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International Workshop on Computation for Metaphors, Analogy, and Agents

CMAA 1998: Computation for Metaphors, Analogy, and Agents pp 88–101Cite as

Embodiment As Metaphor: Metaphorizing- in the Environment

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 1562))

Abstract

The paper describes a general mechanism for internalization of environment in autonomous agents. After reviewing the role of representation in behavior-based autonomous agents, we propose metaphor framework that unifies various research threads in the domain. We start from a variant of the so-called similarity creating metaphors for the case of implicit target domain (the environment of the agent). The mechanism is based on a fairly simple idea of assimilation via inborn schemas as understood in Piaget’s developmental psychology. These schemas represent the source domain for the metaphor. They are ordered sequences of elementary actions that the agent is capable of performing. Because of the environmental constraints, when the agent tries to execute some schema, only certain subsequences from the original schema will actually be performed. These subsequences are called enabled schema instances. Thus, environment unfolds its structure to the agent via the subset of the enabled schema instances. Another way to look at this is to say that what the agent gets is a metaphorical description of its environmental niche (the implicit target domain) in terms of instances of its inborn schemas (the source domain). After describing the basic idea by means of an example, we present some simulation results that show the plausibility of the model. The simulated agent solves the navigational problem in an initially unknown environment. The paper closes with a discussion section where we compare our model with some related works and make the case for the metaphor framework as a proper unifier of diverse research work in embodied and situated cognition.

The author wishes to express his gratitude to the Ministry of Culture and of Science of the Republic of Macedonia for the awarded grants which helped the work described in this paper.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science InstituteogFaculty of Electrical Engineering, SS Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia

    Georgi Stojanov

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  1. Georgi Stojanov
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield Herts, AL10 9AB, UK

    Chrystopher L. Nehaniv

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© 1999 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Stojanov, G. (1999). Embodiment As Metaphor: Metaphorizing- in the Environment. In: Nehaniv, C.L. (eds) Computation for Metaphors, Analogy, and Agents. CMAA 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 1562. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48834-0_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48834-0_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-65959-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48834-7

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