Jackendoff Ray: SEMANTIC INTERPRETATION IN GENERATIVE GRAMMAR (MIT
Press, 1972)
One of the milestone works in government and binding theory.
The author shows that theta roles determine to some extent the
wellformedness of anaphoric relations. Theta roles form a hierarchy
and binding must respect such hierarchy by placing the antecedent of
an anaphor higher on the hierarchy than the anaphor itself.
Jackendoff Ray: X'SYNTAX (MIT Press, 1977)(MIT Press, 1972)
A monumental study of the phrase structure of the english language in
the light of Chomsky's X-bar theory.
Jackendorff Ray: SEMANTICS AND COGNITION (MIT Press, 1983)
Jackendorff develops conceptual structures to explain language, in a
fashion similar to Fodor's mentalese.
The structure of meaning ought to be pursued on the same first princi-
ples as phonology and syntax.
Meaning of verbs can be reduced to a few spacetime primitives, such as
motion and location.
The "extended standard theory" enhances Chomsky's standard theory by
using interpretation rules to extract the meaning of a sentence. Such
rules apply to the intermediate syntactic structures used in the
derivation of the phonetic representation.
Jackendoff Ray: CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE COMPUTATIONAL MIND (MIT Press,
1987)
Jackendorff believes in a hierarchy of levels of mental representa-
tion.
The book resumes Jackendorff's claim that phonology and syntax are key
to the structure of meaning, then extends the framework developed for
language to vision and music (hinting at a possible unification with
Marr's theory of vision).
Each cognitive function exists at different levels of interpretations
and cognitive functions generally interact at intermediary levels.
Jackndorff refines and extends Fodor's idea of the modularity of the
mind.
Consciousness arises from a level of representation which is inter-
mediate between the sense-data and the form of thought.
Jackendorff Ray: SEMANTIC STRUCTURES (MIT Press, 1990)
Jackendorff's conceptual semantics is applied to lexical and syntactic
expressions in English. Jackendorff proposes a formalism for describ-
ing lexical semantic facts and expressing semantic generalizations.
He employs multi-dimensional representations analogous to those found
in phonology.
Jackendorff Ray: LANGUAGES OF THE MIND (MIT Press, 1992)
This collection of papers summarizes Jackendorff's formal theory on the nature of language and a modular approach to "mental anatomy", and applies the same concepts to learning and common sense reasoning. There is a tight relationship between vision and language. A lexical item contains the stereotipical image of the object or concept. Know- ing the meaning of a word implies knowing how the object or concept looks like.
Jackendoff Ray: PATTERNS IN THE MIND (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993)
Following Chomsky, Jackendoff thinks that the human brain contains
innate linguistic knowledge and that the same argument can be extended
to all facets of human experience: all experience is constructed by
unconscious genetically determined principles that operate in the
brain.
The experience of spoken language is constructed by the hearer's men-
tal grammar: speech per se is only a meaningless sound wave, only a
hearer equipped with the proper device can make sense of it.
These same conclusions can be applied to thought itself, i.e. to the
task of building concepts. Concepts are constructed by using some
innate, genetically determined, machinery, a sort of "universal gram-
mar of concepts". Language is but one aspect of a broader charac-
teristic of the human brain.
Jackson Frank: CONDITIONALS (Basil Blackwell, 1987)
A collection of articles by David Lewis, Robert Stalnaker, Grice and
Frank Jackson on the subject of conditionals. A theory of conditionals
must offer an account of the truth conditions of a conditional (under
which conditions "if A then B" is true or false, or acceptable to some
degree). The traditional view that a conditional is true if and only
if the antecedent is false or the consequent is true is too simplicis-
tic and allows conditionals such as "if Jones lives in London, then he
lives in Scotland" to be true (if he does not live in London or lives
in Scotland) when it is obviously senseless.
Stalnaker and Lewis solve some of the problems of (subjective) condi-
tionals ("if it were that A then it would be that B") by using
possible-world semantics. Lewis also reviews Ernest Adams' thesis that
the assertability of (indicative) conditionals ("if A then B") is
measured by the conditional probability of the consequent given the
antecedent.
Jackson Frank: PERCEPTION (Cambridge University Press, 1977)
The immediate objects of perception are mental. To perceive an object
is to be in a perceptual state as a causal result of the action of
that object.
On epiphenomenal qualia Jackson proposed a famous thought experiement:
a blind neurophysiologist that knows everything of how the brain per-
ceives colors still cannot know what it feels like to see a color.
Color is not a property of material things. Sense-data are not
material, they are mental.
Jauregui Jose: THE EMOTIONAL COMPUTER (Blackwell, 1995)
This is the english translation of 1990's "El Ordenador Cerebral".
Jauregi, like Wilson, views sociology as a branch of biology. The
same emotional system controls social, sexual and individual behavior.
Such emotional system originates from the neural organization of the
brain: emotions are rational and predictable events. Jauregi believes
that the brain is a computer, but introduced the novelty of emotions
as the direct product of that computer's processing activity. It is
emotions, not reason, that directs and informs the daily actions of
individuals. Jauregi deals with humans that feel pleasure and pain
rather than with abstract problem solvers.
Jauregi begins by separating the brain and the self: the brain is
aware of what is going on in the digestive system of the body, but
will inform the self only when some correction/action is necessary.
Normally, an individual is not aware of her digestive processes. Her
brain is always informed, though. The communication channel between
the brain and the self is made of emotions. The brain can tune the
importance of the message by controlling the intensity of the emo-
tions. Far from being an irrational process, the emotional life is
mathematically calculated to achieve exactly the level of response
needed. Feelings are subjective and inaccessible, but they also are
objective and precise.
The self has no idea of the detailed process that was going on in the
body and of the reason why that process must be corrected. The
brain's emotional system, on the other hand, is a sophisticated and
complex information-processing system. The brain is a computer pro-
grammed to inform the self (through emotions) of what must be done to
preserve her body and her society. It is through emotions that the
brain informs the self of every single detail in the body that is
relevant for survival. There almost is no instant without an emotion
that tells the individual to do something rather than something else.
"For human beings the reality that ultimately matters is the reality
of their feelings".
The self keeps a level of freedom: while it cannot suppress the (emo-
tional) messages it receives from the brain, it can disobey them. The
brain may increase the intensity of the message as the self disobeys
it a painful conflict may arise. The brain and the self are not only
separate, but they may fight each other.
Only the self can be conscious and feel, but the brain has control of
both consciousness and feelings.
If we view the brain as a computer, the hardware is made of the neural
organization. There are two types of software, though: bionatural
(knowledge about the natural world) and biocultural (such as a
language or a religion). A program has three main components: the
sensory, the mental and the emotional systems. Any sensory input can
be translated automatically by the brain into a mental (idea) or emo-
tional (feeling) message; and viceversa. Biocultural and bionatural
programs exhert emotional control over the body.
Jauregi distinguishes five systems of communication: the natural sys-
tem (the sender is a natural thing, such as a tree), the cultural sys-
tem (the sender is culture, something created by humans), the somatic
system (the sender is the individual's own body), the imaginary system
(the sender is imagination) and the social system (the sender is
another individual). The human brain is genetically equipped to
receive and understand all five kinds of messages. What ultimately
matters is the emotional translations of sensory inputs.
Jaynes Julian: THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF THE
BICAMERAL MIND (Houghton Mifflin, 1977)
Jaynes makes a number of interesting points about consciousness.
Consciousness is not necessary for concepts, learning, reason or even
thinking. Awareness of an action tends to follow, not precede, the
action. Awareness of an action bears little or no influence on the
outcome. Before one utters a sentence, one is not conscious of being
about to utter those specific words.
Consciousness is an operation rather than a thing. It is an operation
of analogy that transforms things of the real world into meanings in a
metaphorical space. Consciousness is a metaphor-generated model of the
world. Consciousness is based on language, therefore it appeared after
the emergence of language. By reviewing historical documents of past
civilizations, Jaynes tries to identify when and how consciousness was
born. Causes include the advent of writing, the loss of belief in
gods, epics, and natural selection itself.
Jaynes thinks that some social institutions and religions, psychologi-
cal phenomena such as hypnosis and schizophrenia, and artistic prac-
tices such as poetry and music are vestiges of an earlier stage of
human consciousness.
Jeanerrod Marc: THE COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE OF ACTION (Blackwell,
1996)
A survey of findings on the representations and processing that lead
to action, from neurophysiological data to the role of mental imagery.
Johnson-Laird Philip: HUMAN AND MACHINE THINKING (Lawrence Erlbaum,
1993)
A theory of deduction, induction and creation.
Johnson-Laird Philip: THINKING (Cambridge Univ Press, 1977)
A collection of articles that reviews the study of thinking in the
aftermath of the conceptual revolution that forced the transition from
behaviorism to information-processing. Contributions range from philo-
sophy (Popper, Kuhn) to artificial intelligence (Minsky, Schank).
Johnson-Laird Philip: MENTAL MODELS (Harvard Univ Press, 1983)
Johnson-Laird's representational theory assumes that mind represents
and processes models of the world. The mind solves problems without
any need to use logical reasoning. A linguistic representation such as
Fodor's is not necessary.
A sentence is a procedure to build, modify, extend a mental model.
The mental model created by a discourse exhibits a structure that
corresponds directly to the structure of the world described by the
discourse.
To perform an inference on a problem the mind needs to build the
situation described by its premises. Such mental model simplifies
reality and allows the mind to find an "adequate" solution.
Johnson-Laird draws on several phenomena to prove the psychological
inadequacy of a mental logic. People often make mistakes with deduc-
tive inference because it is not a natural way of thinking. The
natural way is to construct mental models of the premises: a model of
discourse has a structure that corresponds directly to the structure
of the state of affairs that the discourse describes. How can chil-
dren acquire inferential capabilities before they have any inferential
capabilities? Children solve problems by building mental models that
are more and more complex.
Johnson-Laird admits three types of representation: "propositions"
(which represent the world through sequences of symbols), "mental
models" (which are structurally analogous to the world) and "images"
(which are perceptive correlates of models).
Images are ways to approach models. They represent the perceivable
features of the corresponding objects in the real world.
Models, images and propositions are functionally and structurally dif-
ferent.
Linguistic expressions are first transformed into propositional
representations. The semantics of the mental language then creates
correspondences between propositional representations and mental
models, i.e. propositional representations are interpreted in mental
models.
Turning to meaning and model-theoretic semantics, Johnson-Laird pro-
poses that a mental model is a single representative sample from the
set of models satisfying the assertion. Semantic properties of expres-
sions are emergent properties of the truth conditions. Johnson-Laird's
procedural semantics assumes that there are procedures that construct
models on the basis of the meaning of expressions.
Johnson-Laird believes that consciousness is computable. The mind con-
tains a high-level operating system and a hierarchy of parallel pro-
cessors. Conscious mind is due to a serial process of symbolic mani-
pulation that occurs at the higher level of the hierarchy of proces-
sors (in the operating system), while unconscious mind is due to a
parallel process of distributed symbolic representation. Emotions are
non-symbolic signals, caused by cognitive interpretations of the
situation, that propagate within the hierarchy.
Johnson-Laird Philip: THE COMPUTER AND THE MIND (Harvard Univ Press,
1988)
An introduction to the themes and methods of cognitive science, with a
review of porduction and connectionist architectures. Speech, vision
and language are devoted long chapters. Johnson-Laird also introduces
his theory of mental models and resumes his theory of consciousness
and emotions.
Johnson-Laird Philip & Byrne Ruth: DEDUCTION (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1991)
The authors advance a comprehensive theory to explain all the main
varieties of deduction: propositional reasoning (that uses the connec-
tives "and", "or" and "not"), relational reasoning (that depends on
relations between entities), quantificational reasoning (that uses
quantifiers such as "any" and "some"). And justify it with a variety
of psychological experiments.
In order to understand discourse, humans construct an internal
representation of the state of affairs that is described in that
discourse. These mental models have the same structure as human con-
ceptions of the situations they represent. Deduction does not depend
on formal rules of inference but rather on a search for alternative
models of the premises that would refute a putative conclusion. Cen-
tral to the theory is the principle that people use models that make
explicit as little information as possible. The theory also make
sense of how people deal with conditionals.
The theory explains phenomena such as: that modus ponens ("if p then
q" and "p" then "q") is easier than modus tollens ("if p then q" and
"not q" then "not p").
Josephson John & Josephson Susan: ABDUCTIVE INFERENCE (Cambridge
University Press, 1993)
Abduction (inference to the best explanation, i.e. building the
hypothesis that best accounts for the data) is ubiquitous in ordinary
life as well as in scientific theory formation. The book presents a
dynasty of systems that explored abduction. Intelligence is viewed as
a cooperative community of knowledge-based specialists (performing
"generic tasks"). Knowledge arises from experience by processes of
abductive inference.
Jouvet Michel: LE SOMMEIL ET LE REVE (Jacob, 1992)
Jouvet was the first to localize the trigger zone for REM sleep and
dreaming in the brain stem. In this book he provides a neurobiological
and psychological analysis of sleep and dreaming.
According to his findings, a dream is the vehicle employed by an
organism to cancel or archive the day's experiences on the basis of a
genetic program. Dreaming is a process that absorbs a lot of energy.
This theory would also solve the dualism between hereditary and
acquired features. An hereditary component is activated daily to
decide how new data must be acquired.
Kaku Michio: HYPERSPACE (Oxford University Press, 1994)
A popular introduction to modern cosmology, including black hole,
time travel, parallel universes and alien civilizations.
The title refers to the fact that the universe may actually exist
in dimensions beyond the commonly accepted four of spacetime. The
laws of nature become simpler when expressed in higher dimen-
sions. In fact, all forces can be unified in the ten-dimensional
hyperspace of superstring theory. Kaku shows how the concept of
supergravity was derived from the intuitions of the old Kaluza-
Klein theory, which first unified the two great field theories,
light and gravity (Maxwell and Einstein).
Kandell Abraham: FUZZY MATHEMATICAL TECHNIQUES (Addison Wesley,
1986)
A very technical and very well organized introduction to the con-
cepts and theorems of fuzzy logic: fuzzy sets, theory of possi-
bility, fuzzy functions (integration and differentiation), mul-
tivalent logics, linguistic approximation and applications.
Kanerva Pentti: SPARSE DISTRIBUTED MEMORY (MIT Press, 1988)
The sparse distributed memory is a model of long-term memory in
which situations are encoded by patterns of features and episodes
are encoded by sequences of them. Any pattern in a sequence can
be used to retrieve the entire sequence. Memories are stored
based on features. The senses must extract the invariant features
of objects to retrieve the corresponding memories. The motor sys-
tem is also controlled by sequences of patterns in memory. A cen-
tral site, the "focus", stores all the features that are needed
to define the specific moment in time, to account for subjective
experience. The model is capable of learning.
Most of the study is a computational analysis of the feasibility
of a very large address space whose units of address decoding are
linear threshold functions (neurons).
Kaplan David: THEMES FROM KAPLAN (Oxford Univ Press, 1989)
This book is a tribute to Kaplan by a number of thinkers (Cas-
taneda, Church, Deutsch, etc), but also contains Kaplan's famous
"Demonstratives" (1977).
Indexicals include the personal pronouns, the demonstrative pro-
nouns, some adverbs ("here", "now", "tomorrow"), etc, i.e. words
whose referent depends on the context of use (whose meaning pro-
vides a rule which determines the referent in terms of the con-
text). The logic of demonstratives, based on first-order predi-
cate logic, is a theory of word meaning, not speaker's meaning,
based on linguistic rules shared by all linguistic users.
Indexicals are "directly referential", i.e. refer directly to
individuals without the mediation of Fregean sense (unlike nonin-
dexical definite descriptions, which denote their referent
through their sense). Kaplan's indexicals are similar to
Kripke's "rigid designators", expressions that designate the
same thing in every possible world in which they exist and desig-
nate nothing elsewhere. Indexicals provide directly that the
referent in every circumstance is fixed to be the actual
referent. In Kaplan's case, though, the expression is the "dev-
ice" of direct reference.
Kaplan distinguishes between the "character" of a linguistic
expression (its grammatical meaning, i.e. what the hearer learns
when she learns the meaning of that expression) and its "content"
in a context (the proposition, the primary bearer of truth-
values, the object of thought). Indexicals have a context-
sensitive character, nonindexicals have a fixed character. Char-
acters are functions that map contexts into contents.
The theory of direct reference for indexicals includes: the
language system (to which meanings and characters belong), the
contexts of uses (through which referents are assigned to expres-
sions) and the circumstances of evaluation (at which truth-values
are allocated to sentential referents).
Karmiloff-Smith Annette: BEYOND MODULARITY (MIT Press, 1992)
A developmental model is proposed that embraces both Piaget's
constructivism and Fodor's nativism, both innate capacities of
the human mind and subsequent representational changes. Based on
a number of experiments on children, Karmiloff-Smith believes
that initially children learn by instinct, or at least impli-
citly; then their thinking develops, by redescribing the world
from an implicit form to more and more explicit forms, to more
and more verbal knowledge. She contends that there are separate
cognitive categories, each with its own innate structure; but
modularization is seen as a product of the child's development
and development proceeds along the same sequential steps for all
mental activities. Language is just one of them. The model is
then applied to connectionist models of the mind.
Katz Jerrold: THE METAPHYSICS OF MEANING (MIT Press, 1990)
A critique of naturalism, particularly Wittgenstein's argument
against intensionalist theories of meaning and Quine's argument
for indeterminacy. By examining Wittgenstein's own critique of
pre-existing theories of meaning, Katz salvages a theory of mean-
ing (the "proto-theory") which postulates underlying sense struc-
ture (just like Chomsky's postulation of underlying syntactic
structure) and constructs a decompositional semantics (i.e., pro-
vides a preliminary theory of decompositional sense structure).
Katz replaces Frege's referentially defined notion of sense with
a notion defined in terms of sense properties and relations
internal to the grammar of the language, thereby accomplishing a
separation of sense structure and logical structure (a separation
of grammatical meaning from reference and use).
Katz thinks that words' meaning can be decomposed in atoms of
meaning that are universal for all languages.
This may well be the most detailed critique ever of
Wittgenstein's thought.
Katz Jerrold: AN INTEGRATED THEORY OF LINGUISTIC DESCRIPTIONS
(MIT Press, 1964)
Two components are necessary for a theory of semantics: a dic-
tionary, which provides for every lexical item a phonological
description, a syntactic classification ("grammatical marker",
e.g. noun or verb) and a specification of its possible distinct
senses ("semantic marker", e.g. light as in color and light as
the opposite of heavy); and projection rules, which produce all
valid interpretations of a sentence.
Katz Jerrold: THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE (Harper & Row, 1966)
According to Katz, a theory of language is a theory of linguistic
universals (features that all languages have in common). Katz
argues that the basic ontological categories are those semantic
markers that are implied by other semantic markers but never
imply other markers themselves.
Katz Jerrold: SEMANTIC THEORY (Harper & Row, 1972)
Two components are necessary for a theory of semantics: a dic-
tionary, which provides for every lexical item a phonological
description, a syntactic classification ("grammatical marker",
e.g. noun or verb) and a specification of its possible distinct
senses ("semantic marker", e.g. light as in color and light as
the opposite of heavy); and projection rules, which produce all
valid interpretations of a sentence.
"The logical form of a sentence is identical with its meaning as
determined compositionally from the senses of its lexical items
and the grammatical relations between its syntactic consti-
tuents."
Kaufmann Arnold & Gupta Madan: INTRODUCTION TO FUZZY ARITHMETICS
(Van Nostrand Reinhold)
A technical (and one of the most rigorous) introduction to the
properties of fuzzy numbers. A fuzzy number is viewed as an
extension of an interval of confidences, once it is related to a
level of presumption. The addition of fuzzy numbers and random
data yields hybrid numbers, which transform a measurement of an
objective data into a valuation of a subjective value without any
loss of information. Definitions are provided for derivatives of
functions of fuzzy numbers, fuzzy trigonometric functions, etc.
Kauffman Stuart: THE ORIGINS OF ORDER (Oxford University Press,
1993)
Darwin's vision of natural selection as a creator of order is not
sufficient to explain all the spontaneous order exhibited by both
the living and the dead universe. At every level of science the
spontaneous emergence of order, or self-organization of complex
systems, is a common theme.
Living organisms happen to be mere accidents in this universal
process. Natural selection and self-organization complement each
other: they create complex systems poised at the edge between
order and chaos, which are fit to evolve in a complex environ-
ment. The target of selection is a type of adaptive system at the
edge between chaos and order. This is one of the three types of
behaviors that are possible for large networks of elements
(besides chaotic and ordered). This applies at all levels of
organization, from living organisms to ecosystems.
Kauffman's mathematical model involves "fitness landscapes". A
fitness landscape is a distribution of fitness values over the
space of genotypes. Adaptive evolution can be represented as a
local hill climbing search converging via fitter mutants toward
some local or global optimum. Adaptive evolution occurs on
rugged (multipeaked) fitness landscapes. The very structure of
these landscapes implies that radiation and stasis are inherent
features of adaptation. The Cambrian explosion and the Permian
extinction may be the natural consequences of inherent properties
of rugged landscapes.
Kauffman also advances his theory of how life may have ori-
ginated. When a system of simple chemicals reaches a certain
level of complexity, it undergoes a phase transition. The
molecules spontaneously combine to yield larger molecules of
increasing complexity and catalytic capability. Such autocata-
lytic chemical processes may have formed the basis for early
life. Life began complex, with a metabolic web which was capable
of capturing energy sources.
Arrays of interacting genes do not evolve randomly but converge
toward a relatively small number of patterns, or "attractors".
This ordering principle may have played a larger role than did
natural selection in guiding the evolution of life.
Principles of self-organization also drive the genetic program
which drives morphogenesis. A few behaviors at the cell level
(e.g., differentiation) are actually unavoidable consequences of
the properties of self-organization. They are not the product of
selection, but rather of the properties of the systems that
selection acts upon. Laws of form complement selection. In any
event, the genetic program is not a sequence of instructions but
rather a regulatory network that behaves, again, like a self-
organizing system.
Kauffman is searching for the fundamental force that counteracts
the universal drift towards disorder required by the second law
of thermodynamics.
Kauffman Stuart: AT HOME IN THE UNIVERSE (Oxford Univ Press,
1995)
The whole is greater than its parts: life is not located in any
of the parts of a living organism, but arises from the emergent
properties of the whole they compose. Such emergent properties
are the result of a ubiquitous trend towards self-organization.
Self-organizing principles are inherent in our universe and life
is a direct consequence of self-organization. Therefore, both the
origin of life and its subsequent evolution were inevitable.
Kauffman refutes the theory that life started simple and became
complex in favor of a scenario in which life started complex and
whole due to a property of some complex chemical systems, the
self-sustaining process of autocatalytic metabolism. Life is but
a phase transition that occurs when the system becomes complex
enough. Life is vastly more probably than traditionally assumed.
The theme of science is order. Order can come from equilibrium
systems and from non-equilibrium systems that are sustained by a
constant source of matter/energy or (udally) by a persistent dis-
sipation of matter/energy. In the latter systems, order is gen-
erated by the flux of matter/energy. All living organisms (as
well as systems such as the biosphere) are nonequilibrium ordered
systems.
Kauffman advocates a "theory of emergence" that deals with none-
quilibrium ordered systems. Such a theory would explain why life
emerged at all.
Evolution is viewed as the traversing of a fitness landscape.
Peaks represent optimal fitness. Populations wander driven by
mutation, selection and drift across the landscape in their
search for peaks. It turns out that the best strategy for reach-
ing the peaks occurs at the phase transition between order and
disorder (the "edge of chaos"). The same model applies to other
biological phenomena and even nonbiological phenomena, and may
therefore represent a universal law of nature.
Kauffman's view of life can be summarized as: autocatalytic net-
works arise spontaneously; natural selection brings them to the
edge of chaos; a genetic regulatory mechanism accounts for onto-
geny. Natural selection is not the only source of order: there is
also order for free.
The main theme of Kauffman's research is that the requirements
for order to emerge are far easier than traditionally assumed
("order for free").
Kavanaugh Robert: EMOTION (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996)
An overview of studies on emotion.
Kaye Jonathan: PHONOLOGY (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1989)
A cognitive approach to phonology. Besides reviewing the history
of the field and the recent developments (syllable structure,
tones and nonlinear phonology, harmony, parametrized systems),
Kaye advances his own theory that the function of phonological
processes is to help process language in a fashion similar to
punctuation by providing information about domain boundaries. A
theory of markedness was also sketched to explain the fact that
certain features condition other features.
Kearns Michael & Varizani Umesh: INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTATIONAL
LEARNING THEORY (MIT Press, 1994)
A very technical survey of the main issues of learning theory,
built around Valiant's "probably approximately correct" model
(1992), which defines learning in terms of the predictive power
of the hypothesis output by the learning algorithm. Notions such
as the Vapnik & Chervonenkis dimension, a measure of the sample
complexity of learning, and various extensions to Valiant's algo-
rithm are presented.
Keil Frank: SEMANTIC AND CONCEPTUAL DEVELOPMENT (Harvard Univ
Press, 1979)
Following Fred Sommers, Keil develops a formal theory of the
innate constraints that guide and limit the acquisition of onto-
logical knowledge (knowledge about the basic categories of the
world). Two terms are of the same type if all predicates that
span one of them also span the other one; and two predicates are
of the same type if they span exactly the same sets of terms. No
two terms have intersecting predicates. No two predicates span
intersecting sets of terms (the "M constraint"). Ontological
knowledge is therefore organized in a rigid hierarchical fashion.
Keil Frank: CONCEPTS, KINDS AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT ( (Cam-
bridge University Press, 1989)
Concepts are always related to other concepts. No concept can be
understood in isolation from all other concepts. Concepts are not
simple sets of features. Concepts embody "systematic sets of
causal beliefs" about the world and contain implicit explanations
about the world. Concepts are embedded in theories about the
world, and they can only be understood in the context of such
theories.
In contrast with stage-based developmental theories, Keil argues
for the continuity of cognition across development. Continuity is
enforced by native constraints on developmental directions.
Perceptual procedures through which objects are categorized are
not part of the categories: an animal is a skunk if its mother is
a skunk regardless of what it looks like.
Keil refines Quine's ideas. Natural kinds are not defined by a
set of features or by a prototype: they derive their concept from
the causal structure that underlies them and explains their
superficial features. They are defined by a "causal homeostatic
system", which tends to stability over time in order to maximize
categorizing. Nominal kinds (e.g., "odd numbers") and artifacts
(e.g., "cars") are similarly defined by the theories they are
embedded in, although such theories are qualitatively different.
There is a continuum between pure nominal kinds and pure natural
kinds with increasing well-definedness as we move towards natural
kinds. What develops over time is the awareness of the network of
causal relations and mechanisms that are responsible for a
natural kind's essential properties. The theory explaining a
natural kind gets refined over the years.
Kelso Scott & Mandell Arnold: DYNAMIC PATTERNS IN COMPLEX SYS-
TEMS (World Scientific, 1988)
Proceedings of a 1988 conference on self-organizing systems.
Hermann Haken discusses the dualism between pattern recognition
and pattern formation.
Kelso shows that the brain exhibits processes of self-
organization that obey to nonlinear dynamics features (multista-
bility, abrupt phase transitions, crises and intermittency). The
human behavior is therefore also subject to nonlinear dynamics.
Kelso Scott: DYNAMIC PATTERNS (MIT Press, 1995)
Kelso believes that all levels of behavior, from neural processes
to mind, are governed by laws of self-organization. He explains
human behavior from phenomena of multistability, phase transi-
tions, etc.
Kessel Frank: SELF AND CONSCIOUSNESS (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1993)
A collection of essays on the subject, with contributions by Den-
nett, Neisser and Gazzaniga.
Kim Jaegwon: SUPERVENIENCE AND MIND (Cambridge University Press,
1993)
A collection of philosophical essays, particularly on superveni-
ence.
The world has a structure: the existence of an object and its
properties depend on, or are determined by, the existence and the
properties of other objects. With Hume, "causation is the cement
of the universe". Supervenience is a type of relation between
objects that occurs between their properties: if two individuals
are alike in all their physical properties, then they must be
alike also in their nonphysical properties, i.e. the set of
valuational (nonphysical) properties supervenes on the set of
nonvaluational (physical) ones.
"Supervenience" theory assumes that objects with the same physi-
cal properties also exhibit the same mental properties. A causal
relation between two states can be explained both in mental terms
and in physical terms. The mental and the physical interact only
to guarantee consistence. The mental supervenes on the physical,
just like the macroscopic properties of objects supervene on
their microscopic structures.
In general, supervenience is a relation between two sets of pro-
perties over a single domain (e.g., mental and physical proper-
ties over the domain of organisms). Weak supervenience occurs
when indiscernibility with respect to a class of properties
entails indiscernibility with respect to another class of proper-
ties. Strong supervenience claims that if individuals share the
same physical properties, then they must share the same mental
properties. Global supervenience occurs when worlds that are
indiscernible with respect to an individual are also indiscerni-
ble with respect to another individual.
Kim is a physicalist (the world is a physical world governed by
physical laws) and a mental realist (mentality is a real feature
of the world and has the power to cause events of the world). His
goal is to understand how the mind can "cause" anything in the
physical world.
Kirkham Richard: THEORIES OF TRUTH (MIT Press, 1992)
A philosophical (and probably unique) introduction to a variety
of modern theories of truth: Charles Peirce's pragmaticism, Wil-
liam James' instrumentalism, Brand Blanshard's coherence theory
(truth as a fully coherent set of beliefs), Russell's congruence
theory,nd theory of types Austin's correlation theory, Tarski's
correspondence theory. Theories of justification (how to iden-
tify the properties of true statements by reference to which the
truth of a statement can be judged) are treated as separated from
theories of truth, as well as theories of speech acts. The sys-
tems of Davidson, Dummett, Kripke, Prior are reviewed and criti-
cized.
Kitchener Robert: PIAGET'S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE (Yale University
Press, 1986)
One of the best introduction to genetic epistemology.
Kittay Eva: METAPHOR (Clarendon Press, 1987)
Drawing from Black's interactionist theory, and its vision of
metaphor's dual content (literal and metaphorical, "vehicle" and
"topic"), Kittay develops a theory of metaphor
Kittay's theory of metaphor is based on her own "relational"
theory of meaning, which is inspired by Saussure's theory of
signs. The meaning of a word is determined by other words that
are related to it by the lexicon. Meaning is not an item, is a
field. A semantic field is a group of words that are semantically
related to each other. Language is context-dependent, and con-
textual features are constitutive of meaning.
Metaphor is a process that transfers semantic structures between
two semantic fields: some structures of the first field creates
or reorganizes a structure in the second field.
The meaning of a word consists of all the literal senses of that
word. A literal sense consists of a conceptual content, a set of
conditions, or semantic combination rules (permissible semantic
combinations of the word, analogous to Fodor's selection-
restriction rules) and a semantic field indicator (relation of
the conceptual content to other concepts in a content domain).
An interpretation of an utterance is any of the senses of that
utterance. Projection rules combine lower-level units into
higher-level units according to their semantic combination rules.
A first-order interpretation of an utterance is derived from a
valid combination of the first-order meanings of its consti-
tuents. Second-order interpretation is a function of first-order
interpretation and expresses the intuitive fact that what has to
be communicated is not what is indicated by the utterance's
literal meaning.
Kittay outlines the formal conditions for recognizing an utter-
ance as a metaphor. An explicit cue to the metaphorical nature of
an utterance is when the first-order and the second-order
interpretation point to two distinct semantic fields.
Equivalenty, an incongruity principle (incongruity between a
focus and a frame) can be used. discriminate a metaphorical
utterance.
Metaphor can be interpreted as second-order meaning.
The cognitive force of metaphor comes from a reconceptualization
of information about the world that has already been acquired but
possibly not conceptualized. Metaphor turns out to be one of the
primary ways in which humans organize their experience.
Metaphorical meaning is not reducible to literal meaning.
Klahr David: PRODUCTION SYSTEM MODELS OF LEARNING AND DEVELOP-
MENT (MIT Press, 1987)
A set of articles that provide an overview of production systems
from the perspective of cognitive psychology and in the context
of working computer programs. Includes Pat Langley's "A general
theory of discrimination learning" (the PRISM project) and Paul
Rosenbloom's "Learning by chunking" (the XAPS project).
Kleene Stephen: INTRODUCTION TO METAMATHEMATICS (North-Holland,
1964)
Kleene's three-valued logic was conceived to accomodate undediced
mathematical statements. The third truth value signals a state of
partial ignorance. The undecided value is assigned to any well-
formed formula that has at least one undecided component.
Klopf Harry: THE HEDONISTIC NEURON (Hemisphere, 1982)
Organisms actively seek stimulation. If homeostasis is the seek-
ing of a steady-state condition, "heterostasis" is the seeking of
a maximum stimulation. All parts of the brain are independently
seeking positive stimulation (or "pleasure") and avoiding nega-
tive stimulation (or "pain"). All parts are goal-driven in that,
when responding to a given stimulus leads to "pleasure", the
brain part will respond more frequently to that stimulus in the
future; and viceversa.
In his neural model cognition and emotion cohexist and complement
each other. Emotion provides the sense of what organisms need.
Cognition provides the means for achieving those needs.
Kodratoff Yves: INTRODUCTION TO MACHINE LEARNING (Morgan Kauf-
man, 1988)
A technical, Prolog-oriented textbook on machine learning that
starts with the theoretical foundations of production systems,
deals with truth maintenance and then surveys a number of learn-
ing methods: Mitchell's version spaces, explanation-based (deduc-
tive) learning, analogical learning, clustering.
Koestler Arthur: THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE (Henry Regnery, 1967)
Koestler brings together a wealth of biological, physical,
anthropological and philosophical arguments to construct a uni-
fied theory of open hierarchical systems.
Language has to do with a hierarchic process of spelling out
implicit ideas in explicit terms by means of rules and feedbacks.
Organisms and societies also exhibit the same hierarchical struc-
ture. Each intermediary entity ("holon") function as self-
contained wholes relative to their subordinates and as dependent
parts to their superordinates. Each holon tends to persist and
assert its pattern of activity.
Wherever there is life, it must be hierarchically organized.
Life exhibits an integrative property (that manifests itself as
symbiosis) that enables the gradual construction of complex
hierarchies out of simple holons. In nature there are no
separated, indivisible, self-contained units. An "individual" is
an oxymoron. An organism is a hierarchy of self-regulating
holons (a "holarchy") that work in coordination with their
environment. Holons at the higher levels of the hierarchy have
progressively more degrees of freedom and holons at the lower
levels of the hierarchy have progressively less degrees of free-
dom. Moving up the hierarchy, we encounter more and more com-
plex, flexible and creative patterns of activity. Moving down the
hierarchy behavior becomes more and more mechanized.
A hierarchical process (which gradually reduces the percept to
its fundamental elements) is also involved in perception and
memorization. A dual hierarchical process (which gradually
reconstructs the percept) is involved in recalling.
Hierarchical processes of the same nature can be found in the
development of the embryo, in the evolution of species and in
consciousness itself (which should be analyzed not in the context
of the mind/body dichotomy but in the context of a multi-levelled
hierarchy and of degrees of consciousness).
They all share common themes: a tendency towards integration (a
force that is inherent in the concept of hierarchic order, even
if it seems to challenge the second law of thermodynamics as it
increases order), an openess at the top of the hierarchy (towards
higher and higher levels of complexity) and the possibility of
infinite regress.
Kohonen Teuvo: ASSOCIATIVE MEMORY (Springer Verlag, 1977)
The retrieval of information in memory occurs via associations.
An associative memory is a system from which a set of information
can be recalled by using any of its members. An adaptive associa-
tive network is viewed as a reasonable model for biological
memory. Kohonen also argues for the biological plausibility of
holographic associative memories. For each model a thorough
mathematical treatment is provided.
Kohonen Teuvo: SELF-ORGANIZATION AND ASSOCIATIVE MEMORY
(Springer Verlag, 1984)
A formal study of memory from a system theory's viewpoint.
Kohonen built a psychologically-plausible model of how the brain
represents topographically the world, with nearby units respond-
ing similarly. His model is therefore capable of self-organizing
in regions.
Kohonen's connectionist architecture, inspired by Malsburg's stu-
dies on self-organization of cells in the cerebral cortex, is
able to perform unsupervised training, i.e. it learns categories
by itself.
Instead of using Hebb's learning, Kohonen assumes that the
overall synaptic resources of a cell are approximately constant
and what changes is the relative efficacies of the synapses. A
neural network has learned a new concept when the weights of con-
nections converge towards a stable configuration. This model
exhibits mathematical properties that set it apart: the layering
of neurons plays a specific role (the wider the intermediate
layer, the faster but the more approximate the process of
categorization).
A variant of Hebb's law yields competitive behavior.
Kohonen also reviews classical learning systems (Adaline, Percep-
tron) and holographic memories.
Kohonen Teuvo: SELF-ORGANIZING MAPS (Springer Verlag, 1995)
The Adaptive-Subspace Self Organizing Map (ASSOM) is an algorithm
for neural networks that combines Learning Subspace Method (LSM),
the first supervised competitive-learning algorithm ever, and
Self Organizing Map (SOM), another algorithm invented by Kohonen,
that maps patterns close to each other in the input space onto
contiguous locations in the output space (topology preserving).
The new algorithm is capable of detecting invariant features.
Kolodner Janet & Riesbeck Christopher: EXPERIENCE, MEMORY, AND
REASONING (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1986)
An introduction to computational theories of memory that are
derived from the conceptual dependency theory. Each article is
written by an expert in the field. Schank writes about
explanation-based learning. Lebowitz describes his RESEARCHER
project. Lytinen discusses his word-based parsing technique.
Riesbeck introduces to his direct memory access parsing system.
Kolodner Janet: CASE-BASED REASONING (Morgan Kaufmann, 1993)
A monumental summary of the discipline of case-based systems that
also attempts ot lay logical foundations for the field. Emphasis
is placed on the views of learning as a by-product of reasoning,
and reasoning as remembering; on the essential task of adapting
old solutions to solve new problems (old cases to explain new
situations). Schank's cognitive model of dynamic memory (MOPs
and the likes) is introduced at length. Some of the historical
systems (CHEF, CYRUS, etc) are discussed. The book provides
detailed techniques for storing, indexing, retrieving, matching
and using cases.
Kolodner Janet: RETRIEVAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGIES IN CON-
CEPTUAL MEMORY (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1984)
A description of the CYRUS system, which was based on Schank's
conceptual dependency theory.
Kosko Bart: NEURAL NETWORKS AND FUZZY SYSTEMS (Prentice Hall,
1992)
A textbook on adaptive fuzzy systems that presents a unified view
of neural networks and fuzzy systems. Kosko presents neural net-
works as stochastic gradient systems and fuzzy sets as points in
unit hypercubes.
All the main learning algorithms for neural networks are reviewed
and formalized. It is shawn that neural computations is similar
to statistics in that its goal is to approximate the function
that relates a set of inputs to a set of outputs.
In Kosko's formalization, a fuzzy set is a point in the unitary
hypercube equivalent to Zadeh's universe of discourse, and a
non-fuzzy set is one of the vertexes of such a cube. The para-
doxes of classical logic occur in the middle points of the hyper-
cube.
A fuzzy set's entropy (which could be thought of as its "ambi-
guity") is defined by the number of violations of the law of
non-contradiction compared with the number of violations of the
excluded middle. Entropy is zero when both laws hold, is maximum
in the center of the hypercube. Alternatively, a fuzzy set's
entropy can be defined as a measure of how a set is a subset of
itself.
A fuzzy system is a relationship between hypercubes, a relation-
ship of fuzzy sets into families of fuzzy sets.
Fuzzy associative memories are balls of fuzzy sets into balls of
fuzzy sets.
Fuzzy logic, which can account for all results of the theory of
probability, better represents the real world, without any need
to assume the existence of randomness. For example, relative fre-
quency is a measure of how a set is a subset of another set.
Many of Physics' laws are not reversible because if they were
casuality would be violated (after a transition of state proba-
bility turns into certainty and cannot be rebuilt working back-
wards). If they were expressed as "ambiguity", rather than proba-
bility, they would be reversible, as the ambiguity of an event
remains the same before and after the event occurred.
The space of neural states (the set of all possible outputs of a
neural net) is identical to the power fuzzy set (the set of all
fuzzy subsets of the set of neurons). A set of "n" neurons (whose
signals vary continously between zero and one) defines a family
of n-dimensional fuzzy sets. That space is the unitary hypercube,
the set of all vectors of length "n" and coordinates in the uni-
tary continous interval (zero to one).
Hopfield's nets tend to push the state of the system towards one
of the 2 to the "n" vertexes of the hypercube. This way they
dynamically disambiguate fuzzy descriptions by minimizing their
fuzzy entropy.
Kosko Bart: FUZZY THINKING (Hyperion, 1993)
Fuzziness is pervasive in nature ("everything is a matter of
degree"), while science does not admit fuzziness.
Even probability theory still assumes that properties are crisp.
And probability (according to Kosko's "subsethood" theorem) can
be interpreted as a measure of how much the whole (the space of
all events) is contained in the part (the event). Kosko shows
how logical paradoxes such as Russell's can be interpreted as
"half truths" in the context of fuzzy logic. Heisenberg's uncer-
tainty principle (the more a quantity is accurately determined,
the less accurately a conjugate quantity can be determined, which
holds for position and momentum, time and energy) can be reduced
to the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality (which is related to Pythagora's
theorem, which is in turn related to the subsethood theorem).
Applications such as fuzzy associative memories, adaptive fuzzy
systems and fuzzy cognitive maps are discussed at length.
Kosko even discusses why the universe exists (because otherwise
the fuzzy entropy theorem would exhibit a singularity) and specu-
lates that the universe is information and maybe God himself is
information.
Too much autobiography and too many references to eastern reli-
gion try to make the book more accessible but probably merely
detract from the subject.
Kosslyn Stephen: IMAGE AND MIND (Harvard University Press, 1980)
"Mental imagery" is seeing something in the absence of any sen-
sory signal, such as the perception of a memory. Kosslyn analyzes
what is seen when in the brain there is no such image, and why we
need mental imagery at all.
Based on numerous psychological experiments, Kosslin maintains
that mental imagery is pictorial in character, i.e. that mental
imagery involves scanning an internal picture-like entity. Mental
images can be inspected and classified using pretty much the same
processes used to inspect and classify visual perceptions.
To explain the structure of mental imagery Kosslyn puts forth a
representational theory of the mind of a "depictive" type, as
opposed to Fodor's propositional theory and related to Johnson-
Laird's models. Kosslyn thinks that the mind can build visual
representations, which are coded in parts of the brain, and which
reflect what they represent. Such representations can be
inspected by the mind and transformed (rotated, enlarged,
reduced).
There exist two levels of visual representation: a "geometric"
level, which allows one to mentally manipulate images, and an
"algebric" one, which allows one to "speak" about those images.
Kosslyn thinks that mental imagery achieves two goals: retrieve
properties of objects and predict what would happen if the body
or the objects should move in a given way. Reasoning on shapes
and dimensions is far faster when we employ mental images rather
than concepts.
Kosslyn Stephen: GHOSTS IN THE MIND'S MACHINE (W. Norton, 1983)
An introduction to Kosslyn's theory of mental imagery oriented
towards a computer implementation.
Kosslyn Stephen & Koenig Olivier: WET MIND (Free Press, 1992)
An overview of cognitive neuroscience, i.e. of psychological stu-
dies based on the principle that "the mind is what the brain
does", i.e. theories that describe mental events by means of
brain activities.
Chapters on neural computation, vision, language, movement,
memory.
Kosslyn Stephen: IMAGE AND BRAIN (MIT Press, 1994)
This book revises and expands the contents and conclusions of
"Image and Mind".
Kosslyn's proposal for the resolution of the imagery debate is an
interdisciplinary theory of high-level vision in which perception
and representation are inextricably linked. Visual perception
(visual object identification) and visual mental imagery share
common mechanisms.
Visual processing is decomposed in a number of subsystems, each a
neural network: visual buffer (located in the occipital lobe),
attention window (selects a pattern of activity in the visual
buffer), two cortical visual systems, the ventral system (infe-
rior temporal lobe, encodes object properties) and the dorsal
system (posterior paretal lobe, encodes spatial properties),
associative memory (which integrates the two classes of proper-
ties), information lookup subsystem (dorsolaterla prefrontal
cortex, accesses information about the most relevant object in
associative memory), attention shifting subsystems (frontal,
parietal and subcortical areas, directs the attention window to
the appropriate location). The subsystems may overlap and
exchange feedback. More detailed analysis of the visual recogni-
tion process identify more specialized subsystems. The model is
therefore gradually extended to take into account the full taxo-
nomiy of visual abilities.
Mental imagery shares most of this processing architecture with
high-level visual perception.
During the course of the development of the theory, a wealth of
psychological and neurophysiological findings is provided.
Koza John: GENETIC PROGRAMMING (MIT Press, 1992)
One of the seminal books on "genetic" programming by means of
natural selection. The solution to a problem is found by geneti-
cally breeding populations of computer programs. A computer is
therefore enabled to solve problems without being explicitly pro-
grammed to solve them. The process of finding a solution to a
problem is turned into the process of searching the space of com-
puter programs for a highly fit individual computer program to
solve such a problem.
Koza John: GENETIC PROGRAMMING II (MIT Press, 1994)
Focuses on automatic function definition for the decomposition of
complex problems.
Kripke Saul: NAMING AND NECESSITY (Harvard University Press,
1980)
Kripke developed a model-theoretic interpretation of various
axiom sets for modal logic. Modality can be represented by recur-
ring to the notion of possible worlds. In Kripke's semantics a
property is necessary if it is true in all worlds, a property is
possible if there is at least a world in which it is true.
The extensional analysis of language cannot account for sentences
that are very common such as those that employ opaque contexts
(to know, to believe, to think) and those that employ modal
operators (all words that can be reduced to "it is possible that"
and "it is necessary that"). These senteces are not extensional,
meaning that they do not satisfy Leibniz's law. These sentences
can be interpreted in Kripke's model-theoretic semantics. A
statement that is false in this universe can be true in another
universe. The truth values of a sentence are always relative to
a particular world.
Tarski's theory is purely extensional (for each model the truth
of a predicate is determined by the list of objects for which it
is true), Kripke's modal logic is intensional. An extensional
definition would actually be impossible, as the set of objects is
infinite.
Proper names and definite descriptions are designators. Proper
names are rigid designators, i.e. in every possible world they
designate the same object. Kripke (unlike Frege) carefully dis-
tinguishes the meaning of a designator and the way its reference
is determined (which are both "sense" in Frege). Then he puts
forth his causal theory of naming: initially, the reference of a
name is fixed by some operation (e.g., by description), then the
name is passed from link to link. A name is not identified by a
set of unique properties satisfied by the referent: the speaker
may have erronous beliefs about those properties or they may not
be unique. The name is passed to the speaker by tradition from
link to link. Terms for natural kinds behave in a similar way to
proper names.
Kripke rejects the view that either proper or common nouns are
associated with properties that serve to select their referents.
Names are just "rigid designators". Both proper and common names
have a referent, but non a Fregean sense. The property cannot
determine the reference as the object might not have that pro-
perty in all worlds. For example, gold might not be yellow in
all worlds.
Kripke's causal theory of names assumes that names are linked to
their referents through a casual chain. A term applies directly
to an object via a connection that was set in place by the ini-
tial naming of the object.
A nonrigid designator is a term that changes its referent across
possible worlds. Mental states cannot be identical to physical
states because both are rigid designators and they might desig-
nate different objects in different worlds.
Kuipers Benjamin: QUALITATIVE REASONING (MIT Press, 1994)
A unified theory of qualitative reasoning.
Qualitative reasoning is viewed as a set of methods for
representing and reasoning with incomplete knowledge about physi-
cal systems. A qualitative description of a system allows for
common sense reasoning that overcomes the limitations of rigorous
logic. Qualitative descriptions capture the essential aspects of
structure, function and behavior, at the expense of others. Since
most phenomena that matter to ordinary people depend only on
those essential aspects, qualitative descriptions are enough for
moving about in the world.
Kuipers presents his QSIM algorithm and representation for quali-
tative simulation. His model deals with partial knowledge of
quantities (through landmark values and fuzzy values) and of
change (by using discrete state graphs and qualitative differen-
tial equations). A qualitative differential equation is a quadru-
ple of variables, quantity spaces (one for each variable), con-
straints (that apply to the variables) and transitions (rules to
define the domain boundaries).
The framework prescribes a number of constraint propagation tech-
niques, including for higher-order derivatives and global dynam-
ics. First of all, it is necessary to build a model which
includes all the elements needed for simulating the system
(close-world assumption). Then the model can be simulated. The
ontological problem is solved drawing from varius techniques
(Forbus' qualitative process theory, Sussman's device modeling
approach, DeKleer's "no function in structure").
Kulas Jack, Fetzer James & Rankin Terry: PHILOSOPHY, LANGUAGE
AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (Kluwer, 1988)
A collection of historical articles on semantics, including
Davidson's "Truth and meaning" (1967), Grice's "Utterer's mean-
ing" (1968), Hintikka's "Semantics for propositional attitudes"
(1969), Montague's "The proper treatment of quantification in
ordinary english" (1973), Gazdar's "Phrase-structure grammar"
(1982), Stalnaker's "Possible worlds and situations".
Kulas provides a historical introduction to the field, starting
with Aristotle.
Kuppers Bernd-Olaf: INFORMATION AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE (MIT
Press, 1990)
Kuppers thinks that all living phenomena, such as metabolism and
inheritance, can be reduced to the interaction of biological
macromolecules, i.e. to the laws of Physics and Chemistry, and,
in particular, the living cell originated from the iterative
application of the same fundamental rules that preside to all
physical and chemical processes.
The issue of the origin of life is reduced to the issue of the
origin of biological information. Information is viewed in its
different aspects: syntactic (as in information theory), semantic
(function and meaning of information for an organism's survival),
and pragmatic (following von Weiszacker, "information is only
that which produces information"). Following Manfred Eigen and
in opposition to Jacques Monod, Kuppers favors the hypothesis
that the origin of life from inorganic matter is due to emergent
processes of self-organization and evolution of macromolecules.
Natural selection applies to the molecular level.
Kuppers presents rigorous mathematical proofs of his theory,
often resorting to algorithmic theory (e.g., Gregory Chaitin's
quantitative determination of information in a structure).
Since evolution depends on the semantic aspect of information,
there is no contradiction with the second law of thermodynamics,
which is about the structural aspect of matter (i.e., the syntac-
tic aspect of information).
The origin of life is the origin of biological information. The
origin of syntactic information relates to the prebiotic syn-
thesis of biological macromolecules. The origin of semantic
information relates to the self-organization of macromolecules.
In the balance between law and chance, only the general direction
of evolution is determined by natural law: the detailed path is
mainly determined by chance. Natural law entails biological
structures, but does not specify which biological structures.
Jackendoff Ray: SEMANTIC INTERPRETATION IN GENERATIVE GRAMMAR
(MIT Press, 1972)
One of the milestone works in government and binding theory.
The author shows that theta roles determine to some extent the
wellformedness of anaphoric relations. Theta roles form a hierar-
chy and binding must respect such hierarchy by placing the
antecedent of an anaphor higher on the hierarchy than the anaphor
itself.
Jackendoff Ray: X'SYNTAX (MIT Press, 1977)(MIT Press, 1972)
A monumental study of the phrase structure of the english
language in the light of Chomsky's X-bar theory.
Jackendoff Ray: SEMANTICS AND COGNITION (MIT Press, 1983)
Jackendoff develops conceptual structures to explain language, in
a fashion similar to Fodor's mentalese.
The structure of meaning ought to be pursued on the same first
principles as phonology and syntax.
Meaning of verbs can be reduced to a few spacetime primitives,
such as motion and location.
The "extended standard theory" enhances Chomsky's standard theory
by using interpretation rules to extract the meaning of a sen-
tence. Such rules apply to the intermediate syntactic structures
used in the derivation of the phonetic representation.
Jackendoff Ray: CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE COMPUTATIONAL MIND (MIT
Press, 1987)
Jackendoff believes in a hierarchy of levels of mental represen-
tation.
The book resumes Jackendoff's claim that phonology and syntax are
key to the structure of meaning, then extends the framework
developed for language to vision and music (hinting at a possible
unification with Marr's theory of vision).
Each cognitive function exists at different levels of interpreta-
tions and cognitive functions generally interact at intermediary
levels.
Jackndoff refines and extends Fodor's idea of the modularity of
the mind.
Consciousness arises from a level of representation which is
intermediate between the sense-data and the form of thought.
Jackendoff Ray: SEMANTIC STRUCTURES (MIT Press, 1990)
Jackendoff's conceptual semantics is applied to lexical and syn-
tactic expressions in English. Jackendoff proposes a formalism
for describing lexical semantic facts and expressing semantic
generalizations. He employs multi-dimensional representations
analogous to those found in phonology.
Jackendoff Ray: LANGUAGES OF THE MIND (MIT Press, 1992)
This collection of papers summarizes Jackendoff's formal theory
on the nature of language and a modular approach to "mental ana-
tomy", and applies the same concepts to learning and common sense
reasoning.
There is a tight relationship between vision and language. A lex-
ical item contains the stereotipical image of the object or con-
cept. Knowing the meaning of a word implies knowing how the
object or concept looks like.
Jackendoff Ray: PATTERNS IN THE MIND (Harvester Wheatsheaf,
1993)
Following Chomsky, Jackendoff thinks that the human brain con-
tains innate linguistic knowledge and that the same argument can
be extended to all facets of human experience: all experience is
constructed by unconscious genetically determined principles that
operate in the brain.
The experience of spoken language is constructed by the hearer's
mental grammar: speech per se is only a meaningless sound wave,
only a hearer equipped with the proper device can make sense of
it.
These same conclusions can be applied to thought itself, i.e. to
the task of building concepts. Concepts are constructed by using
some innate, genetically determined, machinery, a sort of
"universal grammar of concepts". Language is but one aspect of a
broader characteristic of the human brain.
Jackson Frank: CONDITIONALS (Basil Blackwell, 1987)
A collection of articles by David Lewis, Robert Stalnaker, Grice
and Frank Jackson on the subject of conditionals. A theory of
conditionals must offer an account of the truth conditions of a
conditional (under which conditions "if A then B" is true or
false, or acceptable to some degree). The traditional view that a
conditional is true if and only if the antecedent is false or the
consequent is true is too simplicistic and allows conditionals
such as "if Jones lives in London, then he lives in Scotland" to
be true (if he does not live in London or lives in Scotland) when
it is obviously senseless.
Stalnaker and Lewis solve some of the problems of (subjective)
conditionals ("if it were that A then it would be that B") by
using possible-world semantics. Lewis also reviews Ernest Adams'
thesis that the assertability of (indicative) conditionals ("if A
then B") is measured by the conditional probability of the conse-
quent given the antecedent.
Jackson Frank: PERCEPTION (Cambridge University Press, 1977)
The immediate objects of perception are mental. To perceive an
object is to be in a perceptual state as a causal result of the
action of that object.
On epiphenomenal qualia Jackson proposed a famous thought
experiement: a blind neurophysiologist that knows everything of
how the brain perceives colors still cannot know what it feels
like to see a color.
Color is not a property of material things. Sense-data are not
material, they are mental.
Jauregui Jose: THE EMOTIONAL COMPUTER (Blackwell, 1995)
This is the english translation of 1990's "El Ordenador Cere-
bral".
Jauregi, like Wilson, views sociology as a branch of biology.
The same emotional system controls social, sexual and individual
behavior. Such emotional system originates from the neural
organization of the brain: emotions are rational and predictable
events. Jauregi believes that the brain is a computer, but intro-
duced the novelty of emotions as the direct product of that
computer's processing activity. It is emotions, not reason, that
directs and informs the daily actions of individuals. Jauregi
deals with humans that feel pleasure and pain rather than with
abstract problem solvers.
Jauregi begins by separating the brain and the self: the brain is
aware of what is going on in the digestive system of the body,
but will inform the self only when some correction/action is
necessary. Normally, an individual is not aware of her digestive
processes. Her brain is always informed, though. The communica-
tion channel between the brain and the self is made of emotions.
The brain can tune the importance of the message by controlling
the intensity of the emotions. Far from being an irrational pro-
cess, the emotional life is mathematically calculated to achieve
exactly the level of response needed. Feelings are subjective
and inaccessible, but they also are objective and precise.
The self has no idea of the detailed process that was going on in
the body and of the reason why that process must be corrected.
The brain's emotional system, on the other hand, is a sophisti-
cated and complex information-processing system. The brain is a
computer programmed to inform the self (through emotions) of what
must be done to preserve her body and her society. It is through
emotions that the brain informs the self of every single detail
in the body that is relevant for survival. There almost is no
instant without an emotion that tells the individual to do some-
thing rather than something else. "For human beings the reality
that ultimately matters is the reality of their feelings".
The self keeps a level of freedom: while it cannot suppress the
(emotional) messages it receives from the brain, it can disobey
them. The brain may increase the intensity of the message as the
self disobeys it a painful conflict may arise. The brain and the
self are not only separate, but they may fight each other.
Only the self can be conscious and feel, but the brain has con-
trol of both consciousness and feelings.
If we view the brain as a computer, the hardware is made of the
neural organization. There are two types of software, though:
bionatural (knowledge about the natural world) and biocultural
(such as a language or a religion). A program has three main
components: the sensory, the mental and the emotional systems.
Any sensory input can be translated automatically by the brain
into a mental (idea) or emotional (feeling) message; and vicev-
ersa. Biocultural and bionatural programs exhert emotional con-
trol over the body.
Jauregi distinguishes five systems of communication: the natural
system (the sender is a natural thing, such as a tree), the cul-
tural system (the sender is culture, something created by
humans), the somatic system (the sender is the individual's own
body), the imaginary system (the sender is imagination) and the
social system (the sender is another individual). The human
brain is genetically equipped to receive and understand all five
kinds of messages. What ultimately matters is the emotional
translations of sensory inputs.
Jaynes Julian: THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF
THE BICAMERAL MIND (Houghton Mifflin, 1977)
Jaynes makes a number of interesting points about consciousness.
Consciousness is not necessary for concepts, learning, reason or
even thinking. Awareness of an action tends to follow, not pre-
cede, the action. Awareness of an action bears little or no
influence on the outcome. Before one utters a sentence, one is
not conscious of being about to utter those specific words.
Consciousness is an operation rather than a thing. It is an
operation of analogy that transforms things of the real world
into meanings in a metaphorical space. Consciousness is a
metaphor-generated model of the world. Consciousness is based on
language, therefore it appeared after the emergence of language.
By reviewing historical documents of past civilizations, Jaynes
tries to identify when and how consciousness was born. Causes
include the advent of writing, the loss of belief in gods, epics,
and natural selection itself.
Jaynes thinks that some social institutions and religions,
psychological phenomena such as hypnosis and schizophrenia, and
artistic practices such as poetry and music are vestiges of an
earlier stage of human consciousness.
Jeanerrod Marc: THE COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE OF ACTION (Blackwell,
1996)
A survey of findings on the representations and processing that
lead to action, from neurophysiological data to the role of men-
tal imagery.
Johnson-Laird Philip: HUMAN AND MACHINE THINKING (Lawrence Erl-
baum, 1993)
A theory of deduction, induction and creation.
Johnson-Laird Philip: THINKING (Cambridge Univ Press, 1977)
A collection of articles that reviews the study of thinking in
the aftermath of the conceptual revolution that forced the tran-
sition from behaviorism to information-processing. Contributions
range from philosophy (Popper, Kuhn) to artificial intelligence
(Minsky, Schank).
Johnson-Laird Philip: MENTAL MODELS (Harvard Univ Press, 1983)
Johnson-Laird's representational theory assumes that mind
represents and processes models of the world. The mind solves
problems without any need to use logical reasoning. A linguistic
representation such as Fodor's is not necessary.
A sentence is a procedure to build, modify, extend a mental
model. The mental model created by a discourse exhibits a struc-
ture that corresponds directly to the structure of the world
described by the discourse.
To perform an inference on a problem the mind needs to build the
situation described by its premises. Such mental model simplifies
reality and allows the mind to find an "adequate" solution.
Johnson-Laird draws on several phenomena to prove the psychologi-
cal inadequacy of a mental logic. People often make mistakes
with deductive inference because it is not a natural way of
thinking. The natural way is to construct mental models of the
premises: a model of discourse has a structure that corresponds
directly to the structure of the state of affairs that the
discourse describes. How can children acquire inferential capa-
bilities before they have any inferential capabilities? Children
solve problems by building mental models that are more and more
complex.
Johnson-Laird admits three types of representation: "proposi-
tions" (which represent the world through sequences of symbols),
"mental models" (which are structurally analogous to the world)
and "images" (which are perceptive correlates of models).
Images are ways to approach models. They represent the perceiv-
able features of the corresponding objects in the real world.
Models, images and propositions are functionally and structurally
different.
Linguistic expressions are first transformed into propositional
representations. The semantics of the mental language then
creates correspondences between propositional representations and
mental models, i.e. propositional representations are interpreted
in mental models.
Turning to meaning and model-theoretic semantics, Johnson-Laird
proposes that a mental model is a single representative sample
from the set of models satisfying the assertion. Semantic proper-
ties of expressions are emergent properties of the truth condi-
tions. Johnson-Laird's procedural semantics assumes that there
are procedures that construct models on the basis of the meaning
of expressions.
Johnson-Laird believes that consciousness is computable. The mind
contains a high-level operating system and a hierarchy of paral-
lel processors. Conscious mind is due to a serial process of
symbolic manipulation that occurs at the higher level of the
hierarchy of processors (in the operating system), while uncons-
cious mind is due to a parallel process of distributed symbolic
representation. Emotions are non-symbolic signals, caused by
cognitive interpretations of the situation, that propagate within
the hierarchy.
Johnson-Laird Philip: THE COMPUTER AND THE MIND (Harvard Univ
Press, 1988)
An introduction to the themes and methods of cognitive science,
with a review of porduction and connectionist architectures.
Speech, vision and language are devoted long chapters. Johnson-
Laird also introduces his theory of mental models and resumes his
theory of consciousness and emotions.
Johnson-Laird Philip & Byrne Ruth: DEDUCTION (Lawrence Erlbaum,
1991)
The authors advance a comprehensive theory to explain all the
main varieties of deduction: propositional reasoning (that uses
the connectives "and", "or" and "not"), relational reasoning
(that depends on relations between entities), quantificational
reasoning (that uses quantifiers such as "any" and "some"). And
justify it with a variety of psychological experiments.
In order to understand discourse, humans construct an internal
representation of the state of affairs that is described in that
discourse. These mental models have the same structure as human
conceptions of the situations they represent. Deduction does not
depend on formal rules of inference but rather on a search for
alternative models of the premises that would refute a putative
conclusion. Central to the theory is the principle that people
use models that make explicit as little information as possible.
The theory also make sense of how people deal with conditionals.
The theory explains phenomena such as: that modus ponens ("if p
then q" and "p" then "q") is easier than modus tollens ("if p
then q" and "not q" then "not p").
Josephson John & Josephson Susan: ABDUCTIVE INFERENCE (Cambridge
University Press, 1993)
Abduction (inference to the best explanation, i.e. building the
hypothesis that best accounts for the data) is ubiquitous in
ordinary life as well as in scientific theory formation. The
book presents a dynasty of systems that explored abduction.
Intelligence is viewed as a cooperative community of knowledge-
based specialists (performing "generic tasks"). Knowledge arises
from experience by processes of abductive inference.
Jouvet Michel: LE SOMMEIL ET LE REVE (Jacob, 1992)
Jouvet was the first to localize the trigger zone for REM sleep
and dreaming in the brain stem. In this book he provides a neuro-
biological and psychological analysis of sleep and dreaming.
According to his findings, a dream is the vehicle employed by an
organism to cancel or archive the day's experiences on the basis
of a genetic program. Dreaming is a process that absorbs a lot of
energy.
This theory would also solve the dualism between hereditary and
acquired features. An hereditary component is activated daily to
decide how new data must be acquired.
Laird John, Rosenbloom Paul & Newell Allen: UNIVERSAL SUBGOALING
AND CHUNKING (Kluwer Academics, 1986)
The book describes in detail an architecture (SOAR) for general
intelligence. The universal weak method is an organizational
framework whereby knowledge determines the weak methods employed
to solve the problem, i.e. knowledge controls the behavior of
the rational agent. Universal subgoaling is a scheme whereby
goals can be created automatically to deal with the difficulties
that the rational agent encounters during problem solving.
The engine of the architecture is driven by production rules that
fire in parallel and represent task-dependent knowledge. The
architecture maintains a context which is made of four slots:
goal, problem space, state and operator. A fixed set of produc-
tion rules determines which objects have to become current, i.e.
fill those slots. In other words, they determine the strategic
choices to be made after each round of parallel processing.
A model of practice is developed based on the concept of chunk-
ing, which is meant to produce the power law of practice that
characterizes the improvements in human performance during prac-
tice at a given skill. Rosenbloom describes the XAPS3 system,
which was designed to model goal hierarchies and chunking. Each
task has a goal hierarchy. When a goal is successfully completed,
a chunk that represent the results of the task is created. In the
next instance of the goal, the system will not need to fully pro-
cess it as the chunk already contains the solution. The process
of chunking proceeds bottom-up in the goal hierarchy. The
process of chunking eventually leads to a chunk for the top-level
goal for every situation that it can encounter.
Lakoff George: METAPHORS WE LIVE BY (Chicago Univ Press, 1980)
Once metaphor is defined as the process of experiencing something
in terms of something else, metaphor turns out to be pervasive,
and not only in language but also in action and thought.
The human conceptual system is fundamentally metaphorical in
nature. Most concepts are understood in terms of other concepts.
There is a continuum that extends between subcategorization (a
category "is" another category in the sense that a category
belongs to another category) and metaphor (a category "is"
another category in the metaphorical sense).
Metaphors are used to partially structure daily concepts. They
are not random, but rather form a coherent system that allows
humans to conceptualize their experience. Metaphors create simi-
larities.
Lakoff defines three types of metaphor: "orientational" (in which
we use our experience with spatial orientation), "ontological"
(in which we use our experience with physical objects), "struc-
tural" (in which natural types are used to define other con-
cepts). Each metaphor can be reduced to a more primitive meta-
phor.
Conceptual metaphors transport properties from structures of the
physical world to non-physical structures. Language was probably
created to deal only with physical objects, and later extended to
non-physical objects by means of metaphors. The human conceptual
system is shaped by positive feedback from the environment.
Lakoff uses a theory of categories that draws from Wittgenstein's
family resemblance, Eleanor Rosch's prototype-based categoriza-
tion and Zadeh's fuzziness.
Language comprehension always consists in comprehending something
in terms of another. All our concepts are of metaphorical and are
based on our physical experience.
In accordance with Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf, language
reflects the conceptual system of the speaker.
Metonymy differs from metaphor in that metaphor is a way to con-
ceive something in terms of another thing, whereas metonymy is a
way to use something to stand for something else (i.e., it also
has a referential function).
Objective truth does not exist. Truth is a function of under-
standing, i.e. a function of an individual's conceptual system,
i.e. a function of coherence with such a system.
Ritual is viewed as a crucial process in preserving and propagat-
ing cultural metaphors.
Lakoff George: WOMEN, FIRE AND DANGEROUS THINGS (Univ of Chicago
Press, 1987)
Categorization is the main way that humans make sense of their
world. The traditional view that categories are defined by com-
mon properties of their members is being replaced by Rosch's
theory of prototypes. Lakoff's "experientialism" assumes that
thought is embodied (grows out of bodily experience), is imagina-
tive (capable of employing metaphor, metonymy and imagery to go
beyond the literal representation of reality), is holistic (i.e.,
is not atomistic), has an ecological structure (is more than just
symbol manipulation).
Lakoff reviews studies on categories (Wittgenstein, Berlin, Bar-
salou, Kay, Rosch, Tversky) and summarizes the state of the art:
categories are organized in a taxonomic hierarchy and categories
in the middle are the most basic. Knowledge is mainly organized
at the basic level and is organized around part-whole divisions.
Lakoff claims that linguistic categories are of the same type as
other categories.
In order to deal with categories, one needs cognitive models of
four kinds: propositional models (which specify elements, their
properties and relations among them); image-schematic models
(which specify schematic images); metaphoric models (which map
from a model in one domain to a model in another domain); and
metonymic models (which map an element of a model to another).
The structure of thought is characterized by such cognitive
models. Categories have properties that are determined by the
bodily nature of the categorizer and that may be the result of
imaginative processes (metaphor, metonymy, imagery). Thought
makes use of symbolic structures which are meaningful to begin
with. Language is characterized by symbolic models that pair
linguistic information with models in the conceptual system.
Categorization is implemented by "idealized cognitive models"
that provide the general principles on how to organize knowledge.
Lakoff George: MORE THAN COOL REASON (University of Chicago
Press, 1989)
While studying poetic metaphors, Lakoff emphasizes that metaphor
is not only a matter of words, but a matter of thought, that
metaphor is central to our understanding of the world and the
self. Poetry is simply the art of extending metaphors and there-
fore the mind's power of grasping concepts.
Langton Christopher: ARTIFICIAL LIFE (Addison-Wesley, 1989)
Proceedings of the first A-life workshop at the Santa Fe` Insti-
tute.
In Langton's own theory, living beings and cellular automata have
in common the transfer and conservation of information. Living
organisms use information, besides matter and energy, in order to
grow and reproduce. In living systems the manipulation of infor-
mation prevails over the manipulation of energy.
Life depends on a balance of information: too little information
is not enough to produce life, too much can actually be too dif-
ficult to deal with. Life is due to a reasonable amount of infor-
mation that can move and be stored. Life happens at the edge of
chaos.
Complexity is an inherent property of life. And life is a pro-
perty of the organization of matter.
In order to build artificial life Langton defines a "generalized
genotype" as the set of low-level rules serving as the genetic
blueprint and the "generalized phenotype" as the structure that
is created from those instructions.
Langton Christopher: ARTIFICIAL LIFE II (Addison-Wesley, 1992)
Proceedings of the second A-life workshop at the Santa Fe` Insti-
tute.
Langton Christopher: ARTIFICIAL LIFE (MIT Press, 1995)
A collection of articles by various authors originally published
in the Artificial Life journal.
Larson Richard & Segal Gabriel: KNOWLEGDE OF MEANING (MIT Press,
1995)
An introduction to truth-theoretic semantics for natural
languages, viewed as part of cognitive psychology. Unlike most
semantic studies, which are based on Montague's semantics, this
one is from Davidson's perspective.
Lashley Karl Spencer: BRAIN MECHANISMS AND INTELLIGENCE (Dover,
1963)
This 1929 study set the standard for cognitive neurophysiology
and psychology. The 1963 reissue comes with a preface by Donald
Hebb that puts Lashley's achievements in perspective.
In Lashley's mnemonic distribution model each mnemonic function
is not localized in a specific point of the mind, but distributed
over the entire mind.
Later Lashley also noted how the dualism between mind and brain
resembles the one between waves and particles. A memory in the
brain behaves like a wave in an electromagnetic field.
Laszlo Ervin: INTRODUCTION TO SYSTEMS PHILOSOPHY (Gordon &
Breach, 1972)
Von Bertalanffy's general systems theory lends itself to a
natural wedding of scientific information and philosophic mean-
ing. General systems theory consists in the exploration of
"wholes", which are characterized by such holistic properties as
hierarchy, stability, teleology. Laszlo advocates a return from
analytic to synthetic philosophy.
Laszlo starts by offering his own take at a "theory of natural
systems" (i.e., a theory of the invariants of organized complex-
ity). At the center of his theory is the concept of "ordered
whole" (a non-summative system subject to a set of constraints
that define its structure and allow it to achieve adaptive self-
stabilization). Laszlo then adopts a variant of Ashby's principle
of self-organization, according to which any isolated natural
system subject to constant forces is inevitably inhabited by
"organisms" that tend towards stationary or quasi-stationary
non-equilibrium states. In Laszlo's view the combination of
internal constraints and external forces yields adaptive self-
organization. Natural systems evolve towards increasingly adapted
states, corresponding to increasing complexity (or negative
entropy).
Natural systems sharing an environment tend to organize in
hierarchies. The set of such systems tends to become itself a
system, its subsystems providing the constraints for the new sys-
tem.
Laszlo then offers rigorous foundations to deal with the emer-
gence of order at the atomic ("micro-cybernetics"), organismic
("bio-cybernetics") and social levels ("socio-cybernetics").
A systemic view also permits a formal analysis of a particular
class of natural systems, that of cognitive systems. The mind,
just like any other natural system, exhibits an holistic charac-
ter, adaptive self-organization, and hierarchies, and can be stu-
died with the same tools ("psycho-cybernetics").
The basic building blocks of reality are therefore natural sys-
tems.
Lavine Robert: NEUROPHYSIOLOGY (Collamore, 1983)
A comprehensive introduction to the neuron, the structure of the
brain, senses and to higher cognitive functions.
Layzer David: COSMOGENESIS (Oxford University Press, 1990)
Inspired by cosmology, Layzer deals with the paradox of creation
of order by saying that, if entropy in the environment increases
more than the entropy of the system, then the system becomes more
ordered in that environment. Entropy and order can both increase
at the same time without violating the second law of thermodynam-
ics. This phenomenon can be described as: if the expansion of a
set of systems is so quick that a number of states which are
occupied increases less rapidly than the number of states which
are available (i.e., the phase space gets bigger), entropy and
order can increase at the same time.
Unlike Prigogine, Layzer does not need to assume that an energy
flow from the environment of a system can cause a local decrease
in entropy within the system. Entropy and order increase
together because the realization of structure lags behind the
expansion of phase space.
Drawing from Shannon's theory of communication, David Layzer
defines information as the difference between potential entropy
(the largest possible value that the entropy can assume under the
specified conditions) and actual entropy. As actual information
increases, actual entropy decreases (information is "negative"
entropy in Shannon's theory). Potential entropy is also poten-
tial information: maximum entropy equals maximum information.
In biological and astronomical systems the potential entropy may
increase with time, thereby creating information if it increases
faster than actual entropy. In particular, both contraction and
expansion of the universe from an initial state of thermodynamic
equilibrium would generate potential entropy. Genetic variation
always generates entropy as information flows unidirectionally
from the genotype to the phenotype: when it makes the distribu-
tion of genotypes more uniform in a genotype space, it generates
entropy and destroys information; when it allows the population
to populate previously uninhabited regions fo the genotype space,
it generates potential entropy without necessarily generating
entropy.
Layzer then proves that several evolutionary processes (mutation,
differential reproduction, gene duplication, differentiation and
integration) generate biological information. Natural itself
selection always increases the proportion of relatively fit vari-
ants in a population and decreases the proportion of relatively
unfit variants, therefore natural selection always generates bio-
logical order.
Layzer thinks that biological evolution is not driven by the
growth of entropy (as a counterweight to the loss of order), it
is not (directly or indirectly) driven by the second law of ther-
modynamics. That law presupposes certain initial and boundary
conditions that are not present in biological systems.
Influenced by Schmalhausen's theory that evolution is a process
of hierarchical construction, Layzer thinks that there is a sin-
gle universal law governing processes that dissipate order, but
order is also generated by several hierarchically linked
processes (including cosmic expansion and biological evolution).
Lazarus Richard: EMOTION AND ADAPTATION (Oxford Univ Press,
1991)
Lazarus argues that the final goal of our emotions is to help the
organism survive in the environment. His theory is a "relational"
theory of emotions, in that it assumes that emotions arise from
an adaptational situation of the individual in the environment.
Emotions are reactions to attempted goals ("motivational princi-
ple"), emotions represent reactions to evaluations of relation-
ships with the environment. Stable relationships between the
individual and the environment result in recurrent emotional pat-
terns in the individual. Emotion is due to an evaluation of the
potential consequences of a situation.
The development of the self is a fundamental event for the emo-
tional life. Emotions depend on an organizing principle in which
the self is distinguished from the non-self, because only after
that principle has become established can evaluations of benefits
and harms be performed. Differentiation of self and other is a
fundamental property of living organisms (even plants use protein
discrimination mechanisms, and most organisms could not survive
without the ability to distinguish alien organisms).
An emotion is a process in four stages: anticipation, provoca-
tion, unfolding, outcome. Both biological and social variables
contribute to this process, and this explains why emotions change
through the various stages of life.
Each type of emotion can be defined by a relational meaning which
expresses the set of benefits and harms in a relationship between
individual and environment and is constructed by a process of
appraisal. Each type of emotion is distinguished by a pattern of
appraisal factors. The relational meaning is about the signifi-
cance of the event for the well-being of the individual. Emo-
tions express the personal meaning of an individual's experience.
Lazarus, unlike Zajonc, emphasizes cognition in the relationship
between emotion and cognition. After all, appraisal is the fun-
damental process for the occurrence of emotion.
Lazarus Richard & Lazarus Bernice: PASSION AND REASON (Oxford
Univ Press, 1994)
Lazarus reiterates his point that emotions are as rational as
anything can be in a language accessible to anybody.
Ledoux Joseph & William Hirst: MIND AND BRAIN (Cambridge Univ
Press, 1986)
A collection of articles on perception, attention, memory and
emotion that are organized as debates between psychologists and
neurobiologists.
Lehnert Wendy: STRATEGIES FOR NATURAL LANGUAGE LANGUAGE
(Lawrence Erlbaum, 1982)
A practical textbook on natural language processing in the con-
ceptual dependency tradition. Each chapter is written by an
authority of the field. Includes Steven Small's word-based
parser, Gerald DeJong's FRUMP system, Wilensky's PAM system,
Wendy Lehnert's plot units, Schank's MOPs. Jerry Hobbs writes
about coherence in discourse. Yorick Wilks discusses procedural
semantics.
Leiser David & Gillieron Christiane: COGNITIVE SCIENCE AND
GENETIC EPISTEMOLOGY (Plenum Press, 1989)
The book analyzes the relations between procedures and structures
from a Piagetian perspective and attempts to bridge a gap between
cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence.
Lenat Douglas: BUILDING LARGE KNOWLEDGE-BASED SYSTEMS (Addison-
Wesley, 1990)
The book describes the CYC system, whose goal is to represent
common knowledge (i.e., develop a global ontology) and perform
common-sense reasoning (i.e., employ a set of reasoning methods
as a set of first principles) on large knowledge bases. to
explain
Units of knowledge for common sense are units of "reality by con-
sensus": all the things we know and we assume everybody knows;
i.e., all that is implicit in our acts of communication. A prin-
ciple of economy of communications states the need to minimize
the acts of communication and maximize the information that is
transmitted. World regularities belong to this tacitly accepted
knowledge.
Lenneberg Eric: BIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS OF LANGUAGE (Wiley, 1967)
Language should be studied as an aspect of man's biological
nature, in the same manner as anatomy. Chomsky's universal gram-
mar is to be viewed as an underlying biological framework for the
growth of language. Genetic predisposition, growth and develop-
ment apply to language faculties just like to any other organ of
the body. Behavior in general is an integral part of an
organism's constitution.
Language and speech are represented in the cortex and also seem
to be hosted in subcortical and midbrain structures. The large
size of the human brain is probably a direct consequence of
language functions. Children start learning language when struc-
tural changes in the brain make it possible.
Animals organize the sensory world through a process of categori-
zation. They exhibit propensities for responding to categories
of stimuli. In humans this process of categorization becomes
"naming", the ability to assign a name to a category. Even in
humans the process of categorization is still a process whose
function is to enable similar response to different stimuli. The
meaning-bearing elements of language do not stand for specific
objects, but for the act of categorization. The basic cognitive
mechanisms of semantics are processes of categorization
LePore Ernest: NEW DIRECTIONS IN SEMANTICS (Academic Press,
1987)
A collection of articles on semantics, including Hintikka's
game-theoretical semantics, Gilbert Harman's conceptual role
semantics (the ultimate source of meaning is the functional role
that symbols play in thought) and dual aspect semantics (which
contain one theory relating language to the world and one theory
relating language to the mind).
Lesniewski Stanislaw: COLLECTED WORKS (Kluwer Academic, 1991)
In the Thirties the polish logician Lesniewski noted that in any
language containing its semantics logical laws cannot hold con-
sistently. A contradiction can be avoided only by reconstructing
the object language through hierarchical levels, or
metalanguages. This is similar to Russell's conclusion that some
hierarchy is necessary for a system to be coherent. Lesniewski
developed a hierarchy of categories (a grammar of semantic
categories). Lesniewski's system consists of three axiomatic
theories: protothetic (a calculus of equivalent propositional
functions, with a single axiom), ontology (a calculus of classes
in terms of a theory of nominal predication, with a single axiom)
and mereology (based on the part-whole relation, containing rules
to avoid paradoxes). Functorial categories can be generated from
a set of basic categories (the propositions defined by the single
axiom of protothetic and the nouns defined by the single axiom of
ontology) and are categories of functions from certain arguments
to certain values.
Levine Daniel: INTRODUCTION TO NEURAL AND COGNITIVE MODELING
(Lawrence Erlbaum, 1991)
A broad survey of cognitive science from a neuroscientific per-
spective. After a historical outline (McCulloch-Pitts neurons,
Hebb's law, Rosenblatt's perceptron, etc), Levine details algo-
rithms (and physiological justifications) for associative learn-
ing, competition, conditioning, categorization, representation.
All the main connectionist models are surveyed. The book pro-
vides a detailed, technical compendium of data and ideas in the
field.
Levinson Stephen: PRAGMATICS (Cambridge Univ Press, 1983)
An excellent and relatively accessible introduction to pragmat-
ics.
Levinson surveys the issues of pragmatics, defined essentially as
the relationship between language and context. Approaches to
indexicals or deixis (Fillmore, Lyons, Lakoff), implicatures
(Grice, Gazdar), presupposition (Stalnaker, Karttunen), speech
acts (Austin, Searle), and discourse analysis are dealt with at
length. This is the best introduction to the theories that
emerged during the late Seventies.
Levy Steven: ARTIFICIAL LIFE (Pantheon, 1992)
An introduction for the wider audience to the world of artificial
life. Includes history of the field (from Von Neumann to
viruses), biographies of its visionaries (Kauffman, Holland, Haw-
kins, Ray, Brooks) and simplified presentations of their
theories.
Lewin Roger: COMPLEXITY (Macmillan, 1992)
Complexity is presented as a discipline that can unify the laws
of physical, chemical, biological, social and economic phenomena
through the simple principle that all things in nature are driven
to organize themselves into patterns. The book, written in
conversational english, devotes much time to describing the pro-
tagonists of the field and relating interviews in a celebrity-
centered fashion.
Lewis Clarence Irving: SYMBOLIC LOGIC (Mineola, 1932)
In Lewis' modal logic a proposition is necessary if it is true in
every possible world, it is possible if it is true in at least
one possible world. "Necessity" and "possibility" are modal
operators, i.e. they operate on logical expressions just like
logical connectives. The two modal operators are dual (one can
be expressed in terms of the other), thereby reflecting the dual-
ism of the two corresponding quantificators (existential and
universal). A modal logic is built by adding a few axioms con-
taining the modal operators to the axioms of a non-modal logic.
Lewis David K.: COUNTERFACTUALS (Harvard Univ Press, 1973)
Lewis uses possible-world semantics in his theory of counterfac-
tuals. Lewis defines a pair of conditional operators ("if it
were the case that, then it would be the case that" and "if it
were the case that, then it might be the case that"), which can
be defined one in terms of the other. Counterfactuals are not
strict conditionals (material conditionals preceded by a neces-
sity operator), but rather "variably" strict conditionals (a
counterfactual is as strict as it must be to escape vacuity and
no stricter).
Lewis then defends possible worlds and claims that each possible
world is as "real" as ours.
Lewis also compares his theory to Stalnaker's own, which is also
based on possible worlds.
Lewis David K.: PHILOSOPHICAL PAPERS (Oxford Press, 1983)
The ultimate collection of Lewis' papers.
In "An argument for the identity theory" Lewis argues that a men-
tal state can be defined by a physical state, which is not neces-
sarily the same for all species, and by a "causal role", that
expresses behavior that such a state induces in the organism.
In "Radical interpretation" he contends that intentional ascrip-
tion (the task of redescribing the information of an individual
in intentional terms) is a kind of constraint-satisfaction prob-
lem: the correct intentional ascription is the one that provides
a best fit to the demands that the constraints impose. The prob-
lem of radical interpretation is tackled by identifying four
parts: the intentional system (e.g., a person); the system's
attitudes (beliefs and desires) as expressed in the observer's
language; the system's attitudes (beliefs and desires) as
expressed in the system's own language; and the system's mean-
ings.
The constraints are derived from six principles: the principle of
charity constrains the relation between a system and its beliefs
expressed in the observer's language (the system's beliefs are
somehow constrained by the observer's beliefs); the rationaliza-
tion principle constrains the relation between the beliefs
expressed in the observer's language and the system (the system
is a rational agent, his beliefs being what make sense for its
behavior); the principle of truthfulness constrains the relation
between the observer's beliefs and the system's meanings; the
principle of generativity constrains the meaning in that it
should assign truth conditions to the system's sentences in a
reasonable way; the manifestation principle constrains the rela-
tion between the system and its beliefs (they must be consistent
with its speech behavior); and the triangle principle constrains
the relation between the system's meaning, its beliefs and the
observer's beliefs.
Lewis David K.: ON THE PLURALITY OF WORLDS (Basil Blackwell,
1986)
Lewis advocates an indexical theory of actuality. Every possible
world is actual from its own point of view, and every possible
world is merely possible from the point of view of other worlds.
Worlds are never causally related to other worlds. The isolation
of possible worlds constitutes their being merely possible rela-
tive to each other.
A proposition is a function from possible worlds to truth-values.
Each world provides a truth value for a proposition.
Lewontin Richard: THE GENETIC BASIS OF EVOLUTIONARY CHANGE
(Columbia University Press, 1974)
It is not yet clear which percentage of evolutionary change is
due to natural selection and which is due to random events.
Modern evolutionary genetics stems from the merging of two tradi-
tions, the Darwinian and the Mendelian, both of which take varia-
tion as the crucial aspect of life. The Darwinian view can be
summarized as "evolution is the conversion of variation between
individuals into variation between populations and species in
time and space". The paradox is that Mendelian theory dictates
the frequencies of genotypes as the appropriate genetic descrip-
tion of a population, whereas variation is much more important.
"What we can measure is uninteresting and what we are interested
in is unmeasurable". Most theories of genetic variation in popu-
lations (allelic variation) are also theories of natural selec-
tion. Variation and selection turn out to be dual aspects of the
same problem.
Even worse is the situation with respect to "the origin of
species", i.e. theories of the genetic changes that occur in
species formation. Geographic isolation (or, better, ecological
divergence) is recognized as the preliminary stage, causing the
appearance of genetic differences sufficient to restrict severely
the genetic exchange with other populations (reproductive isola-
tion). The second stage occurs when isolated populations come
into contact and the third stage starts when the newly formed
species continue to develop independently.
Lewontin reviews evidence in favor of each theory. His conclu-
sion, in ragarding the genome as the uit of selection, is that
"context and interaction are of essence".
Lewontin Richard: HUMAN DIVERSITY (W.H.Freeman, 1981)
Each organism is the subject of continous development throughout
its life and such development is driven by mutually interacting
genes and environment. Genes per se cannot determine the pheno-
type, capacity or tendencies.
The organism is both the subject and the object of evolution.
Organisms construct environments that are the conditions for
their own further evolution and for the evolutions of nature
itself towards new environments