Unified Theories of Cognition and the Role of Soar

Abstract

I start this paper by focusing on unified theories of human cognition —what they are and what their general status is in the current scene of cognitive science. Then I consider an exemplar of a unified theory of cognition, namely, the Soar theory and system, which has been developed by my colleagues and myself over almost a decade. I will provide some historical context for Soar and then treat the Soar theory of cognition in somewhat greater detail, selecting several specific topics that should help to appreciate the nature of unified theories of cognition. At the end I will raise a number of general issues that apply concretely to Soar, but in fact apply in analogous form to any candidate unified theory of cognition. As will become apparent, the considerations stated here flow largely from my 1987 William James Lectures on Unified Theories of Cognition (Newell, 1990), but several new issues and results are incorporated.KeywordsRecognition MemoryCognitive ScienceUnify TheoryIntelligent SystemHuman CognitionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.