Jun Tani, Ph.D.

Compositionality has been considered as an essential feature of human cognition.
It looks as if meanings of sentences were derived from compositions of
words and complex human acts were generated from compositions of reusable
behavior primitives. However, if we look at our everyday behaviors, most
of them seem to be generated in more "organic" ways rather than
in computational ways of, as like, manipulating concrete objects. Our behaviors
are quite context-dependent, surprisingly flexible and emergent while being
robust and fluent.
Now, our synthetic robotics studies for two decades are ready to show that
the self-organization processes of neuro-dynamic systems structured through
ample of their sensory-motor level interactions have resulted in so-called
the "organic" compositionality that affords the above mentioned
properties of human cognitive behaviors. Ultimately, our approaches are
extended to elucidate immanent properties of "symbols", "self"
and "time" in our subjective mind through the triangular researches
on neuroscience, dynamical systems and phenomenology
"Organic" Compositionality:
An Account for Immanent Properties of Symbols, Self and Time
Research Summary (2000〜2009) PDF