Document Version Preprint – the version submitted for publication Link to publication record in King's Research Portal Citation for published version (APA): Shea, N. (2011). Acquiring a new concept is not explicable-by-content. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 34(3), 148-149doi: 10.1017/S0140525

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Preprint typeset in JHEP style.- PAPER VERSION hep-th/0007146

Interposition agents are a well-known device for attaching legacy applications to distributed systems. However, agents are difficult to build and are often large, monolithic pieces of software which are suited only to limited applications or systems. We solve this problem with Bypass, a language and a tool for quickly building multiple small agents that can be combined together to create powerful yet manageable software.

1 A high order control basis for volition It appears to be a straightforward implication of distributed cognition principles that there is no integrated executive control system (e.g. Brooks 1991, Clark 1997). If distributed cognition is taken as a credible paradigm for cognitive science this in turn presents a challenge to volition because the concept of volition assumes integrated information processing and action control. For instance the process of forming a goal should integrate information about the available action options. If the goal is acted upon these processes should control motor behavior. If there were no executive system then it would seem that processes of action selection and performance couldn’t be functionally integrated in the right way. The apparently centralized decision and action control processes of volition would be an illusion arising from the competitive and cooperative interaction of many relatively simple cognitive systems. Here I will make a case that this conclusion is not well-founded. Prima facie it is not clear that distributed organization can achieve coherent functional activity when there are many complex interacting systems, there is high potential for interference between systems, and there is a need for focus. Resolving conflict and providing focus are key reasons why executive systems have been proposed (Baddeley 1986, Norman and Shallice 1986, Posner and Raichle 1994). This chapter develops an extended theoretical argument based on this idea, according to which selective pressures operating in the evolution of cognition favor high order control organization with a ‘highest-order ’ control system that performs executive functions. The core elements of this architecture are presented in figure 1.

that are homotopy equivalent to a surface. This analysis is also of interest in its own right. This eprint is based on the August 1986 version of this preprint, which was submitted, refereed, and accepted for publication; for reasons that are hard to fathom, I never returned a corrected version to the journal. I

Preprint typeset in JHEP style.- PAPER VERSION hep-th/9911067

Preprint typeset in JHEP style- PAPER VERSION

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