چارچوب نظری انفورماتیک شناختی (CI)

ABSTRACT The Theoretical Framework of Cognitive Informatics

The development of classical and contemporary informatics, the cross fertilization between computer science, systems science, cybernetics, computer/software engineering, cognitive science, knowledge engineering, and neuropsychology, has led to an entire range of an extremely interesting and new research field known as Cognitive Informatics (Wang, 2002a, 2003a, b, 2006b; Wang, Johnston & Smith 2002; Wang & Kinsner, 2006). Informatics is the science of information that studies the nature of information; it’s processing, and ways of transformation between information, matter, and energy.

Definition 1. Cognitive Informatics (CI) is a transdisciplinary enquiry of cognitive and information sciences that investigates the internal information processing mechanisms and processes of the brain and natural intelligence, and their engineering applications via an interdisciplinary approach.

In many disciplines of human knowledge, almost all of the hard problems yet to be solved share a common root in the understanding of the mechanisms of natural intelligence and the cognitive processes of the brain. Therefore, CI is a discipline that forges links between a number of natural science and life science disciplines with informatics and computing science.

The structure of the theoretical framework of CI is described in Figure 1, which covers the Information-Matter-Energy (IME) model (Wang, 2003b), the Layered Reference Model of the Brain (LRMB) (Wang, Wang, Patel & Patel, 2006), the Object-Attribute-Relation (OAR) model of information representation in the brain (Wang, 2006h; Wang & Wang, 2006), the cognitive informatics model of the brain (Wang, Liu, & Wang, 2003; Wang & Wang, 2006), Natural Intelligence (NI) (Wang, 2003b), Autonomic Computing (AC) (Wang, 2004), Neural Informatics (NeI) (Wang, 2002a, 2003b, 2006b), CI laws of software (Wang, 2006f), the mechanisms of human perception processes (Wang, 2005a), the cognitive processes of formal inferences (Wang, 2005c), and the formal knowledge system (Wang, 2006g).

In this article, the theoretical framework of CI is explained in the fundamental theories of CI section. Three structures of new descriptive mathematics such as Concept Algebra (CA), Real-Time Process Algebra (RTPA), and System Algebra (SA) are introduced in the denotational mathematics for CI in order to rigorously deal with knowledge and cognitive information representation and manipulation in a formal and coherent framework. Applications of CI are discussed, which covers cognitive computing, knowledge engineering, and software engineering. Then, it draws conclusions on the theories of CI, the contemporary mathematics for CI, and their applications.