The role of anticipation in cognition

Abstract

According to the standard definition of anticipatory systems, anticipation is based on a predictive model of the system itself and its environment. The paper abandons this perspective of weak anticipation in favor of what has been called strong anticipation. It is proposed that anticipation is a consequence of canalization caused by the organization of the structural building-blocks of which the system in question consists. Strong anticipation can account for the anticipatory behavior in animals to which we would not impute the ability of creating internal models of themselves.