Unified theory of cognition

Unified theories of cognition is a book, written by Allen Newell in 1987. Newell argues for the need of a set of general assumptions for cognitive models, that account for all of cognition, a unified theory of cognition, UTC.

A UTC must explain how intelligent organisms flexibly react to stimuli from the environment, how they exhibit goal-directed behaviour and choose goals rationally, how they represent knowledge (or which symbols they use), and learning.

Newells argument for a UTC was, that the mind is a single system. He also claimed, the cognitive models devised are vastly underdetermined by experimental data. Therefore, a UTC would provide constraints on the modeling process, resulting in more principled and informative models. A UTC could also be applied as theoretical constructs to a much wider range of phenomena. When a phenomenon cannot plausibly be made to conform to the UTC's mechanisms, it could indicate a UTC is wrong.

Newell understands the term cognition to include perception and motor control.

The cognitive architecture SOAR is an implementations of a UTC.

Further Readings

• Newell, A. (1994).Unified Theories of Cognition, Harvard University Press; Reprint edition, ISBN 0674921011.
• Newell, A. (1973). "You can’t play 20 questions with nature and win: Projective comments on the papers of this symposium". In W. G. Chase (ed.), Visual Information Processing. New York: Academic.

See also

• SOAR
• cognitive architecture

External links

• What is a unified theory of cognition?
• You can't play 20 questions with nature and win