What do You Want to do Today? : Relevant-Information Bookkeeping in Goal-Oriented Behaviour

Abstract

We extend existing models and methods for the informational treatment of the perception-action loop to the case of goaloriented behaviour and introduce the notion of relevant goal information as the amount of information an agent necessarily has to maintain about its goal. Starting from the hypothesis that organisms use information economically, we study the structure of this information and how goal-information parsimony can guide behaviour. It is shown how these methods lead to a general definition and quantification of sub-goals and how the biologically motivated hypothesis of information parsimony gives rise to the emergence of behavioural properties such as least-commitment and goal-concealing.