Computing coherency theory: the case for a computational theory of coherence

Abstract

Computational modelling of cognitive phenomena seeks to shed light on how we think and reason. This activity is largely the pursuit of cognitive scientists, those men and women for whom the most basic assumption regarding cognitive processes is that they are computational. One such contemporary body of work is the computational theory of coherence. Although not new to epistemology, coherence theory has only recently been tested computationally. Its proponents claim that much of human cognition can be understood in terms of coherence and that this can be computationally modelled within a connectionist framework.