Understanding 20161128 v8

This presentation provides an initial conceptual framework for "Understanding Cognitive Systems" – this presentation can be downloaded from slideshare.net/spohrer I'm Jim Spohrer, I work at IBM and I am the presenter, and in today's short talk, I will briefly cover what is a cognitive system (entity) – both biological and digital. Then I will briefly discuss how to build, understand, and work with digital cognitive systems – and how this is steps towards a next generation cognitive curriculum, including types of digital cognitive systems. Biological cognitive system entities… and human intelligence… The best explanation of what a biological cognitive system entity is can be found in Terrence Deacon's book- the Symbolic Species – the co-evolution of language and the brain. All easily recognizable biological cognitive systems from ants to wolves to crows to dolphins to monkeys to people have brains that have co-evolved with symbol systems - chemical, visual, auditory – that individuals of the species you as a type of language for communicating and coordinating reasoning and interactions and the accumulation of knowledge for successful multi-generational living in an environment. Less sophisticated languages and brains deal primarily with the physical world, but more sophisticated languages and brains are needed to deal with the social and in the case of people, the cultural and institutional world, of large numbers of others of their species living in close proximity with each other.