1 Cognitive Agents – A Procedural Perspective relying on the Predictability of Object-Action-Complexes (OACs)

Abstract: Embodied cognition suggests that complex cognitive traits can only arise when agents have a body situated in the world. The aspects of embodiment and situatedness are being discussed here from the perspective of linear systems theory. This perspective treats bodies as dynamic, temporally variable entities, which can be extended (or curtailed) at their boundaries. We show how acting agents can, for example, actively extend their body for some time by incorporating predictably behaving parts of the world and how this affects the transfer functions. We suggest that primates have mastered this to a large degree increasingly splitting their world into predictable and unpredictable entities. We argue that temporary body extension may have been instrumental in paving the route for the development higher cognitive complexity as it is reliably widening the cause-effect horizon about the actions of the agent. A first robot experiment is sketched to support these ideas. We continue discussing the concept of Object-Action Complexes (OACs) introduced by the European PACO-PLUS consortium to emphasize the notion that for a cognitive agent objects and actions are inseparably intertwined. In another robot experiment w