Anticipatory Systems: General Introduction
Dr. Robert Rosen
This article is a foundational work in the field of anticipation. Its author defines anticipation as a characteristic feature of biological systems. He advances the model of anticipation as being a simulation of real events, although is faster time. Simulated anticipation allows humans to generate predictive models that refine the implementation of something before it actually takes place. This article is an essential cornerstone of the anticipation field.
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The Central Argument: The Limitations of Entailment in Machines and Mechanisms
Dr. Robert Rosen
Robert Rosen makes a distinction between entailment in living systems and the functioning of machines. This distinction is from his book, Life Itself, a foundational
text for understanding anticipation as a characteristic of the living.
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Interview with Dr. Robert Rosen
Judith Rosen
This Paper is a transcript of a videotaped interview of Dr. Robert Rosen made in July, 1997, in Rochester, New York, U.S.A.
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Introduction to Computing Anticipatory Systems
Daniel M. Dubois
This paper deals with an introduction to computing anticipatory systems starting with Robert Rosen's definition of anticipatory systems. Firstly, the internalist and externalist aspects of anticipation will be explained at an intuitive point of view. Secondly, the concepts of incursion and hyperincursion are proposed to model anticipatory systems. Thirdly, a simple example of a computing anticipatory system will be simulated on computer from an incursive harmonic oscillator. This oscillator includes an anticipatory model of itself in view of computing its successive states.
The “Shared Manifold” Hypothesis: From Mirror Neurons To Empathy
Vittorio Gallese
The main aim of my arguments will be to show that, far from being exclusively dependent upon mentalistic/linguistic abilities, the capacity for understanding others as intentional agents is deeply grounded in the relational nature of action. Action is relational, and the relation holds both between the agent and the object target of the action (see Gallese, 2000b), as between the agent of the action and his/her observer (see below). Agency constitutes a key issue for the understanding of intersubjectivity and for explaining how individuals can interpret their social world. This account of intersubjectivity, founded on the empirical findings of neuroscientific investigation, will be discussed and put in relation with a classical tenet of phenomenology: empathy. I will provide an “enlarged” account of empathy that will be defined by means of a new conceptual tool: the shared manifold of intersubjectivity.
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Mirror neurons and the simulation theory of mind-reading
Vittorio Gallese, Alvin Goldman
In the present article we will propose that humans´ mind-reading abilities rely on the capacity to adopt a simulation routine. This capacity might have evolved from an action execution/observation matching system whose neural correlate is represented by a class of neurons recently discovered in the macaque monkey premotor cortex: mirror neurons (MNs).
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The Volitional Brain: Towards a Neuroscience of Freewill
Benjamin Libet, Anthony Freeman, & J. K. B. Sutherland, Editors
Many scientists and philosophers claim that everything in the physical world (including all our own actions) is predetermined. On this view, no one is responsible for anything they do, so punishment is an inappropriate response to crime. The Volitional Brain looks at the evidence from science, psychology, and philosophy and debates these issues from the standpoint of both "sceptics" and "libertarians."
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Is the reliable prediction of individual earthquakes a realistic scientific goal?
Ian Main
The recent earthquake in Colombia has once again illustrated to the general public the inability of science to predict such natural catastrophes. Despite the significant global effort that has gone into the investigation of the nucleation process of earthquakes, such events still seem to strike suddenly and without obvious warning. Not all natural catastrophes are so apparently unpredictable, however.
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Anticipatory Computing
Mihai Nadin
Anticipation lies at the foundation of the entire cognitive activity of the human being. Moreover, through anticipation, we humans gain insight into what keeps our world together as a coherent whole whose future states stand in correlation to the present state as minds grasp it. Minds exist only in relation to other minds; they are instantiations of co-relations.
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Mind - Anticipation and Chaos
Mihai Nadin
This identification of minds as having only a relational existence is critical insofar as it suggests transcending the model that describes the operations of the mind according to its distinct functions and adopting a model based on dynamic relations. We can learn about the mind only by considering interaction among minds. In an even more pointed formulation: To know the mind means to know how minds interact.
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Anticipation - A Spooky Computation
Mihai Nadin
The title of the paper is meant to submit the hypothesis that such processes are related to quantum non-locality. The second goal of this paper is to offer a cognitive framework based on the author's early work on mind processes (1988). The third goal of this paper is to identify the broad conceptual categories under which we can identify progress made so far and possible directions to pursue. The fourth and final goal is to submit a co-relation view of anticipation and to integrate the inclusive recursion in a logic of relations that handles co-relations.
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Smart Rooms
Alex P. Pentland
A group of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has recently developed a family of computer systems for recognizing faces, expressions and gestures. This paper describes how the developed environments, called "smart rooms", work.
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Mirror Neurons and imitation learning as the driving force behind "the great leap forward" in human evolution
V.S. Ramachandran
The discovery of mirror neurons in the frontal lobes of monkeys, and their potential relevance to human brain evolution - which I speculate on in this essay - is the single most important "unreported" (or at least, unpublicized) story of the decade. I predict that mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: they will provide a unifying framework and help explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments.
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I Know What You Are Doing: A Neurophysiological Study
M. A. Umilta, E. Kohler, V. Gallese, L. Fogassi, L. Fadiga, C. Keysers, G. Rizzolatti
In the ventral premotor cortex of the macaque monkey, there are neurons that discharge both during the execution of hand actions and during the observation of the same actions made by others (mirror neurons). In the present study, we show that a subset of mirror neurons becomes active during action presentation and also when the final part of the action, crucial in triggering the response in full vision, is hidden and can therefore only be inferred. This implies that the motor representation of an action performed by others can be internally generated in the observer´s premotor cortex, even when a visual description of the action is lacking. The present findings support the hypothesis that mirror neuron activation could be at the basis of action recognition.
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