From Reactive to Anticipatory Cognitive Embodied Systems:
Papers from the AAAI Fall Symposium
Cristiano Castelfranchi, Christian Balkenius, Martin Butz, and Andrew Ortony, Cochairs
November 4-6, 2005, Arlington, Virginia
Technical Report FS-05-05
158 pp., $30.00
ISBN 978-1-57735-251-8
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In order to deal with novel and dynamic environments, cognitive systems need sophisticated capabilities based on many kinds of anticipation. Expectations and prediction-based control mechanisms underlie effective routinized behavior. Every step we take relies on the expectation that the floor will not give way beneath us; the pervasiveness of such expectations is highlighted by the surprise we experience when we suddenly lose our footing and by our ability to control and adjust it by using a prediction-control loop. Moreover, the ability of building higher order expectations about future events has been a major evolutionary and cognitive breakthrough for humans. Our representations are detached from the present here and now, and we can conceive forthcoming events - and even situations that will never be real. We are able to reason not only about what we experience, but about expected, desired and feared futures—our behavior can thus be really “driven by the future.”