The Embodied Machine: Autonomy, Imagination and Artificial Agents

Nivedita Gangopadhyay

Institut Jean Nicod
1bis, avenue de Lowendal,
75007, Paris,
France
Nivedita.Gangopadhyay@ehess.fr

Abstract

The embodied and enactive approach to consciousness emphasises the role of the physical embodiment of naturally intelligent agents as crucial for a study of consciousness and the importance attributed to the body also tends to be carried over to the material out of which the body is created viz.  living matter. This seems to put into doubt the relevance of the embodied and enactive approach to the field of machine consciousness. However, I shall argue that consciousness as manifested in embodied intelligent systems, natural or artificial, that enact their world of experience by interacting with the environment necessarily needs to be understood in the light of freedom/autonomy and imagination, and the application of the principles of embodiment and enaction in the light of these notions in the field of robotics and AI can be a big step towards creating conscious artificial agents.