Towards a Spatial Representation for the Meta Cognitive Process Layer of Cognitive Informatics

This paper reviews related work in cognitive psychology, philosophy, and a bunch of independent research work in spatial knowledge representation, sets some criteria for potential spatial representations for cognitive informatics(CI), i.e. an expected theory of spatial knowledge for the meta representation layer of cognitive informatics shall take region as primitive, and be able to develop other spatial concepts. The paper critically points out the limitations of one dominant theory in spatial cognition, the RCC theory. It then introduces internal relations among different kinds of spatial knowledge, outlines a basic connection calculus for extended objects, and shows how notions of orientation relations, distance relations are developed in this calculus. The paper briefly presents how the notion of point can be further developed. By showing this we argue that this calculus meets the criteria for being a potential spatial representation for meta cognitive process layer of CI.