Autonomy and adaptiveness : a perspective on integrative neural architectures

Includes bibliographical references.Supported by the ARO. DAAL03-92-G-0115Bernard Gaveau, Charles Rockland, Sanjoy K. Mitter

Always One Bit More, Computing and the Experience of Ambiguity

Fun is often understood to be non-conceptual and indeed without rigour, without relation to formal processes of thought, yielding an intense and joyous informality, a release from procedure. Yet, as this book argues, fun may also be found, alongside other kinds of pleasure, in the generation, iteration and imagination of operations and procedures. This chapter aims to develop a means of drawing out an understanding of fun in relation to concepts of experience in the culture of mathematics and in the machinic fun of certain computer games. Mathematical concepts of experience, as something to be effaced, in terms of the grind of churning out calculations, understood as an acme of human knowledge bordering on the mystical or something both prosaic, peculiar and thrillingly abstract have been crucial to the motivation and genesis of computing. Experience may be figured as something innate to the computing person, or that is abstractable and thus mobile, shifting heterogeneously from one context to another, producing strange affinities between scales – residues and likeness among computational forms that can occasionally link the most austere and mundane or cacophonous of aesthetics. Among such, the fine and perplexing fun of paradox and ambiguity arises not simply in the interplay between formalisms and other kinds of life but as formalisms interweave releasing and congealing further dynamics. There are many ways in which mathematics has been linked to culture as a means of ordering, describing, inspiring or explaining ways of being in the world, but it is less often that mathematics thinks about itself as producing figurations of existence, and such moments are useful to turn to in gaining a sense of some of the patternings of computational culture

COMPLEX ACTION METHODOLOGY FOR ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS (CAMES): AN EXPERIMENTAL ACTION RESEARCH INQUIRY INTO COMMUNICATIVE ACTION AND QUANTUM MECHANICS FOR ACTION RESEARCH FIELD STUDIES IN ORGANISATIONAL CONTEXT

Current action research methodologies bias observations severely and render quantification models of subjective data uncertain. Thus, this research thesis aims to design a scientifically rigorous action-science methodology process that establishes a subject-bias-free method for communication in an organisational context. This investigation aims to apply scientific rigour to this issue and to verify the general applicability of mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics to address organisational venture that includes a “wicked problem” (Stubbart, 1987, quoted in Pearson and Clair, 1998, p. 62) of how to communicate and collaborate appropriately. The subjective data collection and quantification models of this thesis build on the quantitative formalism of quantum mechanics and qualitative formalism of the theory of communicative action. Mathematical and ontological formalism combine into a novel research strategy with planned instrumentation for action research field studies summarised under the term ‘Complex Action Methodology for Enterprise Systems’ (CAMES). The outcome is a process to understand the behavioural action of organisational members. This process is not technical, and neither does it involve a machine or apparatus. The process is primarily mathematical and requires that participants act under a new identity, a virtual identity. Similarly, the data analysis does not require a specific machine, technology or an apparatus. A spreadsheet calculator will primarily be sufficient for low entry. Data collection occurs in one block with an average duration time of 10 minutes in a virtual location. The practice can, therefore, use this thesis’ procedures for bias-free quantification of subjective data and prediction of an individual’s future behaviour with certainty. Prediction of an individual’s future behaviour with certainty provides to the organizational practice what organisational practice lacks but urgently requires. The certainty that claimed findings of behaviour in organisational context requires to intervene and steer. Certainty and justification for planned intervening and steering initiatives secure funding

Foundations of Trusted Autonomy

Trusted Autonomy; Automation Technology; Autonomous Systems; Self-Governance; Trusted Autonomous Systems; Design of Algorithms and Methodologie

Beyond Enlightenment: The Evolution of Agency and the Modularity of the Mind in a Post-Darwinian World

Working out of the social and philosophical revolutions from the Enlightenment, contemporary action theory has unwittingly inherited several Cartesian ideas regarding the human mind: that it is unified, rational, and transparent. As a result, we have for too long conceived of action as intimately bound up with reason such that to act at all is to act for a reason, leaving us with theoretical difficulties in accounting for the behavior of non-human animals as well as irrational behavior in human beings. But rather than propose that such difficulties can be resolved by retreating to a pre-Enlightenment view of human nature, the solution is to make the philosophical turn and embrace the insights that have been secured by Charles Darwin. It is a post-Darwinian evolutionary worldview that can shed some new light on these traditional problems. Two such innovations from the theory of evolution have been evolutionary explanations, which attempt to understand the functions of organisms as having developed in response to environmental pressures, and modular theory, which views organisms as composed of parts with highly specialized functions. Taking these evolutionary ideas together along with the assumption of biological continuity—that there is a developmental history shared by living organisms—we can begin to conceive of more robust theories of action, mind, and human nature. Contrary to Enlightenment conceptions, reason emerges as just one mental process alongside many, the mind appears anything but Cartesian, and agency begins far earlier along the spectrum of life than we have been supposing

Safety and Reliability - Safe Societies in a Changing World

The contributions cover a wide range of methodologies and application areas for safety and reliability that contribute to safe societies in a changing world. These methodologies and applications include: - foundations of risk and reliability assessment and management - mathematical methods in reliability and safety - risk assessment - risk management - system reliability - uncertainty analysis - digitalization and big data - prognostics and system health management - occupational safety - accident and incident modeling - maintenance modeling and applications - simulation for safety and reliability analysis - dynamic risk and barrier management - organizational factors and safety culture - human factors and human reliability - resilience engineering - structural reliability - natural hazards - security - economic analysis in risk managemen