A novel standard for graphical representation of mental models and processes in cognitive sciences

Cognitive Science has positioned itself to be a common ground in which models of mental processes from multiple disciplines merge, situating itself as a common field for new learning theories, or for formalizing existing ones. However, the authors have identified a need for updating the existing graphical representations by incorporating more accessible understanding for teachers and researchers in cross- multidisciplinary fields. In this regard, the present investigation attempts to generate a standard graphical language to represent complex mental processes by the introduction of functional principles, schemes and models that have been successfully used in technical areas such as adaptive control systems, algorithm flow charts, and artificial intelligence. This graphical representation, entitled “Cognitive Functional Representation” (CFR), is further shown to be efficacious in incorporating the essence of complex cognitive theories

"Coisas que as pessoas sabem": computação e territórios do senso comum

The discipline of artificial intelligence has been able to build computational systems with remarkable abilities concerning some difficult tasks for which a human intelligence would otherwise be required. One of those systems, a long term and large-scale enterprise known as CYC, aims to represent and to make usable by computational means the common sense knowledge. Common sense is, in this situation, non-expert knowledge of the world around us, of the type people put to use in their day-to-day affairs. The creators of CYC make use of a number of implicit assumptions about that common sense, such as, in the first place, that it may in some way be formally represented. In this article, we examine this project in order to make visible some of these hidden assumptions that we regard as important. We attempt also to show how common sense knowledge expressed in CYC carries with it worldviews and notions of what constitutes valid knowledge that derive from the perspective of its developers.A inteligência artificial constrói, através da computação, sistemas com capacidades especiais na medida em que são capazes de realizar tarefas elaboradas para as quais a inteligência humana seria, em princípio, essencial. Um desses sistemas, um projeto de longo prazo e larga escala conhecido como CYC, propõe-se a uma tarefa considerada muito difícil, que é a de representar e tornar utilizável computacionalmente o conhecimento de senso comum, isto é, conhecimento não especializado, de que as pessoas lançam mão no decorrer do dia a dia sem mesmo dar-se conta de que o estão utilizando. Para realizar este projeto, seus criadores partem de premissas não explicitadas, tais como a de que esse conhecimento é, em primeiro lugar, representável de alguma maneira formal. Examinaremos com atenção esse projeto, para tentar tornar visíveis algumas dessas premissas que consideramos importantes. Buscaremos mostrar, ademais, como o conhecimento ali expresso é marcado pela perspectiva dos seus criadores sobre o mundo e sobre o que se constitui como conhecimento válido

Concepts enacted: confronting the obstacles and paradoxes inherent in pursuing a scientific understanding of the building blocks of human thought

This thesis confronts a fundamental shortcoming in cognitive science research: a failure to be explicit about the theory of concepts underlying cognitive science research and a resulting failure to justify that theory philosophically or otherwise. It demonstrates how most contemporary debates over theories of concepts divide over whether concepts are best understood as (mental) representations or as non-representational abilities. It concludes that there can be no single correct ontology, and that both perspectives are logically necessary. It details three critical distinctions that are frequently neglected: between concepts as we possess and employ them non-reflectively, and concepts as we reflect upon them; between the private (subjective) and public (inter-subjective) aspects of concepts; and between concepts as approached from a realist versus anti-realist perspective. Metaphysical starting points fundamentally shape conclusions. The main contribution of this thesis is a pragmatic, meticulously detailed, and distinctive account of concepts in terms of their essential nature, core properties, and context of application. This is done within the framework of Peter Gärdenfors’ conceptual spaces theory of concepts, which is offered as a bridging account, best able to tie existing theories together into one framework. A set of extensions to conceptual spaces theory, called the unified conceptual space theory, are offered as a means of pushing Gärdenfors’ theory in a more algorithmically amenable and empirically testable direction. The unified conceptual space theory describes how all of an agent’s many different conceptual spaces, as described by Gärdenfors, are mapped together into one unified space of spaces, and how an analogous process happens at the societal level. The unified conceptual space theory is put to work offering a distinctive account of the co-emergence of concepts and experience out of a circularly causal process. Finally, an experimental application of the theory is presented, in the form of a simple computer program