Consciousness as Recursive, Spatiotemporal Self-Location

At the phenomenal level, consciousness arises in a consistently coherent fashion as a singular, unified field of recursive self-awareness (subjectivity) with explicitly orientational characteristics—that of a subject located both spatially and temporally in an egocentrically-extended domain. Understanding these twin elements of consciousness begins with the recognition that ultimately (and most primitively), cognitive systems serve the biological self-regulatory regime in which they subsist. The psychological structures supporting self-located subjectivity involve an evolutionary elaboration of the two basic elements necessary for extending self-regulation into behavioral interaction with the environment: an orientative reference frame which consistently structures ongoing interaction in terms of controllable spatiotemporal parameters, and processing architecture that relates behavior to homeostatic needs via feedback. Over time, constant evolutionary pressures for energy efficiency have encouraged the emergence of anticipative feedforward processing mechanisms, and the elaboration, at the apex of the sensorimotor processing hierarchy, of self-activating, highly attenuated recursively-feedforward circuitry processing the basic orientational schema independent of external action output. As the primary reference frame of active waking cognition, this recursive self-locational schema processing generates a zone of subjective self-awareness in terms of which it feels like something to be oneself here and now. This is consciousness-as-subjectivity

The pre-scientific concept of a "soul": A neurophenomenological hypothesis about its origin.

In this contribution I will argue that our traditional, folk-phenomenological concept of a "soul� may have its origins in accurate and truthful first-person reports about the experiential content of a specific neurophenomenological state-class. This class of phenomenal states is called the "Out-of-body experience� (OBE hereafter), and I will offer a detailed description in section 3 of this paper. The relevant type of conscious experience seems to possess a culturally invariant cluster of functional and phenomenal core properties: it is a specific kind of conscious experience, which can in principle be undergone by every human being. I propose that it probably is one of the most central semantic roots of our everyday, folk-phenomenological idea of what a soul actually is

Can Science Explain Consciousness?

For diverse reasons, the problem of phenomenal consciousness is persistently challenging. Mental terms are characteristically ambiguous, researchers have philosophical biases, secondary qualities are excluded from objective description, and philosophers love to argue. Adhering to a regime of efficient causes and third-person descriptions, science as it has been defined has no place for subjectivity or teleology. A solution to the “hard problem” of consciousness will require a radical approach: to take the point of view of the cognitive system itself. To facilitate this approach, a concept of agency is introduced along with a different understanding of intentionality. Following this approach reveals that the autopoietic cognitive system constructs phenomenality through acts of fiat, which underlie perceptual completion effects and “filling in”—and, by implication, phenomenology in general. It creates phenomenality much as we create meaning in language, through the use of symbols that it assigns meaning in the context of an embodied evolutionary history that is the source of valuation upon which meaning depends. Phenomenality is a virtual representation to itself by an executive agent (the conscious self) tasked with monitoring the state of the organism and its environment, planning future action, and coordinating various sub- agencies. Consciousness is not epiphenomenal, but serves a function for higher organisms that is distinct from that of unconscious processing. While a strictly scientific solution to the hard problem is not possible for a science that excludes the subjectivity it seeks to explain, there is hope to at least psychologically bridge the explanatory gulf between mind and matter, and perhaps hope for a broader definition of science

Cognitive Modeling for Computer Animation: A Comparative Review

Cognitive modeling is a provocative new paradigm that paves the way towards intelligent graphical characters by providing them with logic and reasoning skills. Cognitively empowered self-animating characters will see in the near future a widespread use in the interactive game, multimedia, virtual reality and production animation industries. This review covers three recently-published papers from the field of cognitive modeling for computer animation. The approaches and techniques employed are very different. The cognition model in the first paper is built on top of Soar, which is intended as a general cognitive architecture for developing systems that exhibit intelligent behaviors. The second paper uses an active plan tree and a plan library to achieve the fast and robust reactivity to the environment changes. The third paper, based on an AI formalism known as the situation calculus, develops a cognitive modeling language called CML and uses it to specify a behavior outline or sketch plan to direct the characters in terms of goals. Instead of presenting each paper in isolation then comparatively analyzing them, we take a top-down approach by first classifying the field into three different categories and then attempting to put each paper into a proper category. Hopefully in this way it can provide a more cohesive, systematic view of cognitive modeling approaches employed in computer animation

Embodied cognition: A field guide

The nature of cognition is being re-considered. Instead of emphasizing formal operations on abstract symbols, the new approach foregrounds the fact that cognition is, rather, a situated activity, and suggests that thinking beings ought therefore be considered first and foremost as acting beings. The essay reviews recent work in Embodied Cognition, provides a concise guide to its principles, attitudes and goals, and identifies the physical grounding project as its central research focus

How the Brain Makes Up the Mind: a heuristic approach to the hard problem of consciousness

A solution to the “hard problem” requires taking the point of view of the organism and its sub- agents. The organism constructs phenomenality through acts of fiat, much as we create meaning in language, through the use of symbols that are assigned meaning in the context of an embodied evolutionary history. Phenomenality is a virtual representation, made to itself by an executive agent (the conscious self), which is tasked with monitoring the state of the organism and its environment, planning future action, and coordinating various sub-agencies. Consciousness is not epiphenomenal and serves a function for higher organisms that is distinct from unconscious processing. While a strictly scientific solution to the hard problem is not possible for a science that excludes the subjectivity it seeks to explain, there is hope to at least informally bridge the explanatory gulf between mind and matter

Real Time Animation of Virtual Humans: A Trade-off Between Naturalness and Control

Virtual humans are employed in many interactive applications using 3D virtual environments, including (serious) games. The motion of such virtual humans should look realistic (or ‘natural’) and allow interaction with the surroundings and other (virtual) humans. Current animation techniques differ in the trade-off they offer between motion naturalness and the control that can be exerted over the motion. We show mechanisms to parametrize, combine (on different body parts) and concatenate motions generated by different animation techniques. We discuss several aspects of motion naturalness and show how it can be evaluated. We conclude by showing the promise of combinations of different animation paradigms to enhance both naturalness and control

Principles for Consciousness in Integrated Cognitive Control

In this article we will argue that given certain conditions for the evolution of bi- \ud ological controllers, these will necessarily evolve in the direction of incorporating \ud consciousness capabilities. We will also see what are the necessary mechanics for \ud the provision of these capabilities and extrapolate this vision to the world of artifi- \ud cial systems postulating seven design principles for conscious systems. This article \ud was published in the journal Neural Networks special issue on brain and conscious- \ud ness

Prediction of intent in robotics and multi-agent systems.

Moving beyond the stimulus contained in observable agent behaviour, i.e. understanding the underlying intent of the observed agent is of immense interest in a variety of domains that involve collaborative and competitive scenarios, for example assistive robotics, computer games, robot-human interaction, decision support and intelligent tutoring. This review paper examines approaches for performing action recognition and prediction of intent from a multi-disciplinary perspective, in both single robot and multi-agent scenarios, and analyses the underlying challenges, focusing mainly on generative approaches