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Computational models will play an important role in our understanding of human higher-order cognition. How can a model's contribution to this goal be evaluated? This article argues that three important aspects of a model of higher-order cognition to evaluate are (a) its ability to reason, solve problems, converse, and learn as well as people do; (b) the breadth of situations in which it can do so; and (c) the parsimony of the mechanisms it posits. This article argues that fits of models to quantitative experimental data, although valuable for other reasons, do not address these criteria. Further, using analogies with other sciences, the history of cognitive science, and examples from modern-day research programs, this article identifies five activities that have been demonstrated to play an important role in our understanding of human higher-order cognition. These include modeling within a cognitive architecture, conducting artificial intelligence research, measuring and expanding a model's ability, finding mappings between the structure of different domains, and attempting to explain multiple phenomena within a single model. (Contains 1 figure and 1 note.)

This article contains the reports of the AI for Human-Robot Interaction, Cognitive Assistance in Government and Public Sector Applications, Deceptive and Counter-Deceptive Machines, Self-Confidence in Autonomous Systems, and Sequential Decision Making for Intelligent Agents symposia, which were held November 12-14, 2015 in Arlington, Virginia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the application of deontic logics in robotics, which allows ethicists to render theories and problems in declarative form for analysis. Deontic logic offers a way for human overseer to restrict the robot's behavior towards an ethically sensitive environment. It also formalizes an ethical code or a collection of ethical rules and principles. There are two conditions involved in deontic logic including, first, robots only take permissible actions and secondly, robots perform all obligatory actions subject to ties and conflicts among available actions. INSET: Why a Logic-Based Approach?.