Meaning and Mental Representations PDF Download

Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253337245
Category : Semantics
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
..". an excellent collection... " -- Journal of Language Social Psychology An important collection of original essays by well-known scholars debating the questions of logical versus psychologically-based interpretations of language.

Author: Stuart Hall
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780761954323
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
This broad-ranging text offers a comprehensive outline of how visual images, language and discourse work as `systems of representation'. Individual chapters explore: representation as a signifying practice in a rich diversity of social contexts and institutional sites; the use of photography in the construction of national identity and culture; other cultures in ethnographic museums; fantasies of the racialized `Other' in popular media, film and image; the construction of masculine identities in discourses of consumer culture and advertising; and the gendering of narratives in television soap operas.

Author: Fred Keijzer
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262263327
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Keijzer provides a reconstruction of cognitive science's implicit representational explanation of behavior, which he calls Agent Theory (AT), the use of mind as a subpersonal mechanism of behavior. Representation is a fundamental concept within cognitive science. Most often, representations are interpreted as mental representations, theoretical entities that are the bearers of meaning and the source of intentionality. This approach views representation as the internal reflection of external circumstances—that is, as the end station of sensory processes that translate the environmental state of affairs into a set of mental representations. Fred Keijzer stresses, however, that representations are also the starting point for a set of processes that lead back to the external environment. They are used as theoretical components within an explanation of a person's outwardly visible behavior. In this book Keijzer investigates the usefulness of representation for behavioral explanation, irrespective of mental issues. Viewing representation solely in terms of its contribution to explaining behavior allows him to build a serious case for a nonrepresentational approach and to evaluate representation's role in cognitive science. Keijzer provides a reconstruction of cognitive science's implicit representational explanation of behavior, which he calls Agent Theory (AT). AT is the use of mind as a subpersonal mechanism of behavior. He proposes an alternative to AT called Behavioral Systems Theory (BST), which explains behavior as the result of interactions between an organism and its environment. Keijzer compares BST to related work in the biology of cognition, in the building of animal-like robots, and in dynamical systems theory. Most important, he extends BST to the difficult issue of anticipatory behavior through an analogy between behavior and morphogenesis, the process by which a multicellular body develops.

Author: Kenneth D. Forbus
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262038943
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
An argument that qualitative representations—symbolic representations that carve continuous phenomena into meaningful units—are central to human cognition. In this book, Kenneth Forbus proposes that qualitative representations hold the key to one of the deepest mysteries of cognitive science: how we reason and learn about the continuous phenomena surrounding us. Forbus argues that qualitative representations—symbolic representations that carve continuous phenomena into meaningful units—are central to human cognition. Qualitative representations provide a basis for commonsense reasoning, because they enable practical reasoning with very little data; this makes qualitative representations a useful component of natural language semantics. Qualitative representations also provide a foundation for expert reasoning in science and engineering by making explicit the broad categories of things that might happen and enabling causal models that help guide the application of more quantitative knowledge as needed. Qualitative representations are important for creating more human-like artificial intelligence systems with capabilities for spatial reasoning, vision, question answering, and understanding natural language. Forbus discusses, among other topics, basic ideas of knowledge representation and reasoning; qualitative process theory; qualitative simulation and reasoning about change; compositional modeling; qualitative spatial reasoning; and learning and conceptual change. His argument is notable both for presenting an approach to qualitative reasoning in which analogical reasoning and learning play crucial roles and for marshaling a wide variety of evidence, including the performance of AI systems. Cognitive scientists will find Forbus's account of qualitative representations illuminating; AI scientists will value Forbus's new approach to qualitative representations and the overview he offers.

Author: Jerry A. Fodor
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262560275
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
These essays will shape discussion in the philosophy of psychology for years to come. A collection of eleven essays dealing with methodological and empirical issues in cognitive science and in the philosophy of mind, Representations convincingly connects philosophical speculation to concrete empirical research.One of the outstanding methodological issues dealt with is the status of functionalism considered as an alternative to behavioristic and physicalistic accounts. of mental states and properties. The other issue is the status of reductionism considered as an account of the relation between the psychological and physical sciences. The first chapters present the main lines of argument which have made functionalism the currently favored philosophical approach to ontology of the mental.The outlines of a psychology of propositional attitudes which emerges from consideration of current developments in cognitive science are contained in the remaining essays.Not all of these essays are re-presentations. The new introductory essay seeks to present an overview and gives some detailed proposals about the contribution that functionalism makes to the solutions of problems about intentionality. The concluding essay, also not previously published, is a sustained examination of the relation between theories about the structure of concepts and theories about how they are learned. Finally, the essay "Three cheers for propositional attitudes", a critical examination of some of D. C. Dennett's ideas, has been completely rewritten for this volume. A Bradford Book.

Author: Julie Barnes
Publisher: MAA Press
ISBN: 9780883855911
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Book Description
Have you ever seen a mathematical object that was so intriguing that anyone, regardless of mathematical background, could appreciate its aesthetic beauty? If so, did you stop to color it? Now is your chance. Explore the beauty of mathematics in this collection if intricate pictures related to complex-valued functions. Any of these images could pass for designs found in some of the many coloring books for adults seen in stores today and are displayed here for you to color. While looking at the coloring pages, you can read about the author's quest to find interesting images. Their tale includes expeditions on the complex plane, work with families of complex functions, visits to Julia sets, unexpected results from a typo, random explorations, and a final send-off from a well-known cartoon character. Grab your colored pencils and enjoy coloring these functions. There are no incorrect ways to color, and consequently, there are no answers in the back of the book!

Author: Barry Simon
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 0821804537
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Barry Simon, I.B.M. Professor of Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology, is the author of several books, including such classics as ""Methods of Mathematical Physics"" (with M. Reed) and ""Functional Integration and Quantum Physics"". This new book, based on courses given at Princeton, Caltech, ETH-Zurich, and other universities, is an introductory textbook on representation theory.According to the author, 'Two facets distinguish my approach. First, this book is relatively elementary, and second, while the bulk of the books on the subject is written from the point of view of an algebraist or a geometer, this book is written with an analytical flavor'. The exposition in the book centers around the study of representation of certain concrete classes of groups, including permutation groups and compact semi simple Lie groups. It culminates in the complete proof of the Weyl character formula for representations of compact Lie groups and the Frobenius formula for characters of permutation groups. Extremely well tailored both for a one-year course in representation theory and for independent study, this book is an excellent introduction to the subject which, according to the author, is unique in having 'so much innate beauty so close to the surface'.

Author: A. A. Kirillov
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3642662439
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
The translator of a mathematical work faces a task that is at once fascinating and frustrating. He has the opportunity of reading closely the work of a master mathematician. He has the duty of retaining as far as possible the flavor and spirit of the original, at the same time rendering it into a readable and idiomatic form of the language into which the translation is made. All of this is challenging. At the same time, the translator should never forget that he is not a creator, but only a mirror. His own viewpoints, his own preferences, should never lead him into altering the original, even with the best intentions. Only an occasional translator's note is permitted. The undersigned is grateful for the opportunity of translating Professor Kirillov's fine book on group representations, and hopes that it will bring to the English-reading mathematical public as much instruction and interest as it has brought to the translator. Deviations from the Russian text have been rigorously avoided, except for a number of corrections kindly supplied by Professor Kirillov. Misprints and an occasional solecism have been tacitly taken care of. The trans lation is in all essential respects faithful to the original Russian. The translator records his gratitude to Linda Sax, who typed the entire translation, to Laura Larsson, who prepared the bibliography (considerably modified from the original), and to Betty Underhill, who rendered essential assistance.

Author: Alexander Kirillov Jr.
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 1470423073
Category : Algebraic geometry -- Cycles and subschemes -- Parametrization (Chow and Hilbert schemes)
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
This book is an introduction to the theory of quiver representations and quiver varieties, starting with basic definitions and ending with Nakajima's work on quiver varieties and the geometric realization of Kac–Moody Lie algebras. The first part of the book is devoted to the classical theory of quivers of finite type. Here the exposition is mostly self-contained and all important proofs are presented in detail. The second part contains the more recent topics of quiver theory that are related to quivers of infinite type: Coxeter functor, tame and wild quivers, McKay correspondence, and representations of Euclidean quivers. In the third part, topics related to geometric aspects of quiver theory are discussed, such as quiver varieties, Hilbert schemes, and the geometric realization of Kac–Moody algebras. Here some of the more technical proofs are omitted; instead only the statements and some ideas of the proofs are given, and the reader is referred to original papers for details. The exposition in the book requires only a basic knowledge of algebraic geometry, differential geometry, and the theory of Lie groups and Lie algebras. Some sections use the language of derived categories; however, the use of this language is reduced to a minimum. The many examples make the book accessible to graduate students who want to learn about quivers, their representations, and their relations to algebraic geometry and Lie algebras.

Author: Harm Derksen
Publisher: American Mathematical Soc.
ISBN: 1470425564
Category : Directed graphs
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
This book is an introduction to the representation theory of quivers and finite dimensional algebras. It gives a thorough and modern treatment of the algebraic approach based on Auslander-Reiten theory as well as the approach based on geometric invariant theory. The material in the opening chapters is developed starting slowly with topics such as homological algebra, Morita equivalence, and Gabriel's theorem. Next, the book presents Auslander-Reiten theory, including almost split sequences and the Auslander-Reiten transform, and gives a proof of Kac's generalization of Gabriel's theorem. Once this basic material is established, the book goes on with developing the geometric invariant theory of quiver representations. The book features the exposition of the saturation theorem for semi-invariants of quiver representations and its application to Littlewood-Richardson coefficients. In the final chapters, the book exposes tilting modules, exceptional sequences and a connection to cluster categories. The book is suitable for a graduate course in quiver representations and has numerous exercises and examples throughout the text. The book will also be of use to experts in such areas as representation theory, invariant theory and algebraic geometry, who want to learn about applications of quiver representations to their fields.