Maths/CogSci/MathPsych lazyweb: Are there any algebras in which you have subtraction but don't have negative values? Pointers appreciated. I am hoping that the abstract maths might shed some light on a problem in cognitive modelling.
The context is that I am interested in formal models of cognitive representations and I want to represent things (e.g. cats), don't believe that we should be able to represent negated things (i.e. I don't think it should be able to represent anti-cats), but it makes sense to subtract representations (e.g. remove the representation of a cat from the representation of a cat and a dog, leaving only the representation of the dog).
Training lunch break & watching vids as a brain palate cleanser of sorts. I found this fascinating. Such parenting supports weren't available 20 yrs ago. It's wonderful to see #autism#parenting#pda communities offering validation, support & education. This video reminded me of a time I visited my sister when my niece was a baby. She couldn't stop playing w/a toy that was frustrating her, she cried every time she hit it but kept doing it. #cognitivepsychology https://youtu.be/1ozg_e2XHvI?si=c_CebRLvpPZMvjOr
@cogsci
The notion of role-filler binding as central to cognitive(ish) representations has been around for ages (possibly under different names, such as slot-value in GOFAI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_(artificial_intelligence)). This is hardly surprising because it's effectively the same as variable-value.
The role is generally treated as though it's an atomic symbol, whereas it's not uncommon for the filler to be taken as a composite value (e.g. a tree). I am toying with embracing the idea of roles also being composite representations.
In a cognitive-agent/robotic context, I think it might be useful for the role to be a "sensorimotor program" and the filler to be the sensory input arising from running the sensorimotor program specified by the role. (This is heading towards a Predictive State Representation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_state_representation).
(1) I would greatly appreciate any pointers to discussions of role-filler bindings as sensorimotor predictions (similar or related to the sense above).
"Attention" could be construed as a "run/don't_run" flag in the sensorimotor program. This is basically treating attention as a kind of action and "don't attend" as not doing that action. (If that were true it's possible that there may also be other attention mechanisms, e.g. the precision weighting posited by Predictive Coding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_coding#Precision_weighting).
(2) I would greatly appreciate any pointers to discussions of attention as a kind of executable sensorimotor action.
Most of the Artificial Neural Net simulation research I have seen (say, at venues like NeurIPS) seems to take a very simple conceptual approach to analysis of simulation results - just treat everything as independent observations with fixed effects conditions, when it might be better conceptualised as random effects and repeated measures. Do other people think this? Does anyone have views on whether it would be worthwhile doing more complex analyses and whether the typical publication venues would accept those more complex analyses? Are there any guides to appropriate analyses for simulation results, e.g what to do with the results coming from multi-fold cross-validation (I presume the results are not independent across folds because they share cases).
What makes someone a cognitive scientist? Is it a degree in cognitive science? Or in one of its constitutive disciplines along with a research focus on the mind? Or publishing in cognitive science journals? Or something else? 🤔
Hi everyone, this is my second profile, which I plan to turn into an educational project in the near future. I'm not yet sure on the specifics, so I'm open to suggestions! 🙏🏻
“In the early days of modern consciousness science, back in the 1990s, researchers focused on identifying empirical correlations between aspects of conscious experience and properties of brain activity. […] In recent years, however, there has been a blossoming of neurobiological theories of consciousness.”
Our Call for Papers is finally up! Come share your representational alignment work at our interdisciplinary workshop at ICLR in beautiful Vienna!
representational-alignment.github.io
Reminder that we (@mvugt@fusaroli) are organizing a workshop on Cognitive modeling of complex behavior (8-12 Jan 2024, Leiden)
We invite domain experts in cognitive science domains (with stats and programming knowledge). The workshop will consist of hands-on group projects between experienced modelers and domain experts.
"Sometimes a simple model will outperform a more complex model... Nevertheless, I believe that deliberately limiting the complexity of the model is not fruitful when the problem is evidently complex. Instead,
if a simple model is found that outperforms some particular complex model, the appropriate response is to define a different complex model that captures whatever aspect of the problem led to the simple model performing well."
@ERDonnachie@cogsci yeah, it is provocative. And it's clear (at least to me) that the model cannot be thing itself. IMO, the model needs to be as complex as needed and as simple as possible. (And "needed" here is doing a lot of work and it really depends on what is the purpose of the model). I don't think that simplicity for the sake of simplicity is useful in modeling. (Especially in #cogsci, I know less about medical research)
I'm fairly confident that I won't be writing on panpsychism again any time soon... My interests switched to reevaluating physicalism again, especially in connection with cognitive science and empirically-informed approaches to consciousness in a broader sense. I don't have a strong opinion on which position is 'true' - and maybe that's bad for a philosopher - I just go by what I find worthy of further investigation 🤷🏻♂️