Hugging Face Trending Papers
6d ago

Mathematics for and by human cognition: A resource-rational search for bottlenecks in problem-solving

The paper argues that human cognitive constraints, often seen as limits, actually drive mathematical progress by creating bottlenecks that force the development of new abstractions. It proposes a resource‑rational theory of mathematical abstraction, showing how these bottlenecks can lead to novel formalisms with broader applications. The authors illustrate this with historical examples and suggest that incorporating similar constraints into machine learning could aid in discovering useful mathematical abstractions.

arXiv AI
Sep 18

The syntax and semantics of goals

The article discusses goals as cognitive states that combine with world knowledge to guide purposeful behavior, emphasizing their compositional nature and relation to rational action. It draws parallels between goal representations and the syntax‑semantics interface in linguistics and logic, highlighting questions about expressivity, design, and efficiency of different goal languages. The authors synthesize research on goal representation properties, propose a broader design space, and suggest that distinguishing form and meaning can clarify assumptions, inform cognition‑motivation interactions, and identify variation axes in goal conceptions.

By David M. Abel, Mark K. Ho