Second Order Isomorphism: A Reinterpretation and Its Implications in Brain and Cognitive Sciences - eScholarship

Second Order Isomorphism: A Reinterpretation and Its Implications in Brain and Cognitive Sciences Yoonsuck Choe (choe@tamu.edu) Department of Computer Science Texas AM below, just SC Mitchell 2001) or metaphorical (Narayanan 1999) functionality. 1 An im- portant observation advanced in this paper is that the function of active representations and relations are very similar to that of neurons, and specific circuits in the cortex and the thalamus can actually implement analogi- cal functions. Analogy is commonly attributed to higher cognitive faculties only, but it does not always have to be the case (Chalmers et al. 1992); it may be part of a larger set of human brain function including perception and motor function. I will discuss in the end how such an Analogy and metaphor are closely related in that they refer to similarities in relations and attributes although the relative degree in each may differ (Gentner 1989). World Brain representation relation B1 relation B2 B3 W1 representation Figure 1: SC coincidences in sensory events) (2) ar- rows from world to brain (B1; sensory transduction), (3) representations in the brain (B2; afferent connections), and (4) relation in the brain (B3; lateral connections). Of these, let us focus on what is available in our brain (B1– B3). If we take for granted the information our sensory transducers tell us, we can drop B1 from our discussion and focus on just B2 and B3. An implicit message in figure 1 is that two objects are represented, and some brain process then judges the rela- tionship between the two (the open arrow). Making this point more explicit, we can illustrate SC something has to per- form the comparison function, but this creates an ever increasing levels in a hierarchical way (i.e. higher areas