Stability and plasticity : constructing cognitive agents

Cataloged from PDF version of article.The AI field is currently dominated by domain-specific approaches to intelligence and cognition instead of being driven by the aim of modeling general human intelligence and cognition. This is despite the fact that the work widely regarded as marking the birth of AI was the project of creating a general cognitive architecture by Newell and Simon 1959. This thesis aims to examine recently designed models and their various cognitive features and limitations in preparation for building our own comprehensive model that would aim to address their limitations and give a better account for human cognition. The models differ in the kind of cognitive capabilities they view as the most important. They also differ in whether their foundation is built on symbolic or sub-symbolic atomic structures. Furthermore, we will look at studies in the philosophy and cognitive psychology domain in order to better understand the requirements that need to be met in order for a system to emulate general human cognition.Bozyiğit, ÖgeM.S

On the adaptive advantage of always being right (even when one is not)

We propose another positive illusion – overconfidence in the generalisability of one’s theory – that fits with McKay & Dennett’s (M&D’s) criteria for adaptive misbeliefs. This illusion is pervasive in adult reasoning but we focus on its prevalence in children’s developing theories. It is a strongly held conviction arising from normal functioning of the doxastic system that confers adaptive advantage on the individual

False beliefs and naive beliefs: They can be good for you

Naive physics beliefs can be systematically mistaken. They provide a useful test-bed because they are common, and also because their existence must rely on some adaptive advantage, within a given context. In the second part of the commentary we ask questions about when a whole family of misbeliefs should be considered together as a single phenomenon

The evolution of misbelief

From an evolutionary standpoint, a default presumption is that true beliefs are adaptive and misbeliefs maladaptive. But if humans are biologically engineered to appraise the world accurately and to form true beliefs, how are we to explain the routine exceptions to this rule? How can we account for mistaken beliefs, bizarre delusions, and instances of self-deception? We explore this question in some detail. We begin by articulating a distinction between two general types of misbelief: those resulting from a breakdown in the normal functioning of the belief formation system (e.g., delusions) and those arising in the normal course of that system's operations (e.g., beliefs based on incomplete or inaccurate information). The former are instances of biological dysfunction or pathology, reflecting "culpable” limitations of evolutionary design. Although the latter category includes undesirable (but tolerable) by-products of "forgivably” limited design, our quarry is a contentious subclass of this category: misbeliefs best conceived as design features. Such misbeliefs, unlike occasional lucky falsehoods, would have been systematically adaptive in the evolutionary past. Such misbeliefs, furthermore, would not be reducible to judicious - but doxastically1 noncommittal - action policies. Finally, such misbeliefs would have been adaptive in themselves, constituting more than mere by-products of adaptively biased misbelief-producing systems. We explore a range of potential candidates for evolved misbelief, and conclude that, of those surveyed, only positive illusions meet our criteri

Intentionality and neuroscience

Most, if not all of us, are in practice mental realists: We explain and predict each other's actions by invoking the attribution of mental states. It is characteristic for many mental states to have intentional content, i.e. for thoughts, desires, intentions or emotions to be about dinner, meetings, sunshine, stock markets, elections, and so on. Intentional contents are assigned on the basis of a rational assessment of behavioral (and other) evidence. Many of us also wish to adhere to the notion that invoking intentional mental states does not imply having to commit to dualism, to a ghostly realm of minds and souls which exists over and above the physical world. Specifically, it is widely believed that the investigation of the brain is integral to explaining how the mind works, and that our mental states fundamentally depend on what happens in our brains. At the same time, it is not all that clear that matters of the mind are in any ontological or explanatory way identical to matters of the brain. Hence, it is prudent to neither adopt the notion that mental states are unrelated to the physical, nor that they can be reduced to the physical. Rather, a moderate position between dualism and reductionism is warranted. This book both gives a comprehensive account of the way explanation by mental state works and of how representational/intentional properties are related to matters of the brain, i.e. to matters described by physics, chemistry and biology. The former, which takes up the first part of the book, is rooted in major accounts of a scientific model of explanation by mental states as delineated by recent analytic philosophy, such as Davidson's, Dennett's, Cummins's or Fodor's. The latter, which takes up the second part, involves an inquiry into current empirical studies investigating matters of neural representation and the theoretical frameworks which – sometimes openly, sometimes tacitly – come with it. It not only yields a unified account of representation in cognitive and neuroscience, but also relates cognitive and neural representation to mental intentionality, and ultimately endorses the investigation of cognition by neuroscientific methods as a way of establishing a translation manual between mind and brain state descriptions. Specifically, recent “mindreading” or braincomputer-interface studies are considered as examples for this ongoing endeavor. Building on Quine's and Davidson's theories of interpretation, it is shown that such correlational studies in cognitive neuroscience satisfy their criteria for empirically specifying meaning by way of holistic truth theories, thereby producing localized translations. These translations are non-reductive, since they are bound to irreducible principles underlying the ascription of intentional content, but at the same time, they establish strong semantic bonds between mind and brain, honoring widely shared views about a strong constitutional link between brain and mind

The role of phonology in visual word recognition: evidence from Chinese

Posters - Letter/Word Processing V: abstract no. 5024The hypothesis of bidirectional coupling of orthography and phonology predicts that phonology plays a role in visual word recognition, as observed in the effects of feedforward and feedback spelling to sound consistency on lexical decision. However, because orthography and phonology are closely related in alphabetic languages (homophones in alphabetic languages are usually orthographically similar), it is difficult to exclude an influence of orthography on phonological effects in visual word recognition. Chinese languages contain many written homophones that are orthographically dissimilar, allowing a test of the claim that phonological effects can be independent of orthographic similarity. We report a study of visual word recognition in Chinese based on a mega-analysis of lexical decision performance with 500 characters. The results from multiple regression analyses, after controlling for orthographic frequency, stroke number, and radical frequency, showed main effects of feedforward and feedback consistency, as well as interactions between these variables and phonological frequency and number of homophones. Implications of these results for resonance models of visual word recognition are discussed.postprin

Interactive effects of orthography and semantics in Chinese picture naming

Posters - Language Production/Writing: abstract no. 4035Picture-naming performance in English and Dutch is enhanced by presentation of a word that is similar in form to the picture name. However, it is unclear whether facilitation has an orthographic or a phonological locus. We investigated the loci of the facilitation effect in Cantonese Chinese speakers by manipulating—at three SOAs (2100, 0, and 1100 msec)—semantic, orthographic, and phonological similarity. We identified an effect of orthographic facilitation that was independent of and larger than phonological facilitation across all SOAs. Semantic interference was also found at SOAs of 2100 and 0 msec. Critically, an interaction of semantics and orthography was observed at an SOA of 1100 msec. This interaction suggests that independent effects of orthographic facilitation on picture naming are located either at the level of semantic processing or at the lemma level and are not due to the activation of picture name segments at the level of phonological retrieval.postprin

The Author, Not the Tale: Memory, Narrative, and the Self

There is a confusing diversity of conceptions of ‘the self’ in philosophical, psychological, psychiatric, and neuroscientific discourse. To remedy this, I propose and defend a naturalistic view of the self: the system view. The self is here conceived of as the complex and dynamic system of our higher-level self-monitoring functions, including our capacities for self-representation over time. These are grounded in more basic self-representational capacities that are widespread among different species. On the system view, the self is not to be confounded with the attributes of personhood, as it often has been in philosophical discourse. Nor is the self over time a product of memory, as philosophers in Locke’s tradition, and some popular intuitions, seem to take it to be. I discuss the complex nature of autobiographical memory and argue that, given that much of our autobiographical remembering is already a reconstructive process, the self is not produced by our memories, but is the system that produces them. The system view is also opposed to currently fashionable views of the self as ‘narrative’. Narrative constructionism about the self has an authorship problem: it does not account for the processes that enable and subserve narration about oneself in the first place. I argue that it is in these processes, rather than in their productions, that we should conceptually locate the self. Neither should we take narrative capacities to be essential for a self. To illustrate the advantages of the system view, I discuss autism spectrum conditions and other defects and disorders such as dementia, dissociative disorders, and schizophrenia. In these conditions, particular self-representational capacities are differently configured, impaired, or absent, but this does not entail a wholesale loss or lack of self. Instead, such conditions are better characterized as specific system malfunctions. I conclude by suggesting directions for future research

The application of the polygraph in the criminal justice system.

This dissertation, which is both exploratory and descriptive in nature, initially describes the development of the polygraph against a background of understanding society's rejection of the lying phenomenon. The theoretical foundations of polygraph thinking are then presented as forerunner to practical illustration of polygraph use in the private sector. The criminal justice system represents the sphere of polygraph ulitization central to the research. With strong American accent, polygraph use in all four components of the system is described in such a manner so as to provoke thought on the part of criminal justice functionaries as to polygraph possibilities in the execution of their functions. Research findings and recommendations aimed at stimulating thought and improvement in the field of polygraphy conclude the dissertation.Criminology and Security ScienceM.A (Penology