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This paper addresses the dynamics of mental states in relation to the dynamics of the interaction with the external world. It contributes a formalised temporal-interactivist approach to these dynamics based on temporal traces for semantics and a temporal trace language to provide an expressive means to formulate dynamic properties. The approach provides both a foundation for the dynamical and interactivist perspective on cognitive phenomena, and a supporting software environment for practical application.

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In this paper we address the problem of synthesizing mobile robots able to solve problems in which they cannot merely react to sensory input, but have to maintain an internal state as well. More precisely we will show how autonomous robots synthesized through an evolutionary process can solve problems that necessarily require an ability to integrate sensory-motor information over time. By presenting the result of a set of experiments in which evolving robots are asked to navigate and self-localize in the environment, we will show that successful results can be achieved by providing evolving individuals with neural controllers with neurons that (a) vary their activity at different rates to detect regularities at different time scales in the sensory-motor flow, and (b) use thresholded activation functions to detect events extending over time.

Conversation agents present a challenging agenda for research and application. We describe the development, evaluation, and application of Baldi, a computer animated talking head. Baldi's existence is justified by the important contribution of the face in spoken dialog. His actions are evaluated and modified to mimic natural actions as much as possible. Baldi has the potential to enrich human-machine interactions and serve as a tutor in a wide variety of educational domains. We describe one current application of language tutoring with children with hearing loss. Embodied Characters The title of this conference is "Embodied Conversational Characters." Why not just "Conversational Characters?" What does embodiment add to our quest for a simulacrum of some human agent? Traditionally, the success of artificial intelligence was deemed to be contingent on creating a thinking machine, encompassing all of the rationality, logic, and abstract knowledge possessed by humans. The achie...

The ‘grounding problem ’ poses the question of how the function and internal mechanisms of a machine, natural or artificial, can be intrinsic to the machine itself, i.e. independent of an external designer or observer. Searle’s and Harnad’s analyses of the grounding problem are briefly reviewed as well as different approaches to solving it, based on the cognitivist and the enactive paradigms in cognitive science. It is argued that, although the two categories of grounding approaches differ in their nature and the problems they have to face, both, so far, fail to provide fully grounded systems for similar reasons: Only isolated parts of systems are grounded, whereas other, essential, parts are left ungrounded. Hence, it is further argued that grounding should instead be understood and approached as radical bottom-up development of complete robotic agents in interaction with their environment.

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This paper explores the role of the traditional computational metaphor in our thinking as computer scientists, its influence on epistemological styles, and its implications for our understanding of cognition. It proposes to replace the conventional metaphor --- a sequence of steps --- with the notion of a community of interacting entities, and examines the ramifications of such a shift on these various ways in which we think.

This paper presents a framework that captures how the social nature of agents that are situated in a multi-agent environment impacts upon their individual mental states. Roles and social relationships provide an abstraction upon which we develop the notion of social mental shaping. This allows us to extend the standard Belief-Desire-Intention model to account for how common social phenomena (e.g. cooperation, collaborative problem-solving and negotiation) can be integrated into a unified theoretical perspective that reflects a fully explicated model of the autonomous agent’s mental state. Keywords: Multi-agent systems, agent interactions, BDI models, social influence. 2 1.

This paper contributes an analysis and formalisation of Damasio’s theory on core consciousness. Three important concepts in this theory are ‘emotion’, ‘feeling’, and ‘feeling a feeling ’ (or core consciousness). In particular, a simulation model is described of the dynamics of basic mechanisms leading via emotion and feeling to core consciousness, and dynamic properties are formally specified that hold for these dynamics at a more global level. These properties have been automatically checked for the simulation model. Moreover, a formal analysis is made of relevant notions of representation used by Damasio. As part of this analysis, specifications of representation relations have been verified and confirmed against the simulation model. 1