DevelopmentalRoboticsGlossary

1. Developmental Robotics Glossary

Collaborative glossary for Developmental Robotics course. Feel free to add people, places and things. Please try to keep order alphabetically.

1.1. autopoietic

...autopoiesis, created by the Chilean biologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela (1980; 1987). Their work (hereafter termed autopoietic theory) concretely addresses each of the issues discussed above as follows:

Autopoietic theory is a 'systemic perspective', because it addresses its subjects in terms of their being formal and functional wholes.
Autopoietic theory provides a foundation for describing and analyzing 'auto-determination', because the central concept of autopoiesis defines living systems as self-producing units which accordingly (self-)maintain their essential form.
Autopoietic theory provides a specific basis for explaining and addressing 'contextualization', because it is an example of second order cybernetics -- systems-theoretic analyses which incorporate the role of an observer in defining systems.
Autopoietic theory avoids much of the 'unhealthy' ambiguity surrounding the idea of 'self-organization', because Maturana and Varela have formulated and extended their concepts in a quite rigorous and systematic fashion.

Maturana ... replied 'Cognition is a biological phenomenon and can only be understood as such; any epistemological insight into the domain of knowledge requires this understanding.' (Maturana & Varela, 1980, p. 7)

Maturana and Varela coined the term autopoiesis to characterize those systems which (a) maintain their defining organization throughout a history of environmental perturbation and structural change and (b) regenerate their components in the course of their operation. Autopoietic systems realized in the physical space are living systems. Varela later defined a broader concept of autonomy, of which autopoiesis is a special case. Autonomous systems maintain their organization, but do not necessarily regenerate their own components.

[From http://www.acm.org/siggroup/auto/Main.html]

1.2. emotions

Emotions differ along two dimensions (Russell's circumplex model):

Valence: Quality (pleasant/unpleasant)
Arousal: Strength (mild to intense)

1.3. empiricism

For a good explanation, see http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/e/emp-brit.htm

1.4. epistemology

The study or a theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge especially with reference to its limits and validity.

[From http://webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=epistemology]

1.5. Hall, G. Stanley

Psychology. "Hall is ... important for his work with the child study movement and attained some notoriety with his theory that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny."

[From http://fates.cns.muskingum.edu/~psych/psycweb/history/hall.htm]

1.6. ontogeny, ontogenetic

Referring to the development of an individual organism. As opposed to phylogeny. Ontogeny, as defined by Maturana and Varela, is "the history of structural change in a unity without loss of organization in that unity"; ontogeny is of primary concern in autopoietic systems analysis.

[From http://www.c5corp.com/research/ontology.shtml]

1.7. ontology

See http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology

1.8. orthogenic principle

Coined by Heinz Werner. The Orthogenic Principle defines development: "...development...proceeds from a state of relative lack of differentiation to a state of increasing differentiation and hierarchic integration." The processes below work at many levels.

Differentiation--the process where tissues, organs, and individuals change into component parts.
Hierarchic Integration--the process in development in which control shifts to higher integrating centers.
Growth--the change in size of tissues, organs, and individuals without any differentiation.
End State--a full description of the final features of development. For example, the stages necessary to become a musician or to become a teacher.

[From http://peace.saumag.edu/faculty/Kardas/Courses/AHG/Werner.html]

1.9. phylogeny

The evolutionary decent and interrelationships of a group of organisms; an organism's "family tree".

1.10. rationalism

See http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/r/rat-cont.htm

1.11. reinforcement learning

"... a way of programming agents by reward and punishment without needing to specify how the task is to be achieved." from Leslie Pack Kaelbling & Michael L. Littman's Reinforcement Learning: A Survey

1.12. spandrel

From Spandrel.com