creators_name: Prem, Erich editors_name: Husbands, Phil editors_name: Harvey, Inman type: confpaper datestamp: 1998-05-25 lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:53:42 metadata_visibility: show title: Epistemic Autonomy in Models of Living Systems ispublished: pub subjects: bio-etho subjects: bio-theory subjects: bio-theory subjects: comp-sci-robot subjects: phil-epist full_text_status: public keywords: epistemic autonomy, embodied Artificial Intelligence, epistemology, theoretical biology abstract: This paper discusses epistemological consequences of embodied AI for Artificial Life models. The importance of robotic systems for ALife lies in the fact that they are not purely formal models and thus have to address issues of semantic adaptation and epistemic autonomy, which means the system's own ability to decide upon the validity of measurements. Epistemic autonomy in artificial systems is a difficult problem that poses foundational questions. The proposal is to concentrate on biological transformations of epistemological questions that have lead to the development of modern ethology. Such an approach has proven to be useful in the design of control systems for behavior-based robots. It leads to a better understanding of modern ontological conceptions as well as a reacknowledgement of finality in the description and design of autonomous systems. date: 1997 date_type: published publisher: MIT Press, Cambridge, MA pagerange: 2-9 refereed: FALSE citation: Prem, Erich (1997) Epistemic Autonomy in Models of Living Systems. [Conference Paper] document_url: http://cogprints.org/168/2/oefai-tr-97-14.ps