The research described in this book is based on the premise that human analogy-making is an extension of our constant background process of perceiving--in other words, that analogy-making and the perception of sameness are two sides of the same coin. Foreword by Daniel Dennett While it is fashionable today to dismiss the "bad old days" of artificial intelligence and rave about emergent self-organizing systems, Robert French has created a model of human analogy-making that attempts to bridge the gap between classical top-down AI and more recent bottom-up approaches. The research described in this book is based on the premise that human analogy-making is an extension of our constant background process of perceiving--in other words, that analogy-making and the perception of sameness are two sides of the same coin. At the heart of the author's theory and computer model of analogy-making is the idea that the building-up and the manipulation of representations are inseparable aspects of mental functioning, in contrast to traditional AI models of high-level cognitive processes, which have almost always depended on a clean separation. A computer program called Tabletop forms analogies in a microdomain consisting of everyday objects on a table set for a meal. The theory and the program rely on the idea that myriad stochastic choices made on the microlevel can add up to statistical robustness on a macrolevel. To illustrate this, French includes the results of thousands of runs of his program on several dozen interrelated analogy problems in the Tabletop microworld. French's work is exciting not only because it reveals analogy-making to be an extension of our complex and subtle ability to perceive sameness but also because it offers a computational model of mechanisms underlying these processes. This model makes significant strides in putting into practice microlevel stochastic processing, distributed processing, simulated parallelism, and the integration of representation-building and representation-processing. A Bradford Book

A new collection of wide-ranging essays from one of cognitive science's most distingushed figures. Minds are complex artifacts, partly biological and partly social; only a unified, multidisciplinary approach will yield a realistic theory of how they came into existence and how they work. One of the foremost workers in this multidisciplinary field is Daniel Dennett. This book brings together his essays on the philosphy of mind, artificial intelligence, and cognitive ethology that appeared in inaccessible journals from 1984 to 1996. Highlights include "Can Machines Think?," "The Unimagined Preposterousness of Zombies," "Artificial Life as Philosophy," and "Animal Consciousness: What Matters and Why." Collected in a single volume, the essays are now available to a wider audience.

Few things in life are more delightful than sharing in the laughter of a baby. Until now, however, psychologists and parenting experts have largely focused on moments of stress and confusion. Developmental psychologist Caspar Addyman decided to change that. Since 2012 Caspar has run the Baby Laughter project, collecting data, videos and stories from parents all over the world. This has provided a fascinating window into what babies are learning and how they develop cognitively and emotionally. Deeper than that, he has observed laughter as the purest form of human connection. It creates a bond that parents and infants share as they navigate the challenges of childhood. Moving chronologically through the first two years of life, The Laughing Baby explores the origin story for our incredible abilities. In the playful daily lives of babies, we find the beginnings of art, science, music and happiness. Our infancy is central to what makes us human, and understanding why babies laugh is key to understanding ourselves.

This volume features the complete text of the material presented at the Twentieth Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. As in previous years, the symposium included an interesting mixture of papers on many topics from researchers with diverse backgrounds and different goals, presenting a multifaceted view of cognitive science. This volume contains papers, posters, and summaries of symposia presented at the leading conference that brings cognitive scientists together to discuss issues of theoretical and applied concern. Submitted presentations are represented in these proceedings as "long papers" (those presented as spoken presentations and "full posters" at the conference) and "short papers" (those presented as "abstract posters" by members of the Cognitive Science Society).

This volume brings together the work of researchers from various disciplines where aspects of descriptive, mathematical, computational or design knowledge concerning metaphor and analogy, especially in the context of agents, have emerged. The book originates from an international workshop on Computation for Metaphors, Analogy, and Agents (CMAA), held in Aizu, Japan in April 1998. The 19 carefully reviewed and revised papers presented together with an introduction by the volume editor are organized into sections on Metaphor and Blending, Embodiment, Interaction, Imitation, Situated Mapping in Space and Time, Algebraic Engineering: Respecting Structure, and a Sea-Change in Viewpoints.

A uniquely accessible introduction to abstract mathematics and category theory written by popular science author of How to Bake Pi.