Plants, Cognition, Time (& Philosophy)

Leibovitz, D. P. (2008) Plants, Cognition, Time (& Philosophy). Talk presented at Carleton University, pp. 1-28, Ottawa, Canada. [doi10.13140/RG.2.1.2470.3209]

Abstract: When plants are viewed under various time and spatial scales, their behaviour can appear quite intelligent. This presentation simply aims at questioning some of the basic terminology used by Philosophers of Mind, and Cognitive Scientists. The goal of the presentation is not to answer the following questions, but to stimulate discussion and reflection.

What do we mean by all the aforementioned terms, and how do we clarify them so that plants are once again relegated to simple stimulus-response systems?

The parting thought is in showing that a trivial stimulus-response system is Turing Complete, so perhaps pointing to individual plant processes and showing that each one alone is a stimulus-response portion might miss the overall system-wide intelligence…

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Emergic Network (EN)

Emergic Network ExampleThe Emergic Network (or EN) is an “artificial neural” network architecture that abandons traditional neural oversimplifications and facilitates an Emergic Approach to design that harnesses emergence by explicitly encoding the interactions among multiple flows of information.

Leibovitz (2012) Modelling visual processing via emergence (CSBBCS)Note: that while an Emergic Network unit can correspond to an actual neuron, the Emergic Network is not a network of neurons, and each unit can correspond to an arbitrary domain of analysis, as low as quantum mechanics if desired, up to social groupings. That is why “neural” is in quotes. Indeed a single unit is Turing complete and could simulate an entire artificial neural network.

The Emergic Network architecture, is described and housed within Wikimergic.

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Emergic Cognitive System

Emergic Cognitive SystemThe Emergic Cognitive System (or ECS) is a system for embodying  a developmental cognitive model in a virtual and dynamic agent that is situated in a dynamic environment using simulated real-time for non-representational information processing. This allows a zero parameter model to be tested with a wide variety of experimental paradigms covering a large contextual domain.

Historical Names: Emergic Simulation System (ESS); Emergic Vision System (EVS)

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