. The field of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) seeks to reproduce the powers of biological...
We suggest that the influence of biology in 'biologically inspired robotics' can be embraced at a deeper level than is typical, if we adopt an enactive approach that moves the focus of interest from how problems are solved to how problems emerge in the first place. In addition to being inspired by mechanisms found in natural systems or by evolutionary design principles directed at solving...
Situated approaches to cognition maintain that cognition is embodied, embedded, enactive, and affective (and extended, but that is not relevant here). Situated approaches are often pitched as alternatives to computational and representational approaches, according to which cognition is computation over representations. I argue that, far from being opposites, situatedness and neural...
AI (broadly speaking) as a discipline and practice has tended to misconstrue social cognition by failing to properly appreciate the role and structure of the interaction itself. Participatory Sense-Making (PSM) offers a new level of description in understanding the potential role of (particularly robotics-based) AGI in a social interaction process. Where it falls short in distinguishing genuine...
In this paper we start from the philosophical position in cognitive science known as enactivism. We formulate five basic enactivist tenets that we have carefully identified in the relevant literature as the main underlying principles of that philosophy. We then develop a mathematical framework to talk about cognitive systems (both artificial and natural) which complies with these enactivist...
We present a description of an ASM-network, a new habit-based robot controller model consisting of a network of adaptive sensorimotor maps. This model draws upon recent theoretical developments in enactive cognition concerning habit and agency at the sensorimotor level. It aims to provide a platform for experimental investigation into the relationship between networked organizations of habits...
Plants offer a source of bioinspiration for soft robotics. Nevertheless, a gap remains in designing robots based on the fundamental principles of plant intelligence, rooted in a non-centralized, modular architecture and a highly plastic phenotype. We contend that a holistic approach to plant bioinspiration-one that draws more fully on the features of plant intelligence and behavior-evidences...
Frontiers in Neurorobotics2020Verena V Hafner, Pontus Loviken, Antonio Pico Villalpando et al.1 citation
Traditionally investigated in philosophy, body ownership and agency-two main components of the minimal self-have recently gained attention from other disciplines, such as brain, cognitive and behavioral sciences, and even robotics and artificial intelligence. In robotics, intuitive human interaction in natural and dynamic environments becomes more and more important, and requires skills such as...
Active inference is an ambitious theory that treats perception, inference, and action selection of autonomous agents under the heading of a single principle. It suggests biologically plausible explanations for many cognitive phenomena, including consciousness. In active inference, action selection is driven by an objective function that evaluates possible future actions with respect to current,...
Consciousness is a complex and multi-faceted phenomenon defying scientific explanation. Part of the reason why this is the case is due to its subjective nature. In our previous computational experiments, to avoid such a subjective trap, we took a strategy to investigate objective necessary conditions of consciousness. Our basic hypothesis was that predictive internal dynamics serves as such a...