🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <5871@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee) writes:
>From article <1781@aipna.ed.ac.uk>, by cam@aipna.ed.ac.uk (Chris Malcolm):
  ...
>>Wherever sensing and action have been locally amalgamated in this sort of
>>way a barrier is created to the extension of separate sensor and motor
>>processing hierarchies. ...

>This seems a central point, but I don't understand it.  Why is
>a barrier created?  (And is the barrier in the creature, or
>in our analysis of it?)

Good point. Now that I think it out carefully, it is not in fact a
barrier, so much as an opportunity not be missed. One _could_ just go on
extending the sensor and processor hierarchies, but the point is that
local amalgamation, as in a feedback servo, creates (when seen with the
right timeframe and granularity) a useful new feature of the "world"
(umwelt) which cannot be seen either as the result of pure sensory
processing, or as as some kind of macro-operation on top of effector
processing. To take advantage of such a feature adulterates the purity
of the twin hierarchy.

For a criticism of the "vision-module" approach to "the vision problem"
from this kind of standpoint, see Aaron Sloman's article in the latest
(vol 1 iss 4) Journal of Experimental and Theoretical AI.

Yes, it's in the creature. While it _might_ be possible to build
creatures with separated sensory and actuator processing hierarchies, it
would at least be very computationally costly.
-- 
Chris Malcolm    cam@uk.ac.ed.aipna   031 667 1011 x2550
Department of Artificial Intelligence, Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK