Attractor

From AGIRI.org

The mathematical definition of an attractor says, roughly, that an attractor is a set of system states to which the system gravitates after it iterates for long enough.

In a complex system like a mind, the most interesting attractors are those displayed by subsystems of the overall system. Generally a subsystem may settle into an attractor after a while, but then be perturbed out of it by input from some other part of the system.

1 Ontology of Attractors
2 Attractors and Emergent Grammars
3 Attractors and Pattern Recognition
4 Mind Ontology Links
5 Links

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Ontology of Attractors

Attractors fall into categories such as

fixed point
limit cycle
strange attractor

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Attractors and Emergent Grammars

The most interesting kinds of attractors for Cognition are strange attractors that contain complex, multi-winged structures. Probability theory may then be used to study the probability of the system's state transitioning from one wing of the attractor to the other. If the wings or parts of the attractor are labeled with symbols, then the symbol-sequences associated with the system's trajectories may be taken as the words in a formal grammar, which leads to the field of Symbolic Dynamics. These emergent grammars are one way that Complex Systems may represent knowledge.

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Attractors and Pattern Recognition

One interesting dynamic that may occur within a mind is: The mind may contain components that try to recognize attractors in the mind's own dynamics, and then embody these attractors explicitly in the system's memory, in a way that will persist even after the attractor is gone. In the Novamente Cognition Engine this process is called "map formation."

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