--- abstract: | We outline the rationale and preliminary results of using the State Context Property (SCOP) formalism, originally developed as a generalization of quantum mechanics, to describe the contextual manner in which concepts are evoked, used, and combined to generate meaning. The quantum formalism was developed to cope with problems arising in the description of (1) the measurement process, and (2) the generation of new states with new properties when particles become entangled. Similar problems arising with concepts motivated the formal treatment introduced here. Concepts are viewed not as fixed representations, but entities existing in states of potentiality that require interaction with a context---a stimulus or another concept---to `collapse' to observable form as an exemplar, prototype, or other (possibly imaginary) instance. The stimulus situation plays the role of the measurement in physics, acting as context that induces a change of the cognitive state from superposition state to collapsed state. The collapsed state is more likely to consist of a conjunction of concepts for associative than analytic thought because more stimulus or concept properties take part in the collapse. We provide two contextual measures of conceptual distance---one using collapse probabilities and the other weighted properties---and show how they can be applied to conjunctions using the pet fish problem. altloc: - http://www.vub.ac.be/CLEA/liane/papers/jetai.pdf chapter: ~ commentary: ~ commref: ~ confdates: ~ conference: ~ confloc: ~ contact_email: ~ creators_id: [] creators_name: - family: Gabora given: Liane honourific: '' lineage: '' - family: Aerts given: Diederik honourific: '' lineage: '' date: 2002-01 date_type: published datestamp: 2004-02-09 department: ~ dir: disk0/00/00/27/25 edit_lock_since: ~ edit_lock_until: ~ edit_lock_user: ~ editors_id: [] editors_name: - family: Dietrich given: Eric honourific: '' lineage: '' eprint_status: archive eprintid: 2725 fileinfo: /style/images/fileicons/application_pdf.png;/2725/1/jetai.pdf full_text_status: public importid: ~ institution: ~ isbn: ~ ispublished: pub issn: ~ item_issues_comment: [] item_issues_count: 0 item_issues_description: [] item_issues_id: [] item_issues_reported_by: [] item_issues_resolved_by: [] item_issues_status: [] item_issues_timestamp: [] item_issues_type: [] keywords: 'analytical thought, associative thought, collapse, concept, conjunction, context, entanlement, exemplar, mathematical model, prototype, potentiality, quantum, representation, state, structure' lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:55:08 latitude: ~ longitude: ~ metadata_visibility: show note: ~ number: 4 pagerange: 327-358 pubdom: TRUE publication: Joural of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence publisher: Taylor and Francis refereed: TRUE referencetext: ~ relation_type: [] relation_uri: [] reportno: ~ rev_number: 12 series: ~ source: ~ status_changed: 2007-09-12 16:46:26 subjects: - cog-psy - phil-mind - comp-sci-art-intel succeeds: 2213 suggestions: 'The version of this paper (and also the one I just entered previously, and the two I am about to revise) are correct on this page, but the page that appears for the public does not have the correct page numbers. (The reason is that they were entered before i knew what the page numbers were. From now on I will wait until I know what the page numbers are, because to revise the properties of the document once it has been submitted seems to have difficulties getting complete.) Thanks.' sword_depositor: ~ sword_slug: ~ thesistype: ~ title: Contextualizing concepts using a mathematical generalization of the quantum formalism type: journalp userid: 352 volume: 14