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

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

Inductive Biases for Deep Learning of Higher-Level Cognition

A fascinating hypothesis is that human and animal intelligence could be explained by a few principles (rather than an encyclopedic list of heuristics). If that hypothesis was correct, we could more easily both understand our own intelligence and build intelligent machines. Just like in physics, the principles themselves would not be sufficient to predict the behavior of complex systems like brains, and substantial computation might be needed to simulate human-like intelligence. This hypothesis would suggest that studying the kind of inductive biases that humans and animals exploit could help both clarify these principles and provide inspiration for AI research and neuroscience theories. Deep learning already exploits several key inductive biases, and this work considers a larger list, focusing on those which concern mostly higher-level and sequential conscious processing. The objective of clarifying these particular principles is that they could potentially help us build AI systems benefiting from humans' abilities in terms of flexible out-of-distribution and systematic generalization, which is currently an area where a large gap exists between state-of-the-art machine learning and human intelligence.Comment: This document contains a review of authors research as part of the requirement of AG's predoctoral exam, an overview of the main contributions of the authors few recent papers (co-authored with several other co-authors) as well as a vision of proposed future researc

A preliminary review

The term neuropsychotherapy has two distinct meanings: Psychotherapy as a tool for neurological rehabilitation (Ellis, 1989; Judd, 1999) and psychotherapy informed by neurosciences (Grawe, 2007). Being a relatively new concept, there was not any review of the literature with a systematic approach to article search yet (to the extent of our knowledge). This dissertation intends to fill that gap, by reviewing articles on the topic across six scientific databases (EBSCO, B-on, MEDLINE/PubMed, PsycINFO, Web of Science and Scielo). Eight articles fulfilled the inclusion criteria defined for this review. The existing literature is classified in chronological, geographical, and content-related terms. The dissertation ends with a discussion on the existing literature.O termo neuropsicoterapia tem dois significados: a psicoterapia como ferramenta para a reabilitação neurológica (Ellis, 1989; Judd, 1999) e a psicoterapia informada pelas neurociências (Grawe, 2007). Sendo um conceito relativamente recente, ainda não existia nenhuma revisão da literatura com uma abordagem sistemática à pesquisa. Nesta dissertação pretende-se dar resposta a essa lacuna, sendo efetuada uma revisão da literatura com uma abordagem sistemática à pesquisa sobre este tópico. Foram abrangidas seis bases de dados científicas (EBSCO, B-on, MEDLINE/PubMed, PsycINFO, Web of Science e Scielo). Oito artigos preencheram os critérios definidos para inclusão nesta revisão. Os artigos foram analisados cronológica, geográfica e tematicamente, tendo posteriormente sido discutidos os resultados

Embodiment and Grammatical Structure: An Approach to the Relation of Experience, Assertion and Truth

In this thesis I address a concern in both existential phenomenology and embodied cognition, namely, the question of how ‘higher’ cognitive abilities such as language and judgements of truth relate to embodied experience. I suggest that although our words are grounded in experience, what makes this grounding and our higher abilities possible is grammatical structure. The opening chapter contrasts the ‘situated’ approach of embodied cognition and existential phenomenology with Cartesian methodological solipsism. The latter produces a series of dualisms, including that of language and meaning, whereas the former dissolves such dualisms. The second chapter adapts Merleau-Ponty’s arguments against the perceptual constancy hypothesis in order to undermine the dualism of grammar and meaning. This raises the question of what grammar is, which is addressed in the third chapter. I acknowledge the force of Chomsky’s observation that language is structure dependent and briefly introduce a minimal grammatical operation which might be the ‘spark which lit the intellectual forest fire’ (Clark: 2001, 151). Grammatical relations are argued to make possible the grounding of our symbols in chapters 4 and 5, which attempt to ground the categories of determiner and aspect in spatial deixis and embodied motor processes respectively. Chapter 6 ties the previous three together, arguing that we may understand a given lexeme as an object or as an event by subsuming it within a determiner phrase or aspectualising it respectively. I suggest that such modification of a word’s meaning is possible because determiners and aspect schematise, i.e. determine the temporal structure, of the lexeme. Chapter 7 uses this account to take up Heidegger’s claim that the relation between being and truth be cast in terms of temporality (2006, H349), though falls short of providing a complete account of the ‘origin of truth’. Chapter 8 concludes and notes further avenues of research

The Mechanics of Embodiment: A Dialogue on Embodiment and Computational Modeling

Embodied theories are increasingly challenging traditional views of cognition by arguing that conceptual representations that constitute our knowledge are grounded in sensory and motor experiences, and processed at this sensorimotor level, rather than being represented and processed abstractly in an amodal conceptual system. Given the established empirical foundation, and the relatively underspecified theories to date, many researchers are extremely interested in embodied cognition but are clamouring for more mechanistic implementations. What is needed at this stage is a push toward explicit computational models that implement sensory-motor grounding as intrinsic to cognitive processes. In this article, six authors from varying backgrounds and approaches address issues concerning the construction of embodied computational models, and illustrate what they view as the critical current and next steps toward mechanistic theories of embodiment. The first part has the form of a dialogue between two fictional characters: Ernest, the �experimenter�, and Mary, the �computational modeller�. The dialogue consists of an interactive sequence of questions, requests for clarification, challenges, and (tentative) answers, and touches the most important aspects of grounded theories that should inform computational modeling and, conversely, the impact that computational modeling could have on embodied theories. The second part of the article discusses the most important open challenges for embodied computational modelling

The possibility conditions of narrative identity.

The focus of this dissertation is narrative identity theory, i.e. the proposition that our sense of self is structured like a story. The imputed advantage of narrativity identity is that it enables great coherence and guidance to our complex lives composed of multiple and often conflicting inner impulses and social demands. The manner in which this is accomplished is that narrativity functions metaphorically as a tacit, formative operation, which transfers the intelligibility inherent in the familiar domain of stories to the more elusive domain of personal identity. Narrativity is an epistemically efficient kind of discourse which can synthesize a multitude of elements into a unity called plot. A plot gives unity to the whole of a story and confers significance to its parts. Both narrativity and metaphoricity are the more recognizable products of an underlying mechanism both share, i.e. productive imagination. This faculty pervasively and continually configures the whole field of our experience, accentuating the relevant structures of our physical, social or inner, affective-mental environment (context) and projects the path through this environment towards a physical destiny, social accomplishment or resolution (direction). With the tools of classic Husserlian phenomenology and its radicalization in Heideggerian existential hermeneutics the main concepts of narrativity, metaphoricity and productive imagination can be further clarified and connected. This will enable a discussion about the question whether the ontological status of narrative identity can be construed such that either 1) personal identity merely has narrative cognition available as a pervasive, tacit tool to cope with life, or 2) whether our personal identity is nothing but the product of the productive The focus of this dissertation is narrative identity theory, i.e. the proposition that our sense of self is structured like a story. The imputed advantage of narrativity identity is that it enables great coherence and guidance to our complex lives composed of multiple and often conflicting inner impulses and social demands. The manner in which this is accomplished is that narrativity functions metaphorically as a tacit, formative operation, which transfers the intelligibility inherent in the familiar domain of stories to the more elusive domain of personal identity. Narrativity is an epistemically efficient kind of discourse which can synthesize a multitude of elements into a unity called plot. A plot gives unity to the whole of a story and confers significance to its parts. Both narrativity and metaphoricity are the more recognizable products of an underlying mechanism both share, i.e. productive imagination. This faculty pervasively and continually configures the whole field of our experience, accentuating the relevant structures of our physical, social or inner, affective-mental environment (context) and projects the path through this environment towards a physical destiny, social accomplishment or resolution (direction). With the tools of classic Husserlian phenomenology and its radicalization in Heideggerian existential hermeneutics the main concepts of narrativity, metaphoricity and productive imagination can be further clarified and connected. This will enable a discussion about the question whether the ontological status of narrative identity can be construed such that either 1) personal identity merely has narrative cognition available as a pervasive, tacit tool to cope with life, or 2) whether our personal identity is nothing but the product of the productive The focus of this dissertation is narrative identity theory, i.e. the proposition that our sense of self is structured like a story. The imputed advantage of narrativity identity is that it enables great coherence and guidance to our complex lives composed of multiple and often conflicting inner impulses and social demands. The manner in which this is accomplished is that narrativity functions metaphorically as a tacit, formative operation, which transfers the intelligibility inherent in the familiar domain of stories to the more elusive domain of personal identity. Narrativity is an epistemically efficient kind of discourse which can synthesize a multitude of elements into a unity called plot. A plot gives unity to the whole of a story and confers significance to its parts. Both narrativity and metaphoricity are the more recognizable products of an underlying mechanism both share, i.e. productive imagination. This faculty pervasively and continually configures the whole field of our experience, accentuating the relevant structures of our physical, social or inner, affective-mental environment (context) and projects the path through this environment towards a physical destiny, social accomplishment or resolution (direction). With the tools of classic Husserlian phenomenology and its radicalization in Heideggerian existential hermeneutics the main concepts of narrativity, metaphoricity and productive imagination can be further clarified and connected. This will enable a discussion about the question whether the ontological status of narrative identity can be construed such that either 1) personal identity merely has narrative cognition available as a pervasive, tacit tool to cope with life, or 2) whether our personamagination operating through narrativityl identity is nothing but the product of the productiv

T2HSOM: Understanding the Lexicon by Simulating Memory Processes for Serial Order

Over the last several years, both theoretical and empirical approaches to lexical knowledge and encoding have prompted a radical reappraisal of the traditional dichotomy between lexicon and grammar. The lexicon is not simply a large waste basket of exceptions and sub-regularities, but a dynamic, possibly redundant repository of linguistic knowledge whose principles of relational organization are the driving force of productive generalizations. In this paper, we overview a few models of dynamic lexical organization based on neural network architectures that are purported to meet this challenging view. In particular, we illustrate a novel family of Kohonen self-organizing maps (T2HSOMs) that have the potential of simulating competitive storage of symbolic time series while exhibiting interesting properties of morphological organization and generalization. The model, tested on training samples of as morphologically diverse languages as Italian, German and Arabic, shows sensitivity to manifold types of morphological structure and can be used to bootstrap morphological knowledge in an unsupervised way

Situational Language Understanding in Texts

This thesis explores how human beings understand the language of fictional literary texts. The first half of the thesis explores the theory behind knowledge in the human brain, and introduces the concept of Predictive Coding and situation model theory. Using this, I present and discuss the theory which has arisen from my research on these topics, predictive model theory. Predictive model theory is used in chapter two to explore some linguistic phenomena which the theory can analyse and describe with great explanatory power. In chapter three in which I outline the main reasons why the theory is both a useful innovation to the field of literary linguistics and a powerful tool for explaining how texts can be understood in the face of ill-posed problems, fictional causality, and textual underdetermination. Following this, I introduce my own unique eye-tracking experiment, designed to look at predictive models in real fictional text, read by readers with a state of the art eye-tracker, which approximates natural reading. In the following discussion, the surprising results which show that a version of the text which is manipulated with logical inconsistencies is in fact read faster than a control. Using my predictive model theory, I discuss this further and offer suggestions of how this gives a brand-new insight into the reading process. I then introduce the concept of contextual plausibility, and how readers use specific indicators of causality and plausibility contained within texts, and integrate these into background knowledge of the world. In the next empirical chapter, my second eye-tracking study is introduced, which looks at how genre descriptions affect reading patterns of participants. Here I show that the unique difficulties faced by readers when part of the context of a textual extract do lead to a slowing down of the reading process. The following analysis delves further into the process of predictive situation models on a genre level. Finally, the conclusion summarises the unique findings of my theoretical considerations and the empirical data I have gathered to support them, and how this furthers the field of linguistics