- Author:
- Horst Hendriks-Jansen
From the Publisher: " Catching Ourselves in the Act is no less than an attempt to explain intelligence. Delightful how the author dismantles traditional views in psychology, artificial intelligence, ethology, and philosophy. But he goes beyond criticism by providing alternative explanations, drawing on recent work in situated robotics. A masterpiece in combining detailed analysis with grand theorizing. A must for any cognitive scientist." -- Rolf Pfeifer, AI Laboratory, Computer Science Department, University of Zurich Catching Ourselves in the Act uses situated robotics, ethology, and developmental psychology to erect a new framework for explaining human behavior. Rejecting the cognitive science orthodoxy that formal task-descriptions and their implementation are fundamental to an explanation of mind, Horst Hendriks-Jansen argues for an alternative model based on the notion of interactive emergence. Situated activity and interactive emergence are concepts that derive from the new discipline of autonomous agent research. Hendriks-Jansen puts these notions on a firm philosophical basis and uses them to anchor a "genetic" or "historical" explanation of mental phenomena in species-typical activity patterns that have been selected by a cultural environment of artifacts, language, and intentional scaffolding by adults. Situated robotics, allied with techniques and principles from ethology, allows the testing of hypotheses framed in terms of natural kinds that can be grounded through the theory of natural selection. This approach negotiates the "nature versus nurture" dispute in a radically new way. Catching Ourselves in the Act provides a thorough overview of autonomous agent research in America and Europe, focusing in particular on work by such eminent researchers as Rodney Brooks, Pattie Maes, Maja Mataric, and Rolf Pfeifer. It reassesses the basic principles of artificial life and explores the repercussions of autonomous agent research for human psychology and the philosophy of mind, as well as its affinities with the "contextual revolution" in sociology and anthropology. A Bradford Book. Complex Adaptive Systems
Cited By
- Ruhland K, Peters C, Andrist S, Badler J, Badler N, Gleicher M, Mutlu B and McDonnell R (2015). A Review of Eye Gaze in Virtual Agents, Social Robotics and HCI, Computer Graphics Forum, 34:6, (299-326), Online publication date: 1-Sep-2015.
Dalton N, Marshall P and Dalton R Extending architectural theories of space syntax to understand the effect of environment on the salience of situated displays Proceedings of the 2nd ACM International Symposium on Pervasive Displays, (73-78)- Bird J, Marshall P and Rogers Y Low-fi skin vision Proceedings of the 23rd British HCI Group Annual Conference on People and Computers: Celebrating People and Technology, (55-64)
- Risku H, Mayr E and Smuc M (2009). Situated interaction and cognition in the wild, wild world, Journal of Mobile Multimedia, 5:4, (287-300), Online publication date: 1-Dec-2009.
- Barandiaran X, Di Paolo E and Rohde M (2009). Defining Agency, Adaptive Behavior - Animals, Animats, Software Agents, Robots, Adaptive Systems, 17:5, (367-386), Online publication date: 1-Oct-2009.
- Meng Q and Lee M Novelty and habituation Biomimetic Neural Learning for Intelligent Robots, (315-332)
- Proudfoot D (2019). The Implications of an Externalist Theory of Rule-Following Behaviour for Robot Cognition, Minds and Machines, 14:3, (283-308), Online publication date: 1-Aug-2004.
- Anderson M (2003). Embodied cognition, Artificial Intelligence, 149:1, (91-130), Online publication date: 1-Sep-2003.
- Nemirovsky P and Watson R Genetic improvisation model Proceedings of the 2003 international conference on Applications of evolutionary computing, (547-558)
- Nolfi S and Marocco D Evolving robots able to integrate sensory-motor information over time Biologically inspired robot behavior engineering, (199-213)
- Seth A Agent-based modelling and the environmental complexity thesis Proceedings of the seventh international conference on simulation of adaptive behavior on From animals to animats, (13-23)
- Kolesnik M and Streich H Visual orientation and motion control of MAKRO Proceedings of the seventh international conference on simulation of adaptive behavior on From animals to animats, (62-69)
- Jung D and Zelinsky A (2000). Grounded Symbolic Communication between Heterogeneous Cooperating Robots, Autonomous Robots, 8:3, (269-292), Online publication date: 1-Jun-2000.
- Holland J, Booker L, Colombetti M, Dorigo M, Goldberg D, Forrest S, Riolo R, Smith R, Lanzi P, Stolzmann W and Wilson S What Is a Learning Classifier System? Learning Classifier Systems, From Foundations to Applications, (3-32)
- Dautenhahn K Embodiment and interaction in socially intelligent life-like agents Computation for metaphors, analogy, and agents, (102-141)
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