When
Terry Horgan
Professor Emeritus, Philosophy
University of Arizona
The Frame Problem in Cognitive Science
Why It’s Still with Us, and Some Promising Resources for Addressing It
Abstract: The frame problem in cognitive science asks how human common-sense reasoning can, and often does, deploy large bodies of circumstantially pertinent background information both rapidly and in a holistically integrated way. In this talk I will explain why I regard this problem as very difficult. I will then suggest that the mathematics of high-dimensional dynamical systems, which figures importantly in neural-network models, offers promising resources for potentially addressing the problem. A dynamical-system based cognitive architecture can allow for large bodies of circumstantially pertinent background information to become automatically operational in common-sense cognition, without this information first becoming mentally represented (either consciously or unconsciously)—and with distinctive traces within conscious experience that I call “chromatic illumination.” I will discuss several familiar kinds of experience, including joke-getting, that plausibly exhibit rich aspects of chromatic illumination.