This paper illustrates cognitive modeling constructs designed to make learning by instruction more robust, including (1) flexible grounding of language to execution, (2) inference of implicit instruction knowledge, and (3) interactive clarification of instructions during both learning and execution.

As cognitive architectures move to account for increasingly complex real‐world tasks, one of the most pressing challenges involves understanding and modeling human multitasking. Although a number of existing models now perform multitasking in real‐world scenarios, these models typically employ customized executives that schedule tasks for the particular domain but do not generalize easily to other domains. This article outlines a general executive for the Adaptive Control of Thought–Rational (ACT–R) cognitive architecture that, given independent models of individual tasks, schedules and interleaves (...) the models' behavior into integrated multitasking behavior. To demonstrate the power of the proposed approach, the article describes an application to the domain of driving, showing how the general executive can interleave component subtasks of the driving task (namely, control and monitoring) and interleave driving with in‐vehicle secondary tasks (radio tuning and phone dialing). (shrink)

Allen Newell (1973) once observed that psychology researchers were playing “twenty questions with nature,” carving up human cognition into hundreds of individual phenomena but shying away from the difficult task of integrating these phenomena with unifying theories. We argue that research on cognitive control has followed a similar path, and that the best approach toward unifying theories of cognitive control is that proposed by Newell, namely developing theories in computational cognitive architectures. Threaded cognition, a recent theory developed within the ACT-R (...) cognitive architecture, offers promise as a unifying theory of cognitive control that addresses multitasking phenomena for both laboratory and applied task domains. (shrink)

Among the various questions on different subjects attributed to Albert the Great, and presumably disputed in Paris around the middle of the 13th century, we find one – handed down mainly under the title De quiditate et esse – dedicated to the presentation of some fundamental notions of metaphysics. This particular question deserves attention insofar as it represents a significant moment in the geneaology of the distinction between the notions of res a ratitudine and res a reor reris. A final (...) remark concerns the possible connection between Albert the Great and Henry of Ghent with respect to the transcendental primacy of res and the attempt not to reduce the consideration of metaphysics to actual being alone. (shrink)

Previous accounts of cognitive skill acquisition have demonstrated how procedural knowledge can be obtained and transformed over time into skilled task performance. This article focuses on a complementary aspect of skill acquisition, namely the integration and reuse of previously known component skills. The article posits that, in addition to mechanisms that proceduralize knowledge into more efficient forms, skill acquisition requires tight integration of newly acquired knowledge and previously learned knowledge. Skill acquisition also benefits from reuse of existing knowledge across disparate (...) task domains, relying on indexicals to reference and share necessary information across knowledge components. To demonstrate these ideas, the article proposes a computational model of skill acquisition from instructions focused on integration and reuse, and applies this model to account for behavior across seven task domains. (shrink)

This article describes the path‐mapping theory of how humans integrate analogical mapping and general problem solving. The theory posits that humans represent analogs with declarative roles, map analogs by lower‐level retrieval of analogous role paths, and coordinate mappings with higher‐level organizational knowledge. Implemented in the ACT‐R cognitive architecture, the path‐mapping theory enables models of analogical mapping behavior to incorporate and interface with other problem‐solving knowledge. Path‐mapping models thus can include task‐specific skills such as encoding analogs or generating responses, and can (...) make behavioral predictions at the level of real‐world metrics such as latency or correctness. We show that the path‐mapping theory can successfully account for the major phenomena addressed by previous theories of analogy. We also describe a path‐mapping model that can account for subjects' incremental eye‐movement and typing behavior in a story‐mapping task. We discuss extensions and implications of this work to other areas of analogy and problem‐solving research. (shrink)

The official documents of the Parisian Faculty of Arts (starting from the Statute of March 1255) show a close identification between the philosophical sciences and the corresponding textbooks: to learn a particular science means essentially to read certain, prescribed books. The case of theology seems to be different, however. In spite of the fact that the Bible served as a paradigm for the ‘textualization’ of all kinds of knowledge, and even of the whole world, it did not fit perfectly the (...) epistemological criteria which Aristotle’s Posterior analytics established as necessary for every science. Already in the second half of the 13thcentury, both Thomas Aquinas and Henry of Ghent tried to construct theology as a science, in the Aristotelean sense, by appealing respectively to the theory of the subalternation of the sciences and to the doctrine of the lumen medium. The different reactions to these two models by Godfrey of Fontaines, Durandus of Saint-Pourçain and Peter Auriol seem to indicate a process in which theology can constitute itself as a true science only through a broadening of its textual basis, outside the scope of Sacred Scripture. (shrink)

The philosophy of arithmetic of Wittgenstein's Tractatus is outlined and the central role played in it by the general notion of operation is pointed out. Following which, the language, the axioms and the rules of a formal theory of operations, extracted from the Tractatus, are presented and a theorem of interpretability of the equational fragment of Peano's Arithmetic into such a formal theory is proven.

A conjecture on the metaphysical nature of Tractatus objects is put forward and its interpretative adequacy is tested. The clarification of the true import of the metaphor of logical space and the recognition of the theoretical role played by Wittgenstein's explicit claim that the emptiness of logical space is conceivable enable us to account for the thesis that objects are the substance of the world. Once objects are identified with those universal abstract entities which are qualia, and complexes or states (...) of affairs with their concrete instances, some statements of the Tractatus become liable to a consistent reading: that objects are colourless ; that space, time and colour are forms of objects ; that Leibniz's Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles, though still holding for complexes, does not apply to objects . Lastly, it is shown how the interpretation of objects as qualia sheds a vivid light on the theme of the relation between objects and time. (shrink)

CAUSES AND REASONS: EXPLICATIVE MODELS IN NATURAL AND HUMAN SCIENCES Starting from Wittgenstein’s distinction between causes and reasons of an action, the paper presents two influential models in the methodology of explanation: the deductive‐nomological model elaborated by C. G. Hempel and the model based on Aristotle’s practical syllogism, in G. H. von Wright’s version. The controversy between methodological monism and methodological dualism, which has its roots in the opposition between explaining and understanding, is examined.

On the Exceptionality of Philosophy: Is There Discontinuity between Philosophy and Science? The article is devoted to a short presentation of the controversy between the meta-philosophical conception of the nature of philosophy and its relation with natural science known as exceptionalism, and the opposite anti-exceptionalist conception. The exceptionalist view is traced back to the linguistic turn and is illustrated by focusing on the early and intermediate Wittgenstein, Waismann and Schlick. Quine’s naturalism is identified as the background of the anti-exceptionalist view, (...) whose developments in the area of analytic metaphysics are taken as paradigmatic. Some issues concerning anti-exceptionalism are raised. (shrink)