Towards a Theory of Awareness

Ricardo Sanz, Manuel Rodríguez, Martín Molina, Esther Aguado, Virgilio Gómez

2024

Abstract

Observation of humans and animals shows that awareness is a critical aspect of mental processes for those agents that operate in changing environments. Responding to potentially dangerous situations and leveraging environmental affordances are essential capabilities for autonomous agents’ ecological viability. Agents need to be aware of their situations. Artificial autonomous systems construction depend on using suitable system architectures and applying proven engineering methods. While current systems display a certain degree of awareness, it is unclear what principles shall be used in their design. We are in a pre-scientific, pre-technological situation concering awareness. Unfortunately, the scientific analysis of the awareness phenomena is quite difficult because its principles cannot be easily isolated in fully functioning human minds. We need a clean, formal theory of general awareness of universal nature. This theory should be applicable both to humans and machines, and not exclusively bound to the psychology and neurobiology of living animals. In this position paper, the authors argue for developing such a theory, state some requirements for it and propose an initial conceptual seed for a future theory of awareness that orbit around the idea that awareness is the real-time understanding of sensory flows.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Sanz R., Rodríguez M., Molina M., Aguado E. and Gómez V. (2024). Towards a Theory of Awareness. In Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 3: AWAI; ISBN 978-989-758-680-4, SciTePress, pages 1413-1420. DOI: 10.5220/0012595100003636

in Bibtex Style

@conference{awai24,
author={Ricardo Sanz and Manuel Rodríguez and Martín Molina and Esther Aguado and Virgilio Gómez},
title={Towards a Theory of Awareness},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 3: AWAI},
year={2024},
pages={1413-1420},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0012595100003636},
isbn={978-989-758-680-4},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - Volume 3: AWAI
TI - Towards a Theory of Awareness
SN - 978-989-758-680-4
AU - Sanz R.
AU - Rodríguez M.
AU - Molina M.
AU - Aguado E.
AU - Gómez V.
PY - 2024
SP - 1413
EP - 1420
DO - 10.5220/0012595100003636
PB - SciTePress