Enaction-Based Artificial Intelligence: Toward Coevolution with Humans in the Loop

This article deals with the links between the enaction paradigm and artificial intelligence. Enaction is considered a metaphor for artificial intelligence, as a number of the notions which it deals with are deemed incompatible with the phenomenal field of the virtual. After explaining this stance, we shall review previous works regarding this issue in terms of artifical life and robotics. We shall focus on the lack of recognition of co-evolution at the heart of these approaches. We propose to explicitly integrate the evolution of the environment into our approach in order to refine the ontogenesis of the artificial system, and to compare it with the enaction paradigm. The growing complexity of the ontogenetic mechanisms to be activated can therefore be compensated by an interactive guidance system emanating from the environment. This proposition does not however resolve that of the relevance of the meaning created by the machine (sense-making). Such reflections lead us to integrate human interaction into this environment in order to construct relevant meaning in terms of participative artificial intelligence. This raises a number of questions with regards to setting up an enactive interaction. The article concludes by exploring a number of issues, thereby enabling us to associate current approaches with the principles of morphogenesis, guidance, the phenomenology of interactions and the use of minimal enactive interfaces in setting up experiments which will deal with the problem of artificial intelligence in a variety of enaction-based ways

Artificial Brains and Hybrid Minds

The paper develops two related thought experiments exploring variations on an ‘animat’ theme. Animats are hybrid devices with both artificial and biological components. Traditionally, ‘components’ 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 ‘components’ of thinking systems, while the ‘stuff’ 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

From Biological to Synthetic Neurorobotics Approaches to Understanding the Structure Essential to Consciousness (Part 3)

This third paper locates the synthetic neurorobotics research reviewed in the second paper in terms of themes introduced in the first paper. It begins with biological non-reductionism as understood by Searle. It emphasizes the role of synthetic neurorobotics studies in accessing the dynamic structure essential to consciousness with a focus on system criticality and self, develops a distinction between simulated and formal consciousness based on this emphasis, reviews Tani and colleagues' work in light of this distinction, and ends by forecasting the increasing importance of synthetic neurorobotics studies for cognitive science and philosophy of mind going forward, finally in regards to most- and myth-consciousness

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

Analogy, Mind, and Life

I'll show that the kind of analogy between life and information [argue for by authors such as Davies (2000), Walker and Davies (2013), Dyson (1979), Gleick (2011), Kurzweil (2012), Ward (2009)] – that seems to be central to the effect that artificial mind may represents an expected advance in the life evolution in Universe – is like the design argument and that if the design argument is unfounded and invalid, the argument to the effect that artificial mind may represents an expected advance in the life evolution in Universe is also unfounded and invalid. However, if we are prepared to admit (though we should not do) this method of reasoning as valid, I'll show that the analogy between life and information to the effect that artificial mind may represents an expected advance in the life evolution in Universe seems suggest some type of reductionism of life to information, but biology respectively chemistry or physics are not reductionist, contrary to what seems to be suggested by the analogy between life and information

Enacting Productive Dialogue: Addressing the Challenge that Non-Human Cognition Poses to Collaborations Between Enactivism and Heideggerian Phenomenology

This chapter uses one particular proposal for interdisciplinary collaboration – in this case, between early Heideggerian phenomenology and enactivist cognitive science – as an example of how such partnerships may confront and negotiate tensions between the perspectives they bring together. The discussion begins by summarising some of the intersections that render Heideggerian and enactivist thought promising interlocutors for each other. It then moves on to explore how Heideggerian enactivism could respond to the challenge of reconciling the significant differences in the ways that each discourse seeks to apply the structures it claims to uncover

Consciousness, Meaning and the Future Phenomenology

Phenomenological states are generally considered sources of intrinsic motivation for autonomous biological agents. In this paper we will address the issue of exploiting these states for robust goal-directed systems. We will provide an analysis of consciousness in terms of a precise definition of how an agent “understands” the informational flows entering the agent. This model of consciousness and understanding is based in the analysis and evaluation of phenomenological states along potential trajectories in the phase space of the agents. This implies that a possible strategy to follow in order to build autonomous but useful systems is to embed them with the particular, ad-hoc phenomenology that captures the requirements that define the system usefulness from a requirements-strict engineering viewpoint