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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Paul Thagard of the University of Waterloo gives his talk "The Aha! Experience: Creativity Through Emergent Binding in Neural Networks.
ABSTRACT:
Many kinds of creativity result from combination of mental representations. This talk provides a computational account of how creative thinking can arise from combining neural patterns into ones that are potentially novel and useful. We defend the hypothesis that such combinations arise from mechanisms that bind together neural activity by a process of convolution, a mathematical operation that interweaves structures. We describe computer simulations that show the feasibility of using convolution to produce emergent patterns of neural activity that can support the cognitive and emotional processes underlying human creativity.
BIO:
Paul Thagard is Professor of Philosophy, with cross appointment to Psychology and Computer Science, Director of the Cognitive Science Program, and University Research Chair at the University of Waterloo. He is a graduate of the Universities of Saskatchewan, Cambridge, Toronto (Ph. D. in philosophy) and Michigan (M.S. in computer science). He is the author of several books including "Hot Thought: Mechanisms and Applications of Emotional Cognition (MIT Press, 2006)", "Coherence in Thought and Action (MIT Press, 2000)", "Mind: Introduction to Cognitive Science (MIT Press, 1996; second edition, 2005)", "Conceptual Revolutions (Princeton University Press, 1992)"; and co-author of "Mental Leaps: Analogy in Creative Thought (MIT Press, 1995)" and "Induction: Processes of Inference, Learning, and Discovery (MIT Press, 1986)". He is also editor of Philosophy of Psychology and Cognitive Science (Elsevier, 2007). A new book, "The Brain and the Meaning of Life", will be published in March, 2010, available from Princeton University Press. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Cognitive Science Society, and the Association for Psychological Science, and received a Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize.
Faculty Host: Ashok Goel, Design Intelligence Lab
Student Host: Swaroop Vattam, Design Intelligence Lab
