Concept combination, emergence and abduction

Abstract

Consider the concept combination “pet human”. Human subjects readily ascribe the property “slave” to this combination when it is not an associate ascribed to “pet”, or “human” in isolation. Such emergent associations sometimes have a creative character and cognitive science is largely silent about how we produce them. Departing from a three-level model of cognition, this presentation will explore concept combinations, and will argue emergent associations are a result of abductive reasoning within conceptual space, that is, below the symbolic level of cognition. A tensor based approach is used to model concept combinations allowing such combinations to be conceived as interacting quantum systems. Free association norm data is used to motivate the underlying basis of the conceptual space. In this way it will be shown how some concept combinations behave like quantum-entangled particles, and empirical experiments will be reported which attempt to verify the existence of non-separable concept combinations in cognition. It is conjectured there may be a connection between the nonseparability of a concept combination and its propensity to yield emergent associates. Broadly speaking, this presentation takes the position that emergent technologies for “exploring the invisible world” will need to be aligned with human cognition and that quantum models of cognition may provide an innovative and fruitful theoretical basis for such emergent technologies.