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like scripts or plans, we can think of action as a continuous improvisation with the
environment. Attention and the conscious experience of the agent become the com-
mon thread that stitches the fl ow of each individual action together.
Attention of the agent drives the system by changing the fl ow of sensory infor-
mation. Depending on the current directive, the system “perceives” sensory infor-
mation in different ways. At this point, the reader might ask: How can the same
sensory information be perceived in different ways? If we imagine sensory input as
a fl ow through time, we can then consider adding different “lenses” to perception to
fi lter that sensory input in different ways. Different fi lters make different features of
the environment salient. If they are salient enough, they will demand the attention
of the individual, which might then prompt subsequent interaction. We call this fi l-
ter perceptual logic because it enables a form of direct perceptual reasoning. The
directive guides attention toward facets of the environment that are relevant to the
current intention of the agent. The old adage “when you have a hammer everything
looks like a nail” is quite illuminating to consider in this context. Once a hammer is
picked up, the general directive of hammering is established, and this directive
guides attention and action, which results in things being perceived in terms of their
“hammerabil ity.”
To summarize the idea of a directive, a directive does not dictate action; it selects
a fi lter for perception that (we propose) enables a perception-based reasoning pro-
cess we call perceptual logic. Actions are not discrete units but rather exist as an
emergent fl ow of interactions with the environment. Some actions are executed in
service of tasks, while other actions help gain different perspectives, including
changing physical location as well as changing the directive with which a scene is
analyzed. This process is guided by attention and the awareness of the agent and is
inherently based on the temporal fl ow of experience and the dynamics of interaction
with the environment.
7.3.4
Enactive Creativity Thesis
To account for the emergent nature of cognition and of creativity, we can make sys-
tems that are designed from the ground up as improvisational collaborative agents.
Their “intelligence” and “creativity” would then emerge organically through inter-
acting with intelligent and creative humans. Current AI systems are good at con-
strained and specialized tasks, but tasks that require common sense and creativity
(like collaboration and improvisation) are notoriously diffi cult to model computa-
tionally. Humans use what is referred to as “commonsense knowledge” to adapt
their actions and understand everyday situations. The so-called commonsense prob-
lem in AI refers to the huge knowledge databases required to achieve what humans
normally take for granted as common sense. Building such a large database of
knowledge is notoriously diffi cult and labor intensive, which is one reason why a
general purpose AI does not exist today. Creativity goes a few steps beyond the
commonsense problem because it introduces open-ended domains that do not
