The Distributed Adaptive Control Theory of the Mind and Brain as a Candidate Standard Model of the Human Mind

摘要

This article presents the Distributed Adaptive Control (DAC) theory of mind and brain as a candidate standard model of the human mind. DAC is defined against a reformulation of the criteria for unified theories of cognition advanced by Allen Newell, or the Unified Theories of Embodied Minds - Standard Model benchmark (UTEM-SM) that emphasizes real-world and real-time embodied action. DAC considers mind and brain as the function and implementation of a multi-layered control system and addresses the fundamental question of how the mind, as the product of embodied and situated brains, can obtain, retain and express valid knowledge of its world and transform this into policies for action. DAC provides an explanatory framework for biological minds and brains by satisfying well-defined constraints faced by theories of mind and brain and provides a route for the convergent validation of anatomy, physiology, and behavior in our explanation of biological minds. DAC is a well validated integration and synthesis framework for artificial minds and exemplifies the role of the synthetic method in understanding mind and brain. This article describes the core components of DAC, its performance on specific benchmarks derived from the engagement with the physical and the social world (or the H4W and the H5W problems) and lastly analyzes DAC's performance on the UTEM-SM benchmark and its relationship with contemporary developments in AI.