Making the environment an informative place: A conceptual analysis of epistemic policies and sensorimotor coordination

How do living organisms decide and act with limited and uncertain information? Here, we discuss two computational approaches to solving these challenging problems: a "cognitive" and a "sensorimotor" enrichment of stimuli, respectively. In both approaches, the key notion is that agents can strategically modulate their behavior in informative ways, e.g., to disambiguate amongst alternative hypotheses or to favor the perception of stimuli providing the information necessary to later act appropriately. We discuss how, despite their differences, both approaches appeal to the notion that actions must obey both epistemic (i.e., information-gathering or uncertainty-reducing) and pragmatic (i.e., goal- or reward-maximizing) imperatives and balance them. Our computationally-guided analysis reveals that epistemic behavior is fundamental to understanding several facets of cognitive processing, including perception, decision making, and social interaction.

Publication type: 
Articolo
Author or Creator: 
Pezzulo G.
Nolfi S.
Publisher: 
MDPI,, Basel
Source: 
Entropy (Basel, Online) 21 (2019): 1–15. doi:10.3390/e21040350
info:cnr-pdr/source/autori:Pezzulo G.; Nolfi S./titolo:Making the environment an informative place: A conceptual analysis of epistemic policies and sensorimotor coordination/doi:10.3390/e21040350/rivista:Entropy (Basel, Online)/anno:2019/pagina_da:1/pagin
Date: 
2019
Resource Identifier: 
http://www.cnr.it/prodotto/i/415424
https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/e21040350
info:doi:10.3390/e21040350
http://www.scopus.com/record/display.url?eid=2-s2.0-85065559719&origin=inward
Language: 
Eng
ISTC Author: 
Giovanni Pezzulo's picture
Real name: 
Stefano Nolfi's picture
Real name: