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Igor Vamos, associate professor of electronic media and culture jammer-- along with Andy Bichlbaum--has premiered their new movie, THE YES MEN.  FIX THE WORLD and received media attention for holding a faux news conference on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. 

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Cognitive Science In Print

 

Bringsjord's and Zenzen's Superminds

 

 Superminds: People Harness Hypercomputation and More

Kluwer Academic Publishers

Selmer Bringsjord, Ph.D. and Michael Zenzen, Ph.D.

This is the first book-length presentation and defense of a new theory of human and machine cognition, according to which human persons are superminds. Superminds are capable of processing information not only at and below the level of Turing machines (standard computers), but above that level (the "Turing Limit"), as information processing
devices that have not yet been (and perhaps can never be) built, but have been mathematically specified; these devices are known as super-Turing machines or hypercomputers. Superminds, as explained herein, also have properties no machine, whether above or below the Turing Limit, can have. The present book is the third and pivotal volume in Bringsjord's supermind quartet; the first two books were What Robots
Can and Can't Be
(Kluwer) and AI and Literary Creativity (Lawrence Eribaum). The final chapter of this book offers eight prescriptions for the concrete practice of AI and cognitive science in light of the fact that we are superminds.

Contact:  Selmer Bringsjord

Contact:  Michael Zenzen

Selmer Bringsjord's Web Page  

Mark Changizi's Brain at 25,000 Feet

 

 

The Brain from 25,000 Feet: High Level Explorations of Brain Complexity, Perception, Induction and Vagueness

2004

Mark Changizi

Mark A. Changizi defends a non-reductionist philosophy and applies it to a variety of problems in the brain sciences. Some of the key questions answered are as follows. Why do we see visual illusions, and why are illusions inevitable for any finite-speed vision machine? Why aren't brains universal learning machines, and what does the riddle of induction and its solution have to do with human learning and innateness? The author tackles such questions as why the brain is folded, and why animals have as many limbs as they do, explaining how these relate to principles of network optimality. He describes how most natural language words are vague and then goes on to explain the connection to the ultimate computational limits on machines. There is also a fascinating discussion of how animals accommodate greater behavioral complexity. This book is a must-read for researchers interested in taking a high-level, non-mechanistic approach to answering age-old fundamental questions in the brain sciences.

Contact:Mark Changizi

Mark Changizi's Web Site 

Wayne Gray's Integrated Models of Cognitive Systems

 

Integrated Models of Cognitive Systems

2007

Wayne D. Gray, Editor

The field of cognitive modeling has progressed beyond modeling cognition in the context of simple laboratory tasks and begun to attack the problem of modeling it in more complex, realistic environments, such as those studied by researchers in the field of human factors. The problems that the cognitive modeling community is tackling focus on modeling certain problems of communication and control that arise when integrating with the external environment factors such as implicit and explicit knowledge, emotion, cognition, and the cognitive system. These problems must be solved in order to produce integrated cognitive models of moderately complex tasks. Architectures of cognition in these tasks focus on the control of a central system, which includes control of the central processor itself, initiation of functional processes, such as visual search and memory retrieval, and harvesting the results of these functional processes.

Contact: Wayne D. Gray

Wayne D. Gray's Site 

ames Hendler's Spinning the Semantic Web

 

 

 Spinning the Semantic Web: Bringing the World Wide Web to Its Full Potential

2003

Edited by: Dieter Fensel, James A. Hendler, Henry Lieberman and Wolfgang Wahlster

As the World Wide Web continues to expand, it becomes increasingly difficult for users to obtain information efficiently. Because most search engines read format languages such as HTML or SGML, search results reflect formatting tags more than actual page content, which is expressed in natural language. Spinning the Semantic Web describes an exciting new type of hierarchy and standardization that will replace the current "web of links" with a "web of meaning." Using a flexible set of languages and tools, the Semantic Web will make all available information -- display elements, metadata, services, images, and especially content -- accessible. The result will be an immense repository of information accessible for a wide range of new applications.

Contact: James Hendler

James Hendler's Web Site 

Ron Sun's Cognition and Multi Agent Interaction

 

 

Cognition and Multi-Agent Interaction: From Cognitive Modeling to Social Simulation

2007

Ron Sun, Editor

This book explores the intersection between cognitive sciences and social sciences. In particular, it explores the intersection between individual cognitive modeling and modeling of multi-agent interaction (social stimulation). The two contributing fields - individual cognitive modeling (especially cognitive architectures) and modeling of multi-agent interaction (including social simulation and, to some extent, multi-agent systems) - have seen phenomenal growth in recent years. However, the interaction of these two fields has not been sufficiently developed. We believe that the interaction of the two may be more significant than either alone. They bring with them enormous intellectual capitals. These intellectual capitals can be profitably leveraged in creating true synergy between the two fields, leading to more in-depth studies and better understanding of both individual cognition and sociocultural processes. It is possible that an integrative field of study in cognitive and social sciences is emerging and we are laying the foundation for it.

Contact: Ron Sun

Ron Sun's Web Site