New mathematical foundations for AI and Alife: Are the necessary conditions for animal consciousness sufficient for the design of intelligent machines?

Rodney Brooks' call for 'new mathematics' to revitalize the disciplines of artificial intelligence and artificial life can be answered by adaptation of what Adams has called 'the informational turn in philosophy' and by the novel perspectives that program gives into empirical studies of animal cognition and consciousness. Going backward from the necessary conditions communication theory imposes on cognition and consciousness to sufficient conditions for machine design is, however, an extraordinarily difficult engineering task. The most likely use for the first generations of conscious machines will be to model the various forms of psychopathology, since we have little or no understanding of how consciousness is stabilized in humans or other animals