FW: Papers available

Non-member submission from [Ron Sun <rsun(a)cecs.missouri.edu>] Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2000 18:55:37 -0600 From: Ron Sun <rsun(a)cecs.missouri.edu> To: rsun(a)cecs.missouri.edu Subject: Papers available Papers available, in both PS and PDF formats: ----------------------------------------------------------------- TITLE Symbol Grounding: A New Look At An Old Idea by Ron Sun Appeared in: Philosophical Psychology, Vol.13, No.2, pp.149-172. 2000. http://www.cecs.missouri.edu/~rsun/sun.PP00.ps http://www.cecs.missouri.edu/~rsun/sun.PP00.pdf ABSTRACT Symbols should be grounded, as has been argued before. But we insist that they should be grounded not only in subsymbolic activities, but also in the interaction between the agent and the world. The point is that concepts are not formed in isolation (from the world), in abstraction, or ``objectively". They are formed in relation to the experience of agents, through their perceptual/motor apparatuses, in their world and linked to their goals and actions. In this paper, we will take a detailed look at this relatively old issue, using a new perspective, aided by our work of computational cognitive model development. --------------------------------------------------------------- TITLE: Cognitive Science Meets Multi-Agent Systems: A Prolegomenon by Ron Sun To appear in: Philosophical Psychology, Vol.14, No.1, pp.5-28. 2001. http://www.cecs.missouri.edu/~rsun/sun.PP01.ps http://www.cecs.missouri.edu/~rsun/sun.PP01.pdf ABSTRACT In the current research on multi-agent systems (MAS), many theoretical issues related to sociocultural processes have been touched upon. These issues are in fact intellectually profound and should prove to be significant for MAS. Moreover, these issues should have equally significant impact on cognitive science, if we ever try to understand cognition in the broad context of sociocultural environments in which cognitive agents exist. Furthermore, cognitive models as studied in cognitive science can help us in a substantial way to better probe multi-agent issues, by taking into account essential characteristics of cognitive agents and their various capacities. In this paper, we systematically examine the interplay among social sciences, MAS, and cognitive science. We try to justify an integrated approach for MAS that incorporates different perspectives. We show how a new cognitive model {Clarion} can embody such an integrated approach through a combination of autonomous learning and assimilation. --------------------------------------------------------------- TITLE Accounting for the Computational Basis of Consciousness: A Connectionist Approach by Ron Sun Appeared in: Consciousness and Cognition, Vol.8, pp.529-565. December, 1999. http://www.cecs.missouri.edu/~rsun/sun.CC99.ps http://www.cecs.missouri.edu/~rsun/sun.CC99.pdf ABSTRACT This paper argues for an explanation of the mechanistic (computational) basis of consciousness that is based on the distinction between localist (symbolic) representation and distributed representation, the ideas of which have been put forth in the connectionist literature. A model is developed to substantiate and test this approach. The paper also explores the issue of the functional roles of consciousness, in relation to the proposed mechanistic explanation of consciousness. The model, embodying the representational difference, is able to account for the functional role of consciousness, in the form of the synergy between the conscious and the unconscious. The fit between the model and various cognitive phenomena and data (documented in the psychological literatures) is discussed to accentuate the plausibility of the model and its explanation of consciousness. Comparisons with existing models of consciousness are made in the end. ------------------------------------------------------------------- here is a related paper describing the details of the model: Ron Sun Edward Merrill Todd Peterson To appear in: Cognitive Science. http://www.cecs.missouri.edu/~rsun/sun.CS99.ps http://www.cecs.missouri.edu/~rsun/sun.CS99.pdf ABSTRACT This paper presents a skill learning model {\sc Clarion}. Different from existing models of mostly high-level skill learning that use a top-down approach (that is, turning declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge through practice), we adopt a bottom-up approach toward low-level skill learning, where procedural knowledge develops first and declarative knowledge develops later. Our model is formed by integrating connectionist, reinforcement, and symbolic learning methods to perform on-line reactive learning. It adopts a two-level dual-representation framework (Sun 1995), with a combination of localist and distributed representation. We compare the model with human data in a minefield navigation task, demonstrating some match between the model and human data in several respects.