Glossary
The Behavioral Logic glossary is a work in progress to rigorously define core terminology across disciplinary boundaries such as computer science, neuroscience, robotics, psychology, education, and behavioral sciences.
A
- Abuse
- Arbitrary or excessive negative valence that can lead to depression.
- Abort
- Halting the execution of a plan before completion due to observed divergence from predicted results.
- Action
- Initiating a physical, chemical, electrical, or behavioral change.
- Adulthood
- The period of time in creatures with conditioned behaviors after initial variation of behavior is significantly reduced.
- Attraction
- The increase in probability of behaviors associated with positive valence that occurs as a part of operant conditioning.
Aversion
The decrease in probability of behaviors associated with negative valence that occurs as a part of operant conditioning.
B
- Bad habit
- A Harmful conditioned behavior acquired by insufficient or anomalous experience such as abuse or spoiling.
- Behavior
- A property of a thing where a set of conditions results in an action. A cause and effect relation for a particular medium.
Behavior: Conditions -> Thing -> Action
- Behavior Table
- A group of situations and associated actions.
- Belief
- Information that associates an initial situation and an action to a consequent situation.
- Benefit
- The improvement of a goal's chance of success. (Antonym: harm.)
C
- Childhood
- The initial period of time during operant conditioning before adequate experience is acquired to reduce large variations in behavior.
- Classical conditioning
- The association of valence to previously objective conditions.
- Condition
- A single boolean (true or false) datum indicating the presence or absence of a quality of the environment relevant to the goal of an intelligent creature.
- Conditioned behavior
- A type of intelligent behavior that is improved through the process of operant conditioning.
- Consciousness
- The ability for a creature to predict consequences and evaluate imaginary situations.
- Creature
- A thing that exhibits intelligent behavior.
- Why creature? I had to call it something. Agent is commonly used in computer science and organism in biological science to but I wanted a term that works for both. The root meaning in latin means "created" and I think that applies to natural or artificial intelligent creations. I'll usually be explicit and use intelligent creature to be clearer, but to me, that is redundant. I would never talk about non-intelligent creatures.
E
- Eccentric
- A harmful habit caused by insufficient and/or anomalous experiences.
- Evaluation
- An estimate of the harm or benefit of a situation.
- Experience
- The combination of a behavior and the valence produced when it is performed used in conditioned behavior.
Execution
To begin performing the decision of a plan.
G
- Game
- A situation that approximates those expected in adulthood, but with no (or much lower) risk of harm.
- Goal
- The ultimate purpose of a creature’s existence.
Webster (1913) Goal 2. The final purpose or aim; the end to which a design tends…
- Gut Reaction
- When a creature capable of making a decision chooses to instead act out of habit.
L
- Learn
- To increase the benefit (or reduce harm) of behaviors.
- Adding or improving behaviors.
N
- Non-intelligent Behavior
- Behavior that acts only according to physical laws. Objects that don't possess the ability to choose from more than one possible action.
- Neglect
- An inadequate amount of experience during childhood that can result in eccentric behavior.
O
- Opinion
- A valence associated with a situation from past experience.
- Operant Conditioning
- A system of intelligent behavior that starts with a variation in behavior, then the probability of behaviors associated with pleasantness are increased and the probability of those associated with unpleasantness are decreased.
P
- Permanent memory
- Memory that is intended to persist until it is deliberately changed. This is somewhat analogous to long-term memory in psychology and non-volatile memory in computer science.
- Pleasantness
- A positive valence indicating benefit.
- Play
- Participation in a game.
- Plan
- A series of decisions produced from multiple rounds of thinking.
- Prediction
- The consequent situation formed using a creature's beliefs from an initial situation and a proposed action.
- Premature Conclusion
- An error in thinking where the decision threshold is too low resulting in less beneficial actions than should be chosen.
R
Reflex
An intelligent behavior acquired by a process external to a creature's first hand experience and is performed automatically without thought or feeling.
S
- Science
- Increasing understanding by adding, simplifying, and increasing the accuracy of beliefs.
- Sensor
- A mechanism used to produce information that represents a particular property of the environment.
- Situation
- A set of conditions at a particular time and place. Current conditions are those that are here and now, but the same type of information could represent remembered past or imagined future situations.
- Spoiling
- Arbitrary or excessive positive valence leading to eccentric behavior.
- Subjective Sensor
- A sensor that evaluates behavior.
T
- Temporary memory
- Memory that exists to aid an active information processing activity. This is somewhat analogous to short-term memory in psychology and volatile memory in computer science.
- Thinking
- The process of using thoughts of multiple ideas to make a decision when a threshold is reached.
- Thought
- A prediction and its evaluation.
Tune
To decrease variation in behavior toward those evaluated to be beneficial and away from those deemed harmful.
U
- Unpleasantness
- A negative valence indicating harm. Similar to the psychological concept of negative affect.
- Urgency
- An estimate of the amount of time before a decision is needed.
- The briefness of a time-based decision threshold. Too much urgency can lead to premature conclusions, while too little can lead to indecision.
- Understanding
- The accuracy (how closely predictions are to reality) and efficiency of beliefs.
V
- valence
- A type of sensory information created by subjective sensors (or from classical conditioning data.) Similar to the psychological concept of affect, our general sense of pleasantness or unpleasantness, and the value function in reinforcement learning.
- In logical examples I use a range of -1.0 to 1.0 to indicate valence.
Behavioral Logic