Tools for Thinking about Minds: An Ontology for Cognition



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An Ontology for Cognition

• Entities, relations, processes
• Useful for the study of how minds work
• That is, for the study of cognition


What is an autonomous agent


A system embedded in, and part of,
an environment, that
– Senses its environment
– Acts on it
– Over time
– In pursuit of its own agenda
– So that its actions affect its future sensing


An Agent in its Environment


• The agent senses its environment and acts
on it, over time, in pursuit of its own agenda.
• It must have built in drives, or motivators,
sensory receptors, and effectors.


Cognition

• Cognition will be the term used for the endless
cycle of deciding what to do next.
• This use is broader than that typically used in
psychology, which omits perception & action


Procedural Memory

• Procedural memory—stores procedures
for performing tasks, and sequences thereof
• Procedural learning—improves performance
of old tasks, learns new ones


Cognitive Processes
• Are always cyclic—executing through a
continuing sequence of cognitive cycles
• May complete during a single cycle—
bottom up
• May require a number of cycles to
complete—multicyclic—top down