El problema de marco cuestiona cómo los procesos cognitivos determinan qué información, de entre toda la disponible, es relevante dada una tarea determinada. Aunque postulamos una definición posible, especificar de qué trata este problema es una tarea complicada. Una manera de obtener claridad sobre esta cuestión es explorar distintas interpretaciones del problema de marco, interpretación lógica y filosófica, para dilucidar luego la dificultad en común. Como resultado de nuestro análisis concluimos que, sea la interpretación del problema de marco que se (...) tenga en mente, la dificultad subyacente es la misma: examinar vasta cantidad de información. La dificultad de la vastedad de información, a modo de puente entre ambas interpretaciones, permitiría no solo comprender más claramente de qué trata el problema de marco sino también resolverlo. The frame problem questions how cognitive processes determine what information is relevant, among all available, given a particular task. Although we proposed a possible definition, it is a difficult task to specify what this problem is about. One way to get insight into this matter is to explore different interpretations of the frame problem, a logical interpretation and a philosophical interpretation, to then elucidate the difficulty in common. The conclusion drawn from our analysis is that, irrespective of the interpretation of the frame problem you may have in mind, the underlying difficulty is the same: to examine a vastness of information. The difficulty posed by the vastness of information, taken as a bridge between both interpretations, would not only allow a clearer insight into the frame problem but also to solve it. (shrink)

The frame problem was originally a problem for Artificial Intelligence, but philosophers have interpreted it as an epistemological problem for human cognition. As a result of this reinterpretation, however, specifying the frame problem has become a difficult task. To get a better idea of what the frame problem is, how it gives rise to more general problems of relevance, and how deep these problems run, I expound six guises of the frame problem. I then assess some proposed heuristic solutions to (...) the frame problem; I show that these proposals misunderstand, and fail to address, an important aspect of the frame problem. Finally, I argue that though human cognition does not solve the frame problem in its epistemological guise, human cognition avoids some of the epistemological worries. (shrink)

Heuristics are often invoked in the philosophical, psychological, and cognitive science literatures to describe or explain methodological techniques or "shortcut" mental operations that help in inference, decision-making, and problem-solving. Yet there has been surprisingly little philosophical work done on the nature of heuristics and heuristic reasoning, and a close inspection of the way(s) in which "heuristic" is used throughout the literature reveals a vagueness and uncertainty with respect to what heuristics are and their role in cognition. This dissertation seeks to (...) remedy this situation by motivating philosophical inquiry into heuristics and heuristic reasoning, and then advancing a theory of how heuristics operate in cognition. I develop a positive working characterization of heuristics that is coherent and robust enough to account for a broad range of phenomena in reasoning and inference, and makes sense of empirical data in a systematic way. I then illustrate the work this characterization does by considering the sorts of problems that many philosophers believe heuristics solve, namely those resulting from the so-called frame problem. Considering the frame problem motivates the need to gain a better understanding of how heuristics work and the cognitive structures over which they operate. I develop a general theory of cognition which I argue underwrites the heuristic operations that concern this dissertation. I argue that heuristics operate over highly organized systems of knowledge, and I offer a cognitive architecture to accommodate this view. I then provide an account of the systems of knowledge that heuristics are supposed to operate over, in which I suggest that such systems of knowledge are concepts. The upshot, then, is that heuristics operate over concepts. I argue, however, that heuristics do not operate over conceptual content, but over metainformational relations between activated and primed concepts and their contents. Finally, to show that my thesis is empirically adequate, I consider empirical evidence on heuristic reasoning and argue that my account of heuristics explains the data. (shrink)