A central controversy in cognitive science concerns the roles of rules versus similarity. To gain some leverage on this problem, we propose that rule‐ versus similarity‐based processes can be characterized as extremes in a multidimensional space that is composed of at least two dimensions: the number of features (Pothos, 2005) and the physical presence of features. The transition of similarity‐ to rule‐based processing is conceptualized as a transition in this space. To illustrate this, we show how a neural network model (...) uses input features (and in this sense produces similarity‐based responses) when it has a low learning rate or in the early phases of training, but it switches to using self‐generated, more abstract features (and in this sense produces rule‐based responses) when it has a higher learning rate or is in the later phases of training. Relations with categorization and the psychology of learning are pointed out. (shrink)

People are unable to report how they decide whether to move backwards or forwards to catch a ball. When asked to imagine how their angle of elevation of gaze would change when they caught a ball, most people are unable to describe what happens although their interception strategy is based on controlling changes in this angle. Just after catching a ball, many people are unable to recognise a description of how their angle of gaze changed during the catch. Some people (...) confidently choose incorrect descriptions that would guarantee failure of interception demonstrating unconscious knowledge co-existing with systematically different conscious beliefs. Where simple solutions to important evolutionary problems exist, unconscious perception needs to be impervious to conscious beliefs. (shrink)

Judging similarities among objects, events, and experiences is one of the most basic cognitive abilities, allowing us to make predictions and generalizations. The main assumption in similarity judgment is that people selectively attend to salient features of stimuli and judge their similarities on the basis of the common and distinct features of the stimuli. However, it is unclear how people select features from stimuli and how they weigh features. Here, we present a computational method that helps address these questions. Our (...) procedure combines image-processing techniques with a machine-learning algorithm and assesses feature weights that can account for both similarity and categorization judgment data. Our analysis suggests that a small number of local features are particularly important to explain our behavioral data. (shrink)

Many animals can be trained to perform novel tasks. People, too, can be trained, but sometime in early childhood people transition from being trainable to something qualitatively more powerful—being programmable. We argue that such programmability constitutes a leap in the way that organisms learn, interact, and transmit knowledge, and that what facilitates or enables this programmability is the learning and use of language. We then examine how language programs the mind and argue that it does so through the manipulation of (...) embodied, sensorimotor representations. The role language plays in controlling mental representations offers important insights for understanding its origin and evolution. (shrink)

Many animals can be trained to perform novel tasks. People, too, can be trained, but sometime in early childhood people transition from being trainable to something qualitatively more powerful—being programmable. We argue that such programmability constitutes a leap in the way that organisms learn, interact, and transmit knowledge, and that what facilitates or enables this programmability is the learning and use of language. We then examine how language programs the mind and argue that it does so through the manipulation of (...) embodied, sensorimotor representations. The role language plays in controlling mental representations offers important insights for understanding its origin and evolution. (shrink)

A fundamental question in the study of human cognition is how people learn to predict the category membership of an example from its properties. Leading approaches account for a wide range of data in terms of comparison to stored examples, abstractions capturing statistical regularities, or logical rules. Across three experiments, participants learned a category structure in a low‐dimension, continuous‐valued space consisting of regularly alternating regions of class membership (A B A B). The dependent measure was generalization performance for novel items (...) outside the range of the training space. Human learners often extended the alternation pattern––a finding of critical interest given that leading theories of categorization based on similarity or dimensional rules fail to predict this behavior. In addition, we provide novel theoretical interpretations of the observed phenomenon. (shrink)

This article discusses an approach to characterizing movement patterns (paths/trajectories) of individual agents that allows for relating aspects of cognitive conceptualization of movement patterns with formal spatial characterizations. To this end, we adopt a perspective of characterizing movement patterns on the basis of perceptual and conceptual invariants that we term movement choremes (MCs). MCs are formally grounded by behaviorally validating qualitative spatio-temporal calculi. Relating perceptual and cognitive aspects of space and formal theories of spatial information has shown promise to foster (...) understanding of the semantics of movement patterns. Specifically, we discuss our approach in relation to existing qualitative formalisms such as the region connection calculus and the Egenhofer’s intersection formalisms. We show that the MC approach is compatible with these approaches but offers additional opportunities to improve the cognitive adequacy of these formalisms. We summarize this paper using a movement taxonomy that also provides guidance for future research. (shrink)

The social cognition of domestic cats is a scarcely studied topic due to the reputation of the animal as individualistic. Nevertheless, cats are capable of cognitively demanding cooperative activities such as a communal nest-moving. The cognitive abilities of free-ranging cats are evaluated against the background of the shared intentionality hypothesis, proposed by a research group of Michael Tomasello. Although their comparative studies are carried out on chimpanzees, they are valuable as a source of conceptual work linking empirical cognitive studies with (...) the philosophical accounts of joint agency. We critically analyze theoretical cognitive concepts interpreting the triadic interactions of great apes and the collective hunting among chimpanzees. Contrary to the shared intentionality hypothesis, it is argued that cats have cognitive abilities to share attention, truly cooperate and constitute shared meanings. Finally, we introduce the concept of the natural interaction ritual by Randall Collins and outline its significance for our case study about cats as well as for a general biosemiotic theory of the development of symbols. (shrink)

Explorations in Systems Phenomenology in Relation to Ontology, Hermeneutics and the Meta-dialectics of Design -/- SYNOPSIS A Phenomenological Analysis of Emergent Design is performed based on the foundations of General Schemas Theory. The concept of Sign Engineering is explored in terms of Hermeneutics, Dialectics, and Ontology in order to define Emergent Systems and Metasystems Engineering based on the concept of Meta-dialectics. -/- ABSTRACT Phenomenology, Ontology, Hermeneutics, and Dialectics will dominate our inquiry into the nature of the Emergent Design of the (...) System and its inverse dual, the Meta-system. This is an speculative dissertation that attempts to produce a philosophical, mathematical, and theoretical view of the nature of Systems Engineering Design. Emergent System Design, i.e., the design of yet unheard of and/or hitherto non-existent Systems and Metasystems is the focus. This study is a frontal assault on the hard problem of explaining how Engineering produces new things, rather than a repetition or reordering of concepts that already exist. In this work the philosophies of E. Husserl, A. Gurwitsch, M. Heidegger, J. Derrida, G. Deleuze, A. Badiou, G. Hegel, I. Kant and other Continental Philosophers are brought to bear on different aspects of how new technological systems come into existence through the midwifery of Systems Engineering. Sign Engineering is singled out as the most important aspect of Systems Engineering. We will build on the work of Pieter Wisse and extend his theory of Sign Engineering to define Meta-dialectics in the form of Quadralectics and then Pentalectics. Along the way the various ontological levels of Being are explored in conjunction with the discovery that the Quadralectic is related to the possibility of design primarily at the Third Meta-level of Being, called Hyper Being. Design Process is dependent upon the emergent possibilities that appear in Hyper Being. Hyper Being, termed by Heidegger as Being (Being crossed-out) and termed by Derrida as Differance, also appears as the widest space within the Design Field at the third meta-level of Being and therefore provides the most leverage that is needed to produce emergent effects. Hyper Being is where possibilities appear within our worldview. Possibility is necessary for emergent events to occur. Hyper Being possibilities are extended by Wild Being propensities to allow the embodiment of new things. We discuss how this philosophical background relates to meta-methods such as the Gurevich Abstract State Machine and the Wisse Metapattern methods, as well as real-time architectural design methods as described in the Integral Software Engineering Methodology. One aim of this research is to find the foundation for extending the ISEM methodology to become a general purpose Systems Design Methodology. Our purpose is also to bring these philosophical considerations into the practical realm by examining P. Bourdieu’s ideas on the relationship between theoretical and practical reason and M. de Certeau’s ideas on practice. The relationship between design and implementation is seen in terms of the Set/Mass conceptual opposition. General Schemas Theory is used as a way of critiquing the dependence of Set based mathematics as a basis for Design. The dissertation delineates a new foundation for Systems Engineering as Emergent Engineering based on General Schemas Theory, and provides an advanced theory of Design based on the understanding of the meta-levels of Being, particularly focusing upon the relationship between Hyper Being and Wild Being in the context of Pure and Process Being. (shrink)