Overview:

Johnson-Laird gives an overview an account of mental models that originally is derived from Kenneth Craik. Craik’s use of models was originally directed towards an account of explanation. The review Johnson-Laird gives is to find a mechanism for formalizing meaning in language that explains cognition. The formulation is strongly tied in the notion of computation, and models are represented as computationally formalizable. This puts Johnson-Laird at odds with proponents of embodiment, but his theory nonetheless gives a formal strategy for forming and understanding mental models.

Notes:

The prologue introduces a set of questions which is good for characterizing the investigation. Here are a couple of them (p. ix):

• Why is it that we cannot think everything at once but are forced to have one thought after another? Our memories exist together, yet we cannot call them to mind all at once, but only one at a time.
• Why are there silences when we think aloud? Aren’t we thinking at those moments, or are we unable to put our thoughts into words? It seems unlikely that thoughts should be grossly intermittent, so what barrier prevents them from being articulated?
• What happens when we understand a sentence? We are aware of understanding it, and are more aware of having failed to do so. Why can’t we follow the mental processes of comprehension as we can follow the action of tying a shoelace?

The concept of mental models derives from Craik. Johnson-Laird notes Weizenbaum’s ELIZA, but claims that it is not a simulation, but rather a dissimulation. It does not have a process of thought, but conjures thought instead. This distinction raises the contrasting idea that ELIZA matches and responds to the interactor’s model, rather than having a model of its own.

The Nature of Explanation

Most theories of cognition consist of description, and lack are not formal (in the sense of algorithmic). Johnson-Laird asks what the criteria is for a definition of cognition. This criteria, he explains, should describe theory in the form of an effective procedure. Theory must be in the form of an algorithm. This should not be a limitation in what exists in the world, but rather, what constitutes a theory that describes the world.

Later in the chapter, there is an extensive discussion of Turing machines, and explaining their universality. He is very impressed by and fascinated with the capacity for Turing machines to do any computation, and furthermore represent each other. If theories are algorithms, then they must be computable. That assertion is the claim of functionalism, to which Johnson-Laird ascribes.

The Doctrine of Mental Logic

Models are intended to replace the doctrine of mental logic, which is the propositional model of cognition. Propositional logic is a fallacious as a model for cognition because of the many logical mistakes that people make on a daily baisis. If our brains worked according to mental propositional logic, then we would be able to more readily correctly answer certain logical problems, which is clearly not the case. Johnson-Laird is not attempting to argue against logic, but rather, that there are multiple kinds of logic.

The logical problem demonstrated is case where the subjects are shown a set of cards with the symbols: [E, K, 4, 7], and told that every card has a number on one side, and a letter on the other. The subject given the generalization, “If a card has a vowel on one side then it has an even number on the other side.” The subject is then asked what cards to turn over to find out whether the generalization is true or false. (p. 30)

These simple logic problems are strongly affected by context. Context affects inference. Changing context in logical problems leads to variable results in whether people can solve the problem correctly. Certain formulations of equivalent problems are frequently solved correctly, while other formulations are frequently solved incorrectly. Familiarity generally helps performance. This argument surfaces when making the connection to embodiment and associative reasoning.

The conclusion of this section presents 6 bullet points (p. 39):

1. People make fallacious inferences.
2. Which logic is found in the mind?
3. How is logic formulated in the mind?
4. How does logic arise in the mind? (development)
5. Deduction depends on the content of the premises. When an individual is familiar with (or has a model of) a situation, they are more likely to reason about it correctly.
6. “People follow extra-logical heuristics in making inferences. They appear to be guided by the principle of maintaining the semantic content of the premises but expressing it with greater linguistic economy.” That is, when presented with propositions p and not-p or q, they are likely to conclude q, instead of p and q.

Theories of the Syllogism

Propositional logic is psychologically flawed. A more accurate logic occurs in syllogisms. Syllogisms are first order declarations: All X are Y, or some X are Y, no X are Y, etc. Johson-Laird puts forth several goals for a theory of reasoning (p. 65-66), and will later deduce that syllogisms satisfy these goals.

1. “A descriptively adequate theory must account for the evaluation of conclusions, the relative difficulty of different inferences, and the systematic errors and biases that occur in drawing spontaneous conclusions.”
2. “The theory should explain the differences in inferential ability from one individual to another.”
3. “The theory should be extensible in a natural way to related varieties of inference rather than apply solely to a narrow class of deductions.”
4. “The theory should explain how children acquire the ability to make valid inferences.”
5. “The theory must allow that people are capable of making valid inferences, that is, they are potentially rational.”
6. “The theory should shed some light on why formal logic was invented and how it was developed.”
7. “The theory should ideally have practical applications to the teaching of reasoning skills.”

How to Reason Syllogistically

In giving a description for how people might reason using syllogisms, Johnson-Laird gives an example of how syllogisms might be visualized by an individual. The syllogism is of the form, “All the artists are beekeepers, and all the beekeepers are chemists.” A way to visualise syllogisms without using a Euler circle or Venn diagram is to imagine a tableau of actors who play the parts of artists, beekeepers, and chemists. Thus, there would be artist-beekeeper-chemists, beekeeper-chemists, and a lone chemist. (p. 94) The metaphor of the tableau is useful for representing mental representations of the situation, but more telling is the use of the troupe of actors who enact these roles. This representation covertly emphasizes the cultural and embodied manner by which the syllogism is understood.

Going a step further, though. Johnson-Laird produces an algorithm for how to reason syllogistically. However, syllogistic logic is still not a complete representation of the logic that humans follow when reasoning, because we still make reasoning mistakes in complex syllogistic problems, for example: “Some B are A, no C are B” yields incorrect conclusions in almost all cases. (p. 74)

Inference and Mental Models

The key to this chapter is how to reason without rules of inference. Both propositional and syllogistic logic define rules for drawing inferences, but they do not line up to natural everyday reason. Mental models are introduced with relational expressions. These may all take the form of predicates or relational expressions. Relations are a bit heavier than ordinary propositions, but still work on the same level. At this point, all mental models are of the form of tableaus.

With the focus on tableaus, mental models can be understood as devices for association, and defining relationships. Both of these can be addressed by non-symbolic and embodied means (Lakoff and Johnson), so even though Johsnon-Laird’s formulation is intended to be computational in nature, it can be more than that.

There are some final bullet points regarding mental models:

1. The theory embraces both implicit and explicit inferences. This means that they should be able to represent all arguments.
2. Children can learn to reason before understanding rules of inference, because reason is possible without logic.
3. The theory is compatible with the fact that people can use logic.
4. It is also compatible with the historical origin of logic.

Images, Propositions, and Models

There is a conflict over how images fit into cognition and psychology. The two sides are the ‘imagists’ (Paivio, Shepard, and Kosslyn) and ‘propositionalists’ (Baylor, Pylyshyn, Palmer). Johnson-Laird argues for the encoding of images in the mind, and goes for a functional account of mental processing. This does liken the mind to a computer: it can procedurally transform images into systems of symbols.

Johnson-Laird describes the relationship between mental models and propositions. “The crucial problem for the mental language is the nature of its semantics. Propositions can refer to the world. Human beings, of course, do not apprehend the world directly; they posess an internal representation of it, because perception is the construction of a model of the world.” Thus, the mental model operates between the individual’s logic and the world itself. Any propositions in that individual’s mind must act on the model, rather than on the world directly. Models work via analogy, and images are views of models.

Meaning in Model-Theoretic Semantics

This section describes how meaning is constructed and composed (in the sense of built compositionally) in model theory. Johnson-Laird references Tarski here, in terms of understanding truth values. A big bit of this is still in terms of truth vs falsehoods. The discussion raises the issue of worlds, and how models connote not only existing meaning, but a set of potential configurations that are enabled by that model. The world of meaning enabled by a model is called its extension.

There is some discussion of Montague grammar, which is an attempted formalization of natural language. This segues into a model-based formulation of meaning, which derives neatly from mathematical logic. The following passage is dearly familiar to the theory of models in logic. “The power of model-theoretic semantics resides in its explicit and rigorous approach to the composition of meanings. It provides a theory of semantic properties and relations, e.g., a set of premises entails a conclusion if and only if the conclusion is true in every model in which the premises is true.” (p. 180)

What Is Meaning?

The discussion of meaning traverses from psychology to word meanings. THere is a great deal of philosophy and squabbling over where meanings come from, or what concepts like “water” or “jade” are, intrinsically. This entire discussion neglects the use of practice, where words and other signs may hold different meanings to different observers, under different circumstances. The importance of language meaning is critical in this treatment of mental models, because the models are based on language.

The conflict in this is between meaning Psychologism and Realism, which respectively attest that meaning is in the mind or outside of the mind. Johnson-Laird is attempting to find a middle ground in this, and looks to an encoding of meaning that allows for intersections and vagueness. However, fuzzy logic exposes the same problem. Propositions, even with values of confidence, are divorced from a knower. For language to work, the knower must have a context and a state of mind. The relative values of “tallness” (given in his example on p. 200) are only meaningful in context.

To address the question of meaning, the psychological perspective asserts that meaning is wholly in the mind, whereas the realistic perspective asserts that meaning is wholly outside of it. Johnson-Laird seems to claim that meaning works within a model, which is grounded in language, which has elements that are both inside and outside the mind. There is an added dimension of culture, though which is extremely relevant. Meanings (and models) are shared between individuals in a culture, so meaning exists beyond the individual, but also beyond the literalism of language. I would argue that it is instead a consensus. This position is not incompatible with models, but requires a reppropriation of Johnson-Laird’s use of models.

The Psychology of Meaning

Models are procedural structures that may be adjusted over time or through discourse according to some rules. There is a set of bullet points describing these:

1. “The processes by which fictitious discourse is understood are not essentially different from those that occur with true assertions.” Thus we use the same logic for processing information into models, even if we know the information is fictional or false.
2. “In understanding a discourse, you construct a single model of it.”
3. “The interpretation of discourse depends on both the model and the processes that construct, extend, and evaluate it.” The model for discourse can vary over time.
4. “The functions that construct, extend, evaluate, and revise mental models, unlike the interpretation functions of model-theoretic semantics, cannot be treated in an abstract way.” There must be some formal algorithms for changing mental models.
5. “A discourse is true if it has at least one mental model that satisfies its truth conditions that can be embedded in a model corresponding to the world.”

~~Intermezzo~~

The next couple of chapters deal with the understanding of grammar and the parsing of language into propositional expressions. There is a great deal of noun-phrase, verb-phrase stuff. The analysis of grammar is heavily extended from Chomsky.

The Coherence of Discourse

Johnson-Laird gives a surprising interjection regarding story grammars. This makes some sense given the focus in the preceeding chapters on the relationship between language grammar and models. The challenge to story grammars can be seen as a critique of a particular kind of structuralism. Earlier pages compare blocks of text that form coherent paragraphs versus those that do not. Coherency relates to consistency and discourse history, which is a type of context. Models have the formal power to use this context in a way that grammar lacks.

The Nature of Mental Models

Some properties of mental models:

1. Computability. Mental models are computable, and so are the tools for manipulating them.
2. Finitism. A mental model must be finite, and cannot directly represent an infinite domain.
3. Constructivism. A model is constructed from symbolic tokens and structurally composed.

A typology/heirarchy of models:

1. Relational. This is a finite set of tokens representing entities, a finite set of properties, and a finite set of relations connecting entities to properties.
2. Spatial. This is a relational model where the relations are spatial.
3. Temporal. A temporal model consists of frames of spatial models, that occur in a temporal order.
4. Kinematic. This is a temporal model that is psychologically continuous, there are no temporal discontinuities.
5. Dynamic. A kinematic model which relates causal relations between frames.
6. Image. The image is a viewer-centric representation of a spatial or kinematic model.

It seems to me that this formulation reverts to computational models, and begins to become severely detached from underlying psychology.

Consciousness and Computation

The final chapter works to give a formal and procedural account for consciousness. Essentially, consciousness is already computational, when understood as processing of mental models. An excuse is given here, that while cognition may be computational, other human traits, such as spirituality, morality, and imagination cannot be modeled and will “remain forever inexplicable.” This is a cop out. Johnson-Laird cannot introduce a hulking device for representing psychology and then blow off its application to other psychological traits.

There are significant critiques to be had with the computational formulation of mental models. I would argue that the computational imposition is severely flawed, but models remain invaluable as a tool for understanding cognition. The use of modeling is especially important in the representations of spirituality (cultural beliefs), morality, and imagination.

This is a collection of essays in honor of Philip Johnson-Laird, one of the founding figures in mental models. These essays represent application of his theory to several particular domains.

George Miller: Contextuality

This essay is about handling words and stituations with multiple meanings. The process of figuring out these meanings is contextualization, described as a basic cognitive process. This is closely related to Goffman’s frame analysis. The goal of contextualization is to resolve ambiguity that is heavily present in interpretation of everyday language and knowledge.

Computational linguistics is a tricky area in cognitive science and computation. It is deeply affected by the issue of context. Miller’s analysis focuses on linguistics exclusively (mirroring Johnson-Laird), as opposed to other sorts of ambiguous circumstances. Computational linguistics involves processing language and attempting to identify and process the correct word meanings from that language. Miller mentions Bar-Hillel (1960), who finds that this sort of language processing can identify correct meanings about 80% of the time. He estimates that this last bit could never be achieved without significant advances in AI.

Expert systems, which are the general approach for working with specialized knowledge, limit the domain of word meanings to a significant degree, but this still does not absolve the “Curse of Bar-Hillel.” Miller theorizes that context identification is the key to unlocking this last bit of meaning.

An aside to note is that Miller is a collaborator on WordNet.

Alan Garnham: The Other Side of Mental Models: Theories of Language Comprehension

This essay looks at language comprehension by examining issues of reference and inference. One key element to inference and communication is instantiation. Where an abstract idea is replaced by a more concrete (or other known) one. However, Garnham is concerned with the communication of abstracts, and notes that we communicate information about abstracts without instantiation.

Propositional relations are a strategy used frequently in AI for world modeling, and relate to information as discrete facts. Garnham gives an example which uses locational prepositions, things of the form: “The lamp is in front of the candle,” etcetera. In terms of these locational structure here, it seems dubious. There is a suggestion that mental models use a more analog depiction and representation of spatial relations.

It is true that we do use abstracts in communication, but models of communication that have emerged from Vygotsky indicate that communication emerges in development when social interaction transforms from something embodied and physical to something symbolic. If we follow Lakoff and Johson, then relations are all metaphorical and based ultimately in the body.

Paolo Legrenzi and Vittorio Girotto: Mental Models in Reasoning and Decision-making Processes

This essay discusses decision making according to psychological studies, and explained in terms of mental models. The interesting thing here is that totally rational decision making is not present, rather, decision making is based on the matter of focusing. This sounds a lot like priming and activation (related to neural networks). Models illustrate the construction of ideas, but neglect to factor how the focusing works intrinsically.

David Green: Models, Arguments, and Decisions

Green builds a theory of decisions (as derived from Craik, 1943) based on argument. Argument is done through warrants, which are bits of relevant information.This work is built from Toulmin’s scheme. Further, the goal here is to analyze argument through mental models. The interplay between observation and model mirrors warrant and argument. Warrants also relate to beliefs, which may be connectable to the belief, desire, and intention scheme in AI. We can also apply warrants to causal models.

The final conclusion in this section is that there is an interplay between argument and simulation, as well as decisions and commitment.

Keith Oatley: Emotions, Rationality, and Informal Reasoning.

Oatley’s focus here is on informal reasoning as it relates to emotions. Informal is opposed to logical or day-to-day. Oatley argues that emotion is critical to this sort of everyday conventional reasoning.

He opens with an analysis of Aristotle’s rhetoric, which discusses two types of reason. There is absolute mathematical reasoning, and also persuaded reasoning, where there is no demonstrable truth. Persuasion instead aims to achieve the best truth possible. The interesting example with this is that Aristotle’s writing is based on the sort of rhetoric used in his day, where law is extremely dependent on performance and dramatic emotional appeal.

Oatley makes some notes on Aristotle’s Rhetoric: The first is that persuasion applies to the imperfectly knowable, and the field of the imperfectly knowable is huge. AI, on the other hand, seeks to only understand that which is perfectly knowable, or that which can be logically concluded or deduced. The second point is that Aristotle explains emotion as a tool of judgement, as opposed to something that is bestial or irrational. Furthermore, there are three impediments to making rational decisions:

1. Limited knowledge and resources. Our mental models are incomplete to fully predict the effects of our actions.
2. Multiple goals. Multiple goals cannot always all be satisfied rationally.
3. Distributed agency. Actions are performed in relation to others, planning must occur among multiple agents, where the problem of limited knowledge becomes especially difficult.

Rationality depends on environment and context. Emotion is used as a form of feedback for goals. Oatley describes emotion as a heuristic function for potential actions.

Oatley makes a connection to Vygotsky and Hutchins. Emotions play a role in the distribution and extension of cognition. There is a connection between Aristotle and the Roman historian Quintillian, who documents the practice of law in the Roman court. This is an argument for the theatricality of reason, relating to the ideas of performance. The performance of law is an enactment and exaggeration of events. The social nature of the audience is essential.

Oatley follows this with the analysis of two experiments, where individuals change behavior based on emotional priming. Emotional induction proved to be immensely relevant in both examples. One of which consisted of examining decision making in judgement of evidence of a trial (after having viewed a happy or a sad film clip), and the other examined forward or reverse reasoning (after reading an angry or sad short story). The experimental corrolation was immensely strong in both examples.

Ciuliano Geminiani, Antonella Carassa, Bruno Bara: Causality by Contact

This essay is about the role of causality in reasoning. Causality is related to the construction of scientific models, but also is relevant from the perspective of narrative. Using causality implies the use of simulation mentally. Causality has an evolutionary basis that is associative (for instance, a rat who smells a type of food on a dead rat will not eat that type of food). This associative logic is also imaginably present in humans, but humans also do use causal reasoning, which comes with the demand for knowing why something occurs. This connects well to Vygotsky and development. The why relates to the narrative/linguistic model of thought.

An interesting note: In developmental study, causality is dependent on contact. Touching is necessary for causality to be interpreted by infants. Gradually, though, causality becomes analogically based. Causal models are a subset of dynamic models. The authors give a funny example of two narrative segments: “Cleopatra was bitten by an asp, Cleopatra died” versus “Cleopatra was bitten by an asp, a tourniquet was applied to her arm, Cleopatra was saved.” This example is a little strange, but is used to understand how people might model what happens to the poison. Mental imagery and metaphors are especially important: poison is a particle, poison is like paint, etc. The important thing to note here is that the example is fundamentally a narrative one.

To understand how models are formed and used, the authors give a three part theory for development of causal models: Construction, comparison, falsification. The construction phase involves taking the components (as a pre-model) and understanding them quantitatively. This is literally formulated as collecting symbols and describing them qualitatively. Next, qualities are quantified, fixing values and times. Finally, the model is simulated dynamically at a sub-cognitive level. The sub-cognitive simulation involves 1) activation of implicit knowledge, 2) generation of instantaneous changes in quantities according to the simulation, and 3) simulation of the temporal evolution of the model.

At the comparison phase, the effects of the mental model with the base model are compared. In this context, the base model is imaginably the observed phenomenon, which is the original story. This comparison intiates revisitations and inferences. Finally, in the falsification phase, plausibility and counterexamples are considered. This sort of analysis derives from Qualitative Process Theory (Forbus 1984), which seems like a good place to check the connection between narrative and models.

This approach is useful in looking at models of fiction as pertains to adaptation, especially in terms of emotional value and responses.

This paper is on computer mediated communication. The abstract presents the paper as a critique of some standard approaches, which emphasize the role of bandwidth as a means for understanding different different means of mediated communication. Instead, the subject should be the relationship between the communicators, and the focus on how the mediated communication affects that relationship. Nardi proposes a model that uses three fields of connection: affinity, commitment, and attention. These fields form the dimensions of a communication space, wherein the values of each change and evolve over the course of communication.

Nardi reviews some existing theory on computer mediated communication. These are nuanced, but all fall under the category of exploring bandwidth: Media richness theory (Daft and Lengel 1984), Social presence theory (Short et al. 1976), and others. All these are about understanding communication in context of more objective information about the communicators.

Nardi’s analysis instead looks at an ethnography of instant messaging in the workplace. She finds that what is important is not the bandwidth and or richness of information, but rather communication is about the feelings of connection and the sense of openness in interaction. These feelings were established by bodily interactions and “informal discourse of low information content.”

In a study of instant messaging, Nardi finds that well regarded executives perform quick and informal “purposeless” communication with colleagues through IM. Nonetheless, this informal communication does serve a function of staying connected. Activities of connection occur through computer mediated communication, but simply through different channels than in regular conversation (which has a lot of embodied and visual signals). This idea is interesting because it puts a mediated spin on the sociology of interaction.

In reviewing social presence theory, Nardi introduces a number of concepts from sociology. Particularly relevant to mediated communication is the idea of symbolic interaction, which lends the insight that different media may be chosen to communicate different things based on the social role of the medium. Interaction relies on cueing, and different media have varying affordances for cues.

Nardi’s analysis of communication is broken down into three dimensions: Affinity, commitment, and attention.

Affinity is a feeling of connection, and the degree of openness in interacting with another. Affinity may be derived from social bonding activities. The examples of social al bonding that Nardi provides are: Touch, eating and drinking, sharing experience in a common space, informal conversation. Bonding is heavily embodied. These experiences are also tightly connected to not only sociological traditions, but also anthropological ones.

As an aside, the idea of bonding might be an interesting thing to use to develop emotional significance with artificial agents. A bit of work has been done looking into the emotional appeal of games and game characters (which is especially significant in the cases where tragedy strikes), and this might be useful in other cases. It may also be a good frame to analyze the Sims.

The expression of commitment is important. Nardi explores some interviews and finds that commitment is very much about establishing a bodily presence. What is important is making some sort of visible expression to indicate just how committed the actor is. Commitment is about performance and ritual. In some cases, it is related to expenditure, but bodily presence is especially valuable. For example, flying out a long distance to meet clients for a day. Commitment can probably be compared to issues of investment and personal sacrifice. Again, this is a common practice that has deep roots in anthropology.

Procuring attention is about capturing the focus of a subject. In personal interaction, attention has a lot to do with eye contact. The gaze is another heavily embodied element of communication, and cannot adapt well to the bandwith model of communication. Attention is also about conveying availability for interaction.

One curious thing about Nardi’s analysis is that her experimental subjects are all modern professionals, but each of the elements of study are overwhelmingly anchored in anthropology. The effects of the examples of highly paid business executives seem right at home next to the effects of tribal rituals.

Using these three elements as essential parts of communication, Nardi explains that some of these elements can be carried over into mediated communication, but their operation is different. Mediated communication enables the elements of contact, but in a subtle and definitively weaker manner than in full face-to-face communication. Nardi’s point can be seen that improved bandwidth can not improve communication. Rather, communication might be improved by focus on the elements of connection and relationships.

Opens by outlining the general failure of theoretical psychology to apply to HCI. HCI is generally developed from practical knowledge. The problem is especially related to the psychological theory of information processing, deriving from cognitive science. Kuutti describes a movement in HCI that reacts against the symbolic/Cartesian model.

He examines Liam Bannon, who presented a critique of Human Factors (as likening humans to components to factor into a human-machine system), and further criticizes HCI as exploring only inexperienced users. This critique relates back to the idea of everyday life and practice. Experienced users make use of emergent practices that may augment or subvert the original model.

HCI is composed of three levels. The first is oriented toward ergonomics, perception and motor skills. The second is concerned with information processing and conceptual psychology. The last is an emerging level that addresses deeper complexity, and is the target for applying activity theory.

As background, activity theory originates in Kant and Hegel. This German philosophy developed against objective empiricism, the idea that meaning is external and may be discovered through experience, and replaced it with constructivism, where meaning is actively constructed. This idea was later adopted by Marx and Engels who applied construction and activity to political ends. Activity was finally developed by Vygotsky and his school of psychology. Kuutti suggests that Mead’s symbolic interaction (which led to Goffman) also followed a similar vein.

An activity is the basic unit of analysis. The idea is to define an activity as a subset of actions that has a minimal meaningful context. Activities are mediated, and are also permeable and flexible structures. It also provides an interesting approach to tool use. Tools are media that enable activities, but they limit the user in things that do not belong to that activity. This is especially important if we consider tools or mediators to be more than physical objects. Mediation can be through environment or other contexts. In this sense, the limiting nature of tools reflects pattern matching in phenomenology as well as the notion of keying in sociology.

Activity also works with the idea of a community formed around activities and the mediating object. This establishes the notion of a collaborative activity, where members may have different roles. Kuutti calls the division between these roles a division of labor, but I would argue that activity is not dependent on labor.

Kuutti does relate activity to planning, but as a step that is about modeling, not outlining the action. The initial phase of an activity is orientation, during which the agent models the world into consciousness. The execution of an activity is composed of “fluent” engagement with the world, which is composed of operations. This model allows for a hierarchical model of activity that derives from learning and practice. For a novice learning how to drive a car, the process of changing the gearbox is a highly conscious activity that requires a lot of attention to the individual elements of the task, but later on, these operations become fluent elements and moving the gearbox is merely an action in the larger activity of driving. Kuuti does not examine this hierarchy, though, and seems to assert that activity only happens at this higher level.

Activity relates to HCI by looking at how people go about using computers for activities. This exposes some of the ways in which traditional information processing psychology has failed to help HCI. Notably, it addresses the issues of complexity and use and practice.

Notes:

The authors set out to bridge what they consider to be a false division between intelligence and technology. The idea of technology is something that is artificial, and usually electronic. Intelligence is seen as something that enables reason and planning, and is a biological property of individuals. The authors’ notion of technology is a tool-mediated social practice, which enables a very different model of intelligence. In this context, intelligence is “a process of adaptation to, and transformation of, the conditions of life.” (p. 2)

Artifacts are both ideal and material. This idea derives from Dewey, and is supported by constructivist philosophy. This unity is also something that exists in cognition: material and symbolic are tied together in thought, departing from Cartesian dualism. The authors outline levels of artifacts as identified by Wartofsky, which move artifacts from primarily material to primarily symbolic.

The authors continue by looking at how artifacts augment cognition, and some of which are explicitly psychological tools. This notion comes from Vygotsky, but the idea that tools are used to augment understanding extend back from Francis Bacon. The cognitive prosthetic continues through Norman (and also through other figures in early computer science, notably Vannevar Bush and Norbert Weiner). Norman’s principles are bulletted here: (p. 6)

• A representation is a set of symbols that substitutes for the real event.
• Once we have ideas represented by representations, the physical world is no longer relevant.
• Representations are abstractions so good representations are those which abstract the essential elements of the event.
• The critical trick is to get the abstractions right, to represent the important aspects and not the unimportant. This allows everyone to concentrate upon the essentials without distraction from irrelevancies.
• Representations are important because they allow us to work with events and things absent in space and time, or for that matter, events and things that never existed — imaginary objects and concepts.
• A person is a system with an active, internal representation.

This is an interesting approach with which to analyze representation. Norman uses this but focuses exclusively on the ideal or conceptual level and denies the material element in the cognitive. Further, the authors criticize Norman’s neglecting of the environment and broader social context surrounding the use of artifacts.

The negotiation between intelligence and technology leads to a reconsideration of the role of culture in cognition. When intelligence and culture are bridged, artifacts become material and conceptual aids to cognition. The idea of culture as a large pool of knowledge is heavily challenged. The authors cite Geertz as circumventing the ideal/material dichotomy, using semiotics as a means to embed culture in material artifacts.

The authors continue exploring Geertz, specifically his theory that the nervous system requires culture in order for human development. This argument is followed by Quartz and Sejnowski, who encourage the neurological aspect of culture, and the extension of intelligence and cognition into the environment.

To bridge the connection between technology and intelligence through culture, the authors give the example of the use of the Abacus in Japan. The tool was delivered culturally and developed a cultural role and function. Additionally, there is a cultural intelligence associated with it that becomes evident in highly skilled abacus users.

Overview:

Lev Vygotsky is one of the most unusually influential figures in modern cognitive science. He is unusual in that he was, in his day, a controversial figure within his native Soviet Russia, and because of this fact, his ideas did not become popular in the west until about thirty years after his death. When his writing did become circulated in the west, it shone on many subjects from cognitive science to developmental psychology. Vygotsky is also remarkably ahead of his time in critiquing both rationalism and behaviorism, arguing instead for a remarkably nuanced take on development and cognition, wherein cultural, social, and embodied contexts are necessary for proper study of learning.

Mind in Society criticizes existing psychological methods, and presents an argument for looking at psychology from a cultural and social perspective. At the heart of his examination is the idea of the formation of symbols, which occurs as a social function. The process of learning symbols is called internalization, and it involves the internalization of signs, but this is matched with an externalization of meaning. Essentially, the emergence of symbols occurs simultaneously with the extension of cognition into the environment. Vygotsky’s analysis gives light on how to treat the symbol-embodiment problem with artificial agents.

Notes:

Western psychology was heavily derived from Descartes until Darwin. Darwin’s influence likened humans to animals (which were always cast as below human in Cartesian reasoning), and triggered the behaviorist movement. Gestalt psychology came out of or alongside that. Vygotsky was a scholar of the Wundt school, which also came from the behaviorists, but argued for an introspective method (as opposed to the behaviorists who were much more external). Both behaviorism and the Wundt school argued for a stimulus-response methodology, which has remained influential in modern psychology.

Vygotsky aims to develop a comprehensive theory of psychology, that can reason about higher level mental functions, as opposed to the behaviorism, which is specifically oriented towards lower level functions. He notes that culture is important to psychology, and looks toward development as a methodology. Development, though, is more than just the process of maturation, but a complex suite of events that includes maturation and learning.

Tool and Symbol in Child Development:

Vygotsky seems to be arguing that the behavioral model is insufficient to explain ongoing developmental processes. Specifically, early development makes use of “pracitcal intelligence,” which makes use of the environment, tools, and by extension, language to serve as aids. These things are all instrumental and work to augment practical intelligence.

Childrens’ speech is used as a constant narration that operates in parallel with activity. This is (I think) the sort of egocentric/autistic speec described in early development. Speech is instrumental in reasoning and modeling the world and behavior. What is notable here is that this speech is used instrumentally to forma sort of narrative underpinning of the world, and cements the strength of the linguistic model of consciousness.

Planning, as a component of thought, originates in inner/social speech preceeding an action. Speech is also social, and interaction with others is necessary for the interaction with objects. Development of planning is socially dependent. This is a great ground to critique the models of planning found in symbolic AI.

The Development of Perception and Attention

Visual perception is limited in animals (even in apes). The key element to human perception is the ability to transform visual perception into language. The idea is that visual information is transformed into signs, via language. Thus, language is necessary for the process of siginification. Attention is a mechanism for controlling and directing perception and awareness.

Mastery of Memory and Thinking

Sign usage is a mediated form of thought. Mediation is also a very gradual process to incorporate into thinking. “We have found that sign operations appear as a result of a complex and prolonged process subject to all the basic laws of psychological evolution. This means that sign-using activity in children is neither simply invented nor passed down by adults; rather it arises from something that is originally not a sign operation and becomes one only after a series of qualitative transformations.” (p. 46)

There is a complex relationship between memory and thought. In early childhood, thinking means remembering. This references the heavy associative nature of thinking, but later, individuals are more “logicalized”, that is, information is associated through systems of signs, so remembering is more mediated/augmented. The function of memory extends out into the environment. Individuals use environmental cues to trigger associative memories and contextualize thought.

Internalization of Higher Psychological Functions

Tools and signs are both mediating. They provide a level of indirection in everyday interactions. However, tools are externally oriented and symbols are internally oriented. Develpment seeks to internalize interpersonal processes into intrapersonal ones. The child’s interaction with others becomes a way to think about the world internally. This is internalization of signs, but it comes paired with an externalization and extension of cognition into the environment.

Problems of Method

Vygotsky is rejecting the stimulus-response method, originally developed by behaviorism, from higher psychology. He claims that is simply inadequate for addressing higher functions. He notes that it is unidirectional and reactive (after Engels). This suggests that there can be complex interactions with the environment in cognition. Vygotsky’s goal is to instead look at processes and not objects, and instead wants the method to focus on development as a general tool for understanding.

Interaction Between Learning and Development

There is a complex relationship between learning and development. There are several competing theories on how the two relate: One is that the two are totally independent (Piaget), the second is that the two are equivalent (James), and the last is a combination of the first two, that the two processes influence each other (Koffka). Development here is the natural process of maturation, while learning is socially based gaining of knowledge. Vygotsky’s conclusion to this is that contrary to intuition, development follows learning.

The argument is made that learning is partly a social process, and that it is socially supported. Do not look at the child alone, but rather look at the child in the social setting, with others and the environment as support. “Over a decade even the profoundest thinkers never questioned the assumption; they never entertained the notion that what children can do with the assistance of others might be in some sense even more indicative of their mental development than what they can do alone.” This is the Zone of Proximal Development. This idea challenges the notion of solitary performance that is still used in evaluation and test-taking to this day.

Imitation relates to the internalization of cultural/social practices and values. For example, playing house, cowboy and indian, other sorts of games. Imitation also serves as a basis for metaphor and supports the neural basis for the establishment of meaning.

The Role of Play in Development

Play creates an imaginary situation, and seems to emerge when the child experiences unrealizable tendencies. Play satisfies some unrealizable desires. It requires rules to constrain its imaginary world. “Just as we were able to sho at the beginning that every imaginary situation contains rules in a concealed form, we have also demonstrated the reverse–that every game with rules contains an imaginary situation in concealed form. The development from games with an overt imaginary situation and covert rules to games with overt rules and a covert imaginary situation outlines the evolution of childrens’ play.” (p. 95-96)

Play and symobls depend on symbolic abstraction. An early child cannot differentiate visual truth from meaning. Later, meaning can be separated, lies told, and objects imagined. When a child forms the capacity to internalize symbols from the environment, he also gains the ability to project those symbols onto objects. Thus, the wooden stick can become a horse. This is the same process that is used to imbue meaning metaphorically, and can be extended beyond the realm of play and games, but it is interesting as a point of origin.

Overview:

This is a collection that is primarily about developing formalizations of communication. The essays are primarily by AI scholars as well as a few notable linguists and philosophers. The entire suite of essays though does presuppose the idea that goals and plans are intrinsic to cognition and communication. There are a number of logical formalizations of communication and intention, but each of these requires a propositional model to account for knowledge in the world. This requirement is a failing from my purposes, but the approach and methods of formalization seem like fertile ground.

What I am trying to get out of this reading is a way to model knowledge and communication that is embodied (at least to the agents), situated, relational, social, and performative.

Notes:

Philip Cohen, Jerry Morgan, and Martha Pollack: Introduction

On the very first page, the editors describe a great example of communication, that is very hard to model.

Let us begin with an example. With the Wednesday advertising supplement in hand, a supermarket patron approaches the butcher and asks “where are the chuck steaks you advertised for 88 cents per pound?” to which the butcher replies, “How many do you want?” (p. 1)

This example is difficult because there is a lot of things implicit in the communication, and while the literal meanings of the responses are barely connected, the response is perfectly natural and normal. The editors follow this up with a little analysis, but I disagree with their conclusions. They suggest that this is about communication of intentions and realizing what the other agent wants and acting to satisfy this need. While I agree that the butcher in the example must know at some level what the customer wants, I think that is a poor candidate for what is going on in his head.

I would say that this is better explained by sociological methods, especially the notion of scripts. This is an instance of the “shopkeeper” script. A person walking by is attributed the role of customer, and the butcher is the shopkeeper. This attribution of roles is enforced by the environment and situation, but also more importantly by ingrained cultural experience. Everyone knows what shopkeepers and customers do. Shopkeepers and customers know what to do, they do not need to analyze each others’ intentions, but simply perform their roles.

The authors outline six questions which are to be addressed by the rest of the book:

1. Meaning: What is meaning? Is there a notion of meaning that is appropriate for all expressions?
2. Composability: How are meanings of complex expressions composed of the meanings of their parts?
3. Action: How does speech perform actions beyond the mere act of saying?
4. Indirectness: How can a sentence convey more information than the literal meaning?
5. Discourse compositionality: How does the interpretation of discourse reveal more than the sum of the meanings of the individual sentences?
6. Communication: What is communication? How are linguistic and nonlinguistic communication related? How is communication related to meaning?

These questions are important considerations for any theory of communication and would be good to address for future endeavors.

Michael Bratman: What Is Intention?

The goal here is to define and understand intention. THis concept is something that ties together mind and action. The idea is that intention is a sort of intermediary buffer between thought and action. Before perfoming actions, one might form intentions to perform higher goals, and this would direct the performance of the actions.

A challenge comes with distance, and this is explained through the rhetoric of planning. The problem is explained with a nice example: “Suppose I intend today to drive over the Golden Gate bridge tomorrow. My intention today does not reach its ghostly hand over time and control my action tomorrow; that would be action at a distance. But my intention must somehow influence my later action; otherwise, why bother today to form an intention about tomorrow?” (p. 16) Bratman poses a trilemma of issues posed by intention at a distance:

1. Distant intentions are metaphysically objectionable, because they involve action at a distance.
2. Distant intentions are rationally objectionable, because they are irrevocable.
3. Distant intentions are a waste of time.

Bratman’s solution to this mess is the idea of planning. One has a hierarchy of intentions (or goals), and this hierarchy may be revised in context of changes in state and information. I think that a similar, but intrinsically different conclusion can be drawn. Instead of plans as mental constructions, intentions become part of an intrinsic state, essentially, intentions become roles. This is the sort of approach specified by Clancey et al in Cognition and Multi-Agent Interaction.

This idea gets hinted at some more later on: Bratman relates planning to action. ” (p. 19) I have a plan to A only if it is true that I plan to A.” This distinction is subtle, and it could also be used to relate planning to identity. For example: the plan, “I am planning to graduate” relates the identity, “I am a student.” This idea is touched on when Bratman connects intention to the idea of a “pro-attitude.” The function of the attitude can be examined as “I am someone who intents to A,” or, alternately, “I am conducting myself as to A.” This can be used to bridge intentions and roles.

Bratman outlines some issues that connect intentions to beliefs. With relation to each other and general knowledge, intentions must be consistent, coherent, constrained, admissible, and stable, etc. All of these hinge on the matter of beliefs and knowledge. The constraints and rules for determining intentions resemble the way that Soar considers operators.

At the conclusion of Bratman’s paper, he is trying to address the problem of the “package deal” when actions toward intended goals can have unintended effects. He uses an example that is rather disconcerting, though. The example is a wartime situation involving two bombers who may or may not bomb a school full of children (actually, it is whether to bomb a munitions factory that is next to a school full of children which would suffer collateral damage). This example is intended to illustrate the complexities of decision making, but wholly leaves out the charged emotional element. It assumes a totally rational process, and in this case, curiously, the rational agent decides to bomb the children. This is a key example of the danger of the emphasis on rational planning.

Philip Cohen and Hector Levesque: Persistence, Intention, and Commitment

The goal of this paper is about the “rational balance” of beliefs, intentions, and actions. The focus is on an AI controlled (or modeled) rational agent in a wold with other agents. While the formulation here has what I would consider to be an undue reliance on the dogma of rationality, the authors do emphasize a social element to action, and their formalization requires the existince of other agents to work.

The authors define a seven-point theory of intention. In this framework, an intention is essentially a persistent goal.

1. Intentions pose problems for an agent. The agent must determine a way to achieve them.
2. Intentions provide a “screen of admissibility” for adopting other intentions.
3. Agents “track” the success of their attmepts to achieve their intentions.
4. To intend p: The agent must believe p is possible.
5. To intend p: The agent does not believe he will not bring about p.
6. To intend p: Under certain conditions, the agent believes he will bring about p.
7. Agents need not intend all the expected side effects of their intentions.

Outlined here is a thorough and rigorous model of a logical formalization of action, beliefs, and intentions. The manner of expression is through propositional predicates. For example: (GOAL x p), (BEL x p), (HAPPENS a), etc. Over the course of the paper, more types of propositions and logical constructs are added. The formalization here is concerned with a precise logical modeling of the world. A problem, though, is that it can be used to describe agent models (the space of beliefs held by the agent), but all of these are absolute and literal. They are independent of perception or context.

One element in this analysis is the aim to formalize the rules of intentions described by the authors. This is successful, but it exposes the flaws and weaknesses in the original model. Here, issues such as procrastination and dedication are explained by complex structuring of beliefs and intentions with respect to time. Instead, I think that procrastination and dedication are based much more strongly in situation, personality, and emotion. The awkwardness and complexity of modeling some supposedly simple emergent qualities of behavior suggests that there is a failure to consider something important within the original model.

Martha Pollack: Plans as Complex Mental Attitudes

Pollack aims in this to present an alternative approach to planning, differing from a number of original models, specifically STRIPS and NOAH, which derive from Allen. Planning frameworks, which depend on graphs, heirarchy, and decomposition flounder because of several reasons. The one that Pollack is focused on is the human disconnect. It must be possible for a planning framework to handle invalid plans, ones that would be successful given the agent’s beliefs, but cannot occur because some of those beliefs might be false.

An element here is that, based on observations, plans may be inferred and analyzed. This inference is an important topic that could (and will) see more attention. Pollack is using an example of communication wherein one agents is trying to reach a friend: A: “I want to talk to Kathy, so I need to find out the phone number for St. Eligius.” S: “St. Eligius closed last month. Kathy was at Boston General, but she’s already been discharged. You can call her at home. Her number is 555-1238.” The nature of this communication is tricky, and I would argue that it is socially defined, but it would be hard to say that it is part of a formal script. I would agrue that it is based on experience, convention, and practice, but these are hard to formalize.

To deal with these situation, Pollack describes the idea of an explanatory plan, or an “eplan”, which gives a solution to the inference problem, but is vague. Other than by direct inquiry, how does one recognize a statement or question as an explanatory plan?

Henry Kautz: A Circumscriptive Theory of Plan Recognition

This essay investigates plan recognition. The approach here depends on keyhole recognition, which assumes more complex knowledge. The analysis here is done by structruing a logical formalized representation of observed events. Observation and analysis of plans must work according to several methods, among which are entailment (deductive) and closure (inductive). These rules define how plans may be infered from observed actions.

Kautz moves into a formal representation of events and plans. Plans are broken down into components, agents (participants), constraints (temporal and equality), and preconditions. What follows are then a few theorems on how models relate to events and fact determination. Communication is expressed through this logic as a collection of predicates: indirect requests, direct requests, inquiries, etcetera. Kautz then concludes with an algorithm for the recognition of plans and intentions.

This thought is really perplexing, because it subtly suggests that human intelligence consists of performing this algorithm.

An Aside

Much of what is going on here assumes a sense of objective truth. It assumes that minds and communication occur in pure, abstract (or purely representative) methods, ignoring cultural or social context and influence.

C. Raymond Perrault: An Application of Default Logic to Speech Act Theory

This section is on modeling and understanding speech acts. There is a good review of types of speech acts derived from Austin (1962), of the types of speech acts: locutionary, illocutionary, perlocutionary. It is interesting that the author acknowledges the performative element here. Illocutionary acts are rich with variable meanings, for instance, irony, sarcasm, lies, etc. The focus in this essay is on the application of logic to illocutionary acts, and understanding how they succeed or fail.

The logical structure used is derived from predicate elements : Kxp, Bxp, Gxp, for knowledge, belief, goals. The structure outlined enables complex formalizations of reflexive social knowledge and goals. An important element of communication here is the cycling of knowledge. For instance BxByBxByp. This analysis allows for an easy formalization of certain structures: “I want x to know that I want p.” However the recursive cycles are very awkward. What follows from here is leading to a non-monotonic logic where beliefs can change with changes in knowledge.

One of the issues and challenges with this model is that it bases all speech as propositional. If the performative element of speech is analyzed, it introduces complexity and challenges. Speech operates with scripts (that may be parameterized) and rituals. Speech may also have non propositional functions, like “annoy.”

Daniel Vanderveken: On the Unification of Speech Act Theory and Formal Semantics

This essay seeks to connect the theory of illocutionary acts (from Searle and Austin) to truth semantics (Frege and Tarski). The method is to separate speech acts into several types: declarative (make assertions), imperative (give directives), interrogative (ask questions/find knowledge), exclamatory (express state), optative (express wishes). I would argue that this is the right idea, breaking speech down into its functional elements, but speech acts in conversations really can have a lot more than single functions embedded into them.

Vanderveken notes that illocutionary acts are more than propositional content, but also contain other sorts of qualities. He explains these as being a set of qualifiers (forces) on the statements. These relate to the performative aspect of speech, but he does not go as far as suggesting that qualifiers might convey other information in of themselves.

An important thing to note in this discussion of general semantics is that it assumes literal meaning. This is especially interesting in the context of Lakoff, as well as Rumelhart, who both challenge the idea of literal meaning.

Philip Cohen and Hector Levesque: Rational Interaction as the Basis for Communication

The idea here is to examine illocutionary acts as instances of actions. This is aimed to be a reaction against some existing theories. The unity of speech and action has a strong psychological precedent, especially from Vygotsky. However, this is extended from the rational action framework in the earlier chapter, whcih fails to account for other contextual elements.

The authors describe a world model that uses the propositional approach (looking at cleaning floors and opening doors). The formulation of statement predicates is interesting for further use, but seems incomplete in light of some of the underlying problems, for instance, the dependence on literal statements. Abstracting to an action model can cupercede this. I think the speech actions should be more emotionally/socially oriented. For instance, support, praise, etc.

This theory and its complex logical formulation of a helpful agent is fascinating but hugely complex (p. 243). It seems like this is overboard in explaining the simple social logic of requests. A much better, simpler, strategy would be to work from another model of interaction based on sociology or cultural anthropology.

John Searle: Collective Intentions and Actions

Searle forms a complex analysis of intention, as relates to plans and sub-plans. Intention propagates to sub-tasks and gets messy. It seems like this fails when compared with embodied interaction and knowledge. (Recall Hubert Dreyfus on phenomenology). The collective analysis here is atomic. It does not relate to extended or proximal cogition, or social practice. The world being presented here is one in which every human agent is alienated from context and must decipher precisely every intention and goal before communication or action. While Searle is a critic of AI, he ascribes here the disembodied nature of reason held by AI scholars.

Herbert Clark and Deanna Wilkes-Gibbs: Referring as a Collaborative Process

This, the last chapter in the volume, makes an interesting and very deep analysis of conversation and reference that picks up on many ideas neglected by the other authors in the book.

The essay looks at conversation as collaborative, in which meaning is co-constructed. A comparison is immediately made to sociology. The authors note how conversation is a very flexible, interactive thing, where ambiguity is made and then clarified or contextually understood. This also, notably, is very tied to the environment, not abstract propositions, but world referents.

The authors describe four assumptions of literary models that are destroyed in real conversation. These are tacit idealizations that ascribe to communication formal elements of written speech which is simply absent.

The literary model makes these tacit idealizations. (1) The reference is a proper noun (for instance, Napoleon, King George), a definite description (this year, the man with the moustache), or a pronoun (he, this, they). (2) The speaker uses the noun phrase intending to the addresse to be able to identify the referent uniquely against their common ground. (3) The speaker satisfies her intention simply by the issuing of that proper noun phrase. And (4) the course of the process is controlled by the speaker alone.

The authors reference Goffman (!) and claim that understanding is developed interactively. Communicated statements are followed with “continuers.” These enable conversation continue, and confirm that meaning is shared. This is based on practice and performance.

What is also neat about this analysis is the fact that the discourse in the experiement is entirely metaphorical. The experiment consists of having the subjects be given a grid of tangrams (making up arbitrary, but evocative shapes) and giving one subject a list of tangrams to instruct the other to recognize. The shapes are being refered to by imagery, analogy, and association. All of these are embodied and none are propositional (at least not in the sense of the other essays).

Recognition, and general communication, is a process. It involves various potential reactions, which have active knowledge changing, belief changing, and linguistic elements. These examples are: acceptance, rejection, postponement. Most notably is that each of these responses may be considered an action.

Notes:

The Embodied Mind

The authors open the section by immediately making the connection to neural networks. They support this connection with (besides the obvious fact that our brains are made of neurons) evidence derived from cognitive science relating to how the perception motor areas of the brain interconnect. The neural argument is used to show how concepts and reason are embodied in nature. One of the mechanisms by which this occurs is categorization. Categorization is a quality of interaction with the world and is inherently embodied.

Category, concept, and experience are woven together inseparably. “An embodied concept is a neural structure that is actually part of, or makes use of, the sensorimotor system of our brains. Much of conceptual inference is, therefore, sensorimotor inference.” (p. 20) This claim is very philosophically charged, as it contradicts many of the accepted traditions of Western philosophy.

Note: An important thing to note about this, is that, if models are embodied, what does that mean for the capacity of games and software to communicate models? Arguments toward embodiment also support the importance of the emotional element in games and in fiction. Emotion is a visceral experience, which leads to a sort of world model feedback that is used in the mental processing of fiction (See Keith Oatley). Games and electronic media have a powerful capacity to represent models, but it is difficult to argue towards embodied cognition, but represent game worlds so abstractly. The irony in this is that simulated characters are represented as being embodied, but the actual human user lacks a thorough embodied experience with the simulation. There are ways of getting around that by arguing towards emotion and the success of similar works that are not heavily embodied, but it seems as though there should be something extra here.

Lakoff and Johnson give the label of “metaphysical realism” to the aspect of classical philosophy that asserts that the world is fully abstract and that it can be imagined and understood in a disembodied manner. Metaphysical realism asserts that our concepts reflect the world. The opposing argument is the idea of “embodied realism” which I would argue takes a more subtle approach: our concepts construct the world. The authors pose a model of perception developed by Berlin and Rosch, which consists of four conditions that define basic conceptual categories.

• Condition 1: “The highest level at which a single mental image can represent the entire category.” Example is of a chair, table, car, etc. But, furniture does not fit into this category, as it is impossible to have a mental image of “furniture.”
• Condition 2: “It is the highest level at which category members have similarly perceived overall shapes.” This has to do with recognition, and the ability to map a perceived object into the category.
• Condition 3: “It is the highest level at which a person uses similar motor actions for interacting with category members.” This approach is an interactivity-based categorization. This idea is somewhat problematic, though, because it relates to the matter of affordances. I would argue that affordances work below a categorical level, but then, the goal of these conditions is to define the highest level that is intrinsically basic.
• Condition 4: “It is the level at which most of our knowledge is organized. You have a lot of knowledge at the basic level. Think for a moment of all that you know about cars versus what you know about vehicles.” This is one of the more problematic aspects. The trend of AI pattern matching seems to operate at a level above the basic level, to higher level reasoning.

The essence of embodiment is that perception plays a central role in conception.

Primary Metaphor and Subjective Experience

This section resembles a great deal of the discussion in Metaphors We Live By. Here, the authors are establishing a type of metaphor that is used as a groundwork for explaining how metaphor is used as a fundamental building block for cognition. There are four parts to the integrated theory of primary metaphor:

1. Johnson’s theory of conflation. Conflation is how somatic experience connects to foundational concepts during development. An example is the connection between warmth and affection experienced by infants. Conflation is paired with differentiation, wherein children separate domains, but the underlying association remains present.
2. Grady’s theory of primary metaphor. These are like building blocks for larger metaphors: they are atomic metaphors, and primary units. Examples are simple associations such as “more is up”.
3. Narayanan’s neural theory of metaphor. This theory uses the neural basis of cognition to explain how conflation is represented neurally via associations. This uses the neural groundwork of activation and association to explain how metaphors function.
4. Fauconnier and Turner’s theory of conceptual blending. This idea suggests that when distinct conceptual domains are activated simultaneously, connections across the domains are formed, leading to new inferences.

There is a brief note in this section that is worthy of attention: “It is also important to stress that not all conceptual metaphors are manifested in the words of a language. Some are manifested in grammar, others in gesture, art, or ritual. These nonlinguistic metaphors may, however, be secondarily expressed through language and other symbolic means.” (p. 57) This idea conveys that metaphors operate beyond language, and extend into a much broader sense of meaning. If metaphor operates at the level of art or ritual, this seems to assert that metaphors are models at their essence, and perhaps all models are metaphorical systems. The claim is significant, but defensible, as models construct relationships between concepts within a domain, and metaphor is how relationships are constructed, ultimately mapping back to bodily experience.

The Anatomy of Complex Metaphor

On complex metaphors, the authors continue to stress that  models and metaphors are the same things: associative patterns.  Concepts are dependent on metaphors. Examples of complex metaphors are “A Purposeful Life is a Journey”, “Love is a Journey”, etc. These are explained as being tied together by various underlying sub-metaphors, woven together by associations which are experientially based.

Embodied Realism

The idea that has been at work in the past several sections is that realism is dependent on the body and on experience, and cannot be metaphysically known. In this section, the authors compare classical (or first generation) cognitive science with contemporary embodied cognitive science. First generation cognitive science is based on a priori philosophy, carrying into the study of mind all of the classical ideas from Cartesian philosophy. This approach prevented growth, by tying cognition down with philosophical commitments, and leaving it unable to answer experimental evidence. Second generation or contemporary cognitive science accepts the neural basis of cognition and as a result, its embodiment.

Overview:

Bradd Shore sets his sight on correcting a problematic and false divide between anthropology and psychology. He claims that the two are intrinsically related, but were kept separate during the early growth of both fields due to the desire to preserve the abstract and disembodied view of cognition. To help unite the two fields, he proposes that this may be done via the theory of mental models, borrowing from Johnson-Laird. Mental models can be used to explain the process of cognition and meaning making and illustrate this on the levels of both cognition and culture.

Notes:

The foreword describes the cultural narrative of the seprated disciplines of psychology and anthropology, trying to find ways of connecting them. Notably, referenced are Mead and Geertz as forces for good. The underlying issue at stake in this discussion is the establishment of meaning. The product of meaning making is reality. However, the process is not absolute or universal. This logic could be used to express the idea that individuals live in different, but mutually construted realities.

A biological argument for the diversity of cognition: The human brain develops 3/4 its mass after birth and keeps on learning. Knowing what we do about how neural networks recognize patterns, there is just too much material that is learned that is contextually dependent for general cognition to be universal. Shore discusses later his experience moving to Samoa, and the gradual period of learning the culture, which involves learning to think like the Samoans do. This process is a gradual incorporation of Samoan mental models into his own mind. This model of understanding treats the brain as an active participant in terms of meaning making and understanding experience.

The Psychic Unity Muddle

This section is intended to dismantle psychic unity, the previously dominant trend in anthropology. Psychic unity claims that, despite cultural differences, peoples minds are essentially the same. This idea rose as a politically “enlightened” perspective on anthropology, from the previous Victorian and colonialist idea that cultural differences reflected cognitive differences. The Victorian model ultimately concluded that because cultures were different from the obviously superior European culture, they were inferior. Psychic unity aimed to defeat that, but replaced it with an equally colonialist mentality, dismissing the evidence of variations in cognition, and still reaffirming the superiority of European rationalism.

Shore’s take on this is to assert that culture directly affects cognition, but through development. The brain has an intrinsic ability to make meaning, which is shared by all cultures, but the actual meaning made, the cultural psychology, varies significantly.

Shore describes a number of anthropologists who worked in the direction of distancing themselves from psychic unity. One of these is Levy-Bruhl, who asserted that some cultures have a stronger acceptance of sensual and nonrational understanding. The concept wherein individuals can be identified in trancendental ways is called participation.

Levi-Strauss attempts to promote a universal rationality by splitting rationality into two flavors: modern and primitive (or mythic). This distinction is really not one of rationality, but of consistency, specifically with respect to some thought/value system. Levi-Strauss promotes psychic unity, but vaguely, as he says that the mind has the same capacities.

Shore has an interesting take on Geertz. Geertz encourages the movement of culture into mind, but not vice versa. By examining culture as a web of meanings, Geertz steps away from the psychic unity muddle, but does not do so completely for Shore.

Shweder does the opposite, but in reaction against western rationalism, he rejects the processor element of mind, which is going too far for Shore. Shore wants there to be a universal hardware, which is exactly the processing element of the mind. In reaction against symbolic reasoning, Shweder’s reaction is understandable, but Shore argues that connectionist models of cognition can be used to explain a universal mechanism of meaning making.

Rethinking Cultural Models

Shore describes an experience introducing visitors to Samoa. One of them asks for a conrete example of culture, which Shore cannot provide. The point here is the futility of trying to find a concrete, tangible example of culture, something that one could simply point at. This idea is an objective view of culture, thinking of culture as a system of artifacts, which could be physical objects or conversations or ideas. This view only looks at the products of culture, not the thing itself, which can be thought of as a system of mental models.

Introducing mental models explicitly. Shore references Roy D’Andrade’s definition of cultural models “a cognitive schema that is intersubjectively shared by a cultural group,” which is flawed because of its failure to accomodate several important details. The idea here is to address culture as a model, or a composition of models. These models include explicit patterns as well as tacit ones. Shore claims that the mind is a model generator. Mental models are a meaning making strategy, they come in categories of personal and conventional ones. Conventional models are mediated and have a social feedback mechanism which involves phases of expression and participation.

Conventional models may conflict with personal ones, producing anxiety. Cultural models may also have a psychic cost. Dominant models occasionally come alongside alternative models.

Some important distinctions: certain structures, rituals, games, scripts, performances, fall under the category of instituted models. These are different from conventional models. Referenced here are Victor Turner, Goffman, Schank, and Abelson. Also distinguished is the idea of a “foundational schema” which is something of a meta-model, or a general class of models which can encompass a wide variety of specific models.

Shore provides a nice set of bullet points on the types of models. This perception of models is like a toolkit, as opposed to a single unified strategy. There is classification here, but not hierarchy. In developing implementation of models as artifacts, how would one handle this diversity?

• Orientational
  • Spatial
  • Temporal
  • Social orientation
  • Diagnostic
• Expressive/Conceptual
  • Classifacatory
  • Ludic
  • Ritual and dramatic
  • Theories
• Task
  • Scripts
  • Recipies
  • Checklists
  • Mnemonics
  • Persuasion

Mind Games

In this section, Shore uses the system of models to analyze how spectators make sense out of a baseball game. The analysis here connects metaphors and symbolism. Models are means of structuring and interpreting events meaningfully. A model turns an arbitrary sequence of occurrences into a meaninful narrative.

Shore then connects the themes and mechanics of baseball to some unique qualities of American culture. Baseball’s asymmetry and style of walkabout connects to the American culture of individualism, privatism, and atomism. There is some vagueness here, though. Is this meant to say that baseball is itself a model of American culture? Is it an adaptation, or interpretation, or enactment of American culture? What are the structures that underlie these models?

There is a connection between the model and the culture, but it is not the rules themselves that exactly connect. The formal model generates an experience (a simulation), which, when executed, connects to the cultural themes and meanings. Some relationships are only emergent. This relates to the relationship between culture and games-as-played, versus the culture as it relates to the game’s model.

Playing with Rules

The three categories here define working with rules in games. There are constitutive rules, procedural rules, and strategies. Shore seems to be channeling Sutton-Smith here. Rules can never be complete, though. Any system of rules will lead to a boundary between the realm of the game space and the outside: Huizinga’s magic circle. Boundary violations lend to a “marginal play,” which lives in a liminal space between rules.

Interior Furnishings: Scenes from an American Foundational Schema

Shore introduces the idea of modularity as a foundational schema, that is closely related to the cultural and cognitive aspects of American culture. The examples of modularity provided by Shore are all things that have changed with modernization. It seems that Shore is attempting to explore the effect of technology on human life from an anthropological perspective. The examples he gives are well known to philosophers: particularly the idea that the use of machines likens humans to machines. The ideas of modularity and atomism do not seem so much as models, but units. What is a model in this case? An interpretive pattern that relates metaphorically to cultural values?

A term here is “Cultural pattern.” This connects to the existing dynamic cultural landscape, including political, economical, and technological factors. A cultural pattern is a snapshot of historically recorded consiousness.

Technological Trends: The Neuromantic Frame of Mind

The discussion of modularization seems to be rather pejorative in this section. Still, analysis of culture as a system of models is inherently modular.

In this chapter there are the inevitable references to Heidegger and Benjamin, both of whom were very critical of technology and its impact on human being. Modularity is closely tied to, and in this case, is essentially the same as technology in a general sense. So here surface many arguments regarding the inherent destructive/assimilative/simulative effects of technology on man.

Kwakiutl Animal Symbolism

Totemism as discussed here is a foundational schema, which relates cultural and life patterns to cognitive patterns. The rationality of totemism is associated with various natural characteristics, and cannot be easily explained by categorical logic. Furthermore, the symbols associated with meaning are participatory symbols, and the signifier is never totally separate from the signified. Shore’s argument here is that in order for semiosis (the process of deriving meaning through signs) to work, signifiers must have an establishing relationship with the signified. “The first life of any sign lies in the empirical nature of the relation a signifier bears to a referent. Signs have different sorts of affordances for producing psychological meaning. The sign’s second life is the establishment of a psychological relationship between signifier and referent in someone’s mind.” (p. 200)

Dreamtime Learning, Outside-In

The Wawilak narrative is a foundational schema which takes the form of many models within Murngin culture. The place of this narrative relates to Western “grand narratives” or cultural narratives (see Lyotard). This connection establishes the relationship between the sort of eternally-retold narratives and the cultural and cognitive models that frame them.

Tropic Landscapes: Alternative Spatial Models in Samoan Culture

The subject of this chapter is the relationship between two models of spatial navigation, which operate together in Samoan culture. The first model is a sort of inside/outside or seaward/landward model, which is binary, and is described as “digital”, in the sense that it is discrete. The second model is a more gradiated, analog model. Spatial orientation is closely related to moral orientation, where different spaces give way to different associated values and “appropriate” behaviors.

Spatial relationships are anchored in kinaesthetic experience and later tied with metaphor. The analog concentric models are learned, internalized, and embodied. “This is why Samoans are able to articulate for outsiders like myself the seaward-landward model but are less likely to convey to an outsider the concentric model, which is more directly linked to the subtle modulations of daily behavior.” These are more difficult to communicate because they are embodied, whereas the others are disembodied and can be more communicable.

There are two approaches to these models: digital and analog. In interpreting models, it is important to observe and distinguish perspective, model, and practice. Structuralist analysis imposes structuralist values, which assumes that perspective, model, and analysis are equatable, but they are not.

When Models Collide: Cultural Origins of Ambivalence

The discussion in this case is about conflicting models, when models operate against each other. An example is given with morality and ethics, which involves the play of values within morals. The discussion of model conflict is very reminiscent of Goffman. The conflict however, is not one of roles, but of models and systems and values.

Shore gives a few examples of models at conflict. The first of these is one wherin the chief of a villiage is murdered. The son of the murdered chief is visited by a Christian pastor who professed the moral course of action, to turn the other cheek and forgive. This was done using a sort of formal speech, and in an authoratative space. However, sometime later, the same pastor visits the son again, outside, speaking in a more informal speech, telling him that “if he does not avenge his father’s murder, he is not his father’s son.” The boy later on attacked the murderer with a machete while he was being escorted through the village. The values at contrast here are those of filial piety versus ostensible moral behavior. This example is extremely related to Geertz’s analysis of the failed funeral in Bali. Here, Shore uses the approach of models to explain the circumstances, though. When contrasted against Geertz, we are made aware that models do change over time, sometimes new ones are introduced and others become irrelevant, and frequently they operate in conflict with each other.

Shore gives three more examples, but in each of these cases, the culture has a formal ritual for handling the indiscression that arises from the conflict. Even in the case of the murder, Shore explains in the epilogue that there is a slow and difficult process by which the murderer’s family is exiled from the villiage. If models are the means by which we make meaning, rituals are how that meaning is turned into daily life.

An ethical struggle is about rationalizing and legitimizing a course of action. “Thus, ethical discourse is not just the enunciation of moral values but commonly involves a rhetorical struggle to legitimize one course of action and depreciate an alternative, even though both possibilities exist as ethical alternatives.” (p. 296)

Culture and the Problem of Meaning

This chapter is about formalizing the construction of meaning. There is a summary according to some bullet points:

1. Logical vs psychological
2. Meaning construction versus information processing
3. Meaning and memory
4. Realist vs nominalist
5. Experiential realism (Lakoff and Johnson)
6. Analytical/nonanalytical, concept formation

There are stages in meaning construction: Shore borrows the Piagetian ideas of assimilation and accomodation, wherein old models are applied to new phenomena, and models are modified or created to account for new information, respectively. Also relates to Churchland’s idea of exploratory understanding.

Shore makes an interesting claim: Language enables the articulation of mental models into propositional ones. “I am not suggesting that analytical models are irrelevant to human cognition. Far from it. Many cultural models are themselves in the form of complex programs that have an internal syntax characteristic of informational models. Moreover, these sorts of cultural models probably proliferate under conditions where language is written and practices are rationalized into sets of procedures and formalized recipies. One would also expect them to proliferate in highly industrialized settings where machines mediate human relations. More generally, whenever people are forced to ‘work out’ their models and communicate them in verbal terms, all cultural models are transformable into such propositional models. Indeed, a hallmark of human language is that it posesses the potential of a universal transducer of human experiences into informational terms.”

On Meno and the hermeuneutic circle. The Socratic dialogue answeres the question of knowing arguing for eternal, timeless knowledge. Shore makes the interesting connection where he agrees, by claiming that memory is the key, but it relates to experience, rather than inheritance.

There is a strong critique of Saussure, who neglects the difference between systematic and psychological arbitrariness. Signs may be arbitrary as relates to their meaning, systematically. However, psychologically, signs have a much deeper connection to their referents. Lakoff and Johnson provide a better approach to meaning, but mddule on whether “idealized conceptual models” exist in the mind or in the world (and other issues).

Analogical Transfer and the Work of Culture

Shore argues toward a neural and connectionist approach to examining meaning making. The work of neural pattern matching is meant to serve as a bridge between social/cultural models and individual mental models. This would play out as pattern recognition and encoding of choice. The argument is that experience and matching (classification) is what drives analogy, and cognition occurs as a result of this pattern matching.

Explaining the embodiment aspect of cognition, Shore mentions that language is anchored in synaesthesia (or what I might just call experience). Audio phonesthemes are a hard argument against the AI comprehension of language.

An interesting example that connects experience and symbolic reasoning is Werner and Kaplan’s work on “Symbol Formation”, which explains a heavily embodied process of learning symbols, that takes place in development.

Analogy here is a useful analytic tool to connect experience and cultural meaning, and connect models to experience.

In the epilogue, Shore gives a wonderful summary: “As the Murngin Wawilak story reminds us, the making of a meaningful world engages a set of preexisting forms, but only in relation to a set of personal dispositions of a particular knower. The emergent world is a coming-into-knowledge of another world that already exists. This is the Murngin version of culture’s twice-born character, the ceaseless flow of semiosis, inside-out and outside-in, linking culture in the world and culture in the mind.” (p. 379)

Overview

Fine’s book is one of the first seminal studies of the culture of roleplaying games. The work is conducted as an ethnography, and was probably the original study to examine roleplaying as a legitimate culture. The content of the investigation explores the social structure, the creation of meaning, the frames of interaction, and the types of people who enjoy these games. The study was conducted in the 1970s, and as a result, much of the culture seems very alien and peculiar, especially to one familiar with roleplaying only in relatively recent times (in my own experience, since the late 1990s). I find that much of the hidden potential that Fine hints at has come to some fruition, though not completely.

Notes

Fine is a sociologist and this work is an ethnography. Note the goals here: “First, to analyze and describe a contemporary urban leisure subculture. Second, to understand the the development and components of microcultural systems and explore their relationships to the structure of the groups in which they are embedded. Third, to understand the process by which people generate meanings and identities in social worlds.” (p. 1) This last point is the most remarkable about roleplaying, but to get at it, it is necessary to delve into the structure and form of the games and the culture that plays them.

From the preface, Fine describes an interesting conflict in the study: balancing work and play. One one hand, studying a leisure culture might be considered frivolous to those who consider themselves serious sociologists, and conversely, the culture itself may find that the formal study serves to sap the fun or lightness out of the play in question. The success of the study depends on the ability to navigate between these conflicting perspectives. The concern is also particularly relevant to those of us studying video games.

Fine also begins by looking at the history of roleplaying, specifically by investigating war games and the culture that surrounds them. War games connect to simulation games, which, in this context, are frequently used as educational or management tools. The role of simulation games is to encourage the players to see things in terms of positions, not persons. This distinction carries over to the abstract function of player versus character.

On exploring player culture and the role of violence and sublimated aggression within the games: Fine describes a number of situations where players partake and glorify violence in game, but these behaviors are also blanketed with excuses. Some excuse violence by arguing that the game allows the players to simulate and get their hostilities and aggression out within the context of the game. Gary Gygax argues (from an interview) that players, having played these games, know better what violence and war is about, and would thus consider real violence unacceptable. This thread is notable because it compares again to the arguments for and against violent video games.

There is a note on the common interests of the roleplaying community, and Fine describes these as the components of fantasy role-playing gaming. This resounds with Mackay’s findings as well. There is a list of bullet points of interests which are described as relevant: wargaming, fantasy literature, mythology, history, physical science, mysticism, Society for Creative Anachronism experience. A thing to note about these is that many of them are focused around the ideas of model-construction.

On reasons why people play games: there is a large category which is escapism. One of the special items in this category is the idea of escape from self. This idea connects to role-experimentation and identity play that is discussed by Turkle.

Fine also notes, with continuing discomfort, the notable absence of women from fantasy role-playing culture. One note is that women tend towards social settings in play, so, while role-playing would seem to be a natural passtime for female players, there is an emphasis that role-playing is a sublimation of aggressive physical play, which is a sterotypically male developmental pattern.

On the nature of the constructed fantasy in these worlds, Fine notes that there are several “folk ideas” or values that are present or embedded in game worlds:

• Unlimited good. This goodness is in the sense of material or other rewards. There is always infinite possibility for reward in dungeons.
• Oppositional nature of the world. The worlds are framed in the context of good versus evil in clear and stark terms.
• Western morality and culture is identified as good, whereas anything else that is deviant or outside can be cast as evil.
• Prevailing virtue of courage. Courageous behavior is met with increased rewards. Luck is seen as part of it, but success is rationalized with courage.

There is a paradox of reason and logic in fantasy worlds. Fine discusses several layers of logicality: there is realism, where the game is held to certain standards of realistic logic. The example given with this is in the portrayal of medieval worlds. Logic tends to relate to the coherence of the game according to its rules and logical flow. The primary issue at stake is consistency. As long as the realism and logic are consistent, then the game flows appropriately and is not frustrating to the players.

Description of the world setting: The Empire of the Petal Throne, by M. A. R. Barker. The appeal of this setting, as described by Fine seems to be the discovery of the exoticism of the alien world. The appeal of this seems like a social MMOG, where there is a whole culture to learn and be fascinated and surprised by.

Fine references Erving Goffman’s technique of Frame Analysis to examine the styles of interpersonal interaction within the roleplaying games. He also references Alfred Schutz. The essential aspect at stake in this analysis is the idea of engrossment. A frame is a level of interaction in which there is sufficient engrossment. However, the difference between Goffman’s frame analysis and what is conducted in role-playing games is that the engrossment is continually oscillating in the games.

Frames become relevant in managing knowledge. An example given is how game masters aim to keep things secret from the players, to enforce that their characters will remain ignorant, and the players will have the same knowledge as their characters according to a given scenario. Occasionally, GMs try to conceal the rules (specifically numeric probabilities and the statistics of monsters), so that players will not know what to expect. “Some referees extend their concern with the degree of players’ awareness and suggest that, as in ‘real life,’ characters should not know the probabilities in the game world (the rules of the game with their percentages of success). This secretiveness–keeping the player ignorant so that his character will be ignorant–adds to the verisimilitude of the simulation according to some referees.” (p. 191)

On playing characters, there is stress between role-playing and game-playing. This relates to immersion and motivation. When compared to later studies (especially Mackay), the position of pure game-playing seems much more accepted here. Game playing treats the experience as having concrete goals, so the play can be directed around achieving, sometimes even competitively, those goals. This ties back into the way that digital role-playing games, specifically MMORPGs function. In these contexts, the fantasy is a backdrop for the game itself.

Fantasy role-playing games involve a communal construction of culture. Symbolic interaction enables the construction of meaning. The worlds are socially constructed, which means that themes and values are shared by the culture. In personal fantasy, the themes may be idiosyncratic, but in a social construction, the values have been established and are enacted by the group, and the fantasy thus becomes a shared creation. Other social groups construct meaning, but in role-playing the value is fantastic, imaginary, and explicitly formed.