The notion of a "mental representation" is, arguably, in the first instance a theoretical construct of cognitive science. As such, it is a basic concept of the Computational Theory of Mind, according to which cognitive states and processes are constituted by the occurrence, transformation and storage (in the mind/brain) of information-bearing structures (representations) of one kind or another.

Commentators expressed a wide variety of views on whether there is a basic capacity limit of 3 to 5 chunks and, among those who believe in it, about why it occurs. In this response, I conclude that the capacity limit is real and that the concept is strengthened by additional evidence offered by a number of commentators. I consider various arguments why the limit occurs and try to organize these arguments into a conceptual framework or “metatheory” of storage capacity (...) limits meant to be useful in future research to settle the issue. I suggest that principles of memory representation determine what parts of the representation will be most prominent but that limits of attention (or of a memory store that includes only items that have been most recently attended) determine the 3- to 5-chunk capacity limit. (shrink)

I introduce a novel framework for theorizing about representations in cognitive science, which relies on two theses. First, representations are, primarily, signals for information transmission, not as a side effect of other functions these signals may have, but for its own sake. Second, these signals aim at efficiently trading-off three cognitive budgets: rate (or transmission and storage costs), distortion (or faithfulness of the transmitted information), and computational complexity of coders. The way to provide empirical evidence that some entity is (...) a representation---and hence that it is involved in information transmission for the sake of information transmission, as per the first thesis---is to show that it present adaptations for efficient information transmission---as per the second thesis. The kinds of properties that cognitive scientists routinely associate with paradigmatic instances of representations are generated by adaptations for rate-distortion-complexity efficiency. (shrink)

Computational dialectics is concerned with the formal representation of argument and dispute. The field emerged from developments in philosophy, artificial intelligence and legal theory. Its goal is to suggestalgorithms, procedures and protocols to investigate the tenability of logical claims, on the basis of information in the form of rules and cases. Currently, the field slowlyconverges to the opinion that dispute is the most fair and effective way to investigate claims. The basic assumption of this field is that dispute is (...) the most fair and effective way to investigate claims. The definition of a formal dispute varies throughout the literature, butis considered not to vary within one and the same logical system. In this paper it is shown that parts of the definition of a dispute may change within one logical system.To this end, the notion of partial protocol specification (PPS) is introduced. A PPS is a part of the definition of the protocol. A modification to the protocol, in the form of a PPS, can be put forward, disputed, established and incorporated as aneffective `point of order. The paper demonstrates the existence of self-undermining PPSs, it discusses the relevance of PPSs for dialectical models of legal argument and concludes with a description of how PPSs can be built into existing argumentation systems. (shrink)

Implicit and explicit attitudes manifest themselves as distinct and partly dissociable behavioral dispositions. It is natural to think that these differences reflect differing underlying representations. The present article argues that this may be a mistake. Although non-verbal and verbal measures of attitudes often dissociate, this may be because the two types of outcome-measure are differentially impacted by other factors, not because they are tapping into distinct kinds of representation or distinct storage systems. I arrive at this view through (...) closer consideration than is usual of the mechanisms and processes that underlie overt behavior. (shrink)

The distinction between regular and irregular morphology is not clear-cut enough to suggest two distinct modular structures. Instead, regularity is tied directly to the type frequency of a pattern. Evidence from experiments as well as from naturally occurring sound change suggests that even regular forms have lexical storage. Finally, the development trajectory entailed by the dual-processing model is much more complex than that entailed by associative network models.

In attempting to integrate the authors' proposed model with results from analogous human event-related potential (ERP) research, we found difficulties with: (1) its apparent disregard for supraordinate representations at posterior multimodal association cortices, (2) its failure to address contextual task effects, and (3) its strict architectural dichotomy between memory storage and control functions.

Natural language processing techniques contribute more and more in analyzing legal documents recently, which supports the implementation of laws and rules using computers. Previous approaches in representing a legal sentence often based on logical patterns that illustrate the relations between concepts in the sentence, often consist of multiple words. Those representations cause the lack of semantic information at the word level. In our work, we aim to tackle such shortcomings by representing legal texts in the form of abstract meaning (...) class='Hi'>representation, a graph-based semantic representation that gains lots of polarity in NLP community recently. We present our study in AMR Parsing and AMR-to-text Generation specifically for legal domain. We also introduce JCivilCode, a human-annotated legal AMR dataset which was created and verified by a group of linguistic and legal experts. We conduct an empirical evaluation of various approaches in parsing and generating AMR on our own dataset and show the current challenges. Based on our observation, we propose our domain adaptation method applying in the training phase and decoding phase of a neural AMR-to-text generation model. Our method improves the quality of text generated from AMR graph compared to the baseline model. 2018; and “Legal Text Generation fromMeaning Representation”, published in the 32nd International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems 2019.). (shrink)

Modeling law search and retrieval as prediction problems has recently emerged as a predominant approach in law intelligence. Focusing on the law article retrieval task, we present a deep learning framework named LamBERTa, which is designed for civil-law codes, and specifically trained on the Italian civil code. To our knowledge, this is the first study proposing an advanced approach to law article prediction for the Italian legal system based on a BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) learning framework, which has (...) recently attracted increased attention among deep learning approaches, showing outstanding effectiveness in several natural language processing and learning tasks. We define LamBERTa models by fine-tuning an Italian pre-trained BERT on the Italian civil code or its portions, for law article retrieval as a classification task. One key aspect of our LamBERTa framework is that we conceived it to address an extreme classification scenario, which is characterized by a high number of classes, the few-shot learning problem, and the lack of test query benchmarks for Italian legal prediction tasks. To solve such issues, we define different methods for the unsupervised labeling of the law articles, which can in principle be applied to any law article code system. We provide insights into the explainability and interpretability of our LamBERTa models, and we present an extensive experimental analysis over query sets of different type, for single-label as well as multi-label evaluation tasks. Empirical evidence has shown the effectiveness of LamBERTa, and also its superiority against widely used deep-learning text classifiers and a few-shot learner conceived for an attribute-aware prediction task. (shrink)

This paper puts forward a general framework for thought about human information processing. It is intended to avoid some of the problems of pipeline or stage models of function. At the same time it avoids the snare of supposing a welter of indefinitely many separate processes. The approach is not particularly original, but rather represents the common elements or presuppositions in a number of modern theories. These presuppositions are not usually explicit, however, and making them so reduces the danger of (...) slipping back into earlier modes of thought.The key point is to distinguish between persisting representations and the processes that translate one representation into another. Various classes or groups of persisting representations can be distinguished by the experimental treatments that interfere with them. In particular, there now seem to be several kinds of short-term or temporary storage, different from each other as well as from longterm memory; the translating processes also have several different modes or kinds. A particularly important aspect of the current position is that a model of this general type no longer requires some external agent to direct and control long sequences of behaviour. (shrink)

This article is an exercise in computational jurisprudence. It seems clear thatthe field of AI and Law should draw upon the insights of legal philosophers,whenever possible. But can the computational perspective offer anything inreturn? I will explore this question by focusing on the concept of OWNERSHIP,which has been debated in the jurisprudential literature for centuries. Althoughthe intellectual currents here flow mostly in one direction – from legal philosophy to AI – I will show that there are also some insights to (...) be gained from a computational analysis of the OWNERSHIP relation. In particular, the article suggests a computational explanation for the emergence of abstract property rights, divorced from concrete material objects. (shrink)

Dispositionalism about belief has had a recent resurgence. In this paper we critically evaluate a popular dispositionalist program pursued by Eric Schwitzgebel. Then we present an alternative: a psychofunctional, representational theory of belief. This theory of belief has two main pillars: that beliefs are relations to structured mental representations, and that the relations are determined by the generalizations under which beliefs are acquired, stored, and changed. We end by describing some of the generalizations regarding belief acquisition, storage, and change.

The approach to images as cultural documents of collective memory and instruments of social shaping builds a central theoretical component of cultural theories since its establishment as a critical discipline. Prominent thinkers of cultural studies and art history defined images as symbolic representations and as carriers and storages of affective, cultural expression. The anthology covers this broad understanding of images as carriers of archival value, texts, and complex language; it elaborates on the fundamental role of images as a driving force (...) of ideologies and cultural evolution. The book also includes Charles S. Peirce's full manuscript On the Logic of drawing History from Ancient Documents especially from Testimonies, a genuine treatise on applied science as a universal method of incorporating knowledge across disciplines. (shrink)

Abstract pictures are distinguished from depictive pictures in that no visibly recognizable objects can be seen in them. Abstract pictures are thus non-depictive and non-figurative. The question still remains, however, if abstract pictures can be representations. The aim of this chapter is to defend the view that abstract pictures can be representational and therefore have content or subject matter. It will be shown that there are at least three ways to understand what the subject matter of abstract pictures can be: (...) it is either abstracted from figurative content, it is spiritual or the subject matter is produced. (shrink)

Rips et al. consider whether representations of individual objects or analog magnitudes are building blocks for the concept natural number. We argue for a third core capacity – the ability to bind representations of individuals into sets. However, even with this addition to the list of starting materials, we agree that a significant acquisition story is needed to capture natural number.

Electoral representation is a cornerstone of contemporary democracy. Democracy today is widely interpreted to mean that the people governs itself through electing officials of government. But while...

Storage operators are λ-terms which simulate call-by-value in call-by-name for a given set of terms. Krivine's storage operator theorem shows that any term of type ¬D → ¬D*, where D* is the Gödel translation of D, is a storage operator for the terms of type D when D is a data-type or a formula with only positive second order quantifiers. We prove that a new semantical version of Krivine's theorem is valid for every types. This also gives (...) a simpler proof of Krivine's theorem using the properties of data-types. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a unified account of cinematic representation as primary depiction. On this account, cinematic representation is a distinctive form of depiction, unique in its capacity to depict temporal properties. I then explore the consequences of this account for the much-contested question of whether cinema is an independent representational art form. I show that it is, and that Scruton’s argument to the contrary relies on an erroneous conception of cinematic representation. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's (...) this? (shrink)

Advocates of the computational theory of mind claim that the mind is a computer whose operations can be implemented by various computational systems. According to these philosophers, the mind is multiply realisable because—as they claim—thinking involves the manipulation of syntactically structured mental representations. Since syntactically structured representations can be made of different kinds of material while performing the same calculation, mental processes can also be implemented by different kinds of material. From this perspective, consciousness plays a minor role in mental (...) activity. However, contemporary neuroscience provides experimental evidence suggesting that mental representations necessarily involve consciousness. Consciousness does not only enable individuals to become aware of their own thoughts, it also constantly changes the causal properties of these thoughts. In light of these empirical studies, mental representations appear to be intrinsically dependent on consciousness. This discovery represents an obstacle to any attempt to construct an artificial mind. (shrink)

The never ending growth of digital information and the availability of low-cost storage facilities and networks capacity is leading users towards moving their data to remote storage resources. Since users’ data often holds identity-related information, several privacy issues arise when data can be stored in untrusted domains. In addition digital identity management is becoming extremely complicated due to the identity replicas proliferation necessary to get authentication in different domains. GMail and Amazon Web Services, for instance, are two examples (...) of online services adopted by million of users throughout the world which hold huge amounts of sensitive users data. State-of-the-art encryption tools for large-scale distributed infrastructures allow users to encrypt content locally before storing it on a remote untrusted repository. This approach can experience performance drawbacks, when very large data-sets must be encrypted/decrypted on a single machine. The proposed approach extends the existing solutions by providing two additional features: (1) the encryption can also be delegated to a pool of remote trusted computing resources, and (2) the definition of the encryption context which drives the tool to select the best strategy to process the data. The performance benchmarks are based on the results of tests carried out both on a local workstation and on the Grid INFN Laboratory for Dissemination Activities (GILDA) testbed. (shrink)

The study of neuronal specialisation in different cognitive and perceptual domains is important for our understanding of the human brain, its typical and atypical development, and the evolutionary precursors of cognition. Central to this understanding is the issue of numerical representation, and the question of whether numbers are represented in an abstract fashion. Here we discuss and challenge the claim that numerical representation is abstract. We discuss the principles of cortical organisation with special reference to number and also (...) discuss methodological and theoretical limitations that apply to numerical cognition and also to the field of cognitive neuroscience in general. We argue that numerical representation is primarily non-abstract and is supported by different neuronal populations residing in the parietal cortex. (shrink)

This book is not a conventional introduction to the philosophy of mind, nor is it a contribution to the physicalist/ dualist debate. Instead The Representational Theory of Mind demonstrates that we can construct physicalist theories of important aspects of our mental life. Its aim is to explain and defend a physicalist theory of intelligence in two parts: the first six chapters consist of an exposition, elaboration and defence of human sentience (the functionalist theory of mind), and the second part considers (...) rivals and objections to this theory. Kim Sterelny aims to introduce people to this area of philosophy by exemplifying it, to show that philosophical and empirical investigations can be synthesized to the benefit of both. --From publisher's description. (shrink)

ABSTRACT As is well-known, a classical representation theorem of the theory of cylindric algebras is: A ε IGwsa if and only if A ε SNrαCAα+ε. The part “only if” is trivial. Regarding to the other part “A ε SNrαCAα+ε then A ε IGwsα“ the following question arises: is it possible to replace the class CA in the hypothesis A ε SNrαCAα+ε by a larger class so that the theorem still holds. Such a larger class Kα β is defined. The (...) class Kα β is the best possible, in a sense to be made precise. Representability of set algebras is investigated, too. (shrink)

Information is widely perceived as essential to the study of communication and representation; still, theorists working on these topics often take themselves not to be centrally concerned with "Shannon information", as it is often put, but with some other, sometimes called "semantic" or "nonnatural",kind of information. This perception is wrong. Shannon's theory of information is the only one we need. -/- I intend to make good on this last assertion by canvassing a fully (Shannon) informational answer to the metasemantic (...) question of what makes something a representation, for a certain important family of cases. This answer and the accompanying theory, which represents a significant departure from the broadly Dretskean philosophical mainstream, will show how a number of threads in the literature on naturalistic metasemantics, aimed at describing the purportedly non-informational ingredients in representation, actually belong in the same coherent, purely information-theoretic picture. (shrink)

Refuting the assumption that art is a representational practice, Bolt's striking argument engages with the work of Heidegger, Deleuze and Guattari, C.S.Peirce and Judith Butler to argue for a performative relationship between art and artist. Drawing on themes as diverse as the work of Cezanne and of Francis Bacon, the transubstantiation of the Catholic sacrament and Wilde's novel The Picture of Dorian Gray , she challenges the metaphor of light as enlightenment, reconceiving this revealing light as the blinding glare of (...) the Australian sun, and suggests that too much light may in fact reveal nothing. Finally she asks: how does an embodied practice fare within the culture of conceptual art? (shrink)

Miller (1956) summarized evidence that people can remember about seven chunks in short-term memory (STM) tasks. However, that number was meant more as a rough estimate and a rhetorical device than as a real capacity limit. Others have since suggested that there is a more precise capacity limit, but that it is only three to five chunks. The present target article brings together a wide variety of data on capacity limits suggesting that the smaller capacity limit is real. Capacity limits (...) will be useful in analyses of information processing only if the boundary conditions for observing them can be carefully described. Four basic conditions in which chunks can be identified and capacity limits can accordingly be observed are: (1) when information overload limits chunks to individual stimulus items, (2) when other steps are taken specifically to block the recoding of stimulus items into larger chunks, (3) in performance discontinuities caused by the capacity limit, and (4) in various indirect effects of the capacity limit. Under these conditions, rehearsal and long-term memory cannot be used to combine stimulus items into chunks of an unknown size; nor can storage mechanisms that are not capacity-limited, such as sensory memory, allow the capacity-limited storage mechanism to be refilled during recall. A single, central capacity limit averaging about four chunks is implicated along with other, noncapacity-limited sources. The pure STM capacity limit expressed in chunks is distinguished from compound STM limits obtained when the number of separately held chunks is unclear. Reasons why pure capacity estimates fall within a narrow range are discussed and a capacity limit for the focus of attention is proposed. Key Words: attention; enumeration; information chunks; memory capacity; processing capacity; processing channels; serial recall; short-term memory; storage capacity; verbal recall; working memory capacity. (shrink)

There is considerable evidence that the hippocampal system contributes both to (1) the temporary maintenance of memories and to (2) the processing of a particular type of memory representation. The findings on amnesia suggest that these two distinguishing features of hippocampal memory processing are orthogonal. Together with anatomical and physiological data, the neuropsychological findings support a model of cortico-hippocampal interactions in which the temporal and representational properties of hippocampal memory processing are mediated separately. We propose that neocortical association areas (...) maintain shortterm memories for specific items and events prior to hippocampal processing as well as providing the final repositories of long-term memory. The parahippocampal region supports intermediate-term storage of individual items, and the hippocampal formation itself mediates an organization of memories according to relevant relationships among items. Hippocampal-cortical interactions produce (i) strong and persistent memories for events, including their constituent elements and the relationships among them, and (ii) a capacity to express memories flexibly across a wide range of circumstances. (shrink)

Alvin Goldman (1993) presents three arguments against the psychological plausibility of representational functionalism (RF) as a theory of how subjects self-ascribe mental predicates. Goldman appears to construe RF as an account of attitude type self-ascription. His “combinatorial explosion” argument, however, proves devastating only to an implausible construal of RF as an account of attitude content self-ascription.

Representation is integral to the functioning and legitimacy of modern government. Yet political theorists have often been reluctant to engage directly with questions of representation, and empirical political scientists have closed down such questions by making representation synonymous with congruence. Conceptually unproblematic and normatively inert for some, representation has been deemed impossible to pin down analytically and to defend normatively by others. But this is changing. Political theorists are now turning to political representation as a (...) subject worthy of theoretical investigation in its own right. In their effort to rework the theory of political representation, they are also hoping to impact how representation is assessed and studied empirically. This volume gathers together chapters by key contributors to what amounts to a "representative turn" in political theory. Their approaches and emphases are diverse, but taken together they represent a compelling and original attempt at re-conceptualizing political representation and critically assessing the main theoretical and political implications following from this, namely for how we conceive and assess representative democracy. Each contributor is invited to look back and ahead on the transformations to democratic self-government introduced by the theory and practice of political representation. Representation and democracy: outright conflict, uneasy cohabitation, or reciprocal constitutiveness? For those who think democracy would be better without representation, this volume is a must-read: it will question their assumptions, while also exploring some of the reasons for their discomfort. Reclaiming Representation is essential reading for scholars and graduate researchers committed to staying on top of new developments in the field. (shrink)