The Rise of the Modern State: Gradual Reform or Punctuated Transition
Root, Hilton L. (George Mason University)
A state is not alive, yet it performs many of the central enjoys few bonds of kinship: and residence depends upon functions of life like replication and adaptation to new conditions occupational specialization rather than blood relations. A to balance social protection and opportunity. As a modern state can declare war on behalf of the entire collectivity, lifelike system the rise of the modern state raises four sets reserving the right to declare mandatory participation of fundamental questions about its evolutionary design. A and to contract the area of private vengeance. They proclaim first set concerns how it became a sustainable, autonomously a monopoly of force and of law, while requiring citizens to replicating system, capable of evolution. All non-state agglomerations forgo violence; vengeance is not the responsibility of the offended such as empires or chiefdoms eventually stagnate party. Almost any crime against one member is a because they are closed systems that break down over crime against the state. Subgroups seeking vengeance are time (Weber). A state is an open system that must able to viewed as threatening to the order of the state.
Is Consciousness Computationally Functional?
Baars, Bernard (The Neurosciences Institute)
Consciousness is a major feature of mammalian nervous significant "news" is demanding to be heard by the systems. Recent evidence indicates it may extend from established powers in the society of mind. The only known mammals to birds and even cephalopods (Edelman & Seth, function of slow-wave sleep, for example, is to consolidate 2009). Since all major biological adaptations are episodic memories (i.e., memories of conscious events that functional, or sequelae of biofunctions, and since brains took place during the conscious period before sleep). They be to "reapportion" cortical functions based on the are based on biochemistry and eukaryotic cells, which previous day's experiences, consistent with the last two impose narrow limits on such features as the peak rate of decades of work on cortical plasticity.
Fitting a Model to Behavior Tells Us What Changes Cognitively when under Stress and with Caffeine
Ritter, Frank E. (Pennsylvania State University) | Kase, Sue E. (Pennsylvania State University) | Klein, Laura Cousino (Pennsylvania State University) | Bennett, Jeanette (Pennsylvania State University) | Schoelles, Michael (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)
A human subject experiment was conducted to investigate caffeine’s effect on appraisal and performance of a mental serial subtraction task. Serial subtraction performance data was collected from three treatment groups: placebo, 200, and 400 mg caffeine. The data were analyzed by caffeine treat ment group and how subjects appraised the task (as challenging or threatening). A cognitive model of the serial subtraction task was developed. The model was fit to the human performance data using a parallel genetic algorithm. How the model’s parameters change to fit the data suggest how cognition changes due to caffeine and appraisal. Over all, the cognitive modeling and optimization results suggest that the speed of vocalization varies the most along with changes to declarative memory. This approach provides a way to compute how cognitive mechanisms change due to moderators.
Experiments on the Acquisition of Cognitive and Linguistic Competence to Communicate Propositional Logic Sentences
Sierra, Josefina (Technical University of Catalonia) | Santibanez, Josefina (University of La Rioja)
We describe some experiments which simulate a grounded approach to the acquisition of the cognitive and linguistic competence required to communicate propositional logic sentences. This encompasses both the construction of a conceptualisation of its environment by each individual agent and of a shared language by the population. The processes of conceptualisation and language acquisition in each individual agent are based on general purpose cognitive capacities, such as categorisation, discrimination, invention, adoption and induction. The construction of a shared language by the population is achieved using a particular type of linguistic interaction, known as the evaluation game, which gives rise to a common set of linguistic conventions through a process of self-organisation. This work addresses the problem of the acquisition of both the semantics and the syntax of propositional logic. Trying to learn these two aspects at the same time is more difficult than learning the semantics or the syntax of propositional logic separately. Because the agents must coordinate their linguistic behaviour taking into account only the subset of objects which constitutes the topic of a particular linguistic interaction. This means that a pair of agents can communicate successfully about a particular subset of objects (a topic) even if they use different conceptualisations (formulas) in order to identify the same topic. And this introduces a high degree of ambiguity in the interpretation process the agents have to deal with when they try to construct a shared communication language. In spite of this, the results of the experiments show that at the end of the simulation runs the individual agents build different conceptualisations and grammars, but that the conceptualisations and grammars of the agents in the population are compatible in the sense that they guarantee the unambiguous communication of propositional logic sentences.
High Definition Fiber Tracking Exposes Circuit Diagram for Brain Showing Triarchic Representation, Domain General Control, and Metacognitive Subsystems
Schneider, Walter (University of Pittsburgh) | Pathak, Sudhir (University of Pittsburgh) | Phillips, Jeff (University of Pittsburgh) | Cole, Micahel (University of Pittsburgh)
Dramatic advances in the last six months in High Definition Fiber Tracking (HDFT) make it possible to image the fiber connectivity from source to destination mapping hundreds of thousands fiber tracks with sufficient resolution to identify the cable level circuit diagram of the human brain. Brain activity imaging studies using functional Magnetic Resonance Imagining (fMRI) identify differential activation patterns as a function of task and level of practice. These data show subnetworks with communication of high bandwidth vector associations, scalar priority and control signals, and interactions with control and meta cognition. The connectivity and activity data support a triarchic cognitive architecture. Processing is the synergistic interaction of three interlinked cognitive computational systems with differential computation role and evolutionary history. These data provided a detailed diagram to guide reverse engineering of the systems levels of the human brain.
A Platform-Independent Tracking and Monitoring Toolkit
Rossi, Pier Giuseppe (University of Macerata) | Carletti, Simone (University of Macerata) | Bonura, Diego (University of Macerata)
Issues concerning students involved with online learning paths, that need to be faced by e-Tutors on their day-to-day activity, most often than not fall into known pedagogical patterns - that are problems and difficulties already occurred in the past and dealt with. These pedagogical patterns belong to e-Tutors' know-how and experience and their resolution are frequently a matter of activating routine processes or giving pre-factored answers; nevertheless statistical data indicates that these issues consume a considerable slice of tutors' time. While a portion of the scientific community is still devoting much effort in developing artificial tutoring systems - by deploying AI/MAS-enabled technologies - the solution being investigated by our team focuses on enhancing already-available, open source LMS by implementing a general-purpose tracking and monitoring toolkit able to support e-Tutors in recognizing and dealing with pedagogical patterns stored into a decentralised Knowledge Base. The system architecture is designed to house multiple platforms (only one adapter interface needs to be written for each LMS) and is able to perform real-time, as well as scheduled, data collection by means of Jade-based agents and schedulers. Information obtained from the processed data is then returned to the platform via web services and specific interfaces (instant messaging chatbot). The first deployed prototype is currently being experimented in adult higher education learning paths and is able to track student activity, forum readings and writings and offers a basic chat-based help interface. Our aim is to turn a standard LMS into a knowledge aggregator where information about its users, its contents and interactions between the two can be mined via Knowledge Services; resulting data could then be used to refine users' and groups' profiles, to monitor learners' deviance from expected learning path, and ultimately to adjust the applied pedagogical model.
Back to the Basics – Redefining Information, Knowledge, Intelligence, and Artificial Intelligence Using Only the Adaptive Systems Theory
Decades ago, Alan Turing proposed a test to show if a machine has intelligence, a test that has yet to be replaced by a more comprehensive theory. The same test however, says nothing about what is intelligence. This paper proposes a definition based on a system ability to deal with uncertainty, which is the main attribute of our intelligence. It introduces a new adaptive system theory and the Viable Complex System (VCS), concept that is applied to organisms, social organizations, and to the design and architecture of IT systems. All VCSs share a dual structure built on two function types: operations (i.e. resource processing) and change (adaptability). A system adapts by learning from the interactions with environment on how to improve its chances to survive. All systems sharing common operations are part of a realm. Obviously, we may have systems which could live in two realms at the same time. In conclusion, we define information as the interaction between two similar VCSs, and intelligence as a property of adaptive systems which exist in the context of two realms (i.e. humans being biological organisms and members of the society). We extend the model to quantify intelligence through the use of a new term called information density. This concept associates complexity of the logic embedded in a message, especially the one related to changes, with the system ability to process that logic in its quest to survive. The more intelligent the system, the better it is at extracting information towards higher efficiency and higher viability. We are closing the paper with the presentation of two case studies from our practice that shows how this model can be applied in the IT when designing enterprise systems.
Illumination Invariant Face Recognition on Nonlinear Manifolds
Tunc, Birkan (Istanbul Technical University, Informatics Institute) | Gökmen, Muhittin (Istanbul Technical University, Computer Engineering Department)
Face recognition under variable lighting conditions is recognized as one of the most problematic are of the recognition domain by various authors. Previous work suggested that image variations caused by parameters such as illumination, can be modeled by low dimensional subspaces. In this work, we propose a new scheme for recognition under a single variation. Using a generic manifold learning technique like LPP, we are able to construct coordinate systems for the underlying subspace with the help of an optimization step. We performed experiments with face recognition under changing illumination conditions.
Argumentation Systems and Agent Programming Languages
Gottifredi, Sebastian (UNS) | Garcia, Alejandro Javier (UNS) | Simari, Guillermo Ricardo (UNS)
In this work we will present an integration of a query-answering argumentation approach with an abstract agent programming language. Agents will argumentatively reason via queries, using information of their mental components. Special context-based queries will be used to model the interaction between mental components. Deliberation and execution semantics of the proposed integration are presented.
Emergently Developed Cognitive Architectures: Testing by Developmental Robotics
Berg-Cross, Gary (Knowledge Strategies)
How useful are bio-developmental approaches for understanding how cognitive capabilities are acquired? One bio-developmental hypothesis is that human cognition unfolds with maturation as a massive collection of adaptive cognitive “capabilities” expressing pre-structured genetic programs. But the seeming plasticity of human cognition argues against simple formulations of innately-specified anatomical & functional processing system composed of specialized computational modules. One alternative is an architecture using domain-specific predispositions and general learning mechanisms to construct modules from interactions. This lets them emerge and unfold in a self- organized fashion as part of developmental experience. The result is a more dynamic, complex cognitive architecture explaining such things as the drive for sensorimotor control in infants, which is combines the generation of exploratory movements constrained by the interaction of ability and environment followed by the selection and maintenance of adaptive movement patterns (Schlesinger et al. 2000). Such findings are consistent with a view that ontogenetic processes are co-important (and co-dependent) with gene- based evolutionary processes for behavior and cognition.