Recent advances in cognitive science (Beer, 1995; Brooks, 1991; Chiel and Beer, 1997; Clark, 1997; Hanczyc, Toyota, Ikegami, Packard, & Sugawara, 2007; Ikegami, 2007; Nolfi, 2005; Nolfi & Floreano, 2000; Pfeifer & Scheier, 1999; Tani, 1996; Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991) have clarified that intelligence resides in the circular relationship between the brain of an individual organism, its body, and the environment. More precisely, behavior is (i) a phenomenon resulting from fast nonlinear interactions between the brain of an organism, its body, and the environment (Chiel & Beer, 1997), and (ii) a multiple-scaled phenomenon with different levels of organization in which properties at different levels extend at different timescales and both affect and are affected by lower- and higher-level properties (Keijzer, 2001; Nolfi, 2005; Paine & Tani, 2005). This implies that behavior is an emergent property; that is, a property that cannot be inferred by an external observer, even on the basis of a complete description of the elements involved in the interactions and of the rules governing the interaction.
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