Cognitive Processing

, Volume 13, Issue 4, pp 361–369 | Cite as

Perceptual simulations can be as expressive as first-order logic

  • Hiroyuki Uchida
  • Nicholas L. Cassimatis
  • J. R. Scally
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Abstract

Theories asserting that human reasoning is based on perceptual simulations often suppose these simulations are of concrete individual objects and the specific relations that hold among them. However, much human knowledge involves assertions about which relations do not hold, generalities over large numbers of objects and conditional facts. Can simulation theories explain how the mind represents these forms of knowledge, or are they inferior in their expressive power to knowledge representation schemes based on logical formalisms designed specifically to deal with negative, conditional and quantificational knowledge? In this paper, we show how assertions about mental simulations can in fact straightforwardly express all the concepts that comprise first-order logic, including negation, conditionals and both universal and existential quantification. We also speculate on how to extend this approach to deal with probabilistic and more expressive logics.

Keywords

Perceptual simulation Reasoning Logic Expressive power 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Paul Bello, Selmer Bringsjord, Robyn Carston, Andy Clark, Catherine Wearing and the members of the Human-Level Intelligence Laboratory at RPI for discussions on this work and for comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The authors are also grateful to the editor and the anonymous reviewers whose comments on the earlier draft have helped improve the content and the presentation of the paper. This work was supported in part by grants from the Office of Naval Research (N000140910094), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550-10-1-0389) and MURI award (N000140911029).

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Copyright information

© Marta Olivetti Belardinelli and Springer-Verlag 2012

Authors and Affiliations

  • Hiroyuki Uchida
    • 1
  • Nicholas L. Cassimatis
    • 1
  • J. R. Scally
    • 1
  1. 1.Cognitive Science DepartmentRensselaer Polytechnic InstituteTroyUSA

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