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Markov decision processes have become the de facto standard in modeling and solving sequential decision making problems under uncertainty. This book studies lifting Markov decision processes, reinforcement learning and dynamic programming to the first-order (or, relational) setting.
The present book is the product of conferences held in Bielefeld at the Center for interdisciplinary Sturlies (ZiF) in connection with a year-long ZiF Research Group with the theme "Prerational intelligence". The premise ex plored by the research group is that traditional notions of intelligent behav ior, which form the basis for much work in artificial intelligence and cog nitive science, presuppose many basic capabilities which are not trivial, as more recent work in robotics and neuroscience has shown, and that these capabilities may be best understood as ernerging from interaction and coop eration in systems of simple agents, elements that accept inputs from and act upon their surroundings. The main focus is on the way animals and artificial systems process in formation about their surroundings in order to move and act adaptively. The analysis of the collective properties of systems of interacting agents, how ever, is a problern that occurs repeatedly in many disciplines. Therefore, contributions from a wide variety of areas have been included in order to obtain a broad overview of phenomena that demoostrate complexity arising from simple interactions or can be described as adaptive behavior arising from the collective action of groups of agents. To this end we have invited contributions on topics ranging from the development of complex structures and functions in systems ranging from cellular automata, genetic codes, and neural connectivity to social behavior and evolution. Additional contribu tions discuss traditional concepts of intelligence and adaptive behavior. 1.
THE book is not a treatise on aIl cerebral mechanisms but a pro poscd solution of a specific problem: the origin of the nervous system's unique ability to produce adaptive behaviour. The work has as basis the fact that the nervous system behaves adap tively and the hypothesis that it is essentiaIly mechanistic; it proceeds on the assumption that these two data are not irrecon cilable. It attempts to deduce from the observed facts what sort of a mechanism it must be that behaves so differently from any machinc made so far. Other proposed solutions have usuaIly left open the question whether so me different theory might not fit the facts equaIly weIl: I have attempted to deduce what is necessary, what properties the nervous system must have if it is to behave at once mechanisticaIly and adaptively. For the deduction to be rigorous, an adequately developed logic of mechanism is essential. Until recently, discussions of mechan ism were carried on almost entirely in terms of so me particular embodiment-the mechanical, the electronic, the neuronie, and so on. Those days are past. There now exists a weIl-developed logic of pure mechanism, rigorous as geometry, and likely to play the same fundamental part, in our understanding of the complex systems of biology, that geometry does in astronomy. Only by the dcvelopment of this basic logic has thc work in this book been made possible.
This handbook is the first comprehensive text on positive psychology and disability. Emphasizing paradigmatic changes in understanding disability, the text covers traditional disciplines in positive psychology; and applications of positive psychology to domains like education or work.
In this wide-ranging work, now available in paperback, Habermas presents his views on the nature of the social sciences and their distinctive methodology and concerns. He examines, among other things, the traditional division between the natural sciences and the social sciences; the characteristics of social action and the implications of theories of language for social enquiry; and the nature, tasks and limitations of hermeneutics. Habermas' analysis of these and other themes is, as always, rigorous, perceptive and constructive. This brilliant study succeeds in highlighting the distinctive characteristics of the social sciences and in outlining the nature of, and prospects for, critical theory today.
Scientific research is viewed as a deliberate activity and the logic of discovery consists of strategies and arguments whereby the best objectives (questions) and optimal means for achieving these objectives (heuristics) are chosen. This book includes a discussion and some proposals regarding the way the logic of questions can be applied to understanding scientific research and draws upon work in artificial intelligence in a discussion of heuristics and methods for appraising heuristics (metaheuristics). It also includes a discussion of a third source for scientific objectives and heuristics; episodes and examplars from the history of science and the history of philosophy. This book is written to be accessible to advanced students in philosophy and to the scientific community. It is of interest to philosophers of science, philosophers of biology, historians of physics, and historians of biology.
This book is the outcome of a NATO Advanced Study Institute on Pattern Recog nition Theory and Applications held in Spa-Balmoral, Belgium, in June 1986. This Institute was the third of a series which started in 1975 in Bandol, France, at the initia tive of Professors K. S. Fu and A. Whinston, and continued in 1981 in Oxford, UK, with Professors K. S. Fu, J. Kittler and L. -F. Pau as directors. As early as in 1981, plans were made to pursue the series in about 1986 and possibly in Belgium, with Professor K. S. Fu and the present editors as directors. Unfortunately, Ie sort en decida autrement: Professor Fu passed away in the spring of 1985. His sudden death was an irreparable loss to the scientific community and to all those who knew him as an inspiring colleague, a teacher or a dear friend. Soon after, Josef Kittler and I decided to pay a small tribute to his memory by helping some of his plans to materialize. With the support of the NATO Scientific Affairs Division, the Institute became a reality. It was therefore but natural that the proceedings of the Institute be dedicated to him. The book contains most of the papers that were presented at the Institute. Papers are grouped along major themes which hopefully represent the major areas of contem porary research. These are: 1. Statistical methods and clustering techniques 2. Probabilistic relaxation techniques 3. From Markovian to connectionist models 4.
In the past decade a critical mass of work that uses fuzzy logic for autonomous vehicle navigation has been reported. Unfortunately, reports of this work are scattered among conference, workshop, and journal publications that belong to different research communities (fuzzy logic, robotics, artificial intelligence, intelligent control) and it is therefore not easily accessible either to the new comer or to the specialist. As a result, researchers in this area may end up reinventing things while being unaware of important existing work. We believe that research and applications based on fuzzy logic in the field of autonomous vehicle navigation have now reached a sufficient level of maturity, and that it should be suitably reported to the largest possible group of interested practitioners, researches, and students. On these grounds, we have endeavored to collect some of the most representative pieces of work in one volume to be used as a reference. Our aim was to provide a volume which is more than "yet another random collection of papers," and gives the reader some added value with respect to the individual papers. In order to achieve this goal we have aimed at: • Selecting contributions which are representative of a wide range of prob lems and solutions and which have been validated on real robots; and • Setting the individual contributions in a clear framework, that identifies the main problems of autonomous robotics for which solutions based on fuzzy logic have been proposed.
Max Weber laid the foundations for the meaning of ‘charisma’ in modern secular usage. This new volume argues for the importance of the ‘charismatic principle’ in history, economics and society. This volume brings together a number of contributors at the cross section between economics, theology, sociology and politics in order to set a research agenda for the following issues: What does it means to have a ‘charism’? How does it work in society? How might one distinguish a ‘charism’ from a talent? Are ‘charism’s given only to "special" people, or are they also present in ordinary people? Is a ‘charism’ necessarily associated with religion, or, is it, as we submit, possible to imagine ‘charisms’ at work within a secular perspective? Which are the principle perspectives of the role of ‘charisms’ in social history? How have the ‘charisms’ of noted personalities (e.g., Benedict, Francis, Gandhi) changed economic and social history? What insights might be drawn from ‘civil charisms’ such as the cooperative movement, non-profit organizations, social economy, and values-based organizations? This book seeks to answer these questions through the employment of an interdisciplinary perspective, which examines the theme of the charismatic principle in social life in different fields of application.