Anigrafs: Experiments in Cooperative Cognitive Architecture

by Richards, Whitman A.
ISBN: 9780262527781
Availability:
null

Available Offers


Pickup at {0} Out of stock at {0} Check other stores
FREE
Ship to Me
$3.99

Overview

An innovative proposal for understanding how mental organisms make decisions and control behavior.

In this book, Whitman Richards offers a novel and provocative proposal for understanding decision making and human behavior. Building on Valentino Braitenberg's famous "vehicles," Richards describes a collection of mental organisms that he calls "daemons"--virtual correlates of neural modules. Daemons have favored choices and make decisions that control behaviors of the group to which they belong, with each daemon preferring a different outcome. Richards arranges these preferences in graphs, linking similar choices, which thus reinforce each other. "Anigrafs" refers to these two components--animals, or the mental organisms (agents or daemons), and the graphs that show similarity relations. Together these two components are the basis of a new cognitive architecture.

In Richards's account, a collection of daemons compete for control of the cognitive system in which they reside; the challenge is to get the daemons to agree on one of many choices. Richards explores the results of group decisions, emphasizing the Condorcet voting procedure for aggregating preferences. A neural mechanism is proposed. Anigrafs presents a series of group decisions that incorporate simple and complex movements, as well as aspects of cognition and belief. Anigrafs concludes with a section on "metagrafs," which chart relationships between different anigraf models.

  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Author: Richards, Whitman A.
  • ISBN: 9780262527781
  • Condition: Used
  • Dimensions: 8.00 x 0.40
  • Number Of Pages: 168
  • Publication Year: 2015
Language: English