notionssomething

Notionsomething is a theoretical construct in cognitive science and philosophy of mind that denotes a unitary mental representation that fuses a cognitive notion with the specific external referent it concerns. It is used to model how people hold partially defined or context-dependent beliefs about objects or events, combining abstract categories with situational data in a single cognitive token.

The term is a neologism, blending "notion" and "something", and was first circulated in scholarly discussions in the early 2010s to describe representations that resist easy classification as purely abstract concepts or purely perceptual images.

In theoretical terms, notionsomething is proposed to be dynamic, context-sensitive, and compositional: its content can be updated as new information arrives, while preserving links to prior knowledge. It is contrasted with traditional notions that are either symbolic or sensory, by positing a middle layer that interacts with memory, perception, and action planning. In artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction, the concept is used to account for how agents act under partial observability, allowing for predictions about future states even when current cues are ambiguous.

Examples include a notionsomething of a chair under occlusion, where the agent maintains a belief about chair properties even when not all features are visible, or a social role notion that persists across changing contexts.

Reception is mixed. Proponents argue it clarifies how cognition bridges abstract and concrete knowledge, while critics seek clearer empirical operationalization and measurements. Related ideas include schemas, affordances, and probabilistic concept representations.