A System-Theoretic Analysis of Focused Cognition,and its Implications for the Emergence of Self and

Abstract: A unifying framework for the description and analysis of focused cognitive processes is presented, based on the system-theoretic notions of forward and backward synthesis.  Forward synthesis iteratively creates combinations, seeded from an initial focus-set of mental items; backward synthesis takes a set of mental items and tries to create them iteratively via forward-synthesis.  The utility of a dynamic involving alternating forward and backward synthesis is discussed.  The phenomenal self and the shifting focus of attention, two critical aspects of cognitive systems, are hypothesized to emerge as strange attractors of this alternating dynamic.  In a companion paper, this framework is used to provide a systematic typology for the various cognitive agents in the Novamente AI system, including probabilistic inference, evolutionary learning, attention allocation, credit assignment, concept creation and others. 

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Ben Goertzel is founder and CEO of two computer science firms Novamente and Biomind, and of the non-profit Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute (agiri.org).