Olivier Penelaud
Research theme
The Cognitive Opportunism - from automobile control to cognitive psychology
This thesis proposes to treat two aspects of human cognition and, by their juxtaposition, to release from it a third, heuristics, place of convergence of the properties and characteristic of the both. The first , of an experimental approach and based on empirical data, sticks to the deepening of the study and the modeling of the behavior within the framework of automobile control. The second , of a theoretical approach and based on an epistemological reflection, sticks to the going beyond of the traditional considerations of Science, by a complex approach resulting from the appropriation of a quantum mechanics metaphor. The third , making wish of general assumption, relates to a cognitive "installation" in synchrony with the environment and the serviceable time for the effective action, i.e. underlying a "just necessary" expenditure. The dynamic organization of the quantum metaphor used, makes it possible to define a model of consistency of the statute of the actor and situation in a given moment, bound by a projective aiming to a more or less near future. In this direction, the action is always the fruit of an adequacy, a project incipient from the mapping appropriateness between a subjective intentionality and objective conditions : from where, the concept of cognitive opportunism. This framework makes it possible to illustrate the automobile activity of control like succession of determinations of local goals, themselves encapsulated with more general aims, answering the initial objective to move of a place with another, by respecting certain temporal, health and economic constraints.
Key words : dynamic control; risk management ; complexity; quantum mechanics; gnoseology
Video and experimental material