Artificial intelligence research has foundered on the issue of representation. When intelligence is approached in an incremental manner, with strict reliance on interfacing to the real world through perception and action, reliance on representation disappears. In this paper we outline our approach to incrementally building complete intelligent Creatures. The fundamental decomposition of the intelligent system is not into independent information processing units which must interface with each other via representations. Instead, the intelligent system is decomposed into independent and parallel activity (...) producers which all interface directly to the world through perception and action, rather than interface to each other particularly much. The notions of central and peripheral systems evaporateeverything is both central and peripheral. Based on these principles we have built a very successful series of mobile robots which operate without supervision as Creatures in standard office environments. (shrink)

We solve a problem posed by Goncharov and Knight 639–681, 757]). More specifically, we produce an effective Friedberg enumeration of computable equivalence structures, up to isomorphism. We also prove that there exists an effective Friedberg enumeration of all isomorphism types of infinite computable equivalence structures.

"Written in a racy, persuasive style, the book impresses the reader as a work of significant scholarship...I encourage students of comparative religions- and especially those of Islamic economics- to read it with great care."&$151; Islamic Studies The worlds of economics and theology rarely intersect. The former appears occupied exclusively with the concrete equations of supply and demand, while the latter revolves largely around the less tangible concerns of the soul and spirit. Intended as an interfaith clarification of the relationship between (...) the material and the spiritual worlds, this volume first inspects secular beliefs about the relationship between economics and ethics. Exploring the differences and similarities between the treatment of economic issues in each of the great monotheistic religions, Rodney Wilson reveals how each tradition considers such subjects as individual wealth, lending, economic regulation, usury, insurance capitalism, socialism, and banking. He concludes with an intriguing epilogue on the rapidly expanding field of business ethics. (shrink)

Volume XVI Phenomenology of Emotions, Systematical and Historical Perspectives Aim and Scope: The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy provides an annual international forum for phenomenological research in the spirit of Husserl's groundbreaking work and the extension of this work by such figures as Scheler, Heidegger, Sartre, Levinas, Merleau-Ponty and Gadamer. Contributors: Esteban Marín Ávila, Thiemo Breyer, Jakub Čapek, Mariano Crespo, Roberta De Monticelli, John J. Drummond, Søren Engelsen, Maria Gyemant, Mirja Hartimo, Elisa Magrì, Ronny Miron, Anthony J. Steinbock, (...) Panos Theodorou, Íngrid Vendrell Ferran, Antonio Zirión Quijano, and Nate Zuckerman. Submissions: Manuscripts, prepared for blind review, should be submitted to the Editors electronically via e-mail attachments. (shrink)

This is an exciting time for brain science. Recent progress has been such that it now seems realistic to look toward an explanation of mind in terms of the brain's anatomy and physiology. Models based on artificially symmetrical arrays of idealized neurons are now being superseded by ones which properly take into account the brain's actual circuitry. This book presents a comprehensive overview of the current state of brain modeling, containing contributions from many leading researchers in this field. It will (...) be of interest not only to researchers in the fields of brain science and neurobiology, but also to psychologists and those involved in the study of artificial intelligence. (shrink)

The title of this book was inspired by a passage in Charles Sherrington's Man on his Nature.

In this paper I shall outline the approach to consciousness adopted by ethnomethodology and its `associate'conversation analysis. I shall attempt to do this by taking a minimalist stance, namely a basic formulation of the elements of these approaches, trying to strip away the ornate superstructures which have been erected upon that basis. I shall proceed in two ways. First, I shall seek to define ethnomethodology and conversation analysis by contrasting them to varying degrees with a variety of other approaches: symbolic (...) interactionism and, derivatively, the work of Goffman, the -social psychology of Rom Harre and his associates and with Norbert Wiley. Secondly, I shall give some examples of the use of the notion of `self'held by ethnomethodologists and conversation analysts that take a definitive turn towards a non-ironic, non-mentalist, non-essentialist and non-cognitivist approach to knowledge, consciousness and self. (shrink)

This paper presents an autonomous vision-based obstacle avoidance system. The system consists of three independent vision modules for obstacle detection, each of which is computationally simple and uses a di erent criterion for detection purposes. These criteria are based on brightness gradients, RGB Red, Green, Blue color, and HSV Hue, Saturation, Value color, respectively. Selection of which modules are used to command the robot proceeds exclusively from the outputs of the modules themselves. The system is implemented on a small monocular (...) mobile robot and uses very low resolution images. It has been tested for over 200 hours in diverse environments. Keywords: Vision-based navigation, space exploration, modular design, reactive control, unstructured terrain. (shrink)

This comprehensive compendium provides a rigorous framework to tackle the daunting challenges of designing correct and efficient algorithms. It gives a uniform approach to the design, analysis, optimization, and verification of algorithms. The volume also provides essential tools to understand algorithms and their associated data structures. This useful reference text describes a way of thinking that eases the task of proving algorithm correctness. Working through a proof of correctness reveals an algorithm's subtleties in a way that a typical description does (...) not. Algorithm analysis is presented using careful definitions that make the analyses mathematically rigorous. (shrink)

It is fairly well known that Hume added a footnote to his essay ‘Of National Characters’ in which he asserts that all non-white peoples are naturally inferior to white people. Subsequently, he revised the note to assert only that black people are naturally inferior to white people. But while the view expressed in this footnote has been described as ‘shockingly bigoted’, and even as his ‘racial law,’ it is still commonly thought that in Hume's voluminous writings it is apparently just (...) this single passage which is definitely racist in its import. My aim in this paper is to show how American Indians are thought to be naturally inferior to white people in An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. There are, therefore, passages in Hume's second Enquiry which are also definitely racist in their import. (shrink)

In order to build autonomous robots that can carry out useful work in unstructured environments new approaches have been developed to building intelligent systems. The relationship to traditional academic robotics and traditional artificial intelligence is examined. In the new approaches a tight coupling of sensing to action produces architectures for intelligence that are networks of simple computational elements which are quite broad, but not very deep. Recent work within this approach has demonstrated the use of representations, expectations, plans, goals, and (...) learning, but without resorting to the traditional uses, of central, abstractly manipulable or symbolic representations. Perception within these systems is often an active process, and the dynamics of the interactions with the world are extremely important. The question of how to evaluate and compare the new to traditional work still provokes vigorous discussion. (shrink)

The first brief description is given of a project aimed at searching for the neural correlates of consciousness through computer simulation. The underlying model is based on the known circuitry of the mammalian nervous system, the neuronal groups of which are approximated as binary composite units. The simulated nervous system includes just two senses - hearing and touch - and it drives a set of muscles that serve vocalisation, feeding and bladder control. These functions were chosen because of their relevance (...) to the earliest stages of human life, and the simulation has been given the name CyberChild. The system's pain receptors respond to a sufficiently low milk level in the stomach, if there is simultaneously a low level of blood sugar, and also to a full bladder and an unchanged diaper. It is believed that it may be possible to infer the presence of consciousness in the simulation through observations of CyberChild's behaviour, and from the monitoring of its ability to ontogenetically acquire novel reflexes. The author has suggested that this ability is the crucial evolutionary advantage of possessing consciousness. The project is still in its very early stages, and although no suggestion of consciousness has yet emerged, there appears to be no fundamental reason why consciousness could not ultimately develop and be observed. (shrink)

The first part of this paper explores the general issues in using Artificial Life techniques to program actual mobile robots. In particular it explores the difficulties inherent in transferring programs evolved in a simulated environment to run on an actual robot. It examines the dual evolution of organism morphology and nervous systems in biology. It proposes techniques to capture some of the search space pruning that dual evolution offers in the domain of robot programming. It explores the relationship between robot (...) morphology and program structure, and techniques for capturing regularities across this mapping. (shrink)

This volume is the direct result of a conference in which a number of leading researchers from the fields of artificial intelligence and biology gathered to ...

Artificial Intelligence as a discipline has gotten bogged down in subproblems of intelligence. These subproblems are the result of applying reductionist methods to the goal of creating a complete artificial thinking mind. In Brooks (1987) 1 have argued that these methods will lead us to solving irrelevant problems; interesting as intellectual puzzles, but useless in the long run for creating an artificial being.

The master-module theory of consciousness is considered in the light of experimental evidence that has emerged since the model was first published. It is found that these new results tend to strengthen the original hypothesis. It is also argued that the master module is involved in generation of the schemata previously postulated to be associated with consciousness . The recent discovery of attention-related activity in the thalamic intralaminar nuclei is taken to indicate that these structures constitute an important part of (...) the feedback loop which the theory conjectured to mediate thought. The theory is shown to lead to a remarkably simple rationalization of the cerebral cortex, and it offers explanations of attention, binocular rivalry and qualia. It also makes the surprising prediction that Broca's area might not exclusively serve speech. (shrink)

We give a systematic technical exposition of the foundations of the theory of computably compact metric spaces. We discover several new characterizations of computable compactness and apply these characterizations to prove new results in computable analysis and effective topology. We also apply the technique of computable compactness to give new and less combinatorially involved proofs of known results from the literature. Some of these results do not have computable compactness or compact spaces in their statements, and thus these applications are (...) not necessarily direct or expected. (shrink)

It is suggested that consciousness is primarily associated not with stimuli and perception, as commonly supposed, but with movement and responses. Consciousness of stimuli arises in situations in which possible movements are planned, or in which information must be actively acquired rather than passively registered, and may or may not require overt movements to be performed. By emphasizing response, this formulation provides a simple explanation for the perceived unity of consciousness: though stimuli can be diverse, with independent components, movements must (...) necessarily be coordinated. Therefore, if we are to look for a `site' for consciousness, it is likely to be in a region such as the anterior cingulate that is neurally close to the higher motor hierarchical levels, and also accessible both to real sensory feedback and also to virtual feedback derived through mechanisms of efference copy from actual or proposed motor commands. It is suggested that synchrony of arrival of such information may be an important prerequisite of this unity, and that on this basis such a `master node' might be expected to be temporally `equidistant' from each of these sources; this may well be true of the anterior cingulate, but no doubt also of other structures. (shrink)

In [Countable thin [Formula: see text] classes, Ann. Pure Appl. Logic 59 79–139], Cenzer, Downey, Jockusch and Shore proved the density of degrees containing members of countable thin [Formula: see text] classes. In the same paper, Cenzer et al. also proved the existence of degrees containing no members of thin [Formula: see text] classes. We will prove in this paper that the c.e. degrees containing no members of thin [Formula: see text] classes are dense in the c.e. degrees. We will (...) also prove that the c.e. degrees containing members of thin [Formula: see text] classes are dense in the c.e. degrees, improving the result of Cenzer et al. mentioned above. Thus, we obtain a new natural subclass of c.e. degrees which are both dense and co-dense in the c.e. degrees, while the other such class is the class of branching c.e. degrees 113–130] for nonbranching degrees and [T. A. Slaman, The density of infima in the recursively enumerable degrees, Ann. Pure Appl. Logic 52 155–179] for branching degrees). (shrink)

This work contributes to the program of studying effective versions of “almost-everywhere” theorems in analysis and ergodic theory via algorithmic randomness. Consider the setting of Cantor space {0,1}N with the uniform measure and the usual shift. We determine the level of randomness needed for a point so that multiple recurrence in the sense of Furstenberg into effectively closed sets P of positive measure holds for iterations starting at the point. This means that for each k∈N there is an n such (...) that n,2n,…,kn shifts of the point all end up in P. We consider multiple recurrence into closed sets that possess various degrees of effectiveness: clopen, Π10 with computable measure, and Π10. The notions of Kurtz, Schnorr, and Martin-Löf randomness, respectively, turn out to be sufficient. We obtain similar results for multiple recurrence with respect to the k commuting shift operators on {0,1}Nk. (shrink)

In his highly insightful and wide-ranging rebuttal article “Doing Phenomenology on the Things,” van Manen makes the important claim that “the mission of modern phenomenology transcends foundational and exegetical philosophical theorizing”. I take this claim seriously and put forward this article as an exercise in practical lifeworld phenomenological reflection. By lifeworld I refer to the environing world in which we are enmeshed and in which we live and breathe and have our being; it penetrates our awareness of things while at (...) the same time offering the possibility of reprieve from complete enmeshment in the form of existential reflection on the things, events, doings, goings-on, etc., that collectively constitute the phenomenological concept of world. By phenomenological reflection I refer to written analyses that approach mundane lifeworld phenomena in a manner or style that seeks to show or reveal aspects of the lifeworld that in the ordinary course of everyday life remain hidden from view…aspects of the lifeworld that while they may be glimpsed fleetingly from time to time, remain largely hidden, i.e. in a state of unrealized concealment. The article thus takes seriously the Husserlian call for a return “to the things themselves.” And while the ostensible topic is an old used car, the defacto topic is “us,” or perhaps better stated, the actual topic arises at the meeting place where the “us” and “an older car” arrive and conjoin. It is at the place of this meeting between self and world that the phenomenological analysis can begin. The article emphasizes the practical import of this meeting, this engagement—it is not regarded as a matter of purely abstract philosophical theorizing nor as a purely descriptive matter, although it is also that in part too. (shrink)

This book offers a rationale for a new 'ramified natural theology' that is in dialogue with both science and historical-critical study of the Bible. Traditionally, knowledge of God has been seen to come from two sources, nature and revelation. However, a rigid separation between these sources cannot be maintained, since what purports to be revelation cannot be accepted without qualification: rational argument is needed to infer both the existence of God from nature and the particular truth claims of the Christian (...) faith from the Bible. Hence the distinction between 'bare natural theology' and 'ramified natural theology.' The book begins with bare natural theology as background to its main focus on ramified natural theology. Bayesian confirmation theory is utilised to evaluate competing hypotheses in both cases, in a similar manner to that by which competing hypotheses in science can be evaluated on the basis of empirical data. In this way a case is built up for the rationality of a Christian theist worldview. Addressing issues of science, theology and revelation in a new framework, this book will be of keen interest to scholars working in Religion and Science, Natural Theology, Philosophy of Religion, Biblical Studies, Systematic Theology, and Science and Culture. (shrink)

Traditionally, knowledge of God has been considered to arise from two sources: our innate human capacities of reason and intuition, and special divine revelation. The former is the subject of natural theology and the latter of systematic or dogmatic theology. In this article I argue that this rigid distinction should be dispensed with, both because of the need to respond to the criticisms of atheists that religious beliefs are not grounded on evidence, and because different religions make different and contradictory (...) claims to truth. Thus, what is purported to be revelation needs to be evaluated on commonly accepted criteria of rationality. Such criteria will exclude both a priori religious assumptions, so as to avoid circularity, and a priori atheistic assumptions, so as to avoid excluding what is being investigated by fiat. The project of evaluating specific Christian claims in this way, such as the resurrection of Jesus, is what has been dubbed “ramified natural theology.”. (shrink)

In this book R. G. Peffer tackles the challenges of finding in Marx's work an implicit moral theory, of answering claims that Marxism is incompatible with morality, and of developing the outlines of an adequate Marxist moral and social ...

This simulating book gathers five lectures that ask questions of the broadest general intellectual interest: What is religion? Do other peoples have the same emotional states as we do? Why do humans make use of body imagery? In Circumstantial Deliveries, Rodney Needham shows that the comparative study of societies may furnish the answers. Circumstantial Deliveries challenges the methodology and substance of many conventional ideas about human nature and calls for more radical and comparative analyses. For instance, the author discredits (...) the notion that to primitive peoples the colors red, white, and black symbolize blood, semen, and feces, respectively, arguing that an extensive comparative study of primitive societies discovered no such relationship. These essays sound a common theme: "If a deeper appreciation of the value of life can be had from reading Crime and Punishment, or if a more acute assessment of the springs of action can be acquired from Hamlet, then in principle it should be conceded that like benefits may be derived from a sympathetic observation of other men engaged in their daily affairs.". (shrink)

We solve a longstanding question of Rosenstein, and make progress toward solving a longstanding open problem in the area of computable linear orderings by showing that every computable ƞ-like linear ordering without an infinite strongly ƞ-like interval has a computable copy without nontrivial computable self-embedding. The precise characterization of those computable linear orderings which have computable copies without nontrivial computable self-embedding remains open.

The challenge that confronts corporate decision-makers in connection with global labor conditions is often in identifying the standardsby which they should govern themselves. In an effort to provide greater direction in the face of possible global cultural conflicts, ethicistsThomas Donaldson and Thomas Dunfee draw on social contract theory to develop a method for identifying basic human rights: Integrated Social Contract Theory (ISCT). In this paper, we apply ISCT to the challenge of global labor standards, attempting to identify labor rights that (...) could serve as guides for corporations producing or outsourcing outside of their home country. In addition to identifying areas of universal agreement, we also examine whether ISCT is, in fact, a sufficient basis for determining worker rights; we seek to define the parameters of the “sweatshop” problem; we include the application and results of our ISCT analysis as applied to labor standards: the global labor rights hypernorms; and conclude that ISCT is sufficient only for rights that are universal. We also discuss whether market-driven decisions can identify the boundaries of labor rights, or at least assure that market outcomes are compatible with maintaining labor rights, in order to respond to the shortcomings of ISCT. We conclude with some comments on directions of analysis for labor rights determination. (shrink)

This book presents a new transhistorical framework of defining production, work and consumption. It shows that they all share the common feature of intentional physical transformation of something external to the agent, at some point in time.