mspt at neuroprose on schemes of composition

[Robert Port]

Recently posted to neuroprose:  

  `Beyond Symbolic: Prolegomena to a Kama-Sutra of Compositionality'

 by Timothy van Gelder and Robert Port
   Cognitive Science Program, Indiana University, Bloomington, 
   Indiana, 47405   (tgelder at indiana.edu, port at indiana.edu)


Compositionality, in the sense intended here, refers to the way that a
complex representation is physically constructed of its parts.  Most
representations used in cognitive science exhibit variations of one
specific kind of compositionality, that which is exhibited by printed
sentences and LISP data structures.  There are, however, many other
kinds.  In this paper, we describe six important dimensions for
describing compositionality schemes: first, their TOKENS may be (1)
static or dynamic, (2) analog or digital, and (3) arbitrary or not.
Then, their COMBINATION may be (4) by concatenation or not, (5) static
or temporal (that is, in-time), and may involve (6) strict syntactic
conformity or not.  These dimensions define a huge space of possible
kinds of compositionality.  Many of these kinds may turn out to be
useful in modeling human cognition.  In our discussion, we highlight a
particular variety of compositionality employing what we call
`dynamic representations'.  These representations differ from
traditional `symbolic' representations along all six of the critical
dimensions.
    In general, we urge cognitive scientists to be more adventurous in
exploring the variety of exotic techniques that are available for
composing complex structures from simple ones.


The postscript file for this paper (17 pages including 3 figures) may be
obtained by ftp from the neuroprose archive at Ohio State University
maintained by the proud new father of Dylan Seth Pollack, named Jordan.
 The file is:	vangelder.kamasutra.Z

To pick it up, do:
  unix> ftp archive.cis.ohio-state.edu
 (login as user:'anonymous' using your e-mail address as the password)
   ftp> binary
   ftp> cd pub/neuroprose
   ftp> get vangelder.kamasutra.ps.Z
   ftp> quit
  unix>  vangelder.kamasutra.ps.Z
  unix>  uncompress vangelder.kamasutra.ps
  unix> lpr  vangelder.kamasutra.ps
(for a postscript printer)