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(3) Kinematics of cognition are language-like: It is possible to describe the trajectory
of knowledge states or informational states created during cognition using a
vocabulary very much like English or some regimented logic-mathematical
version of English.
(4) Learning can be added later: The kinematics of cognition and the domain
knowledge needed for cognition can be studied separately from the study of
concept learning, psychological development, and evolutionary change.
(5) Uniform architecture: There is a single architecture underlying virtually all
cognition.
All these questions are cognitive problems critical to AI research, which should
be discussed from the perspective of fundamental theories of Cognitive Science.
These questions have become the watershed for different academic schools of AI
research, as different academic schools usually have different answers to them.
1.3 Hierarchical Model of Thought
Thought is the reflection of the objective realities, i.e. the conscious, indirect
and general reflection in a conscious human brain on the essential attributes and
internal laws about the objective realities. Currently, we are in a stage
emphasizing self knowledge and self recognition with the development of the
Cognitive Science. In 1984, Professor Xuesen Qian advocated the Noetic Science
research (Qian, 1986).
Human thought mainly involves perceptual thought, imagery thought, abstract
thought and inspirational thought. Perceptual thought is the primary level of
thought. When people begin to understand the world, perceptual materials are
simply organized to form self-consistent information, thus only phenomena are
understood. The form of thought based on this process is perceptual thought.
Perceptual thought about the surface phenomena of all kinds of things can be
obtained in practice via direct contact with the objective environment through
sensories such as eyes, ears, noses, tongues and bodies, thus its sources and
contents are objective and substantial.
Imagery thought mainly relies on generalization through methods of
typification and the introduction of imagery materials in thinking. It is common
to all higher organisms. Imagery thought corresponds to the connection theories
of neural mechanisms. AI topics related to imagery thought include Pattern
Recognition, Image Processing, Visual Information Processing, etc.
