Unified Theories of Cognition

Unified Theories of Cognition PDF

Author: Allen Newell

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 580

ISBN-13: 9780674921016

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Newell introduces Soar, an architecture for general cognition. A pioneer system in AI, Soar is the first problem-solver to create its own subgoals and learn continuously from its own experience. Its ability to operate within the real-time constraints of intelligent behavior illustrates important characteristics of human cognition.

Cognition and Perception

Cognition and Perception PDF

Author: Athanassios Raftopoulos

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2009-07-17

Total Pages: 447

ISBN-13: 0262258412

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An argument that there are perceptual mechanisms that retrieve information in cognitively and conceptually unmediated ways and that this sheds light on various philosophical issues. In Cognition and Perception, Athanassios Raftopoulos discusses the cognitive penetrability of perception and claims that there is a part of visual processes (which he calls “perception”) that results in representational states with nonconceptual content; that is, a part that retrieves information from visual scenes in conceptually unmediated, “bottom-up,” theory-neutral ways. Raftopoulos applies this insight to problems in philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and epistemology, and examines how we access the external world through our perception as well as what we can know of that world. To show that there is a theory-neutral part of existence, Raftopoulos turns to cognitive science and argues that there is substantial scientific evidence. He then claims that perception induces representational states with nonconceptual content and examines the nature of the nonconceptual content. The nonconceptual information retrieved, he argues, does not allow the identification or recognition of an object but only its individuation as a discrete persistent object with certain spatiotemporal properties and other features. Object individuation, however, suffices to determine the referents of perceptual demonstratives. Raftopoulos defends his account in the context of current discussions on the issue of the theory-ladenness of perception (namely the Fodor-Churchland debate), and then discusses the repercussions of his thesis for problems in the philosophy of science. Finally, Raftopoulos claims that there is a minimal form of realism that is defensible. This minimal realism holds that objects, their spatiotemporal properties, and such features as shape, orientation, and motion are real, mind-independent properties in the world.

The Search for a Theory of Cognition

The Search for a Theory of Cognition PDF

Author: Stefano Franchi

Publisher: Rodopi

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 397

ISBN-13: 9401207151

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Preliminary Material -- LIFE, DEATH, AND RESURRECTION OF THE HOMEOSTAT /Stefano Franchi -- THE ONTOLOGY OF THE ENEMY: NORBERT WIENER AND THE CYBERNETIC VISION /Peter Galison -- COMPUTERS AS MODELS OF THE MIND: ON SIMULATIONS, BRAINS, AND THE DESIGN OF COMPUTERS /Peter Asaro -- AT THE PERIPHERY OF THE RISING EMPIRE: THE CASE OF ITALY (1945-1968) /Claudio Pogliano -- PROCESSING CULTURES: “STRUCTURALISM” IN THE HISTORY OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE /Patrice Maniglier -- ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE WITH A NATIONAL FACE: AMERICAN AND SOVIET CULTURAL METAPHORS FOR THOUGHT /Slava Gerovitch -- THE CARTESIAN-LEIBNIZIAN TURING TEST /Francesco Bianchini -- TURING COMPUTABILITY AND LEIBNIZ COMPUTABILITY /Maurizio Matteuzzi -- LOGICAL INSTRUMENTS: REGULAR EXPRESSIONS, AI, AND THINKING ABOUT THINKING /Christopher M. Kelty -- GÖDEL, NAGEL, MINDS, AND MACHINES /Solomon Feferman -- ENTANGLING EFFECTIVE PROCEDURES: FROM LOGIC MACHINES TO QUANTUM AUTOMATA /Rossella Lupacchini -- TURING 1948 VS. GÖDEL 1972 /Giorgio Sandri -- WORKS CITED -- INDEX -- ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS -- VIBS.

Creative Cognition

Creative Cognition PDF

Author: Ronald A. Finke

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1996-01-05

Total Pages: 255

ISBN-13: 0262560968

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Creative Cognition combines original experiments with existing work in cognitive psychology to provide the first explicit account of the cognitive processes and structures that contribute to creative thinking and discovery. Creative Cognition combines original experiments with existing work in cognitive psychology to provide the first explicit account of the cognitive processes and structures that contribute to creative thinking and discovery. In separate chapters, the authors take up visualization, concept formation, categorization, memory retrieval, and problem solving. They describe novel experimental methods for studying creative cognitive processes under controlled laboratory conditions, along with techniques that can be used to generate many different types of inventions and concepts. Unlike traditional approaches, Creative Cognition considers creativity as a product of numerous cognitive processes, each of which helps to set the stage for insight and discovery. It identifies many of these processes as well as general principles of creative cognition that can be applied across a variety of different domains, with examples in artificial intelligence, engineering design, product development, architecture, education, and the visual arts. Following a summary of previous approaches to creativity, the authors present a theoretical model of the creative process. They review research involving an innovative imagery recombination technique, developed by Finke, that clearly demonstrates that creative inventions can be induced in the laboratory. They then describe experiments in category learning that support the provocative claim that the factors constraining category formation similarly constrain imagination and illustrate the role of various memory processes and other strategies in creative problem solving.

Patterns, Thinking, and Cognition

Patterns, Thinking, and Cognition PDF

Author: Howard Margolis

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1987

Total Pages: 348

ISBN-13: 9780226505282

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What happens when we think? How do people make judgments? While different theories abound—and are heatedly debated—most are based on an algorithmic model of how the brain works. Howard Margolis builds a fascinating case for a theory that thinking is based on recognizing patterns and that this process is intrinsically a-logical. Margolis gives a Darwinian account of how pattern recognition evolved to reach human cognitive abilities. Illusions of judgment—standard anomalies where people consistently misjudge or misperceive what is logically implied or really present—are often used in cognitive science to explore the workings of the cognitive process. The explanations given for these anomalous results have generally explained only the anomaly under study and nothing more. Margolis provides a provocative and systematic analysis of these illusions, which explains why such anomalies exist and recur. Offering empirical applications of his theory, Margolis turns to historical cases to show how an individual's cognitive repertoire—the available cognitive patterns and their relation to cues—changes or resists changes over time. Here he focuses on the change in worldview occasioned by the Copernican discovery: not only how an individual might come to see things in a radically new way, but how it is possible for that new view to spread and become the dominant one. A reanalysis of the trial of Galileo focuses on social cognition and its interactions with politics. In challenging the prevailing paradigm for understanding how the human mind works, Patterns, Thinking, and Cognition is certain to stimulate fruitful debate.

A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness

A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness PDF

Author: Bernard J. Baars

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1993-07-30

Total Pages: 454

ISBN-13: 9780521427432

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Bernard Baars suggests a way to specify empirical constraints on a theory of consciousness by contrasting well-established conscious phenomena with comparable unconscious ones, such as stimulus representations known to be preperceptual, unattended or habituated. By adducing data to show that consciousness is associated with a kind of workplace in the nervous system, Baars helps clarify the problem.

The Cognitive Animal

The Cognitive Animal PDF

Author: Marc Bekoff

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2002-06-21

Total Pages: 508

ISBN-13: 9780262523226

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The fifty-seven original essays in this book provide a comprehensive overview of the interdisciplinary field of animal cognition. The contributors include cognitive ethologists, behavioral ecologists, experimental and developmental psychologists, behaviorists, philosophers, neuroscientists, computer scientists and modelers, field biologists, and others. The diversity of approaches is both philosophical and methodological, with contributors demonstrating various degrees of acceptance or disdain for such terms as "consciousness" and varying degrees of concern for laboratory experimentation versus naturalistic research. In addition to primates, particularly the nonhuman great apes, the animals discussed include antelopes, bees, dogs, dolphins, earthworms, fish, hyenas, parrots, prairie dogs, rats, ravens, sea lions, snakes, spiders, and squirrels. The topics include (but are not limited to) definitions of cognition, the role of anecdotes in the study of animal cognition, anthropomorphism, attention, perception, learning, memory, thinking, consciousness, intentionality, communication, planning, play, aggression, dominance, predation, recognition, assessment of self and others, social knowledge, empathy, conflict resolution, reproduction, parent-young interactions and caregiving, ecology, evolution, kin selection, and neuroethology.

Neurocognitive Mechanisms

Neurocognitive Mechanisms PDF

Author: Gualtiero Piccinini

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2020-10-08

Total Pages: 413

ISBN-13: 0198866283

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Gualtiero Piccinini presents a systematic and rigorous philosophical defence of the computational theory of cognition. His view posits that cognition involves neural computation within multilevel neurocognitive mechanisms, and includes novel ideas about ontology, functions, neural representation, neural computation, and consciousness.

How the Body Shapes Knowledge

How the Body Shapes Knowledge PDF

Author: Rebecca Fincher-Kiefer

Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 9781433829604

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This text explores the theory of embodied cognition, which suggests that human cognition is "grounded" in the neural pathways linked to bodily sensation.