A collection of papers presented at the First International Summer Institute in Cognitive Science, University at Buffalo, July 1994, including the following papers: ** Topological Foundations of Cognitive Science, Barry Smith ** The Bounds of Axiomatisation, Graham White ** Rethinking Boundaries, Wojciech Zelaniec ** Sheaf Mereology and Space Cognition, Jean Petitot ** A Mereotopological Definition of 'Point', Carola Eschenbach ** Discreteness, Finiteness, and the Structure of Topological Spaces, Christopher Habel ** Mass Reference and the Geometry of Solids, Almerindo E. Ojeda (...) ** Defining a 'Doughnut' Made Difficult, N .M. Gotts ** A Theory of Spatial Regions with Indeterminate Boundaries, A.G. Cohn and N.M. Gotts ** Mereotopological Construction of Time from Events, Fabio Pianesi and Achille C. Varzi ** Computational Mereology: A Study of Part-of Relations for Multi-media Indexing, Wlodek Zadrozny and Michelle Kim. (shrink)

Starting from the overwhelming view that time is metaphorically conceptualized in terms of space, this study will, on the one hand, take the time interval words into minute analysis to confirm our view of event conceptualization of time at a more basic level along with space–time metaphoric conceptualization of time at a relational level. In alignment with the epistemology of the time–space conflation of the Chinese ancestors, our view is supported by the systematic examination of evidence related to the cultural (...) origins of the conceptualization of time, through a scrutiny of the original meanings and construction of words related to intervals of time in Mandarin Chinese. This study offers a new explanation of how: the conceptualization of time in Chinese is realized through metonymic cognition and words related to specific intervals of time are coined based on the metonymic conceptualization of related events or a corresponding event schema. Five major types of event-based metonymies are identified, and their interactive functions are illustrated. Based on this evidence, we argue that the double nature of both metaphoric and metonymic time conceptualization in Mandarin Chinese lies in the fact that time interval words can be used in its time categorial sense or as a time entity which suggests the etymological origins of Chinese as ideograph. It is concluded therefore that the event-based metonymy conceptualization of time can provide better insights into the characteristics of Chinese modes of thinking and its influences on the perception of and interaction with the world. This study can also serve as good evidence for the shaping effect of language on cognition. (shrink)

The aim of the talk was to present a brief account of the history of investigations about concepts in the last decades, thereby contributing to the diffusion of cognitive science. The central episode in that history is the turning point that resultedfrom the researches carried out by Eleanor Rosch and others from the beginning of the 70's. Those researches constitute a challenge to the CLASSICAL VIEW OF CONCEPTS . The fact that the rejection of the classical view is not a (...) viable alternative generates what we called the PROBLEM OF CONCILIATION - that is, the problem of conciliating the classical view with the modern empirical results. The exposition ends with some suggestions towards the solution of the problem of conciliation.O objetivo da palestra foi o de apresentar um apanhado sucinto da história das investigações sobre conceitos nas últimas décadas, com isso contribuindo para a divulgação da Ciência Cognitiva. O episódio central dessa história é a guinada resultante das pesquisas realizadas por Eleonor Rosch e outros a partir do inicio dos anos setenta. Estas pesquisas colocam em cheque a CONCEPÇÃO CLÁSSICA DE CONCEITOS . O fato de que o abandono da concepção clássica não é uma alternativa viável, dá origem ao que chamamos de PROBLEMA DA CONCILIAÇÃO, ou seja, o de compatibilizar a concepção clássica com as descobertas modernas. A apresentação se encerra com algumas sugestões para a solução do problema. (shrink)

In the literature, event metonymies have been used to explain how language users produce and interpret utterances in which certain events are understood in terms of their sub-events or the overall/...

The paper introduces the concepts at the heart of point-set-topology and of mereotopology (topology founded in the non-atomistic theory of parts and wholes) in an informal and intuitive fashion. It will then seek to demonstrate how mereotopological ideas can be of particular utility in cognitive science applications. The prehistory of such applications (in the work of Husserl, the Gestaltists, of Kurt Lewin and of J. J. Gibson) will be sketched, together with an indication of the field of possibilities in linguistics, (...) perceptual psychology, cate¬gorization and geographic information systems. Topological structures will be shown to play a central role in studies of naive physics not least in virtue of the fact that even well-attested departures from true physics on the part of common sense leave the topology and vectorial orientation of the underlying physical phenomena invariant: our common sense would thus seem to have a veridical grasp of the topology and broad general orientation of physical phenomena, both static and dynamic, even where it illegitimately modifies the relevant shape and metric properties. The implications of this and related insights for the methodology of psychology will be explored. (shrink)

The paper is a contribution to formal ontology. It seeks to use topological means in order to derive ontological laws pertaining to the boundaries and interiors of wholes, to relations of contact and connectedness, to the concepts of surface, point, neighbourhood, and so on. The basis of the theory is mereology, the formal theory of part and whole, a theory which is shown to have a number of advantages, for ontological purposes, over standard treatments of topology in set-theoretic terms. One (...) central goal of the paper is to provide a rigorous formulation of Brentano's thesis to the effect that a boundary can exist as a matter of necessity only as part of a whole of higher dimension which it is the boundary of. It concludes with a brief survey of current applications of mereotopology in areas such as natural-language analysis, geographic information systems, machine vision, naive physics, and database and knowledge engineering. (shrink)