Higher Order Theories of Consciousness take a common account for consciousness based on higher-order representations of conscious states. For the sake of clarity and as a preliminary explanation we could just say that Higher Order Theories (HOT) try to model consciousness as a higher-order thought about a thought.

As always, the most controversial dimension of consciousness to be explained is the phenomenal or subjective experience (Qualia). i.e., the famous what-is-it-like-ness as described by Nagel (1974) in terms of what would it be like to be a bat. Higher Order Theories try to explain phenomenal consciousness in terms of higher order representations. Then, we have the access dimension, which is a much more comfortable concept in terms of computability. From the point of view of accessibility, we can say that there are some mental states that happen to be accessible to consciousness, which means that we are actually aware of these states.

Higher Order Theories of consciousness can be framed within cognitive science as the focus on the cognitive level of description in order to explain phenomenal consciousness. In other words, HOT theories reject the idea of (phenomenal) consciousness being a fundamental property of the mind's substrate. Instead, they consider certain representation processes as the source of consciousness production. Concretely, those representations which are higher order thoughts or beliefs of a mental state.

The usual way to differentiate between conscious and unconscious mental states is to consider that the first are those of which we are aware. According to Higher Order Theories, this is to say that conscious states are those that are the object of some sort of higher representation.

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Feelix Growing (FEEL, Interact, eXpress: a Global appRoach to develOpment With INterdisciplinary Grounding) is a project funded by the European Commission under contract FP6 IST-045169. It was launched in December 2006 and it is planned to end by May 2010. Project budget is 2.5 million Euro.

The members of the consortium are the University of hertfordshire, the French National Centre of Scientific Research (CNRS), the Neurocybernetics Team (ETIS), the Learning Algoriths and Systems Laboratory at EPFL, University of Portsmouth, ICCS at the University of Athens, Entertainment Robotics, and Aldebaran Robotics.

The overall goal of the project is to advance the field of socially situated robots, achieving realistic robotics platforms that can be trully integrated in real everyday life environments.

• Feelix Growing Homepage: http://www.feelix-growing.org

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MindPapers - A Bibliography of the Philosophy of Mind and the Science of Consciousness

MindPapers is a bibliography of work in the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of cognitive science, and the science of consciousness. It consists of more than 18000 entries and is divided in 8 parts each of which is further divided by topic and subtopic. Both online and offline material is included, with links wherever possible. Also a search facility is available.

MindPapers has been compiled by David Chalmers (Editor) & David Bourget (Assistant Editor), at the Australian National University.

The main 8 parts are:

Part 1: Philosophy of Consciousness
Part 2: Intentionality
Part 3: Perception
Part 4: Metaphysics of Mind
Part 5: Miscellaneous Philosophy of Mind
Part 6: Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence
Part 7: Philosophy of Cognitive Science
Part 8: Science of Consciousness

• MindPapers Web site: http://consc.net/mindpapers/

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Conscious-Robots.com joins Microsoft Robotics Studio as a partner

As announced by Microsoft Robotics Group last January, Conscious-Robots.com has now joined Microsoft Robotics Studio Partner Program (MSRSPP). Conscious-Robots.com is an organization dedicated to research and development in the area of Cognitive Robotics. The primary focus is to explore, develop, and promote technology advances in the scientific quest for machine consciousness. Our artificial consciousness technology is based on MSRS and is to be applied to several demanding fields of application like security, health care, and social robots.

• Microsoft Robotics Studio.
• Conscious-Robots.com Pages for Robotics Studio.

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Introducción a Microsoft Robotics Studio

Microsoft Robotics Studio es un entorno de desarrollo para docentes o profesionales orientado a la creación de aplicaciones de robótica. Entre otras, las funcionalidades clave de Microsoft Robotics Studio son proporcionar una plataforma de desarrollo de robótica extremo a extremo, soporte de concurrencia en tiempo real orientado a servicios y una plataforma escalable y extensible. Los principales componentes de Robotics Studio son:

• Un lenguaje visual de programación (VPL), que permite la creación intuitiva de aplicaciones para robots.
• Un entorno visual de simulación en tres dimensiones basado en el motor de simulación física AGEIA.
• Soporte en tiempo de ejecución (Runtime) que gestiona la entrada/salida asíncrona, la concurrencia y la distribución de servicios.

Robotics Studio está diseñado para ser una plataforma de desarrollo genérica que pueda emplearse con gran diversidad de hardware y fabricantes de robots. De hecho, existen multitud de servicios de Robotics Studio que funcionan directamente con los modelos de robots más populares.

Una aplicación en Robotics Studio es en esencia una coordinación de diversos servicios distribuidos y asíncronos. Por ejemplo, un sensor se representa por un servicio que ofrece una entrada de información, un actuador tendrá otro servicio asociado que representa la respuesta física del robot, finalmente, un servicio controlador se encargaría de interpretar la información obtenida del sensor y mandaría los comandos apropiados al actuador. La coordinación se produce en la comunicación asíncrona entre todos estos servicios. Por ejemplo, si el servicio de parachoques detecta un impacto, éste envía un mensaje al servicio controlador, que a su vez decidirá qué mensaje enviar al servicio de control de ruedas para realizar la maniobra oportuna. Este escenario se complica cuando el número de sensores y de actuadores aumenta. El funcionamiento de los servicios asociados a los sensores y actuadores sigue siendo similar al ejemplo puesto anteriormente, sin embargo, el servicio coordinador (o servicios coordinadores) debe manejar mucha información en tiempo real y aplicar complejas políticas de control.

El soporte de tiempo de ejecución o Runtime de Robotics Studio consta de dos componentes principales que hacen posible la construcción, supervisión, despliegue y funcionamiento de un gran rango de aplicaciones. Estos dos componentes son el CCR (Concurrency and Coordination Runtime) y el DSS (Decentralized Software Services).

El CCR permite la coordinación concurrente y asíncrona del flujo de ejecución abstrayendo al programador del uso de hilos, semáforos y otras técnicas de más bajo nivel para el aseguramiento de la exclusión mútua o la prevención del interbloqueo. Además plantea un modelo de programación asíncrona que facilita y optimiza la explotación de un entorno de ejecución paralelo o multihilo. Cabe destacar que el CCR es un componente DLL que se ejecuta en el entorno .NET y accesible desde cualquiera de los lenguajes de programación disponibles en .NET.

El DSS combina la arquitectura tradicional Web (HTTP) con elementos de las nuevas arquitecturas orientadas a servicios Web (SOAP). La arquitectura resultante está completamente basada en servicios que se coordinan entre sí para crear aplicaciones distribuidas. Por lo tanto, desde este punto de vista, una aplicación desarrollada en Robotics Studio es un conjunto de servicios que se coordinan entre sí. El principal objetivo es promover la simplicidad, transparencia y la interoperabilidad. Las composiciones de servicios se pueden usar sin importar si estos servicios están funcionando dentro del mismo nodo o a través de la red. El resultado es una plataforma flexible capaz de soportar un amplio rango de aplicaciones. El DSS utiliza los protocolos HTTP y DSSP. DSSP es un protocolo propio que ofrece DSS y se encarga de la mensajería entre servicios. Los servicios mantienen un estado durante el periodo de vida de la aplicación y se ejecutan en nodos DSS, que son los encargados de posibilitar la comunicación entre todos los servicios.

Comparte tus dudas, comentarios o sugerencias en el Foro de Robotics Studio en Español.

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Robot Brains: Circuits and Systems for Conscious Machines

by Pentti O. Haikonen

Wiley. September 2007. ISBN: 978-0-470-06204-3.

Haikonen envisions autonomous robots that perceive and understand the world directly, acting in it in a natural human-like way without the need of programs and numerical representation of information. By developing higher-level cognitive functions through the power of artificial associative neuron architectures, the author approaches the issues of machine consciousness.

Robot Brains expertly outlines a complete system approach to cognitive machines, offering practical design guidelines for the creation of non-numeric autonomous creative machines. It details topics such as component parts and realization principles, so that different pieces may be implemented in hardware or software. Real-world examples for designers and researchers are provided, including circuit and systems examples that few books on this topic give.

In novel technical and practical detail, this book also considers:

• the limitations and remedies of traditional neural associators in creating true machine cognition;
  basic circuit assemblies cognitive neural architectures;
• how motors can be interfaced with the associative neural system in order for fluent motion to be achieved without numeric computations;
• memorization, imagination, planning and reasoning in the machine;
• the concept of machine emotions for motivation and value systems;
• an approach towards the use and understanding of natural language in robots.

The methods presented in this book have important implications for computer vision, signal processing, speech recognition and other information technology fields. Systematic and thoroughly logical, it will appeal to practising engineers involved in the development and design of robots and cognitive machines, also researchers in Artificial Intelligence. Postgraduate students in computational neuroscience and robotics, and neuromorphic engineers will find it an exciting source of information.

• See Chapter 1. Introduction. PDF.
• About Pentti O. Haikonen.
  

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