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Similarity
Author(s) -
Hahn Ulrike
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
wiley interdisciplinary reviews: cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.526
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1939-5086
pISSN - 1939-5078
DOI - 10.1002/wcs.1282
Subject(s) - categorization , similarity (geometry) , cognition , cognitive science , computer science , cluster analysis , representation (politics) , epistemology , visual reasoning , artificial intelligence , psychology , cognitive psychology , philosophy , neuroscience , politics , political science , law , image (mathematics)
Similarity is a fundamental concept within Cognitive Science. It is routinely invoked in the explanation of cognitive processes as diverse as memory retrieval, categorization, visual search, problem solving, learning, language processing, reasoning, and social behavior. At the same time, it is of fundamental practical concern to computer scientists concerned with clustering and machine learning, and it figures in many philosophical contexts. Crucially, ‘similar’ is not a relationship that simply reflects objective properties of the objects under consideration but rather is dependent on how those objects are represented by an observer. This ties theories of similarity closely to theories of representation. This article is categorized under: Philosophy > Foundations of Cognitive Science