Leonardo Lana de Carvalho

Cognitive sciences as an interdisciplinary field, involving scientific disciplines (such as computer science, linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, economics, etc.), philosophical disciplines (philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, analytic philosophy, etc.) and engineering (notably knowledge engineering), have a vast theoretical and practical content, some even conflicting. In this interdisciplinary context and on computational modeling, ontologies play a crucial role in communication between disciplines and also in a process of innovation of theories, models and experiments in cognitive sciences. We propose a model for this process here. An ontological commitment is advocated as the framework of a scientific realism, which leads computational modeling to search for more realistic models, for a complex systems perspective of nature and cognition. In that way multiagent modeling of complex systems has been fulfilling an important role.

Em diversas perspectivas teóricas existe uma oposição entre racionalidade e emoção. Esta dicotomia é desconstruída de uma perspectiva cognitiva das emoções. Neste capítulo, defenderemos que afetos, emoções e racionalidade são dimensões cognitivas, pois significam conhecimento que os organismos realizam no mundo. Em um primeiro momento, baseados principalmente na obra de Dennett (1997) e de Livet (2002), analisamos os conceitos de afeto, emoção e racionalidade. Em seguida, partimos para o objetivo central do texto que é, a partir das ontologias elaboradas por estes autores, propormos um caminho para a concepção de agentes artificiais cognitivos, isto é, de um agente afetivo/emocional/racional. Apresentamos como perspectivas e desafios para a área de pesquisa tanto aplicações práticas destes agentes quanto a necessidade de maiores avanços teóricos para a realização de uma arquitetura cognitiva de agentes artificiais.

The computational theory of cognition, or computationalism, holds that cognition is a form of computation. Two issues related to this view are comprised by the goal of this paper: A) Computing systems are traditionally seen as representational systems, but functional and enactive approaches support non-representational theories; B) Recently, a sociocultural theory against computationalism was proposed with the aim of ontologically reducing computing to cognition. We defend, however, that cognition and computation are in action, thus cognition is just a form of computing and that cognition is the explanatory basis for computation. We state that: 1. Representational theories of computing recurring to intentional content run into metaphysical problems. 2. Functional non-representational theories do not incur this metaphysical problem when describing computing in terms of the abstract machine. 3. Functional theories are consistent with enactive in describing computing machines not in a strictly functional way, but especially in terms of their organization. 4. Enactive cognition is consistent with the computationalism in describing Turing machines as functionally and organizationally closed systems. 5. The cognitive explanatory basis for computing improves the computational theory of cognition. When developed in the human linguistic domain, computer science is seen as a product of human socionatural normative practices, however, cognition is just an explanatory, not ontological, basis for computing. The paper concludes by supporting that computation is in action, that cognition is just one form of computing in the world and the explanatory basis for computation.

This paper presents a historical perspective on the origin of the enactive approach to cognitive science, starting chronologically from cybernetics, with the aim of clarifying its main concepts, such as enaction, autopoiesis, structural coupling and natural drift; thus showing their influences in computational approaches and models of cognitive architecture. Works of renowned authors, as well as some of their main commentators, were addressed to report the development of enactive approach. We indicate that the enactive approach transcends its original context within biology, and at a second moment within connectionism, changes the understanding of the relationships so far established between the body and the environment, and the ideas of conceptual relationships between the mind and the body. The influence on computational theories is of great importance, leading to new artificial intelligence systems as well as the proposition of complex, autopoietic and alive machines. Finally, the article stresses the importance of the enactive approach in the design of agents, understanding that previous approaches have very different cognitive architectures and that a prototypical model of enactive cognitive architecture is one of the largest challenges today.

Segundo Varela, Thompson e Rosch (1991/1993), a mente se realiza como um sistema cognitivo, autopoiético, envolvendo não somente o sistema nervoso (SN), mas sim um fluxo de ação que percorre o corpo, o sistema nervoso e o ambiente. De modo corpóreo, pelo corpo ter uma estrutura aberta e acoplada ao meio, se encontra o movimento experiencial da mente. Apoiados na teoria enativa da mente E. Thompson e outros elaboram uma crítica ao conceito de consciência como uma propriedade emergente do SN. A crítica não está fundamentalmente apoiada sobre o conceito de mente estendida, ela ataca diretamente o conceito de propriedade. Argumenta Thompson (2007/2013), seguindo a tradição enativa, que a mente não surge como uma propriedade emergente, mas acaba por ser realizada como um processo emergente. Thompson dirige sua crítica a autores como J. Kim e J. Searle, dizendo que conservar um conceito de propriedade emergente denota uma herança cartesiana da qual se tem dificuldades em se desvencilhar. O objetivo do texto será apresentar o criticismo da teoria enativa ao conceito de propriedade emergente em detrimento do de processos emergentes. Este criticismo leva a dois pontos centrais na argumentação: 1) Para Thompson esta mudança de concepção traz como resultado a desconstrução do problema da causação descendente; 2) Frente ao problema dos qualia, Thompson vem debatendo com afinco a posição vareliana de isomorfismo.