Plenary Lecture
TOWARD PHYSICS OF THE MIND:
CONCEPTS, EMOTIONS, CONSCIOUSNESS, AND SYMBOLS
Professor Leonid Perlovsky
Harvard University and the Air Force Research Lab.,
Hanscom,
USA
E mail:
Leonid.Perlovsky@hanscom.af.mil
Abstract: Recent advances in mathematics,
cognitive science, and neurobiology are bringing us close to physical theory of
the mind. We can describe mathematically concepts, emotions, instincts,
imaginations, intuitions. All of these are inseparable from perception and
cognition. These, in turn, are related to inverse scattering: we infer
properties of the world from scattered light and sound waves. I first explain a
scheme for reducing combinatorial complexity often encountered in the past
attempts at designing “intelligent systems,” and then briefly discuss
engineering applications (data mining, fusion, financial predictions, Internet
search engines); and present results demonstrating orders of magnitude
improvement in classical detection and tracking in noise.
The last part of the talk moves to future research directions: roles of the
beautiful, music, sublime in the mind, cognition, consciousness, and evolution.
The current “East vs. West” confrontation turns out related to differences in
grammar between English and Arabic. What are the mechanisms of language and
cultural evolution? Presented mathematical theory is related to the knowledge
instinct, which drives the mind to understand the world. This instinct is even
more important than sex or food. This connects computers and the mind, the high
and the mundane.
Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Dr. Leonid Perlovsky, Visiting Scholar at
Harvard, Principal Research Physicist and Technical Advisor at the Air Force
Research Lab. He leads Semantic Web project and other research programs. From
1985 to 1999, as Chief Scientist at Nichols Research, a $0.5 B high-tech
organization, he led the corporate research in intelligent systems, neural
networks, and sensor fusion. He served as professor at Novosibirsk and New York
Universities; participated as a principal in startups developing tools for text
understanding, biotechnology, and financial predictions. His company predicted
the market crash following 9/11 a week before the event, detecting activities of
Al Qaeda traders, and later helped SEC looking for perpetrators. He delivered
invited keynote plenary talks and tutorial lectures around the globe, published
more then 280 papers, 10 book chapters, a monograph “Neural Networks and
Intellect,” Oxford University Press, 2000 (currently in the 3rd printing) and 2
books with Springer in 2007. Dr. Perlovsky organizes conferences on
Computational Intelligence, leads IEEE NNTC Task Force on “The Mind and Brain,”
serves on the Board of Governors of the International Neural Network Society
2008-2011, as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions for Neural Networks,
Editor-at-Large for “Natural Computations,” and Editor-in-Chief for “Physics of
Life Reviews.” He received several National and International Awards, including
Gabor Award, the highest engineering award from International Neural Network
Society 2007; and McLucas Award from the USAF 2007 (the highest AF scientific
award).