Symbols

Author(s):  
Leonid I. Perlovsky

What is the nature of symbols? This word is used for traffic signs, for mathematical notations, and motivationally loaded cultural objects, which may inspire war and piece. This chapter explains relationships among symbols, cognition, and language. Symbols are explained as processes in the mind involving cognition and language. Relationships between cognition and language were a mystery until recently. Linguists often considered language as relationships among words and other linguistic entities, separately from its relationships to the world. Mechanisms of language in the mind and brain were considered separate and different from thinking and cognition. Neural mechanisms integrating language and cognition are unknown. Yet, language and cognition are intertwined in evolution, ontogenesis, learning, and in everyday usage, therefore a unified understanding of working of the mind is essential. A mathematical description of such unifying mechanisms is the subject of this paper. We discuss relationships among computational intelligence, known mechanisms of the mind, semiotics, computational linguistics, and describe a process integrating language and cognition. Mathematical mechanisms of concepts, emotions, and instincts are described as a part of information processing in the mind and related to perception and cognition processes in which an event is understood as a concept. Development of such mathematical theories in the past often encountered difficulties of fundamental nature manifested as combinatorial complexity. Here, combinatorial complexity is related to logic underlying algorithms and a new type of logic is introduced, dynamic fuzzy logic, which overcomes past limitations. This new type of logic is related to emotional signals in the brain and combines mechanisms of emotions and concepts. The mathematical mechanism of dynamic logic is applicable to both language and cognition, unifying these two abilities and playing an important role in language acquisition as well as cognitive ontogenesis. The mathematical description of thought processes is related to semiotic notions of signs and symbols.

Author(s):  
Paul F. M. J. Verschure

This chapter presents the Distributed Adaptive Control (DAC) theory of the mind and brain of living machines. DAC provides an explanatory framework for biological brains and an integration framework for synthetic ones. DAC builds on several themes presented in the handbook: it integrates different perspectives on mind and brain, exemplifies the synthetic method in understanding living machines, answers well-defined constraints faced by living machines, and provides a route for the convergent validation of anatomy, physiology, and behavior in our explanation of biological living machines. DAC addresses the fundamental question of how a living machine can obtain, retain, and express valid knowledge of its world. We look at the core components of DAC, specific benchmarks derived from the engagement with the physical and the social world (the H4W and the H5W problems) in foraging and human–robot interaction tasks. Lastly we address how DAC targets the UTEM benchmark and the relation with contemporary developments in AI.


2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (6) ◽  
pp. 944-956 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert P. Feldman ◽  
Ronald L. Alterman ◽  
James T. Goodrich

Object. Despite a long and controversial history, psychosurgery has persisted as a modern treatment option for some severe, medically intractable psychiatric disorders. The goal of this study was to review the current state of psychosurgery. Methods. In this review, the definition of psychosurgery, patient selection criteria, and anatomical and physiological rationales for cingulotomy, subcaudate tractotomy, anterior capsulotomy, and limbic leukotomy are discussed. The historical developments, modern procedures, and results of these four contemporary psychosurgical procedures are also reviewed. Examples of recent advances in neuroscience indicating a future role for neurosurgical intervention for psychiatric disease are also mentioned. Conclusions. A thorough understanding of contemporary psychosurgery will help neurosurgeons and other physicians face the ethical, social, and technical challenges that are sure to lie ahead as modern science continues to unlock the secrets of the mind and brain.


Author(s):  
Yaroslava Ischuk ◽  

A research of creative economy is impossible without an in-depth review of the existing approaches to its study. By analyzing approaches to the study of creative economy through the prism of most popular theses and ideas of prominent researchers in this field, e. g. J. Ruijssenaars, Suciu М.-С., Howkins J., Florida R. and others, it is revealed that the creative economy is a new type of the economy with the culture in its core with its clearly established and commonly accepted components which, at the same time, constitute its fundamental parts: talent, creativity and tolerance. But these components are integrated in each of the industries that are creative economy components, namely: cultural objects, traditional types of cultural self-expression, performing arts, media, audiovisual activities, artistic creation, printing and publishing, design and engineering practices in the field industrial production, creative services. Such combination of the material and the spiritual in each of the aforesaid industries complicates their investigation and analysis for a researcher. Given that now each of these industries develops in the conditions of intersecting three vectors, technological-digital, creative and entrepreneurial, there appears a need in organizing and conducting additional monitoring, in employing alternative and unorthodox methods for analysis and providing well-grounded and sound opinions concerning creative economy development. It is supposed in the article that in line of the creative circle of Howkins J. a successful creative idea (or product) developed or improved by use of technological-digital means and with support from business will be profitable in future.


2006 ◽  
Vol 02 (01) ◽  
pp. 43-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
LEONID I. PERLOVSKY

Fuzzy logic is extended toward dynamic adaptation of the degree of fuzziness. The motivation is to explain the process of learning as a joint model improvement and fuzziness reduction. A learning system with fuzzy models is introduced. Initially, the system is in a highly fuzzy state of uncertain knowledge, and it dynamically evolves into a low-fuzzy state of certain knowledge. We present an image recognition example of patterns below clutter. The paper discusses relationships to formal logic, fuzzy logic, complexity and draws tentative connections to Aristotelian theory of forms and working of the mind.


2012 ◽  
pp. 33-41
Author(s):  
C. Alexander Simpkins ◽  
Annellen M. Simpkins
Keyword(s):  

2021 ◽  
pp. 125-147
Author(s):  
Loreta Vaičiulytė-Semėnienė

This article deals with the content of neighbour on the basis of the forms of the noun ‘neighbour’ (Lith. kaimynas). Efforts are made to strike a balance between the structural and the cognitive approach to its meaning. The sample base for the study consists of 700 published sentences sourced in the Corpus of the Modern Lithuanian Language (CMLL) compiled by the Centre for Computational Linguistics at the Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas.The study has revealed a neighbour to be someone who experiences a certain mental state, someone who, in his or her (un)favourable response to the environment, affects another person in a relatively close space. Emotionally charged, this effect shows a neighbour who is a nice or a bad person to live next-doors with. The (dis)harmony of attitudes, values, and actions grounded on an (un)favourable mind-set defines a dynamic coexistenceof neighbours, or a failure to coexist.When it comes to the perception of neighbour that shifts in time, what matters is the shared space of the neighbours that has its relative boundaries and is measured as a distance – the closeness resulting in the distinction between a close > distant neighbour; yet even more important is the camaraderie – the proximity of attitudes, values, and the actions that they define – something that the dictionary definitions of the word neighbour tend to omit – and the related gradational differences between a homey > strange neighbour. When it comes to building and maintaining proximity, it is the neighbour’s temper, polite and supportive interaction, and behaviour that favours another person, such as sharing things with them and all kinds of assistance, especially in need, that matters. As the mind-sets, values, and behaviours assimilate, the neighbours become one – they become homey to each other. And the axis of oneness grounded on favour in neighbourhood is God.


2014 ◽  
pp. 439-472
Author(s):  
John F. Sowa

Existential graphs (EGs) are a simple, readable, and expressive graphic notation for logic. Conceptual graphs (CGs) combine a logical foundation based on EGs with features of the semantic networks used in artificial intelligence and computational linguistics. CG design principles address logical, linguistic, and cognitive requirements: a formal semantics defined by the ISO standard for Common Logic; the flexibility to support the expressiveness, context dependencies, and metalevel commentary of natural language; and cognitively realistic operations for reasoning by induction, deduction, abduction, and analogy. To accommodate the vagueness and ambiguities of natural language, informal heuristics can supplement the formal semantics. With sufficient background knowledge and a clarifying dialog, informal graphs can be refined to any degree of precision. Peirce claimed that the rules for reasoning with EGs generate “a moving picture of the action of the mind in thought.” Some philosophers and psychologists agree: Peirce's diagrams and rules are a good candidate for a natural logic that reflects the neural processes that support thought and language. They are psychologically realistic and computationally efficient.


2018 ◽  
pp. 277-280
Author(s):  
Erika Lorraine Milam

This concluding chapter reflects on the lessons presented by this volume as a whole and considers the ongoing study into the origins of humanity in the post-1970s era. In the decades after, readers have not lost their passion for epic evolutionary dramas in which the entirety of human history unfolds before their eyes. Yet when students today respond to the question “What makes us human?” they are far more likely to invoke neurological facts than paleontological ones. The public battlefield over violence and cooperation has since shifted to new ground in the mind and brain sciences. Despite the apparent polarization of scientists writing about human nature into culture- and biology-oriented positions, the intellectual landscape defined by scientists working on the interaction between culture and biology has continued to flourish.


Author(s):  
Junaid Ahmad Malik

With the expanding use of wireless cellular networks, concerns have been communicated about the possible interaction of electromagnetic radiation with the human life, explicitly, the mind and brain. Mobile phones emanate radio frequency waves, a type of non-ionizing radiation, which can be absorbed by tissues nearest to where the telephone is kept. The effects on neuronal electrical activity, energy metabolism, genomic responses, neurotransmitter balance, blood–brain barrier permeability, mental psychological aptitude, sleep, and diverse cerebrum conditions including brain tumors are assessed. Health dangers may likewise develop from use of cellular communication, for instance, car accidents while utilizing the device while driving. These indirect well-being impacts surpass the immediate common troubles and should be looked into in more detail later on. In this chapter, we outline the possible biological impacts of EMF introduction on human brain.


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