Tom Froese

Beyond information transfer: the emergence of embodied communication

Tom Froese
50th Anniversary Summit of Artificial Intelligence
9-14 July 2006, Monte Verita, Switzerland

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Machine Consciousness: An enactive analysis of the state of the art

Tom Froese
Toward a Science of Consciousness
23-26 July 2007, Budapest, Hungary

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Autonomy

Nathaniel Virgo, Tom Froese, and Eduardo Izquierdo
Life and Mind seminar
Nov 29th, 2006, 15:00 ARUN 404A

Nathaniel, Tom and Eduardo will lead a discussion on the definitions of autonomy and their relevance for the artificial, situated, embodied and dynamical systems perspective to the study of life and cognition.

Some of the themes to be discussed are: a) weak versus strong definitions of autonomy, b) death, time, self and artificial worlds, and c) some examples and suggestions for the future: how can strong autonomy be approached in artificial life? Are dissipative structures “borderline cases” or minimally autonomous systems?

The goal will be to have a focused discussion on (a) how we could get ’strong’ autonomy in an artificial setting, and (b) how we would know that we did.

So everyone come along and bring your favorite definition of autonomy for discussion!

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Enaction as reality research

Tom Froese
Life and Mind seminar
17th of January 2007, at 3:00pm
Location: Arun. 404A

What is the final frontier of scientific exploration? Is it the domain of subatomic particles, or perhaps the outer reaches of space? In this talk I will argue that it is neither of these two, but rather the mind as it is studied by cognitive science. It is here that science, as a cognitive activity, is investigating the conditions that make its own existence possible in the first place. Thus, as a form of meta-science, the field of cognitive science is in the priviledged position to influence the scientific project as a whole. Indeed, it has the potential to profoundly alter how we view reality and our place in it.

For the original post with the slides click here.

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The role of AI in the paradigm shift toward an embodied-embedded cognitive science

Tom Froese
Life and Mind seminar
When: Wednesday 15 November, at 15:00.
Where: Room ARUN 404B.

In this talk I will look at the role of AI and robotics in the ongoing paradigm shift of the cognitive sciences. I will start by analyzing the shift from cognitivism towards a more embodied-embedded cognitive science, and conclude that this move was mostly due to empirical developments in AI which allowed purely philosophical arguments to be resolved experimentally. More recently, there has been a lot of discussion of a further shift towards enactivism. I will try to give a brief overview of the central aspects of an enactive theory of cognition. In particlar, I will highlight enactivism’s central concern with the notion of subjectivity and then analyze AI and robotic’s role (if any) in facilitating this second shift. It might turn out that this shift in understanding needs something qualitatively different from the resolution of disputes in either the philosophical or empirical domain of the cognitive sciences.

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Beyond Information Transfer: The Emergence of Embodied Communication

Tom Froese
20 July 2006
Fellow Seminar
Collegium: Institute for Advanced Study, Budapest, Hungary

The “Cognition Is Computation” and “Communication Is Information Transfer” metaphors are among the most deeply entrenched constitutive assumptions of classical cognitive science research. However, there is a growing consensus that it is crucial for our understanding of cognition and communication that we study both as a biologically embodied-embedded phenomena. I will outline some considerations why the functional definition of communication as an exchange of information with selective advantage is inadequate in this respect.

I propose that what is needed instead is a shift of focus to the underlying dynamical mechanisms and morphological structures which causally enable communication to emerge as a coordination of action between embodied, situated, and autonomous systems. In the talk I will outline some of the progress that has been made in artificially evolving such behavioral coordination in multi-agent systems, and then briefly describe why these developments are particularly relevant for the future of embodied cognitive science as a whole.

Constructivist epistemology: an analysis of the constitutive role of viability constraints

Tom Froese
MIND2006: Graduate Conference in the Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science
15-16 June 2006, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

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The role of scientific knowledge in Wheeler’s Reconstructing the Cognitive World
Tom Froese
4:30 p.m. 11 May 2006

Wheeler (2005) begins his book with two explicit assumptions:

1. that physicalism is true, and
2. that whenever there is an inconsistency between philosophy and natural science, it is philosophy which has to give way.

The aim of this talk is to show that assumption 1) violates assumption 2) when considered from a consistent Heideggerian framework.

The first task Wheeler sets himself is to demonstrate that orthodox cognitive science is generally Cartesian in character, which in my opinion he does successfully. He then wants to show that, in contrast, more recent developments in cognitive science (such as the dynamical systems approach and evolutionary robotics) are generally Heideggerian in character.

I outline some of the difficulties that Wheeler is facing with this second task, and trace them to his characterization of scientific knowledge as observer-independent and context-free (thus providing the foundation for his first assumption). This view of science has fundamentally Cartesian consequences, and I provide some examples of Heideggerian cognitive science which shows that it therefore fails to satisfy Wheeler’s own second assumption. Finally, I will briefly outline a characterization of scientific knowledge (Maturana 1988) which avoids these difficulties, and therefore paves the way for a more consistent Heideggerian paradigm in cognitive science.

References:

Maturana, H. R. (1988), “Reality: The Search for Objectivity or the Quest for a Compelling Argument”, The Irish Journal of Psychology, 9(1), pp. 25-82

Wheeler, M. (2005), Reconstructing the Cognitive World: The Next Step, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

The original e-intentionality page with this seminar’s abstract, slides and podcast can be found here.

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Design of a consensual domain: the artificial evolution of communicative behavior
Tom Froese
Symposium on ‘Language, Communication & Cognition’
May 25-26th 2006, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

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Hume on Life and Mind
Tom Froese
4:30 p.m. 23 February 2006

The purpose of this talk is two-fold: I will outline some of the key concepts of constructivist thought, and at the same time use those concepts to interpret some important aspects of Hume’s work. I will begin by revisiting Hume’s famous skeptical claims with regard to our natural attitude (i.e. our belief in causality, an external objective world, and self), and how these claims contrast with mainstream objectivist epistemology and its correspondence theory of truth.

If this skepticism is all there was to Hume’s or constructivist epistemology it could rightly be called self-defeating, however, and fortunately for us, our natural beliefs while not based on reason are nevertheless grounded in what Hume calls human nature. I will thus briefly analyze the relationship between human nature and contemporary biology of cognition. In addition, I will outline some more pragmatic replacements for the objectivist correspondence theory and propose that we should replace the notion of truth with that of viability.

Finally, the concepts which have been developed will be applied to interpret Hume’s “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion” which deals with the Argument from Design (an argument still popular in certain parts of the world). The conclusion reached will be unorthodox and, perhaps, far reaching in its implications.

The original e-intentionality page with the abstract and slides can be found here