CYBERNETICS Purposive, adaptive, and evolving percept-action systems Emergence-relative-to-a-model (expectancy violation) Emergence and creativity: combinatoric vs. emergent creativity Functional open-endedness in fixed, adaptive, and evolutionary robotic systems Extradimensional bypass (Conrad) The limits of computation (what it's good for and what it's not) Strict finitist conceptions of formal systems Symbols vs. dynamics (Pattee)
SYSTEMS SEMIOTICS Semiotics of purposive observer-actors Operational definitions of functions of measurement, computation, action Cybernetics (purposive systems and their interactions, effective design) Special-purpose vs. general purpose sensory systems
NEURAL CODING The neural coding problem (what are the signals of the system in the brain?) Taxonomies of possible neural codes (channel/rate codes, spike pattern, spike latency) Multiplexed complex temporal codes (a la Emmers) and broadcast coordinations Problems with scalar codes (firing rate) and purely connectionist schemes
TEMPORAL CODING Temporal coding of sensory information (auditory, vision, touch, pain, chemical senses) All-order interspike interval population wide distributions as general purpose autocorrelation-like representations Temporal coding of the pitch of complex tones (musical pitch, chroma relations) Temporal coding of consonance and harmony (pitch stability, subharmonic relations) Temporal coding of vowels (timbre) Temporal coding of rhythm & meter Parallels between pitch and rhythm Time-warping invariances (rhythms re: tempo, melodies re: transpositions, speech re: tempo) Parallels between auditory and visual transformations (transpositional & magnification-invariances) Common temporal structure in perception and action Movement in auditory space, visual space, and action-space Pervasive parallels between music and dance
NEURAL TIMING NETS Neural timing nets (for sound separation, as general purpose networks) Signal-centric model of brain function ("it's not the meat, it's the motion") Asynchronous binding of information through common temporal patterns Neural timing nets as alternatives to connectionist architectures Temporal codes, tape recorder memories, molecular memories, anticipatory prediction Engrams, temporal codes, and content-addressable memories
CONSCIOUS AWARENESS & ITS CONTENTS Isomorphism between neural coding dimensions and qualia dimensions Neural requisites for conscious awareness (NCC's) Neural requisites for the contents of conscious awareness (NCCC') Neural coding and anesthesia (scrambling the coherence of signal regeneration) Temporal pattern based global coherences (Eagleman's drumming metaphor) Awareness as an emergent aspect of regenerative signaling (organizational closure) Autopoiesis-like model of neuronal signal productions Hylomorphic ontologies (properties/aspects arising fr organization embedded in matter) Pan-psychism vs. emergentism