Interdisciplinary perspectives on the development, integration and application of cognitive ontologies

We discuss recent progress in the development of cognitive ontologies and summarize three challenges in the coordinated development and application of these resources. Challenge 1 is to adopt a standardized definition for cognitive processes. We describe three possibilities and recommend one that is consistent with the standard view in cognitive and biomedical sciences. Challenge 2 is harmonization. Gaps and conflicts in representation must be resolved so that these resources can be combined for mark-up and interpretation of multi-modal data. Finally, Challenge 3 is to test the utility of these resources for large-scale annotation of data, search and query, and knowledge discovery and integration. As term definitions are tested and revised, harmonization should enable coordinated updates across ontologies. However, the true test of these definitions will be in their community-wide adoption which will test whether they support valid inferences about psychological and neuroscientific data

Web Ontologies to Categorialy Structure Reality: Representations of Human Emotional, Cognitive, and Motivational Processes

This work presents a Web ontology for modeling and representation of the emotional, cognitive and motivational state of online learners, interacting with university systems for distance or blended education. The ontology is understood as a way to provide the required mechanisms to model reality and associate it to emotional responses, but without committing to a particular way of organizing these emotional responses. Knowledge representation for the contributed ontology is performed by using Web Ontology Language (OWL), a semantic web language designed to represent rich and complex knowledge about things, groups of things, and relations between things. OWL is a computational logic-based language such that computer programs can exploit knowledge expressed in OWL and also facilitates sharing and reusing knowledge using the global infrastructure of the Web. The proposed ontology has been tested in the field of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to check if it is capable of representing emotions and motivation of the students in this context of use.This work has been supported by the Basque Government (IT421-10 and IT722-13), the Gipuzkoa Council (FA-208/2014-B) and the University of the Basque Country (PPV12/09). It has also been supported by InDAGuS (Spanish Government TIN2012-37826-C02) and INSPIRES, the Polytechnic Institute of Research and Innovation in Sustainability, Universitat de Lleida, Spai

Interdyscyplinarne perspektywy rozwoju, integracji i zastosowań ontologii poznawczych

We discuss recent progress in the development of cognitive ontologies and summarize three challenges in the coordinated development and application of these resources. Challenge 1 is to adopt a standardized definition for cognitive processes. We describe three possibilities and recommend one that is consistent with the standard view in cognitive and biomedical sciences. Challenge 2 is harmonization. Gaps and conflicts in representation must be resolved so that these resources can be combined for mark-up and interpretation of multi-modal data. Finally, Challenge 3 is to test the utility of these resources for large-scale annotation of data, search and query, and knowledge discovery and integration. As term definitions are tested and revised, harmonization should enable coordinated updates across ontologies. However, the true test of these definitions will be in their community-wide adoption which will test whether they support valid inferences about psychological and neuroscientific data

Foundation for a Realist Ontology of Cognitive Processes

What follows is a first step towards an ontology of conscious mental processes. We provide a theoretical foundation and characterization of conscious mental processes based on a realist theory of intentionality and using BFO as our top-level ontology. We distinguish three components of intentional mental process: character, directedness, and objective referent, and describe several features of the process character and directedness significant to defining and classifying mental processes. We arrive at the definition of representational mental process as a process that is the bringing into being, sustaining, modifying, or terminating of a mental representation. We conclude by outlining some benefits and applications of this approach

The evolution of cognitive models: From neuropsychology to neuroimaging and back

This paper provides a historical and future perspective on how neuropsychology and neuroimaging can be used to develop cognitive models of human brain functions. Section 1 focuses on the emergence of cognitive modelling from neuropsychology, why lesion location was considered to be unimportant and the challenges faced when mapping symptoms to impaired cognitive processes. Section 2 describes how established cognitive models based on behavioural data alone cannot explain the complex patterns of distributed brain activity that are observed in functional neuroimaging studies. This has led to proposals for new cognitive processes, new cognitive strategies and new functional ontologies for cognition. Section 3 considers how the integration of data from lesion, behavioural and functional neuroimaging studies of large cohorts of brain damaged patients can be used to determine whether inter-patient variability in behaviour is due to differences in the premorbid function of each brain region, lesion site or cognitive strategy. This combination of neuroimaging and neuropsychology is providing a deeper understanding of how cognitive functions can be lost and re-learnt after brain damage – an understanding that will transform our ability to generate and validate cognitive models that are both physiologically plausible and clinically useful

Barry Smith an sich

Festschrift in Honor of Barry Smith on the occasion of his 65th Birthday. Published as issue 4:4 of the journal Cosmos + Taxis: Studies in Emergent Order and Organization. Includes contributions by Wolfgang Grassl, Nicola Guarino, John T. Kearns, Rudolf Lüthe, Luc Schneider, Peter Simons, Wojciech Żełaniec, and Jan Woleński

Understanding Interdisciplinary Corroboration: Lessons from a Review Paper in the Mind-Brain Sciences

The current view of the relationship between areas of the mind-brain sciences is one where cross-disciplinary collaboration is required to advance claims about the mind-brain that stand on firm epistemic footing. My goal in this dissertation is to analyze what it means for information from different areas of science to fit together to produce strong epistemic claims by addressing how and to what extent claims about the mind-brain are corroborated in scientific practice. Philosophers of science have advanced various concepts of the notion of fitting together information from different areas of science and its relation to scientific progress (e.g., Bickle, 1998, 2003, 2006; Darden and Maull, 1977; Mitchell, 2002, 2003; Mitchell and Dietrich, 2006; Nagel 1949, 1970, 1979; Piccinini and Craver, 2011; and Roskies, 2010). However, each concept of fitting together is vague and subject to multiple clarificatory questions. To get a handle on the notion of fitting together, I introduce the term ‘interdisciplinary corroboration’ as a placeholder for the various accounts of fitting together to facilitate my investigation of how claims about the mind-brain are corroborated in scientific practice. I argue review papers are a good place to begin analyzing interdisciplinary corroboration; accordingly, I conduct a two-part analysis of a review paper by Eichenbaum (2013) entitled ‘Memory on Time’. I use the lessons from my analysis to develop and advance a methodology for philosophers of science interested in knowledge production for evaluating review papers for corroboration in the mind-brain sciences

Understanding Addiction

The addiction literature is fraught with conceptual confusions, stalled debates, and an unfortunate lack of clear and careful attempts to delineate the phenomenon of addiction in a way that might lead to consensus. My dissertation has two overarching aims, one metaphysical and one practical. The first aim is to defend an account of addiction as the systematic disposition to fail to control one’s desires to engage in certain types of behaviors. I defend the inclusion of desires and impaired control in the definition, and I flesh out the notion of systematicity central to my dispositionalist framework. I engage the so-called ‘disease vs. choice’ debate, criticizing its presupposition that we are dealing here with a dichotomy and arguing that the movement towards a middle ground is the right track to take. I explain how the dispositionalist account can capture this middle ground and how it serves to expand upon existing views, in particular by filling in the metaphysical details. The second aim is to show how the account I defend can help to unify the extant views and disciplinary perspectives in the literature. Both the dispositionalist aspect of my framework and the methodology adopted (applied ontology and systematic metaphysics) can move the literature towards both substantive and methodological unification. This will help to clear up conceptual confusions, resolve (or sometimes dissolve) apparently intractable disputes, situate different research perspectives with respect to each other, facilitate interdisciplinary dialogue, and help to frame important questions about addiction. Finally, I offer the beginnings of an ontology of addiction, which will provide a terminologically well-structured guide to the addiction literature in a way that will facilitate more effective and efficient communication and data management across disciplines