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Mental objects: Mental objects are internal representations of the world, such as concepts, images, and memories. They are the building blocks of thought, and they allow us to think about things that are not physically present, such as the past, the future, and abstract concepts. See also Objects of thought, Objects of belief, Beliefs, Thoughts, Picture, Images, Memory.
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Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments.

 
Author Concept Summary/Quotes Sources

Stuart J. Russell on Mental Objects - Dictionary of Arguments

Norvig I 470
Mental Objects/AI Research/Norvig/Russell: Mental objects have been the subject of intensive study in philosophy and AI. There are three main approaches.
A. The one taken in this chapter, based on modal logic and possible worlds, is the classical approach from philosophy (Hintikka, 1962(1); Kripke, 1963(2); Hughes and Cresswell, 1996(3)). The book Reasoning about Knowledge (Fagin et al., 1995)(4) provides a thorough introduction.
B. The second approach is a first-order theory in which mental objects are fluents. Davis (2005)(5) and Davis and Morgenstern (2005)(6) describe this approach. It relies on the possible-worlds formalism, and builds on work by Robert Moore (1980(7), 1985(8)).
C. The third approach is a syntactic theory, in which mental objects are represented by character
Norvig I 471
strings. A string is just a complex term denoting a list of symbols, so CanFly(Clark ) can be represented by the list of symbols [C, a, n,F, l, y, (,C, l, a, r, k, )]. The syntactic theory of mental objects was first studied in depth by Kaplan and Montague (1960)(9), who showed that it led to paradoxes if not handled carefully. Ernie Davis (1990)(10) provides an excellent comparison of the syntactic and modal theories of knowledge.

1. Hintikka, J. (1962). Knowledge and Belief. Cornell University Press.
2. Kripke, S. A. (1963). Semantical considerations on modal logic. Acta Philosophica Fennica, 16, 83-94.
3. Hughes, G. E. and Cresswell, M. J. (1996). A New Introduction to Modal Logic. Routledge
4. Fagin, R., Halpern, J.Y.,Moses,Y., and Vardi,M.Y. (1995). Reasoning about Knowledge. MIT Press.
5. Davis, E. (2005). Knowledge and communication: A first-order theory. AIJ, 166, 81–140.
6. Davis, E. and Morgenstern, L. (2005). A first-order theory of communication and multi-agent plans. J. Logic and Computation, 15(5), 701–749.
7. Moore, R. C. (1980). Reasoning about knowledge and action. Artificial intelligence center technical note 191, SRI International.
8. Moore, R. C. (1985). A formal theory of knowledge and action. In Hobbs, J. R. and Moore, R. C.
(Eds.), Formal Theories of the Commonsense World, pp. 319–358. Ablex.
9. Kaplan, D. and Montague, R. (1960). A paradox regained. Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic, 1(3),
79–90.
10. Davis, E. (1990). Representations of Commonsense Knowledge. Morgan Kaufmann.


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Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments
The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition.

Russell I
B. Russell/A.N. Whitehead
Principia Mathematica Frankfurt 1986

Russell II
B. Russell
The ABC of Relativity, London 1958, 1969
German Edition:
Das ABC der Relativitätstheorie Frankfurt 1989

Russell IV
B. Russell
The Problems of Philosophy, Oxford 1912
German Edition:
Probleme der Philosophie Frankfurt 1967

Russell VI
B. Russell
"The Philosophy of Logical Atomism", in: B. Russell, Logic and KNowledge, ed. R. Ch. Marsh, London 1956, pp. 200-202
German Edition:
Die Philosophie des logischen Atomismus
In
Eigennamen, U. Wolf (Hg), Frankfurt 1993

Russell VII
B. Russell
On the Nature of Truth and Falsehood, in: B. Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, Oxford 1912 - Dt. "Wahrheit und Falschheit"
In
Wahrheitstheorien, G. Skirbekk (Hg), Frankfurt 1996

Norvig I
Peter Norvig
Stuart J. Russell
Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach Upper Saddle River, NJ 2010


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