Toward a Formal Model of Cognitive Synergy
  "Cognitive synergy" refers to a dynamic in which multiple cognitive
processes, cooperating to control the same cognitive system, assist each other
in overcoming bottlenecks encountered during their internal processing.
Cognitive synergy has been posited as a key feature of real-world general
intelligence, and has been used explicitly in the design of the OpenCog
cognitive architecture. Here category theory and related concepts are used to
give a formalization of the cognitive synergy concept.
  A series of formal models of intelligent agents is proposed, with increasing
specificity and complexity: simple reinforcement learning agents; "cognit"
agents with an abstract memory and processing model; hypergraph-based agents
(in which "cognit" operations are carried out via hypergraphs); hypergraph
agents with a rich language of nodes and hyperlinks (such as the OpenCog
framework provides); "PGMC" agents whose rich hypergraphs are endowed with
cognitive processes guided via Probabilistic Growth and Mining of Combinations;
and finally variations of the PrimeAGI design, which is currently being built
on top of OpenCog.
  A notion of cognitive synergy is developed for cognitive processes acting
within PGMC agents, based on developing a formal notion of "stuckness," and
defining synergy as a relationship between cognitive processes in which they
can help each other out when they get stuck. It is proposed that cognitive
processes relating to each other synergetically, associate in a certain way
with functors that map into each other via natural transformations. Cognitive
synergy is proposed to correspond to a certain inequality regarding the
relative costs of different paths through certain commutation diagrams.
  Applications of this notion of cognitive synergy to particular cognitive
phenomena, and specific cognitive processes in the PrimeAGI design, are
discussed.
