Abstract
The present paper stems from the biosemiotic modelling of individual artificial cognition proposed by Ferreira and Caldas (2012) but goes further by introducing the concept of Umwelt Overlap. The introduction of this concept is of fundamental importance making the present model closer to natural cognition. In fact cognition can only be viewed as a purely individual phenomenon for analytical purposes. In nature it always involves the crisscrossing of the spheres of action of those sharing the same environmental bubble. Plus, the incorporation of that concept is vital to understand the complex semiosis that sustains collective tissues, societies, regulating collective cognition and consequently cooperative action. The concept of Umwelt Overlap broadens the range of applicability of the previous model to several distinct domains allowing for example for its application to multi-agent cooperative autonomous systems. In this paper a Middle Size League RoboCup soccer team is used as an example of a possible application.
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Notes
Cf. Maturana (1978).
By subjective we mean lead by an experiencer subject: the cognitive entity.
In general (Nl × Nc) indicates de dimensions of a matrix, Nl being the number of its rows and Nc that of its columns; thus, (N × 1) represents an N-component vector in the form of a column matrix.
This is also true for the human world, though with an increased level of complexity, as individuals normally play several roles in the social tissue. For instance, an adult plays a role in the family circle, a role in the work circle, a role in the friend’s circle… (cf. Ferreira 2007). The overlapping of these individual spheres defines both the human being’s Umwelt and his identity. On the other hand, it is by the crisscrossing of these specific individual spheres with the particular spheres of those he interacts within distinct domains that the individual’s and the society’s goals are achieved.
These castes can in some African species be four: soldier ants exclusively responsible for the defence of the colony.
Detrain and Deneubourg (2006) refer that threshold to stimuli change as time goes on depending on individual experience. Ants are also capable of associative learning by linking food rewards to previously meaningless stimuli such as visual landmarks or topochemical stimuli.
In this work environmental cues are understood as comprehending those that emerge from the exclusive physical environment and those that are provided by the specific behaviours of congeners (sometimes called communication) and by behaviour of opponents.
In the Gibsonian tradition these salient environmental cues are “affordances”.
We prefer to use the concept of “domain of knowledge/domain of experience”. In fact the domain of knowledge, though initially defined by programmers develops in autonomous systems through individual experience in the interaction with the surrounding environment, being this way progressively actualised.
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Ferreira, M.I.A., Caldas, M.G. The Concept of Umwelt Overlap and its Application to Cooperative Action in Multi-Agent Systems. Biosemiotics 6, 497–514 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-013-9185-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-013-9185-5