Why the Common Model of the mind needs holographic a-priori categories

The enterprise of developing a common model of the mind aims to create a foundational architecture for rational behavior in humans. Philosopher Immanuel Kant attempted something similar in 1781. The principles laid out by Kant for pursuing this goal can shed important light on the common model project. Unfortunately, Kant’s program has become hopelessly mired in philosophical hair-splitting. In this paper, we first use Kant’s approach to isolate the founding conditions of rationality in humans. His philosophy lends support to Newell’s knowledge level hypothesis, and together with it directs the common model enterprise to take knowledge, and not just memory, seriously as a component of the common model of the mind. We then map Kant’s cognitive mechanics to the operations which are used in the current models of cognitive architecture. Finally, we argue that this mapping can pave the way to develop the ontology of the knowledge level for general intelligence. We further show how they can be actualized in a memory system using high dimensional vectors to achieve specific cognitive abilities.