The Cognitive AgentThe Cognitive Agent

Overcoming informational limits

Orlin VakarelovPhilosophy & Cognitive ScienceUniversity of Arizona

SynopsisSynopsisQuestion:

◦ What are the systems for which the capacity of cognition is useful and what “function” does it serve?

Answer:◦ The “function” of cognition is to allow

informationally deprived autonomous agents to overcome the informational deficit so that they can have more successful behaviour.

◦ In a sense, cognition is that which makes agents smarter.

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Cognition vs. cognitionCognition is essentially an embedded and

embodied phenomenon, and is related to system control of the dynamical interactions with environment.

Cognition is a phenomenon of complexity, i.e. it exist only within complex, organized systems, and it is possible in virtue of the complexity.

AssumptionsAssumptions

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A minimal approachA minimal approachMaturana & Varela1 – autopoiesis

◦ A system is autopoiesis iff it can actively maintain itself by implementing a process closure, and it can maintain separation from the environment.

M & V claim: Autopoiesis implies both life and cognition.◦ Natural teleology, self-reference, meaning,

perspective (umwelt), etc.Di Paolo2: Autopoiesis is a structural condition,

while adaptiveness is not. Cognition requires adaptiveness. Therefore, autopoiesis does not cognition.

1 H. R. Maturana & F. J. Varela (1980) Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living, Dordecht: D. Reidel Publishing Co 2 Di Paolo, E. A., (2005). Autopoiesis, adaptivity, teleology, agency. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 4(4): 429 - 452. 4Cognitio 09

MethodologyMethodologyBottom-up approach

◦ The theoretical distinctions must correspond to natural dynamical/system theoretic distinctions arising from the increasing complexity of organization of the systems.

◦ I.e. if you are wondering among various systems, you should be able to stumble on the collection of cognitive system.

I describe a sequence of nested design problems whose general strategies for solution warrant theoretical distinctions – cognition is viewed as one such general strategy for a problem.

Autonomy Agency Cognitive Agency

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AutonomyAutonomy

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AutonomyAutonomy

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AgentsAgents

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Informational LimitsInformational Limits

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Sequence of problems Sequence of problems and systemsand systems

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Cognitive Agents Cognitive Agents

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Back to the familiarBack to the familiar Two general strategies for CIE lowering

◦ Internalize efficiently information from the environment so that you don’t have to communicate it.

◦ Focus on the most relevant source of information. More specific strategies:

◦ accumulation and integration of information over time; ◦ targeting specific useful feature of the environment; ◦ building internal structures that encode information

about the environment and its dynamics, and using them to anticipate the future state of the environment based on limited information from perception;

◦ going beyond the immediate information thought informational transformations (with reasoning capacities), etc.

The prototypical cognitive capacities accomplish exactly such tasks: learning, memory, feature detection, representation, reasoning, etc.

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