Complex Systems and Cognitive Processes

This book shows that the science of complex systems, which stresses the importance of self-organizing processes, can make a decisive contribution to solving many problems in artificial intelligence. Artificial cognitive systems are important in view of their potential applications, and it can be expected that their study will shed light on biological cognitive systems. The new "neurally inspired" information science proposed in this book is fast becoming a promising workshop for the construction of models capable of emulating cognitive behaviour. After a general introduction to the theory of complex systems, the book gives a thorough treatment of neural networks, which are the most successful and the most thoroughly studied dynamical cognitive systems. Attention is also devoted to other classes of artificial cognitive systems, in particular to classifier systems, which provide an important link between the dynamical and the inferential approach to artificial intelligence. The book can be used as a textbook, since it does not require previous knowledge of the topic, and should also be interesting for researchers in this field, since it links formerly separate lines of research.