Search results for "self-model"

A cognitive architecture for ambient intelligence systems

2018

Nowadays, the use of intelligent systems in homes and workplaces is a well-established reality. Research efforts are moving towards increasingly complex Ambient Intelligence (AmI) systems that exploit a wide variety of sensors, software modules and stand-alone systems. Unfortunately, using more data often comes at a cost, both in energy and computational terms. Finding the right trade-off between energy savings, information costs and accuracy of results is a major challenge, especially when trying to integrate many heterogeneous modules. Our approach fits into this scenario by proposing an ontology-based AmI system with a cognitive architecture, able to perceive the state of the surrounding…

The Inner Life of a Robot in Human-Robot Teaming

2020

Giving the robot a 'human' inner life, such as the capability to think about itself and to understand what the other team members are doing, would increase the efficiency of trustworthy interactions with the other members of the team. Our long-Term research goal is to provide the robot with a computational model of inner life helping the robot to reason about itself, its capabilities, its environment and its teammates. Robot inner speech is a part of the research goal. In this paper, we summarize the results obtained in this direction.

Spatial Cognition 2020/1: Book of abstracts : August 2-4, 2021, University of Latvia

2021

Spatial Cognition is concerned with the acquisition, development, representation, organization, and use of knowledge about spatial objects in real, virtual or hybrid environments and processed by human or artificial agents. Spatial Cognition includes research from different fields insofar as they are concerned with cognitive agents and space, such as cognitive and developmental psychology, linguistics, computer science, geography, cartography, philosophy, neuroscience, and education. Research issues in the field range from the investigation of human spatial cognition to mobile robot navigation, including topics such as wayfinding, spatial planning, spatial learning, internal and external re…

The myth of cognitive agency: subpersonal thinking as a cyclically recurring loss of mental autonomy

2018

This metatheoretical paper investigates mind wandering from the perspective of philosophy of mind. It has two central claims. The first is that, on a conceptual level, mind wandering can be fruitfully described as a specific form of mental autonomy loss. The second is that, given empirical constraints, most of what we call “conscious thought” is better analyzed as a subpersonal process that more often than not lacks crucial properties traditionally taken to be the hallmark of personal-level cognition - such as mental agency, explicit, consciously experienced goal-directedness, or availability for veto control. I claim that for roughly two thirds of our conscious life-time we do not possess …

The embodied self, the pattern theory of self, and the predictive mind

2018

Do we have to presuppose a self to account for human self-consciousness? If so, how should we characterize the self? These questions are discussed in the context of two alternatives, i.e., the no-self position held by \(\textit {Metzinger (2003, 2009)}\) and the claim that the only self we have to presuppose is a narrative self \(\textit {(Dennett, 1992; Schechtman, 2007; Hardcastle, 2008)}\) which is primarily an abstract entity. In contrast to these theories, I argue that we have to presuppose an embodied self, although this is not a metaphysical substance, nor an entity for which stable necessary and jointly sufficient conditions can be given. Self-consciousness results from an integrati…

Why know myself? Flexible behaviour and the need for self-modelling: Poster

2021

In this paper I argue that some forms of the capacity for behavioural flexibility entail a specific kind of representation, a self-model. This means that systems with that capacity, among them human beings, must have self-models. In its basic form, the capacity for behavioural flexibility allows a system to respond to the same sensory stimulus differentially, depending on the values of parameters with which it represents the world. On seeing a street, I might cycle straight ahead or take a sharp turn left – depending on whether I represent it to blocked off just around the corner. More advanced forms expand on this. Self-models are a form of self-representation in which states are represent…

Why know myself? Flexible behaviour and the need for self-modelling: Oral presentation

2021

‘Seeing the Dark’: Grounding Phenomenal Transparency and Opacity in Precision Estimation for Active Inference

2018

One of the central claims of the Self-model Theory of Subjectivity is that the experience of being someone - even in a minimal form - arises through a transparent phenomenal self-model, which itself can in principle be reduced to brain processes. Here, we consider whether it is possible to distinguish between phenomenally transparent and opaque states in terms of active inference. We propose a relationship of phenomenal opacity to expected uncertainty or precision; i.e., the capacity for introspective attention and implicit mental action. Thus we associate introspective attention with the deployment of 'precision' that may render the perceptual evidence (for action) opaque, while treating t…