Language, vision, and music: What common cognitive patterns underlie our competence in these disparate modes of thought? Language (natural and formal), vision, and music seem to share at best the following attributes: a hierarchical organization of constituents, recursivity, metaphor, the possibility of self-reference, ambiguity, and systematicity. Can we propose the existence of a general symbol system with instantiations in these three modes, or is the only commonality to be found at the level of such entities as cerebral columnar automata?

In science, business, and policymaking--anywhere data are used in prediction--two sorts of problems requiring very different methods of analysis often arise. The first, problems of recognition and classification, concerns learning how to use some features of a system to accurately predict other features of that system. The second, problems of causal discovery, concerns learning how to predict those changes to some features of a system that will result if an intervention changes other features. This book is about the second--much more difficult--type of problem. The contributors discuss recent research and applications using Bayes nets or directed graphic representations, including representations of feedback or "recursive" systems. The book contains a thorough discussion of foundational issues, algorithms, proof techniques, and applications to economics, physics, biology, educational research, and other areas. ISBN 0-262-57124-2 426 pp., bibliography, index Published by AAAI Press - http://www.aaai.org/Press/