Artificial Intelligence

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Architecture of Intelligence

Abstract

We start by making a distinction between mind and cognition, and by positing that cognition is an aspect of mind. We propose as a working hypothesis a Separability Hypothesis which posits that we can factor off an architecture for cognition from a more general architecture for mind, thus avoiding a number of philosophical objections that have been raised about the "Strong AI" hypothesis. Thus the search for an architectural level which will explain all the interesting phenomena of cognition is likely to be futile. There are a number of levels which interact, unlike in the computer model, and this interaction makes explanation of even relatively simple cognitive phenomena in terms of one level quite incomplete.
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I. Dimensions for Thinking About Thinking

A major problem in the study of intelligence and cognition is the range of—often implicit—assumptions about what phenomena these terms are meant to cover. Are we just talking about cognition as having and using knowledge, or are we also talking about other mental states such as emotions and subjective awareness? Are we talking about intelligence as an abstract set of capacities, or as a set of biological mechanisms and phenomena? These two questions set up two dimensions of discussion about intelligence. After we discuss these dimensions we will discuss information processing, representation, and cognitive architectures.

A. Dimension 1. Is intelligence separable from other mental phenomena?

When people think of intelligence and cognition, they often think of an agent being in some knowledge state, that is, having thoughts, beliefs. They also think of the underlying process of cognition as something that changes knowledge states. Since knowledge states are particular types of information states the underlying process is thought of as information processing. However, besides these knowledge states, mental phenomena also include such...