Grounding and the entailment structure in robots and artificial life

Abstract

This paper is concerned with foundations of ALife and its methodology. A brief look into the research program of ALife serves to clarify its goals, methods and subfields. It is argued that the field of animat research within ALife follows a program which is considerably different from the rest of ALife endeavours. The simulation-non-simulation debate in behavior-based robotics is revisited in the light of ALife criticism and Simon’s characterization of the sciences of the artificial. It reveals severe methodological problems, or dangers at least, which can only be overcome by reconsidering naturalness in the study of ALife. A comparison of ALife with other such sciences like Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science shows similar problems in these areas. Grounding, embodiment, and building real models are ways to overcome the dangers of unbounded artificiality.