The invention of consciousness                               Part 2: Perspectives − Josef Perner

                     Nicholas Humphrey                                   We have an intuitive understanding of perspective from visual
                     humphrey@me.com                                     perspectives. I provide criteria for a more general notion of
                                                                         perspective applicable to language and cognition at large.
                                                                         Tracking differences of perspective plays a central role in
In English we use the word “invention” in two ways: 1. A new             human cognition and may be uniquely human. Developmental
device or process developed by experimentation, and designed             evidence shows that perspective tasks are all mastered at
to fulfill a practical goal. 2. A mental fabrication, especially a       around 4 years of age and specific brain regions may be
falsehood, developed by art, and designed to please or                   concerned with tracking perspectives (e.g., left inferior
persuade. In this talk I’ll argue that human consciousness is            parietal lobe and precuneus). I propose that coreferential
an invention in both respects. 1. It is a cognitive faculty,             mental files are the way perspectives are being represented in
evolved by natural selection, that improves our practical                the brain.
ability to understand the world we live in. 2. It is a fantasy,
evolved by something more like sexual selection, that
motivates us to live more fulfilling lives.                              How to develop artificial empathy? An affective
                                                                         and cognitive developmental robotics approach

                  Whose body matters?                                                          Minoru Asada
                                                                                         asada@ams.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp
                  Frederique de Vignemont
                   fvignemont@gmail.com
                                                                         We have been advocating cognitive developmental robotics
                                                                         (hereafter, CDR) to obtain new insight into the development
Which body do I feel as my own? The body in which I feel                 of human cognitive functions by utilizing synthetic and
sensations? But I can feel sensations in a hand that feels as            constructive approaches. Among the different emotional
alien. The body I can directly control? But more and more                functions, empathy is difficult to model, but essential for
evidence shows that tools can be motorically embodied, and               robots to be social agents in our society. Several attempts have
yet I do not feel tools as parts of my body, while most                  been made for specific situations. However, such attempts
versions of the Rubber Hand Illusion are purely perceptual               have provided several limitations; thus, diminishing
with no agentive component. Or the body that matters for self-           authenticity. In this talk, I introduce "affective developmental
preservation, and thus that has a special affective significance         robotics (hereafter, ADR),” which provides more authentic
for me? According to a classic conception in social                      artificial empathy based on the concept of CDR. First, the
psychology, one does not feel patriotic when one is merely               evolution and development of empathy as revealed in
aware of the boundaries of one’s country; one feels patriotic            neuroscience and biobehavioral studies are reviewed, moving
when one is aware that these boundaries can be in danger. I              from emotional contagion to envy and schadenfreude. These
propose here that something similar applies to the sense of              terms are then reconsidered from the ADR/CDR viewpoint,
bodily ownership.                                                        particularly along the developmental trajectory of self-other
                                                                         cognition. Next, a conceptual model of artificial empathy is
                                                                         proposed based on an ADR/CDR viewpoint and discussed
                                                                         with respect to several existing studies. Finally, a general
 Social cognition: mirrors and perspectives (joint                       discussion and proposals for addressing future issues are
                             lecture)
                                                                         given.
             Giacomo Rizzolatti & Josef Perner
                 giacomo.rizzolatti@unipr.it
                    josef.perner@sbg.ac.at


Part 1: Mirrors − Giacomo Rizzolatti

Action understanding has received and enormous interest in
the fields of cognitive neuroscience over last two decades. In
particular, the presence of motor activation during the
observation of actions done by others when these are part of
the motor repertoire of the observer, aroused a lot of
discussion. In my talk I will show that the mirror mechanism
is a general mechanism that include emotions and vitality
forms. The proposal is that the perception of actions, emotions
and vitality forms is determined by the activation of the motor
programs responsible for that action. There is no need of
independent centers for perception of action. Additional
mechanisms, however, are required when the observed action
is not encoded by the observer’s motor system.



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