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Goals and the Structure of Experience.

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This study introduces a new computational framework where descriptive and prescriptive world model aspects emerge together from an agent's goal. This telic state approach offers a unified view of purposeful behavior in cognitive agents.

Keywords:
goalsstate representationworld models

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Science
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Computational Neuroscience

Background:

  • Purposeful behavior in natural and artificial intelligence is often linked to world models.
  • Traditional models separate descriptive (state representation) and prescriptive (reward function) aspects.
  • An alternative, computationally unexplored, is the interdependent co-emergence of these aspects from goals.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To propose a novel computational framework for goal-directed state representation in cognitive agents.
  • To demonstrate how descriptive and prescriptive world model aspects can co-emerge from agent-environment interactions.
  • To introduce the concept of 'telic states' for a unified understanding of purposeful behavior.

Main Methods:

  • Development of a computational framework based on agent-environment interaction sequences (experiences).
  • Introduction of 'telic states' defined as classes of goal-equivalent experience distributions.
  • Leveraging Buddhist epistemology to define goal-directed states.

Main Results:

  • The framework shows how descriptive and prescriptive world model components can interdependently co-emerge from an agent's goal.
  • Telic states offer a parsimonious account of goal-directed learning.
  • This approach reinterprets goal-directed learning via statistical divergence between policies and desired experiences.

Conclusions:

  • The proposed framework provides a novel computational perspective on purposeful behavior.
  • Telic states offer a unified account integrating behavioral, phenomenological, and neural dimensions.
  • This approach has potential applications across diverse intelligent systems, both natural and artificial.