Representational Issues in the Debate on the Standard Model of the Mind

TL;DR

This paper examines representational issues in cognitive architectures' declarative memory models, highlighting problems and proposing Conceptual Spaces as a promising framework to improve the Standard Model of the Mind.

Contribution

It analyzes current representational assumptions in cognitive architectures and suggests Conceptual Spaces as a novel approach to address existing problems.

Findings

Identifies key issues in current declarative memory models

Highlights differences among SOAR, ACT-R, and Sigma architectures

Proposes Conceptual Spaces as a potential solution

Abstract

In this paper we discuss some of the issues concerning the Memory and Content aspects in the recent debate on the identification of a Standard Model of the Mind (Laird, Lebiere, and Rosenbloom in press). In particular, we focus on the representational models concerning the Declarative Memories of current Cognitive Architectures (CAs). In doing so we outline some of the main problems affecting the current CAs and suggest that the Conceptual Spaces, a representational framework developed by Gardenfors, is worth-considering to address such problems. Finally, we briefly analyze the alternative representational assumptions employed in the three CAs constituting the current baseline for the Standard Model (i.e. SOAR, ACT-R and Sigma). In doing so, we point out the respective differences and discuss their implications in the light of the analyzed problems.