The ProSocrates 2017 Symposium aims to blend the topics of problemsolving, creativity and spatial reasoning. In this paper we will discuss the scienti c interest of the topic blend. We will then describe the presented works, how they t the Symposium theme and statistics about the 2nd Edition of ProSocrates. Finally, we will discuss how the topic mix looked like this year, possible future directions and an outlook for how the topics could be combined in the future.
Human creative cognition investigates the way humans solve a multiplicity of creative tasks [Mednick and Mednick, 1971], from the simple (coming up with an alternative use for an object) to the complex (solving insight problems)[Batchelder and Alexander, 2012], asking questions about process. However, no cognitive modeling universal set of tools exists for the pursuit of implementing computational approaches to test hypotheses in a uni ed manner.
Spatial cognition and reasoning [Freksa, 2015] is also known to contribute to the development of abstract thought, and to have a role in problem solving. Spatial cognition studies have shown that there is a strong link between success in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) disciplines and spatial abilities [Newcombe, 2010]. Qualitative modeling [Forbus, 2011] concerns the representations and reasoning that people use to understand continuous aspects of the world. Qualitative representations are also thought to be closer to the cognitive domain, as showed by models for object sketch recognition [Forbus et al., 2011], for solving Raven's Progressive Matrices intelligence test [Lovett and Forbus, 2017], for solving oddity tasks [Lovett and Forbus, 2011], for 3D perspective descriptions matching [Falomir, 2015] and for paper folding reasoning [Falomir, 2016]. In the context of creativity, spatial descriptors and qualitative shape and colour descriptors and their similarity formulations were tools for object replacement and object composition in the theoretical approach presented by [Olteteanu and Falomir, 2016] to solve Alternative Uses Test.
Cognitive Systems is a great intersection point for all these topics, bringing together the perspectives of human cognition, cognitive modeling and cognitive arti cial intelligence. The interactions between (i) problem-solving and creativity in the context of cognitive systems [Olteteanu, 2014, Olteteanu and Falomir, 2015, Olteteanu and Falomir, 2016, Olteteanu et al., 2015, Olteteanu, 2016, Olteteanu, 2016, Olteteanu et al., 2017] and between (ii) qualitative modelling and spatial cognition [Falomir, 2015, Falomir, 2016] were studied by the proposed guest editors in the last few years.
The focus of the ProSocrates Symposium and of the ensuing Special Issue is to bring the previous described disciplines together, by bringing in dialogue specialists from each of the elds. Authors of experimental, theoretical and computational work which combine perspectives from at least two of these 4 topics (problem-solving, spatial cognition/reasoning, cognitive systems and creativity) will be invited to submit contributions. The larger aim of integrating these topics is to produce theoretical tools, approaches and methodologies for creative and spatial problem solving in cognitive systems, in a manner that would bene t from such interdisciplinary bootstrapping. 3
These ProSocrates'17 proceedings contains 6 accepted papers that were presented at the symposium. Each submitted paper was reviewed by two/three program committee members. Moreover, there were 6 invited talks whose abstracts are also included in these proceedings. A very short summary of these contributions follows, with the aim of observing the various topic blends in the next section. 3.1
Invited Talks In his talk, Reasoning at a Distance by Way of Conceptual Metaphors and Blends, Marco Schorlemmer presented a mathematical model for expressing conceptual metaphor and blending; he then talked about modelling these in combination with the idea of \reasoning at a distance", from Barwise-Seligman theory of information ow.
In the talk Symbolic models and computational properties of constructive reasoning in cognition and creativity, Tarek Besold presented general principles of computational analogy, with a closer look at HDTP and cognitive plausibility.
In her talk, Creating and rating harmonic colour palettes for a given style, Lledo Museros presented a qualitative colour theory, the operations to create harmonic colour palettes and their classi cation as lifestyle.
Ken Forbus discussed ideas for using the Companion cognitive architecture to create software collaborators that support creative work, in his talk Creative Support Companions: Some Ideas.
In the talk Modeling visual problem-solving as analogical reasoning, Andrew Lovett presented a computational model that uses analogical reasoning for visual problem-solving (i.e. Ravens Progressive Matrices test).
Bipin Indurkhya gave a talk titled Thinking Like A Child: The Role of Surface Similarities in Stimulating Creativity. In his talk, he presented examples of puzzles, research on creative problem solving, and two of recent empirical studies to demonstrate how surface similarities can stimulate creative thinking and to designing creativity-support systems.
In this ProSocrates edition, all three of the main topics, Problem solving, Creativity and Spatial reasoning were present, together with some interdisciplinary research at the intersection of various pairs. Here is how the various talks and research papers represented the elds.
The talks by Forcus and Besold, with their focus on creative companions and computational analogy, represented the Creativity topic. The papers of Purcalla Arru &Kirsch and Zakaria et al represented mostly the topic of Spatial Reasoning.
The rest of the talks and papers were interdisciplinary, representing some intersection of two of the elds. Indurkhya, Anger&Schreiber and Olteteanu presented talks at the intersection of Problem Solving and Creativity. Lovett, Falomir and Pitch represented the Problem Solving and Spatial Reasoning intersection. The talks by Museros and Schorlemmer situated themselves at the Spatial Reasoning - Creativity intersection. This outline of the content of talks for ProSocrates 2017 can be observed in the Venn diagram in Figure 1.
The fact that ProSocrates 2017 managed to promote and attract interdisciplinary papers between the three elds counts as a success for the organizers. We hope this trend to continue for the next edition, and perhaps ProSocrates 2018 will also start seeing some points in the middle of the Venn diagram, at the intersection between all three elds. 5
The main focus of ProSocrates 2017 and the presented papers is to promote research in and between three possibly synergistic elds. This aims to encourage new research and collaborations, at the intersections of three elds which are very important for the general society.
The guest editors of these proceedings would like to specially thank funding from the HanseWissenschaftskolleg (HWK), Institute of Advanced Study2. We are also grateful to the reviewers for their 2HWK: http://www.h-w-k.de/ e ort in evaluating the papers considered, and for giving highly constructive feedback to the authors. Finally, they also thank CEUR-WS.org for indexing these proceedings.
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