Is There Something Out There? Inferring Space from Sensorimotor Dependencies

D. Philipona, J.K. O'Regan, J.-P. Nadal

Full text: http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/089976603322297278

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Abstract

This letter suggests that in biological organisms, the perceived structure of reality, in particular the notions of body, environment, space, object, and attribute, could be a consequence of an effort on the part of brains to account for the dependency between their inputs and their outputs in terms of a small number of parameters. To validate this idea, a procedure is demonstrated whereby the brain of a (simulated) organism with arbitrary input and output connectivity can deduce the dimensionality of the rigid group of the space underlying its input-output relationship, that is, the dimension of what the organism will call physical space.

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Ratings & reviews

• Is There Something Out There? Inferring Space from Sensorimotor Dependencies

  A fundamental result

  Anonymous reviewer

  Anonymous

  100 98 0

  

  This is a ground-breaking fundamental result. Unfortunately, no relevant further work has been pursued to build upon this result.