Tag Archives: cognition
11 Feb Introspection as Empirical Science
Heightened awareness – inner vision – focus. I have looked to psychology, neuroscience and philosophy for clues about how to get computers to pay attention to all the right cues so they can engage in meaningful dialog with me. Much of what I encounter in the literature mixes experimental results with empirical observations. And many paths lead […]
11 Feb Conscious Sensibility
Watergate Revisited More than one President of the United States has been asked this question: “What happened, and how soon did you know about it?” Many cognitive psychologists perform experiments in which they ask subjects (people) the same question, seeking to mark the boundaries between conscious and unconscious phenomena. I recently spoke of mindfulness. Wakefulness may be a […]
08 Feb Seeing Within: Proprioception for Robots
I saw a couple movies awhile back, “The Terminator” and “Terminator 2” in which artificial intelligence in computers became hazardous to the survival of humanity. One of the premises, as I recall, was that the critical event that lead to the disastrous attempt of man-made machines to destroy humanity, was when they became “self-aware”. This […]
07 Feb Mindfulness
Imagine being able to flip a switch and get quantitative and qualitative improvements to your intelligence. Mindfulness, in the form of directing your attention or focus can induce changes in the structure and function of the brain. When I was in school, I learned that taking notes helped me not only focus better on what I […]
06 Feb Nature vs Nurture in Intelligence
The three deep roots of intelligence are biological (built into the flesh), cognitive (based on our unique mental responses to stimuli), and psychosocial (learned through culture-laden experiences). Language springs from the same roots, and becomes inseparably intertwined with intelligence. I came across this article in The Creativity Post that corroborated ideas I have been working on for […]
05 Feb Rings of Power: Workflow and Business Rules
Gandalf the Wizard explained the writing on the “One Ring”: “One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them“ Such a ring would be a nice thing to have, as long as it didn’t make you into a fascist – the […]
04 Feb Body Language in Understanding
How much can you hear without a word being spoken? How often does something about a person’s face, posture or hand gestures completely contradict the “normal interpretation” of the words they speak, creating a sense of sarcasm or other indirect message? To what extent are the academy awards influenced by an actor’s ability to use […]
03 Feb Mapping a Thought
What is truly going on in a network of billions of cells with trillions of connections? Can we even begin to figure it out – is mapping a thought possible? When I was in the midst of my studies in which I initially wrote this, MRIs and CAT scans were the best of our ability […]
31 Jan Feature Selectivity in Vision
This post is another in the series on specialization, in which the author stresses the need for very heterogeneous models for imitating brain capabilities with computers. An important discovery of neurophysiological and cybernetic research is that many neurons, particularly those in areas of the brain that specialize in processing perceptual data, are feature selective. Vision processing is […]
30 Jan From Aristotle to the Enchanted Loom
“Swiftly the brain becomes an enchanted loom, where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern-always a meaningful pattern-though never an abiding one” (Charles Sherrington). What of the centillion warps and woofs of ideation? Does it never abide? Passing seems to take away all that was ever weft, unless the Gods endow immortality on our thoughts and carry them […]