Related papers: The Scope and Limits of Simulation in Cognitive Mo…
Probabilistic mental simulation is thought to play a key role in human reasoning, planning, and prediction, yet the demands of simulation in complex environments exceed realistic human capacity limits. A theory with growing evidence is that…
Human physical reasoning relies on internal "body" representations - coarse, volumetric approximations that capture an object's extent and support intuitive predictions about motion and physics. While psychophysical evidence suggests humans…
Monte Carlo simulation is an essential component of experimental particle physics in all the phases of its life-cycle: the investigation of the physics reach of detector concepts, the design of facilities and detectors, the development and…
Robots interacting with the physical world plan with models of physics. We advocate that robots interacting with people need to plan with models of cognition. This writeup summarizes the insights we have gained in integrating computational…
Physical reasoning is a core aspect of intelligence in animals and humans. A central question is what model should be used as a basis for reasoning. Existing work considered models ranging from intuitive physics and physical simulators to…
As we discussed in Part I of this topic, there is a clear desire to model and comprehend human behavior. Given the popular presupposition of human reasoning as the standard for learning and decision-making, there have been significant…
Cognitive theories for reasoning are about understanding how humans come to conclusions from a set of premises. Starting from hypothetical thoughts, we are interested which are the implications behind basic everyday language and how do we…
Excellent computer simulations are done for a purpose. The most valid purposes are to explore uncharted territory, to resolve a well-posed scientific or technical question, or to make a design choice. Stand-alone modeling can serve the…
Reasoning has long been understood as a pathway between stages of understanding. Proper reasoning leads to understanding of a given subject. This reasoning was conceptualized as a process of understanding in a particular way, i.e.,…
Monte Carlo simulations are based on the manipulation of random numbers to evaluate probable outcomes, with applicability in a variety of different fields. By assigning probabilities, which can be determined a priori, to various events, it…
The machinery of the human brain -- analog, probabilistic, embodied -- can be characterized computationally, but what machinery confers what computational powers? Any such system can be abstractly cast in terms of two computational…
The study and understanding of human behaviour is relevant to computer science, artificial intelligence, neural computation, cognitive science, philosophy, psychology, and several other areas. Presupposing cognition as basis of behaviour,…
We briefly introduce a new promising field of applications of statistical physics, opinion dynamics, where the systems at study are social groups or communities and the atoms/spins are the individuals (or agents) belonging to such groups.…
We consider problems in which robots conspire to present a view of the world that differs from reality. The inquiry is motivated by the problem of validating robot behavior physically despite there being a discrepancy between the robots we…
Computational modeling helps neuroscientists to integrate and explain experimental data obtained through neurophysiological and anatomical studies, thus providing a mechanism by which we can better understand and predict the principles of…
Modeling and simulation are recognized as important aspects of the scientific method for more than 70 years but its adoption in biology has been slow. Debates on its representativeness, usefulness, and whether the effort spent on such…
Humans can easily describe, imagine, and, crucially, predict a wide variety of behaviors of liquids--splashing, squirting, gushing, sloshing, soaking, dripping, draining, trickling, pooling, and pouring--despite tremendous variability in…
Mechanical reasoning is a hallmark of human intelligence, defined by its ubiquitous yet irreplaceable role in human activities ranging from routine tasks to civil engineering. Embedding machines with mechanical reasoning is therefore an…
Socially assistive robots provide physical and mental assistance for humans via cognitive human-machine interactions. These robots should sustain long-term engaging interactions with humans in a similar way humans interact with each other.…
There are inherent limits in classical computation for it to serve as an adequate model of human cognition. In particular, non-commutativity, while ubiquitous in physics and psychology, cannot be sufficiently handled. We propose that we…