Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Speakers and Titles
- Abstract elementary classes: some answers, more questions
- On the density of Hausdorff ultrafilters
- Zero-groups and maximal tori
- Constructive set theory with operations
- Parametrized local zeta functions
- Colourings of hypergraphs, permutation groups and CSP's
- Tolerance intersection properties and subalgebras of squares
- Universes in type theory part I—Inaccessibles and Mahlo
- Hausdorff-dimension and weak truth-table reducibility
- Computation and the explanation of intelligent behaviours: ethologically motivated restart
- Constructible sheaves and definability
- An overview of modern universal algebra
- Lecture Notes in Logic
Computation and the explanation of intelligent behaviours: ethologically motivated restart
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 July 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Speakers and Titles
- Abstract elementary classes: some answers, more questions
- On the density of Hausdorff ultrafilters
- Zero-groups and maximal tori
- Constructive set theory with operations
- Parametrized local zeta functions
- Colourings of hypergraphs, permutation groups and CSP's
- Tolerance intersection properties and subalgebras of squares
- Universes in type theory part I—Inaccessibles and Mahlo
- Hausdorff-dimension and weak truth-table reducibility
- Computation and the explanation of intelligent behaviours: ethologically motivated restart
- Constructible sheaves and definability
- An overview of modern universal algebra
- Lecture Notes in Logic
Summary
Abstract. Computational theorizing is fruitfully pursued in the investigation of sensorimotor coordination mechanisms of simple biological systems, such as unicellular organism chemotaxis. These investigations undermine the sweeping claim according to which intelligent and adaptive behaviours in biological systems are to be accounted for in terms of continuous systems. Moreover, these investigations suggest the opportunity of developing a more fine-grained framework for analyzing the hierarchical interplay between computational, dynamical, and hybrid models of adaptive behaviours in both biological systems and machines. Key epistemological issues arising in this context of inquiry are clearly identified in Turing's and von Neumann's early reflections on the computational modelling of intelligent behaviours and brain functions.
Introduction. A variety of sensorimotor coordination mechanisms are being successfully modelled on the basis of continuous dynamical system approaches (Beer [1997]; Steinhage and Bergener [2000]; Turvey and Carello [1995]). This work is invoked as empirical support for a sweeping “dynamicist” thesis: intelligent and adaptive biological behaviours are to be ultimately accounted for in terms of continuous (dynamical) systems; properly computational investigations make approximate simulation tools available for dynamical theories but play no essential theoretical role (Port and Gelder [1995]). Similar claims about mathematical theorizing in cognitive ethology and biology at large can be found in (Beer [1995], Steels [1995]) and (Longo [2003]), respectively. These claims are critically examined here, in the light of theoretical models of simple sensorimotor adaptive behaviours. These case studies are particularly suited to our purposes, for continuous dynamical approaches are supposedly at their best in the modelling of sensorimotor coordination mechanisms. Computational approaches, we submit, are being fruitfully pursued there too.
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- Logic Colloquium 2004 , pp. 168 - 186Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007