A Hierarchical Characterization of Knowledge for Cognition

Abstract

A modestly formal systematic representation for “knowledge” is presented in the context of structured cognition. This representation places knowledge artifacts (“data”, “facts”, “rules”, etc. to be defined later) into a hierarchy. This hierarchy aligns naturally with “stages” or “levels” often observed in intelligent biological and mechanical systems engaged in structured cognition. Each level within the knowledge hierarchy consists of knowledge artifacts that arise as specific relations on the level prior to it. This establishes a recursive relational algebra by which knowledge at all levels can be specified in terms of percepts (“data”) at the bottom. This is quintessential essentialism as a ground for cognition [1]. res est forma eius “The thing is its form.” For the purposes of this work, an object of thought is regarded as equal to the assemblage of attributes it manifests. From the standpoint of cognition, nothing is sacrificed here, since percepts arising from this assemblage constitute the entirety of material available for structured cognition [2]. This formalizes a structured context for the analysis of cognition and the knowledge artifacts it uses. The U.S. Intelligence Community and the Department of Defense use similar but looser formalisms to support data fusion processes [3]. These are briefly described. A brief case study is presented applying this knowledge representation to the analysis of an important pattern processing problem: the classification of distant military vehicles from their Doppler RADAR phase history.