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Internal simulation in embodied cognitive systems: Comment on "Muscleless motor synergies and actions without movements: From motor neuroscience to cognitive robotics" by Vishwanathan Mohan et al.

D. Vernon

Published 2019 in Physics of Life Reviews

ABSTRACT

What it is to be cognitive? This simple question proves more difficult to answer than one might suspect, partly because of the variety of perspectives taken in different disciplines, e.g. neuroscience, cognitive science, AI, and robotics [1], and partly because of the many different issues on which it touches, e.g. autonomy, perception, learning, anticipation, action, and adaptation [2]. Arguably, however, the essence of cognition is the capacity for effective action [3], i.e. actions that are goal-directed and guided by prospection [4–6]. Cognitive agents — humans or cognitive robots — continually predict the need for actions and their outcomes [7]. There is emerging consensus in the field that internal simulation plays a key role in such prospectively-guided goal-directed action [8,9]. What is not so clear, at least in the cognitive architecture literature, is the manner in which internal simulation is accomplished. Some cognitive architectures opt for an explicit module in the architecture (e.g. [10–12]) while in others internal simulation is effected by the same sub-systems as those responsible for sensorimotor-mediated action but using covert, internally-generated endogenous sensorimotor signals, i.e. using afference and efference copies, rather than exogenous sensorimotor signals (e.g. [13–15] and also see [8,16]). The central theme articulated by Mohan et al. in this review [17] resonates strongly with this view of cognition, focusing as it does on “the dual processes of shaping motor output during action execution and providing the self with information related to feasibility, consequence and understanding of potential actions (of oneself/others)” (emphasis in original). Crucially, it makes a compelling case, based on empirical evidence, in favour of the latter approach to internal simulation as a covert mode of cognition rather than a module of cognition, in the manner suggested by Hesslow [18,19] (as the authors themselves note) as well as providing further evidence for the prospective stance on cognition. Specifically, the core message in the review is that both actual and simulated action (“ ‘real and imagined’

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