Publications

The work reported in this document involves a development effort to provide combat commanders and systems engineers with a capability to explore and optimize system concepts that include operational concepts as part of the design effort. An infrastructure and analytic framework has been designed and partially developed that meets a gap in systems engineering design for combat related complex systems. The system consists of three major components: The first component consists of a design environment that permits the combat commander to perform 'what-if' types of analyses in which parts of a course of action (COA) can be automated by generic system constructs. The second component consists of suites of optimization tools designed to integrate into the analytical architecture to explore the massive design space of an integrated design and operational space. These optimization tools have been selected for their utility in requirements development and operational concept development. The third component involves the design of a modeling paradigm for the complex system that takes advantage of functional definitions and the coupled state space representations, generic measures of effectiveness and performance, and a number of modeling constructs to maximize the efficiency of computer simulations. The system architecture has been developed to allow for a future extension in which the operational concept development aspects can be performed in a co-evolutionary process to ensure the most robust designs may be gleaned from the design space(s).

In exploring the question of how humans reason in ambiguous situations or in the absence of complete information, we stumbled onto a body of knowledge that addresses issues beyond the original scope of our effort. We have begun to understand the importance that philosophy, in particular the work of C. S. Peirce, plays in developing models of human cognition and of information theory in general. We have a foundation that can serve as a basis for further studies in cognition and decision making. Peircean philosophy provides a foundation for understanding human reasoning and capturing behavioral characteristics of decision makers due to cultural, physiological, and psychological effects. The present paper describes this philosophical approach to understanding the underpinnings of human reasoning. We present the work of C. S. Peirce, and define sets of fundamental reasoning behavior that would be captured in the mathematical constructs of these newer technologies and would be able to interact in an agent type framework. Further, we propose the adoption of a hybrid reasoning model based on his work for future computational representations or emulations of human cognition.