Seminar #50: The interactivist framework

This week we will have a presentation by Jean-Charles Quinton, who is a new Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Sussex. The discussion topic will be:

The interactivist framework: Anticipation at the core of cognition

Jean-Charles Quinton

Time: 4:30-6:00pm
Date: Wednesday, 11th March
Location: Pev. 1, room 2A01

This seminar will mainly focus on presenting Mark Bickhard’s interactivist framework, with a small portion dedicated to my own PhD thesis work.

The interactivist framework commits to a strict process metaphysics. Any system must be explained in terms of active processes in constant interaction. Inspired by species evolution, starting from far-from-equilibrium processes and incrementally introducing principles such as assimilation, regulation, self-maintenance or anticipation, one goes from physical systems to modern humans. The joint evolution of environmental conditions and internal structures led to nowadays organisms, able to adapt to a genetically unpredictable environment of growing complexity. In that process, anticipative interactions are the key to truth values and implicitely define concepts by forming stable networks.

This framework draws on philosophical developments as well as experimental data, and there have been several attempts to implement these ideas in robots and computer architectures. My research is one of them, promoting a cognitive infrastructure based on interactions and anticipations as to model the flexibility of sensorimotor behaviors in animals and humans. If time is left, a mathematical model permitting the emergence of regulative behaviors from the spatial and temporal implicit coordination of anticipations will be detailed.

All welcome!

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