Information Compression in Cognition: The Interplay between Shannon and Semantic Information

Abstract

This monograph demonstrates the interplay between Shannon information and semantic information in cognition. It shows that Shannon's information acts as driving force for the formation of semantic information; and vice versa, namely, that semantic information participates in the formation of Shannonian information. The authors show that in cognition, Shannonian and semantic information are interrelated as two aspects of a cognitive process termed as information adaptation. In the latter the mind/brain adapts to the environment by the deflating and/or inflating of the information conveyed by t. Prologue; Acknowledgments; Contents; Introduction; 1 Shannonian Versus Semantic Information and Cognition; 1.1 Shannonian Information; 1.2 Semantic Information; 1.3 Applications to Cognition; 1.4 Semantic Information Enters in Disguise; 1.5 Toward Information Adaptation; 2 Information Versus Data; 2.1 General Discussion; 2.1.1 On Knowledge; 2.2 Mathematical Formulation. Some Basic General Concepts; 2.2.1 Information Deflation; 2.2.1.1 Information Inflation; 2.3 Data, Information and Meaning. How Are These Related?; 3 The Empirical Basis of Information Adaptation; 3.1 Introduction. 3.2 Deconstruction & hx2013Reconstruction; 3.3 Analysis & hx2013; Synthesis; 3.4 Hybrid Images and the Meaning of the Deconstruction/Analysis Process; 3.4.1 Hybrid Images; 3.4.2 A Model of Hybrid Images; 3.5 Computational Models: Link Between Bottom-Up and Top-Down; 4 A Complexity Theory Approach to Information; 4.1 Complexity Theory; 4.2 Complexity and Information; 4.3 Forms of Communication; 4.3.1 Complexity, Cognition and Information Adaptation; 4.4 A Communication System of a Complex Adaptive Cognitive System; 5 On Synergetic Computers and Other Machines; 5.1 Can Machines Think? 5.2 Trivial Versus Non-Trivial Machines in Relation to Simple Versus Complex Systems5.3 The Synergetic Computer; 5.3.1 Motivation; 5.3.2 Self-organization; 5.3.3 From Pattern Formation to Pattern Recognition; 5.3.4 SIRN -- Synergetic Inter-Representation Networks; 6 Pattern Recognition as a Paradigm for Information Adaptation; 6.1 Pattern Recognition; 6.2 Pattern Recognition of Faces as Information Adaptation by Means of Deflation; 6.3 Pattern Recognition of Caricatures as Information Adaptation; 6.4 Pattern Recognition as Information Adaptation by Means of Inflation. 7 From General Principles of Information Adaptation to Concrete Specific Models7.1 Introductory Remarks; 7.2 Task: Define Probability of Patterns; 7.3 Information Deflation via Correlation Functions 2026; 7.4 Need for Models: Prototype Patterns; 7.5 Learning; 7.6 Recognition; 7.7 Some More Properties of the SC; 7.8 On Attention Parameters; 7.9 Time Dependent Data Set; 7.10 Machinery; 7.10.1 First Step: Preprocessing; 7.10.2 Second Step: Learning; 7.10.3 Third Step: Recognition; 7.11 The HMAX Model: Outline -- Relation to Information Adaptation; 7.11.1 The Invariance Problem. 7.11.2 The HMAX Model7.11.3 Information Adaptation; 8 Some Further Applications and Discussions of Information Adaptation; 8.1 A Baby Learning the Concept ``Mother''; 8.2 Information Adaptation to an Approaching Object; 8.3 Adapting the Face of the City to Humans' Information Processing Capabilities; Concluding Notes; References.