An Enactivist-Inspired Mathematical Model of Cognition
Vadim Weinstein, Basak Sakcak, Steven M. Lavalle
arXiv Preprint Archive June 10, 2022 Peer reviewed via arXiv
Summary
Enactivist cognitive science holds that cognition arises from the dynamic interaction of brain, body, and environment, without requiring internal symbolic representations. This paper identifies five core tenets of enactivism from the literature and builds a mathematical framework—based on transition systems, sensorimotor systems, and the concept of sufficiency—that respects those tenets. The framework aims to make enactivist ideas accessible to AI, robotics, and cognitive science researchers, while providing philosophers a precise tool. A uniqueness theorem about minimal sufficient refinements (optimal organism–environment attunement) is proved, and connections to sufficient history information spaces are shown.
Study at a glance
| Design | theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key finding | The notion of sufficiency, defined within a sensorimotor transition system, serves as a foundational mathematical concept for enactivist cognitive science, and minimal sufficient refinements correspond to optimal attunement of an organism to its environment. |
Abstract
We formulate five basic tenets of enactivist cognitive science that we have carefully identified in the relevant literature as the main underlying principles of that philosophy. We then develop a mathematical framework to talk about cognitive systems (both artificial and natural) which complies with these enactivist tenets. In particular we pay attention that our mathematical modeling does not attribute contentful symbolic representations to the agents, and that the agent's brain, body and environment are modeled in a way that makes them an inseparable part of a greater totality. The purpose is to create a mathematical foundation for cognition which is in line with enactivism. We see two main benefits of doing so: (1) It enables enactivist ideas to be more accessible for computer scientists, AI researchers, roboticists, cognitive scientists, and psychologists, and (2) it gives the philosophers a mathematical tool which can be used to clarify their notions and help with their debates. Our main notion is that of a sensorimotor system which is a special case of a well studied notion of a transition system. We also consider related notions such as labeled transition systems and deterministic automata. We analyze a notion called sufficiency and show that it is a very good candidate for a foundational notion in the "mathematics of cognition from an enactivist perspective". We demonstrate its importance by proving a uniqueness theorem about the minimal sufficient refinements (which correspond in some sense to an optimal attunement of an organism to its environment) and by showing that sufficiency corresponds to known notions such as sufficient history information spaces. We then develop other related notions such as degree of insufficiency, universal covers, hierarchies, strategic sufficiency. In the end, we tie it all back to the enactivist tenets.