The emergence of understanding in a computer model of concepts and analogy-making

@article{citeulike:2675242, abstract = {This paper describes Copycat, a computer model of the mental mechanisms underlying the fluidity and adaptability of the human conceptual system in the context of analogy-making. Copycat creates analogies between idealized situations in a microworld that has been designed to capture and isolate many of the central issues of analogy-making. In Copycat, an understanding of the essence of a situation and the recognition of deep similarity between two superficially different situations emerge from the interaction of a large number of perceptual agents with an associative, overlapping, and context-sensitive network of concepts. Central features of the model are: a high degree of parallelism; competition and cooperation among a large number of small, locally acting agents that together create a global understanding of the situation at hand; and a computational temperature that measures the amount of perceptual organization as processing proceeds and that in turn controls the degree of randomness with which decisions are made in the system.}, author = {Mitchell, Melanie and Hofstadter, Douglas R. }, citeulike-article-id = {2675242}, doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0167-2789(90)90086-5}, journal = {Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena}, keywords = {artificial-intelligence, cognitive-science}, month = {June}, number = {1-3}, pages = {322--334}, posted-at = {2008-04-15 20:53:26}, priority = {3}, title = {The emergence of understanding in a computer model of concepts and analogy-making}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0167-2789(90)90086-5}, volume = {42}, year = {1990} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:2675242 L3 - citeulike-article-id:2675242 TI - The emergence of understanding in a computer model of concepts and analogy-making JF - Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena VL - 42 IS - 1-3 SP - 322 EP - 334 N2 - This paper describes Copycat, a computer model of the mental mechanisms underlying the fluidity and adaptability of the human conceptual system in the context of analogy-making. Copycat creates analogies between idealized situations in a microworld that has been designed to capture and isolate many of the central issues of analogy-making. In Copycat, an understanding of the essence of a situation and the recognition of deep similarity between two superficially different situations emerge from the interaction of a large number of perceptual agents with an associative, overlapping, and context-sensitive network of concepts. Central features of the model are: a high degree of parallelism; competition and cooperation among a large number of small, locally acting agents that together create a global understanding of the situation at hand; and a computational temperature that measures the amount of perceptual organization as processing proceeds and that in turn controls the degree of randomness with which decisions are made in the system. KW - artificial-intelligence KW - cognitive-science AU - Mitchell, Melanie AU - Hofstadter, Douglas PY - 1990/06// UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0167-2789(90)90086-5 ER -