9,770 research outputs found
Artificial Brains and Hybrid Minds
The paper develops two related thought experiments exploring variations on an âanimatâ theme. Animats are hybrid devices with both artificial and biological components. Traditionally, âcomponentsâ have been construed in concrete terms, as physical parts or constituent material structures. Many fascinating issues arise within this context of hybrid physical organization. However, within the context of functional/computational theories of mentality, demarcations based purely on material structure are unduly narrow. It is abstract functional structure which does the key work in characterizing the respective âcomponentsâ of thinking systems, while the âstuffâ of material implementation is of secondary importance. Thus the paper extends the received animat paradigm, and investigates some intriguing consequences of expanding the conception of bio-machine hybrids to include abstract functional and semantic structure. In particular, the thought experiments consider cases of mind-machine merger where there is no physical Brain-Machine Interface: indeed, the material human body and brain have been removed from the picture altogether. The first experiment illustrates some intrinsic theoretical difficulties in attempting to replicate the human mind in an alternative material medium, while the second reveals some deep conceptual problems in attempting to create a form of truly Artificial General Intelligence
Aerospace medicine and biology. A continuing bibliography with indexes, supplement 195
This bibliography lists 148 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in June 1979
Beyond Desartes and Newton: Recovering life and humanity
Attempts to ânaturalizeâ phenomenology challenge both traditional phenomenology and traditional approaches to cognitive science. They challenge Edmund Husserlâs rejection of naturalism and his attempt to establish phenomenology as a foundational transcendental discipline, and they challenge efforts to explain cognition through mainstream science. While appearing to be a retreat from the bold claims made for phenomenology, it is really its triumph. Naturalized phenomenology is spearheading a successful challenge to the heritage of Cartesian dualism. This converges with the reaction against Cartesian thought within science itself. Descartes divided the universe between res cogitans, thinking substances, and res extensa, the mechanical world. The latter won with Newton and we have, in most of objective science since, literally lost our mind, hence our humanity. Despite Darwin, biologists remain children of Newton, and dream of a grand theory that is epistemologically complete and would allow lawful entailment of the evolution of the biosphere. This dream is no longer tenable. We now have to recognize that science and scientists are within and part of the world we are striving to comprehend, as proponents of endophysics have argued, and that physics, biology and mathematics have to be reconceived accordingly. Interpreting quantum mechanics from this perspective is shown to both illuminate conscious experience and reveal new paths for its further development. In biology we must now justify the use of the word âfunctionâ. As we shall see, we cannot prestate the ever new biological functions that arise and constitute the very phase space of evolution. Hence, we cannot mathematize the detailed becoming of the biosphere, nor write differential equations for functional variables we do not know ahead of time, nor integrate those equations, so no laws âentailâ evolution. The dream of a grand theory fails. In place of entailing laws, a post-entailing law explanatory framework is proposed in which Actuals arise in evolution that constitute new boundary conditions that are enabling constraints that create new, typically unprestatable, Adjacent Possible opportunities for further evolution, in which new Actuals arise, in a persistent becoming. Evolution flows into a typically unprestatable succession of Adjacent Possibles. Given the concept of function, the concept of functional closure of an organism making a living in its world, becomes central. Implications for patterns in evolution include historical reconstruction, and statistical laws such as the distribution of extinction events, or species per genus, and the use of formal cause, not efficient cause, laws
Cinnamons: A Computation Model Underlying Control Network Programming
We give the easily recognizable name "cinnamon" and "cinnamon programming" to
a new computation model intended to form a theoretical foundation for Control
Network Programming (CNP). CNP has established itself as a programming paradigm
combining declarative and imperative features, built-in search engine, powerful
tools for search control that allow easy, intuitive, visual development of
heuristic, nondeterministic, and randomized solutions. We define rigorously the
syntax and semantics of the new model of computation, at the same time trying
to keep clear the intuition behind and to include enough examples. The
purposely simplified theoretical model is then compared to both WHILE-programs
(thus demonstrating its Turing-completeness), and the "real" CNP. Finally,
future research possibilities are mentioned that would eventually extend the
cinnamon programming into the directions of nondeterminism, randomness, and
fuzziness.Comment: 7th Intl Conf. on Computer Science, Engineering & Applications
(ICCSEA 2017) September 23~24, 2017, Copenhagen, Denmar
Modelling virtual urban environments
In this paper, we explore the way in which virtual reality (VR) systems are being broadened to encompass a wide array of virtual worlds, many of which have immediate applicability to understanding urban issues through geocomputation. Wesketch distinctions between immersive, semi-immersive and remote environments in which single and multiple users interact in a variety of ways. We show how suchenvironments might be modelled in terms of ways of navigating within, processes of decision-making which link users to one another, analytic functions that users have to make sense of the environment, and functions through which users can manipulate, change, or design their world. We illustrate these ideas using four exemplars that we have under construction: a multi-user internet GIS for Londonwith extensive links to 3-d, video, text and related media, an exploration of optimal retail location using a semi-immersive visualisation in which experts can explore such problems, a virtual urban world in which remote users as avatars can manipulate urban designs, and an approach to simulating such virtual worlds through morphological modelling based on the digital record of the entire decision-making process through which such worlds are built
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