Embodied AI beyond Embodied Cognition and Enactivism

Abstract

Over the last three decades, the rise of embodied cognition (EC) articulated in various schools (or versions) of embodied, embedded, extended and enacted cognition (Gallagher’s 4E) has offered AI a way out of traditional computationalism—an approach (or an understanding) loosely referred to as embodied AI. This view has split into various branches ranging from a weak form on the brink of functionalism (loosely represented by Clarks’ parity principle) to a strong form (often corresponding to autopoietic-friendly enactivism) suggesting that body–world interactions constitute cognition. From an ontological perspective, however, constitution is a problematic notion with no obvious empirical or technical advantages. This paper discusses the ontological issues of these two approaches in regard to embodied AI and its ontological commitments: circularity, epiphenomenalism, mentalism, and disguised dualism. The paper also outlines an even more radical approach that may offer some ontological advantages. The new approach, called the mind-object identity, is then briefly compared with sensorimotor direct realism and with the embodied identity theory.

As time goes by: Space-time compatibility effects in word recognition.

“…Keywords: word recognition, embodied cognition, time, space How do we understand and represent the meaning of words? Over the past decades, one of the most influential views comes from the field of embodied cognition (Anderson, 2010;Barsalou, 2008;Manzotti, 2019;Pulvermüller, 1999Pulvermüller, , 2018. According to this view, there are no abstract linguistic representations of meaning but rather meaning is "grounded" in bodily interactions and sensorimotor experiences (Barsalou, 2008;Borghi et al, 2017;Kiefer & Barsalou, 2013;Pulvermüller, 2005;Pulvermüller & Fadiga, 2010).…”

The pragmatic use of metaphor in empirical psychology

“…Embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive (or 4E) models emerged as a critique of passive, mentalist, representational models and sought to portray the mind as emerging through a relationship between body and world. This approach, which includes ecological psychology and forms of machine learning of robots that locomote, characterizes the mind as a spatialized physical system and thus emphasizes real-time active integration of perceptual and motor processes (see Chemero, 2011;Gibson, 2014Gibson, [1979; Hutto and Myin, 2013;Manzotti, 2019;Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, 1991). 4E models reconceptualize the mind rhetorically and functionally as a brain-body unit moving through an environment composed of artefacts of the mind (Wilson, 2002).…”

Racial Data in Identity Construction of ‘Intelligent Agents’: Examining Conversations with BINA48 and Mythiccbeing

“…4 'Embodied AI' is used to refer to the physical creation of beings that run via algorithmic models and generate outputs be those visual, sonic, textual or tactile. With the notion of Embodied Artificial Intelligence (EAI) not fixed (Mainzer, 2009;Manzotti, 2019) the elements definitive of EAI include "grounding, selectivity, situatedness, activity, and the notion of the body itself" (Chrisley, 2003). 5 Questions Dinkins ask and the conversation she initiates are referred to as speech acts to emphasize that they serve a function in communication (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2007) 6 Here, I refer to Johnson's definition of 'othering' as "a process that identifies those that are thought to be different from oneself or the mainstream, and it can reinforce and reproduce positions of domination and subordination" in 'Othering and Being Othered in the Context of Health Care Services' (2004).…”