Abstract
In computer science, parallel and distributed processing has long been investigated and developed for its applications to social infrastructures. Nowadays, it enhances growing rate of Internet access around the world, which makes a shared knowledge, or a kind of collective intelligence, that emerges from the collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in consensus decision making in bacteria, nervous systems, animals, humans and perhaps computer networks. The brain is capable of various cognitive functions through similar processes and accomplishes having a self-referential function. We discuss how the brain exhibits a single entity such as the self as a consequence of cooperation among distributed autonomous components and propose a research approach of the brain-based robotics, which investigates the decision-making process in a social context. This synthetic approach may help understanding the brain with consciousness and a key to consider to a parallel and distributed processing with a self-referential property.
