Okay, I have been wanting to play around with this for a while, and just had the chance to investigate Sun’s fascinating and dramatically named Project Darkstar. Darkstar is actually a game server that is designed for facilitating networked games. It reminds me of just the basic infrastructure behind Multiverse, without anything else whatsoever. For small or versatile projects, that may be a very good thing. I can imagine this plugging into Java Monkey Engine very nicely. I am thinking about using it for some small experimental projects, as well as a potential platform for eventual research.

My research project (fictional adaptation and character simulation) needs to have a flexible, modular, and very very pluggable architecture. I want to be able to use it with other things, and allow others to plug it into their own systems. This is always an ambition in these rough and tumble academic projects, but I really hope to do it right. Developing a client/server system that is multiplayer/multiuser ready is a potentially very good start, as long as the overhead is not too much.

Also, all of Darkstar uses Maven, which I have never used before, but looks to be extremely promising as a powerful project organizational and build tool. I definitely want to try using it for new projects. But, as for Darkstar itself, I’ll play around with it and post updates if I make something interesting.

Propp is one of the earliest formalist accounts of story structure. However, immediately in the preface, we see an interesting perspective that is not normally accounted for. Morphology as a practice comes from botany, which is a study of the component parts, and then the relation between individual parts and the whole. The botanical metaphor is interesting, and casts the flavor for Propp’s entire analysis. Morphology in botany is used for two things primarily: classification and study of function. The morphology approach in botany is generally usurped by genetics in modern practice. A genetic analogue to the folktale would observe the creation of tales and study their emergence, and the factors that caused them to appear in the way that they do. Morphology is a differentiation and classification among specimens, identifying how some tales may be alike in many ways but different in key elements.

From a computational perspective, Propp’s work is an excellent example of a descriptive or analytic model. This may be used for classifying or understanding a body of work in terms of its parts, but it is not sufficient to generate new material computationally. In fact, it is not generally possible to proceduralize the deconstruction of a tale into a grammar. Human knowledge and context is needed to both interpret a grammar from a story, and to turn a grammar into a new story. These dimensions have a great deal of choice and flexibility involved, and these details are not within the resolution of the descriptive model. Nonetheless, that does not mean that the model is useless or flawed. It may still work as a tool for interpreting and analyzing tales once they have been converted into the symbolic structure required by the model.

The History of the Problem

Propp’s account for the problem suggests that the goal of morphology is to investigate and catalogue, but also provide a history of folktales. The perspective of understanding history recalls the idea of the genealogy of folktales, understanding how the patterns emerged, although this does not seem to be discussed. The study of folktales have attempted to classify tales in various ways, differentiating between animal tales and fairy tales, and so on. Morphology is posed as an alternative to this sort of high level and hierarchical classification. Existing theories have made classifications based on category, theme, and motif. The flow of these ideas gradually transitions into a grammar that analyzes tales in terms of elements. The categorical approach gives a hierarchical, taxonomy, and that is the origin from which Propp wishes to relocate the study of folktales.

The Method and Material

Propp has targeted his material specifically and exactly. The subject of his study are the fairy tales classified by Afanas’ev, from the numbers 50 to 151 (although there was a more recent reordering, which makes the new numbers 93-270). Propp is forming a morphology of only these 100 tales, so his approach may be seen as maybe not a morphology of all tales, but an example of the means by which a morphology may be defined around a collection of works. The morphology is “a description of the tale according to its component parts and the relationship of these components to each other and to the whole.” (p. 19)

More exactly, the tale is broken down into the functions of the dramatis personae. The function is the unit of analysis from which the tales are composed. The set of characters is large, and the set of functions are small. The two dimensions (function and character) lead to a large combinatorial diversity, producing a large potential number of tales. It is important to clarify that the function is not the act performed by a character, but the meaning behind that action. “Function is understood as an act of a character, defined from the point of view of its significance for the course of the action.” (p. 21) Propp defines four theses relating the functional composition of the folktales: (p. 21-23)

1. Functions of characters serve as stable, constant elements in a tale, independent of how and by whom they are fulfilled. The constituted the fundamental components of a tale.
2. The number of functions known to the fairy tale is limited.
3. The sequence of functions is always identical.
4. All fairy tales are of one type in regard to their structure.

The Functions of Dramatis Personae

This section forms the bulk of Propp’s work. He catalogues with great detail the functions present in a tale, which are identified by Greek and Roman letters, as well as a few symbols. He classifies the functions in order of their appearance within tales, gives several varieties of each type of function, and examples of those variants. The botanical metaphor continues at this level: Propp explains that the task of identifying functions is the extraction of genera. Genera would give way to species, and then varieties. What is interesting is that Propp uses a genetic metaphor to examine the component structures of the folktales, not the tales on the whole.

A good example of a function which has an important role within the morphology is “VIII. The villain causes harm or injury to a member of a family. (Definition: villainy. Designation: A.)” (p. 30-34) Villainy takes on many forms. I will mention a few of them:

1. The villain abducts a person (A1). A dragon kidnaps the tsar’s daughter (131), a peasant’s daughter (133); a witch kidnaps a boy (108)…
2. The villain seizes or takes away a magical agent (A2). The “uncomely chap” seizes a magic coffer (189); a princess seizes a magic shirt (208); the finger-sized peasant makes off with a magic steed (138).
3. The villain pillages or spoils the crops (A3). A mare eats up a haystack (105). A bear steals the oats (143). A crane steals the peas (186).

There is a brief interlude where Propp explains that certain chains of functions have types of their own. Several types of functions work well with each other, or do not work well, and there is a great diversity of possible connections that occur within the catalog of folktales. Generally, illogical connections may exist, but require extra motivation or context in the tale. In computational adaptations of Propp’s work, these connections are extremely problematic, though. In the context of a pure morphology, that is not a problem. This is one point where it is important to realize that Propp’s study is a descriptive or analytic grammar, not a generative one. A human could perform the task of reconciling an illogical chain of functions, but that is generally beyond the power of a computational generative grammar.

For accommodating stories with multiple parts, villainous “moves” are extracted to form subsequences in the grammar. Some of these groups may be cycled and repeated. Additionally, some elements are grouped: prohibition is always paired with violation, for example. The sequence ABC↑ can be understood as a unit, the “complication.” The sequence DEF is the hero’s testing and reward, which also serves as a unit. There are combinatorial variations within these units, but they serve as logical groupings within the grammar itself.

Some Other Elements of the Tale

Tangentially, Propp mentions the issue of motivation. Motivation is extremely important in my own work, and it has an insubstantial role in the formalist analysis. Here motivation is addressed as following from the action (plot) itself. Some motivations are hatred, fear, jealousy, love, lack, and justice. Motivation adds to the quality of the action, but does not address the form of the action itself.

The Distribution of Functions Among the Dramatis Personae

Functions are grouped by spheres of influence, namely, spheres have have authority over certain functions. Characters may correspond to the spheres, or a single character may cover multiple spheres, or many figures may make up a single sphere. These spheres serve as roles within the format, which would conceivably be where agents would intervene if they were able to act within the story as a world. The spheres are enumerated as follows: (p. 79-80)

1. The villain. The villain performs the villainy, struggles with the hero, and pursues him/her.
2. The donor (provider). The donor gives the hero a magical agent.
3. The helper. The helper may undo the misfortune or lack, rescue the hero from pursuit, and transfigure the hero.
4. The princess (a sought-for person) and her father. This sphere assigns the difficult tasks, brands the hero, exposes and recognizes the hero, and also participates in marriage.
5. The dispatcher. Dispatches the hero.
6. The hero. The hero performs the departure and engages with the villain. Oddly, the conflicts are represented in the villain’s domain in this analysis.
7. The false hero. The false hero appears in some stories, engages in some of the activities of the hero, and has a special function of presenting false claims.

The Tale as a Whole

The methods of recombination are actually rather complex. The opening problem is how to distinguish one tale from another. The first step is to tell how a single tale is structured, identify “what is meant by a tale” (p. 92). Given here are methods of reconstruction, which are moves that may take place in the story. Each move is a conflict and resolution, which actually take on multiple formats by the grammar. Some tales have two full sequences of A-W, another example interrupts a tale so it has three sequences: A-G, a-K, K-W. This diversity of recombination is extraordinarily complex, and does not actually seem to be well integrated into the final grammar.

Some tales are differentiated by the sequences of H-I (the struggle with the villain and victory over him), and M-N (the difficult task and its resolution). Many tales diverge on these. The challenge is reconciling the study of the whole to include both systems of multiple moves, as well as this H-I and M-N distinction. Propp does explain that four categories result: tales with H-I, tales with M-N, tales with both, and those with neither. He observes that when there are multiple moves, then the fight (H-I) move always occurs first and is followed by the difficult task (M-N). The solution for reconciliation is to use a branching path. However, the grammar still does seem unusually inflexible.

The remaining discussion is on the variants of the morphology and the characteristics of the overal forms. Propp finds that many instances of functions are interchangeable, but some are not, i.e. H1 must always be followed by I1. Some functions may change places. Direct violations exist, but are usually exceptional cases. Theme is an ill defined problem in terms of story form.

A quick review of Jameson’s intentions: historicizing. The central theme and motivation behind The Political Unconscious is the desire to historicize narratives and to understand them within a Marxist framework of meaning. Texts come to us as already read, and interpretation weaves between previous interpretations. Interpretation is, essentially, allegorical. The goal of this study is to use the Marxist framework to understand the system behind interpretations.

Jameson’s chief influences are Frye, Greimas, Freud, Levi-Strauss, Lukacs, Barthes, and Deleuze. Jameson aims to tie these approaches together:

These divergent and unequal bodies of work are here interrogated and evaluated from the perspective of the specific critical and interpretive task of the present volume, namely to restructure the problematics of ideology, of the unconscious and of desire, of representation, of history, and of cultural production, around the all-informing process of narrative, which I take to be (here using the shorthand of philosophical idealism) the central function or instance of the human mind. This perspective may be reformulated in terms of the traditional dialectical code as the study of Darstellung: that untranslatable designation in which the current problems of representation productively intersect with the quite different ones of presentation, or of the essentially narrative and rhetorical movement of language and writing through time. (p. 13)

The concept of Darstellung seems like a potentially relevant idea that is worth investigating.

On Interpretation

Jameson gives a historical review of interpretation (through Althusser). These means of interpretation are ways of reading and connecting the model of the text productively to the real world. Specifically he explores medieval interpretation and how the biblical texts were analyzed according to four levels: (p. 31)

1. Analogical: political reading (collective “meaning” of history)
2. Moral: psychological reading (individual subject)
3. Allegorical: allegorical key or interpretive code
4. Literal: historical or textual referent

The semantic network behind most narratives is the political unconscious. Jameson is interested in texts, and the space common to all texts (or shared by texts) has a master narrative which is necessarily unconscious. Jameson is not interested in the acceptance of these master narratives, but rather challenging them and understanding them in historical context.

The idea is, in other words, that if interpretation in terms of expressive causality of of allegorical master narratives remains a constant temptation, this is because such master narratives have inscribed themselves in the texts as well as in our thinking about them; such allegorical narrative signifieds are a persistent dimension of literary and cultural texts precisely because they reflect a fundamental dimension of our collective thinking and our collective fantasies about history and reality. (p. 34)

Mediation is about the relationship between the text and its social and cultural context. Mediation is an inherent source of ambiguity. The modern variant of mediation is “transcoding” which illustrates a more literal semiotic process and relationship wherein meanings are encoded and decoded in different ways. An approach to transcoding could be to strategically use different decoding schemes to analyze texts at different levels.

Exploring mediation and transcoding: Expressive causality is a kind of mediation which seems to suggest a kind of audience creativity. The work of mediation is identification and differentiation. Mediation is explored by way of Marxist analysis.

Jameson gives an argument for the narrativization of the real. The real is understood as fantasy, especially within context of the Deleuzian libidinal or “desiring” apparatus. There is an interpretive power in ideology, exploring what the text represses. The notion of master texts is posed in the Freudian language of consciousness and repression. The argument that texts may be read and have adjusted meanings is reminiscent of postmodernism, but the rejection of inherent meaning given by postmodernists clashes with the claim of textual repression.

More than this, the very closure of the “semiotic rectangle” now affords a way into the text, not by positing mere logical possibilities and permutations, but rather through its diagnostic revelation of terms or nodal points implicit in the ideological system which have, however, remained unrealized in the surface of the text, which have failed to become manifest in the logic of the narrative, and which we can therefore read as what the text represses. (p. 48)

Jameson argues that the formalizing goals New Criticism serve to propagate a particular view of what history is. This is interesting in comparison with proceduralization of literature, which I would argue, propagates a view of what meaning an interpretation are.

To Frye, there are phases in reinterpretation, which is essentially a form of rewriting of texts. The fist phase is that  The second phase is a cultural object within

1. The text is an object created as a form of expression, and may be interpreted as a single and independent work.
2. The text is a cultural object situated within a cultural context. The smallest unit of study at this level is the “ideologeme.”
3. The text is read in terms of the ideology of form, which is a means for historicizing the text within multiple sign systems, which are themselves situated historicaly.

Persuasive Games is about procedural rhetoric, and exploring the use and potential of rhetoric in games. To Bogost, rhetoric is much more integral to games than expressiveness, or rather that expression is dependent on rhetoric. In my own analysis of games and systems, I use the term model, and in this context, models can be thought of as rhetorical systems. Rhetoric is about persuasion, which in turn uses (implicitly or explicitly) assumptions and relationships, which are the stuff from which models are made.

The context of Bogost’s work is the struggle of videogames for legitimacy. For reasons that echo Sutton-Smith, games have faced problems with acceptance because of two causes. One is the misperception that games are for children, which is overtly false. The second is a quandary that games are trivial and inconsequential. This misperception construes that games are trifles and do not have the weight of traditional media (citing James Newman). Henry Jenkins has argued that the struggle for legitimacy is characteristic of a new medium. Bogost argues that legitimacy must be obtained by a critical analysis of the rhetoric of videogames, which must explore how they work. How games work addresses the level of mechanics, but also the levels of expression and representation. This critical analysis is what Bogost calls procedural rhetoric. Serious and political games must explore procedure rather than content.

Procedural Rhetoric

Discussing an example of procedural rhetoric, Bogost explains the game “Tenure” (created by Owen Gaede in 1975). This is about high school education, the player is a teacher, and is faced with various options and choices throughout gameplay, which reflect choices that a real teacher might need to make. It reveals issues of interpersonal dynamics (with school faculty), and with the demands and expectations placed on new teachers. What is interesting to note, is that while the game makes many simplifications, and is not necessarily realistic, it makes claims about teaching and illustrates those claims. “Tenure makes claims about how high school education operates.” (p. 2)

Bogost examines procedurality in several senses. Procedure calls to mind computational procedures, but there are also human procedures, which are made prevalent by customs of practice and bureaucracies, and so on. A human procedure given is the way a retail clerk might handle a customer asking to return an item that is past the normal time that returns are accepted. Computation is symbolic and representative. Procedures are expressive with respect to representation. They reflect cultural values, because they are situated in a culture. Human procedures (such as the store return) are very flexible, whereas computer procedures are relatively inflexible. However, the human flexibility is not a flexibility within the procedure itself, but a way of accounting for and transferring to other procedures which might bear more strongly on the situation. When faced with procedures of any nature, a standard human reaction is to investigate its operation. We ask “how does this work?” and we explore procedures in order to explain them.

Rhetoric is inherently about persuasion and here is a review of rhetoric deriving from the Greeks. The term “rhetoric” is derived from the same root as “oratory,” and the term classically applied to the manner of speech used in political speeches. Historically, rhetoric has extended to literary and artistic practice. In these contexts, rhetoric means “effective expression” (p.19). Kenneth Burke is influential here, who argues that identification is the center of rhetoric, not persuasion. This echoes with the notion of shared assumptions and understandings. The term Burke uses to characterize identification is “consubstantiality”, which in its etymological root suggests that rhetoric encourages the speaker and audience to share the same stance or substance. A central principle of rhetoric is the enthymeme, which is a syllogism with the assumption omitted. It is omitted because it may be assumed to be shared. This assumption requires filling in the missing gap on the part of the listener. This can also be argued as the important shared substance on which both the listener and speaker form their identification.

A strong example of procedural rhetoric is Molleindustria‘s McDonald’s Game. This is a strong example because the game has a message (that corruption is a necessity in fast food, and that there are inherent problems with the practices used by fast food corporations), and it communicates these through illustration and simulation of how these processes work. This last step communicates because it presents a model of the system that it represents, and the messages emerge as logical conclusions when one plays the game. Other games with ostensible educational interests fail to effectively use this demonstrative illustration. Bogost gives two examples of games of this sort: “G!rlpower Retouch” and “Freaky Flakes.”  These are problematic because they illustrate the content of their message, they fail to connect the procedures in game to the procedures which they are attempting to represent. This critique in mind, procedural rhetoric seems to be about obtaining a synchronicity of process, representation, and message.

Regarding interaction and procedural rhetoric: Bogost gives several examples of interaction in games. One of these is in Chris Crawford’s game “Balance of the Planet,” which gives the user affordances for manipulating variables that affect the simulation through sliders. Another example is Grand Theft Auto 3, which enables the player to “do anything” within the “parameters of the game.” The claims of freedom are suspect because of the restraints of the due parameters. A player may assault anyone whom he likes, but cannot approach a random person and engage in conversation. However, this restriction is a form of expression within the model presented by the game. What is omitted from the model is just as important as what is present, and that omission may be seen as making a claim about the world represented in the game. It is important to remember those assumptions, though, as a subject of critique.

Chris Crawford has described interactivity as a tight loop of listening, thinking, and speaking. Games may be examined and judged based on how they listen to the player (what the player’s engagement may be), the complexity with which it interprets those inputs, and the expressivity with which they talk back to the player. Sophisticated interactivity is not necessarily more or more frequent interactions, but ones in which input, model, and representation are all tightly linked. Sophisticated interactivity yields an effective enthymeme. The simulation gap is posed in terms of rhetoric. It is the players’ synthesis, filling in the gap of the enthymeme. “A procedural model like a videogame could be seen as a system of nested enthymemes, individual procedural claims that the player literally completes thorough interaction.” (p. 43) Increased persuasion would be increased coupling of the model and representation. Crawford’s take on interactivity are all important for rhetorical argumentation.

There are two kinds of analysis: black box and white box analysis. A concern is with the lack of visibility in black box analysis. This is exemplified by Sherry Turkle’s critique of Sim City. The argument is that the game is a black box, and the model is not externally visible, so one cannot see how the game works. However, players can see how the game works through playing the game. However, what is missing is whether players will be able to make sense and observe objectively the claims and mechanics of the game. This ambiguous element is procedural literacy.

Procedural Literacy

Looking at games and learning, a predominant trend is to use principles of reinforcement from behaviorism. The behaviorist perspective is that games teach “basics” of represented material. For example: Flight Simulator, Sim City, Ninja Gaiden, GTA. Behaviorism forecloses the simulation gap, assumes that playing a role necessarily implies validation. An alternative view is constructivist, which comes from Montessori education and references Papert.

With constructionism, enthusiasm is a factor in play, but it is not in the sense of play as progress, but rather play as creativity (in regards to Sutton-Smith). James Paul Gee argues that games illustrate higher order thinking (essentially metacognition). This idea claims that games teach strategy, not individual actions. Bogost challenges this perspective as well, because it overemphasizes the general (that games teach mechanics and strategy), and that they forsake the importance of individual games and the expressive capability of their models.

The idea of procedural literacy comes from Papert (after Piaget), but also Perlin and Flanagan, and Mateas. Bogost wishes to discourage the idea of procedural literacy as merely programming. Programming is a relevant skill, but it alone does not imply literacy, nor does literacy imply being able to program. Expanding on Mateas: procedural literacy should not be limited to understanding how systems work in the abstract, but it should also be used to interrogate, critique, and use specific processes.

Systems that are strongly representative (like Playmobil as opposed to Leggo) encourage a stronger cultural reference and link into representative systems of meaning. Combining representations, or tying representations to systems allows for interpretive creativity. When performing this sort of creativity, the interpreter constructs models of the new combined system. “When a child constructs a Playmobil scenario combining HAZMAT-crew parts and pirate parts, he constructs an argument for how such a character would behave. This argument is carried out though the rules of play itself, the types of behaviors the child chooses to encourage or prohibit.” (p. 258)

To say procedural system, this implies something malleable and participatory, rather than just an artifact. Literacy involves reading and writing, and these tie into the sense of interaction, freedom, and play with the system itself. To be literate requires more than the ability to read alone, but the ability to write and create within the medium. Creation of models is natural, but procedural literacy demands a certain awareness in how one creates models, and how they are created generally. Procedural rhetoric asks the following questions: (p. 258)

• What are the rules of the system?
• What is the significance of these rules (over other rules)?
• What claims about the world do these rules make?
• How do I respond to those claims?

Bogost concludes the section with an excellent summary:

At the start of this chapter, I asked: if videogames are educational, what do they teach, and how do they teach it? To summarize the reply given here: videogame players develop procedural literacy through interacting with the abstract models of specific real or imagined processes presented in the games they play. Videogames teach biased perspectives about how things work. And the way they teach such perspectives is through procedural rhetorics, which players “read” thorough direct engagement and criticism. (p. 260)

Play is an inherently and deliberately ambiguous concept. Brian Sutton-Smith attempts in this book to conduct a review of studies of play. He is interested in defining play, but such a definition is unlikely to capture the full scope and meaning of the term. Instead, he explores play from the perspective of several rhetorics. These rhetorics are each culturally derived, and each has a certain intrinsic ambiguity. Understanding play is, for obvious reasons, integral to understanding games. However, literature and other works are also playful. I would argue that a certain degree of play is required in building models (creatively), so the rhetorics of play will go a long way in bridging games and literature.

Play and Ambiguity

This section primarily introduces the ambiguities of play and attempts to understand what play is. It explores the question of what the levels of play are, the kinds of play there are, and so on. A substantial list of examples is given here, which is very useful in interpreting the scope and flexibility of both play as a concept, as well as Sutton-Smith’s analysis. These topics are so diverse that it is challenging to imagine what sort of theory would tie them all together. In the following list, I have enumerated Sutton-Smith’s categories, and given a smattering of the examples he gives. (p. 4-5)

• Mind or subjective play: dreams, daydreams, fantasy, imagination, Dungeons and Dragons, playing with metaphors.
• Solitary play: hobbies, collections, listening to music, art projects, pets, reading, yoga, collecting and building cars, Civil War reenactments, bird watching, crosswords.
• Playful behaviors: playing tricks, playing around, playing up to someone, playing a part, putting something into play, playing fair, playing by the rules.
• Informal social play: joking, parties, travel, leisure, dancing, getting laid, potlucks, malls, babysitting, creative anachronism, intimacy, bars and taverns, amusement parks.
• Vicarious audience play: television, films, cartoons, spectator sports, theater, jazz, rock music, parades, comic books, Renaissance festivals, museums.
• Performance play: playing the piano, playing music, being a play actor, playing the fishes, playing the horses, play voices, playhouses.
• Celebrations and festivals: birthdays, Christmas, Easter, Mother’s Day, Halloween, gifting, banquets, balls, weddings, carnivals, balls, Mardi Gras.
• Contests (games and sports): athletics, gambling, casinos, lotteries, pool, golf, parlor games, drinking, the Olympics, cockfights, poker, chance, board games, card games.
• Risky or deep play: caving, hang gliding, kayaking, bungee jumping, skateboarding, windsurfing.

There are seven rhetorics of play. The rhetorics of fate, power, identity, and frivolity are described as the ancient rhetorics, having a much stronger standing in classical literature. The modern rhetorics are progress, self, imaginary, and the self. These all emerged with changing philosophical and psychological trends dating within the past 200 years. The rhetorics are described: (p. 10-11)

1. The rhetoric of play as progress. Progress has dominated studies of the play of children. This rhetoric poses play as a developmental arena wherein players learn and practice for adulthood. This was developed partially because of the characteristic imitation of adults by children. This is something that Sutton-Smith is interested in challenging.
2. The rhetoric of play as fate. This rhetoric is older than the rest, going back to mythologies in which human lives are controlled by destiny, gods, or luck.
3. The rhetoric of play as power. Power is at the heart of competitions, and this poses that play is the expression of conflict. It emphasizes that those who control the play are its heroes. This rhetoric is strongly opposed to modern theories around leisure and progress.
4. The rhetoric of play as identity. Sutton-Smith’s use of identity is tricky in this space. What is meant here is cultural identity. This emphasizes social and cultural roles and structures. There is a focus on communal identity rather than individual. The individually focused complement to this is the rhetoric of the self.
5. The rhetoric of play as the imaginary. The imaginary ties into creativity and flexibility. “This rhetoric is sustained by modern positive attitudes toward creativity and innovation.”
6. The rhetoric of the self. The rhetoric of the self is usually applied toward solitary activities, but can be characterized by other ideas such as fun, relaxation, and escape. The central focus is in the experience of the player. This rhetoric is arguably the most modern because of its appealingness to individuality and consumerism.
7. The rhetoric of play as frivolous. Frivolity is difficult to characterize: it applies to absurdity and the historical roles of tricksters and fools.

Rhetorics of Animal Progress

It is important to remember that scholarly study of play has existed around animal play in addition to human play. A comprehensive theory of play would need to account for the play of animals. Here, Sutton-Smith compares animal play with the rhetoric of progress. Progress distinguishes between child play and adult play. Child play is open and creative, while adult play is closed and recreative. Progress argues for development and learning (progress to adult life. This is compared to animal play, specifically as studied by Robert Fagen.

Fagen describes five categories of animal play (p. 21-24):

1. Isolated, brief jerky movements performed repeatedly without defense or counterattack by others: typical of rodents.
2. Noncontact solo play and the social play of moving bodies through space, running and jumping ina  variety of patterns; characteristic of hoofed mammals, some rodents, and some birds.
3. Social play, some with no contact, like chasing, and some with contact, like sparring and wrestling; characteristic of most primates and carnivores, many ungulates, pinnipeds, and marsupials, and some birds.
4. Complex social play, which involves games with objects and features of the landscape. This form of play is enacted by adults as well as young animals, whereas most play of the former kinds is enacted only by juveniles or by parents with their young; typical of social carnivores, primates, elephants, some whales, dolphins, and porpoises.
5. Mother-infant games, such as peekaboo, as well as object construction and play with pebbles, sticks, flowers, feathers, and bones, and play with snow, water, and trees.

Approaches to animal play as relate to other rhetorics:

• Skill training (progress): this is challenged because things like play fighting is an inverse of rehearsal for the real thing.
• Play fighting (power): under the rhetoric of power, play fighting would establish heirarchies, but juvenile play does not lead to future roles. (I would contest, though, because actual contests have a ceremonial element which resembles play fighting more. Play fighting can be a sort of practice or indoctrination to these ritual forms.)
• Bonding (identity): This is common to power- that play would cement social relationships, but young frequently separate and do not maintain social relationships established from play partners.
• Flexibility (imaginary): Animal play is repetitive. There is not evidence to suggest that the purpose of play is flexibility.
• Emotional experience (self): This seems the most compelling so far, the animals play for their own happiness. The net conclusion of all of this is that no one is making progress to demonstrate that adaptation is play’s main function. (p. 34)

Rhetorics of Power

Consideration of power is highly relevant to modern gaming culture. Power ties into cultural establishment and social building. The discussion of play as empowerment emphasizes compensation and wish fulfillment, and the dynamics of these contests are reminiscent of Geertz on cockfighting. The cockfighting is a much more complex example that delves into other elements of social discourse. Huizinga strongly encouraged the rhetoric of power, claiming that there is a parallel between play contests and real events: “His definition of play primarily as contest reflects the widespread male rhetoric that favors the exaltation of combative power instead of speaking comprehensively about play itself. Combat may be widespread but it is hardly a universal truth about all play forms.” (p. 80)

The rhetoric of power is inherently about rationality. It is ordered. Power misses the forms of disordered and irrational play, of which there are many, even around contests: chance, symbolic inversion, playfighting, play therapy, and so on. Power demands a certain order and is deeply upset by the chaos of chance or frivolity. One challenge to play as power comes from Spariosu, who observes that the western perception oscillates between order and chaos. The rhetoric of progress and rationality gives way to game theory in the mathematical sense, which emphasizes utility.

Rhetorics of Identity

Identity here is cultural identity (not individual). This also fits in with institutions. The study of collective play observes who is controlling the situation and what they are getting out of it. The rhetoric of identity lends itself to a play of cultural power. A great deal of identity play involves developing cultural identity in opposition to other cultures. However, identity formation does not need to be competitive, it can be cooperative. Sutton-Smith cites Bernie De Koven on well played games. “When the game is played only for the good of the larger community that plays it, then it can be well played. If not so subordinated, games may run away with their players and cause friction and conflict.” (p. 100)

Noncontestive identity play can involve situations within a cultural context. This can involve a breaking down of established boundaries, which leads to a reincorporation within a larger community. Examples of these are celebrations such as Mardi Gras, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and so on. All of these involve a breaking down of conventional social barriers, such as those of family and friends, the celebration incorporates a wider community and strengthens these secondary or weaker bonds. Festivals have a seemingly contradictory relationship, though. A festival might create a strong feeling of identity in the participants, but festivals can also encourage ambiguity within the participants.

Rhetorics of the Imaginary

Imagination is an elaborate category. Transformation is at the core of this rhetoric, and it is thus somewhat semiotic and representative in nature. Other terms for this rhetoric might be creativity or flexibility. It represents an interaction of the factual and the imaginary. A key scholar in this literature is Bakhtin. A useful citation point referencing Geertz: “This rhetoric seems not so much concerned with play as an intellectual contest, a competitive bout, or a parade; rather , play and games are presented as ways of thinking about culture or as texts to be interpreted.” (p. 128) This comparison is very resonant with Daniel Mackay’s work on role-playing games, which are aesthetic products in of themselves.

Imagination connects play to art. Art ties into performance and enactment. Sutton-Smith references the use of play in literature. Writing is a kind of play, but, so is reading. In writing fiction, play relates to play of simulation, in the sense of playing the fictional world in the author’s imagination.

Referencing Bateson (1972): play is not just play, but it is a message about itself, and it is of the world and not of the world. This perception of play is relevant for digital games and worlds, where the inside and outsides are complex. There are several senses of play in games: playing in a world, playing with things in the world, and so on. Sutton-Smith connects this sense of complexity and layers to Boccaccio’s Decameron. This story has many layers, and play exists within and between the layers.

Play is important in literature and everyday life, especially the media. Sutton-Smith explains: “Derrida is only one of a number of postmodern or poststructuralist writes who have expressed discontent with earlier ways of looking at the fundamental character of knowledge, and have suggested that life is much more generally play- or game-like than has generally been acknowledge in the earlier, more deterministic scenarios of a functional kind, such as are still found in abundance in the social sciences.” (p. 145) Additionally, William Stephenson has argued in The Play Theory of Mass Communication, that “all media constitute play forms, and that when we are watching or receiving them we are essentially at play (in the broader sense).” (p. 145) This provides a good theoretical point from which to argue for the commonality between literature and games.

The ambiguity in the rhetoric of the imaginary is of the frames involved. The ambiguity of frames resembles Goffman’s take on frame analysis. Framing and navigation between frames is thus a form of play. Situational identification, however, is thus inherently ambiguous. This observation sheds some light on why it is so difficult to form a comprehensive social model of situated activities.

Rhetorics of Self

The rhetoric of the self has to do with freedom primarily. It also focuses on individualism rather than community. Self has to do with fun, experience, psychology, and intrinsic motivation. Self connects to identity in the sense of personal identity. Sutton-Smith mentions Turkle (1995), who wrote of people’s identity and gender play in chatrooms. Even though this is social, the play has primarily to do with individual play and self discovery. This sort of activity resembles masked play as found in German festivals, and countless other situations. “There can be no doubt that virtual worlds are a new play form allowing adults to play almost as amorphously as children.” (p. 178)

The rhetoric of self borrows from the phenomenological tradition with its heavy emphasis on personal experience. Gadamer specifically investigated play within the context of phenomenology. This has much to do with subjectivity, and the relationship between perception and understanding the self. Sutton-Smith references Csikszentmihalyi on the psychology of flow and peak experience. Sutton-Smith also references Rubin, Fein, and Vandenberg on characteristics of children’s play. These are emblematic of the rhetoric of self. (p. 188-189)

1. Play is intrinsically motivated. (That is it is fun). This can be challenged though, as historically play has often been extrinsically motivated by social and cultural customs.
2. Play is characterized by attention to means rather than ends.
3. Play is guided by organism-dominated questions, rather than context-dominated questions.
4. Play behaviors are not instrumental. This argues that play is nonproductive and does not have serious consequences.
5. Freedom from externally imposed rules is necessary. This position is problematic because of the use of rules which may be imposed in organized games or improvised.
6. Players are actively engaged in their activity. This is at odds with daydreams and vicarious play.

Play of self is seen as a kind of performance. Play by itself, for itself. It is about enactment. Also involves language and framing, which is reminiscent of Goffman. This involves meaning construction and deconstruction.

Rhetorics of Frivolity

Frivolity as discussed is reminiscent of game players who subvert mechanics and break rules in effort to create nonsense (or irritate other players). It is antagonistically motivated, but also aimed at deconstructing and mocking cultural order, as is common with festival tomfoolery. The practice however lacks the cultural support given to the frivolous as discussed in this section. Even though the frivolous is antagonistic to cultural orders, it operates in specially accomodated contexts. Attention to the important role of the actively frivolous would be important to account for in design of game worlds.

Philip Agre is a rare breed. He is a strong advocate of embodiment and situated action, and is also an AI practitioner. Agre was enormously influential on Michael Mateas, among others. Agre is interested in developing an approach to AI that is critically aware, as well as reformulating conventional AI applications in a manner that might be described as situated or embodied. His view on diectic entities has an enormous potential in application to an activity-centric approach to simulated characters.

Agre gives a good overview of the task at hand. His interest is in a change of approach around AI, based in both philosophical to technical arguments. He advocates the central idea of a critical technical practice. This idea has been very influential on Mateas and Sengers, in particular.

Introduction

Agre’s goal is to shift from cognition to activity. AI has long been mentalistic, proclaiming to be a model of cognition and pure abstract thought. However, the practice of AI has tended to best work in application to specific practices and activities (note Hutchins). Theorem proving is not cognition in general, but it is a specific activity which can be computationally formulated and modeled. Focus on activity tends to model “situated, embodied agents.” (p. 4) The term “agent” applies to robots, insects, cats, and people, and has strength in ambiguity. Situation implies that an agent’s actions make sense within context of its particular situation. For an agent to be embodied, it must simply have a body: “It is in the world, among the world’s materials, and with other agents.”

There is a review and comparison of the planning based approach common to AI. Ordinary life has a sort of routine, and planning tends to make use of that routine. Agre poses that routines come from emergence. I would argue, though, that in social situations, aspects of routine may have been emergent, but they often become institutionalized. There are three questions that operate around activity, and each of these is important to consider for activity centered applications: (p. 7)

1. Why does activity appear to be organized?
   Planning view: activity is organized because of plans.
   Alternative: orderliness is emergent. Form of activity is influenced by representations, but not determined by them.
2. How do people engage in activity?
   Planning view: Activity is planned and contingency is marginal.
   Alternative: Activity is improvised, contingency is central. People continually redecide what to do.
3. How does the world influence activity?
   Planning view: The world is fundamentally hostile. Rational action requires attempts to anticipate difficulties and everyday life requires constant problem solving.
   Alternative: The world is fundamentally benign. Environment and culture provides support for cognition. Life is a fabric of familiar activity.

AI work is itself a practice, which has its own values: Getting computational systems to work. Systems that do not work lack value. This lends to the idea that only things that can be built can be believed. On the other hand, building is also a way of knowing. Agre argues that emphasis should be shifted from technical product, to practice. The use of models and ideas is torn between science and engineering, both practices which led to the development of AI. Science aims to explain with models, whereas engineering seeks to build. AI straddles these two drives. Similarly, works of art exist on that same border, they are both explanations (expressions), and constructed products.

Metaphor in practice

There are two parts to Agre’s thesis: (1) AI is organized around the metaphor of internality and externality. The mind has an inside and an outside and discrete inputs and outputs at the interface. (2) A better starting point uses a metaphor of interaction, and focus on activity. The important part behind this is to be critically aware of the metaphors used in discourse about the practice.

There is an important nugget here: The technical criticism is with the lack of self reflection. A model is an interpretation and a language, it is a way of seeing things that is inherently metaphorical in nature. There is a double vocabulary, one at the level of discussing the subject of the model, as well as discussing the model itself and its interaction with the software. This duality of discourse is reminiscent of Mateas. “Scientific inquiries based on technical modeling should be guided by a proper understanding of the nature of models. A model is, before anything else, and interpretation of the phenomena it represents. Between the model and the putative reality is a research community engaged in a discursive operation, namely, glossing some concrete circumstances in a vocabulary that can be assimilated to certain bits of mathematics. The discourse within which this process takes place are not transparent pictures of reality; nor are they simply approximations of reality. On the contrary, such discourses have elaborate structures and are thoroughly metaphorical in nature. These discourses are not simply ways of speaking; they also help organize mediated ways of seeing.” (p. 46)

Machinery and dynamics

The two metaphorical theories operational in AI research are mentalism and interactionism. Newell and Simon’s GPS seems interaction oriented at onset, but shifts focus onto abstract representation very quickly. GPS aims for disembodied conceptions of the world. It equates objects with their representations, which is a dangerous phenomenological pitfall.

Agre proposes discussing computation in terms of machinery and dynamics. His goal is to discourage focus on machinery and instead emphasize dynamics. However, as presented, machinery is a useful metaphor. It implies situation within an environment: a machine has a physical presence, which steps away from raw functionalism. The term machinery is also very Deleuzian, which may be either positive or negative. Dynamics instead centers on interaction. Agre encourages us to get rid of computational machinery, and instead invent new dynamic effects, rather than devices.

Abstraction and implementation

Abstraction and implementation is an interesting dyad: Functional definition versus physical construction. What is the relationship between these to representation? It is important to discern the levels of abstraction at work when constructing artifacts. Newell, Simon, and Shaw constructed GPS which is not a model of cognition, but a model of problem solving in a particular domain. There is a generative element in theory, common to the work of both Newell and Simon as well as Chomsky. Soar bills itself as a “unified theory of cognition,” but is still primarily concerned with abstraction. Minsky is a researcher who seems to take this into account: he claimed to represent a constellation of mini-theories which are in turn heavily situated. This approach emphasizes implementation rather than abstraction.

Dependency maintenance

There is a review of critical technical practice. Agre’s aim is not to break the traditions of AI or start over, but to become critically aware of representation and computational machinery. The subject matter in Agre’s examples fold back to everyday activities. The goal is to see if the planning paradigm tells “reasonable stories” about everyday activity. Effectively, this means to see if the planning view of cognition reasonably accounts for everyday interactions. This involves a comparison of activity and routine.

1. Different individuals use different routines for the same task.
2. Routines emerge from repetition and practice.
3. Novel activity is not routine.
4. Routines are upset by circumstances.

Planning and improvisation

Hayes-Roth and Hayes-Roth: real planning is opportunistic and incremental. A relevant question about real world planning is this: “How is it that human activity can take account of the boundless variety of large and small contingencies that affect our everyday undertakings while still exhibiting an overall orderliness and coherence and remaining generally routine? In other words, how can flexible adaptation to specific situations be reconciled with the routine organization of activity?”

Running arguments

The situation and activity oriented framework described that is an alternative to planning is “Running Arguments” or RA. The cycle of RA is determined by the following steps: (p. 175)

1. The world simulation updates itself.
2. The periphery computes new values for the central system’s inputs, which represent perceptual information.
3. The periphery compares the new input values with the old ones. Any newly IN input is declared a premise, any newly OUT input is declared no longer a premise.
4. The central system propagates dependency values and runs rules. Both the dependency system and rule system continue to run until they have both settled.
5. The periphery inspects the values of the central system’s outputs, which represent motor commands.
6. The periphery and world simulation together arrive at as set of proprioceptive propositions (judgments about the success or failure of the agent’s primitive actions) and a set of motor effects (the immediate physical consequences of the agent’s actions).
7. The world simulation updates itself again, and so on ad infinitum.

There is a set of principles regarding RA, discussed on (p. 179):

1. It is best to know what you’re doing. Executing plans is derived from the symbols of the plan, not from an understanding of the situation. I think this suggests a model which makes use of the situation within the symbols themselves. Flexibility relies on understanding of situation and its consequences.
2. You’re continually redeciding what to do. Much of the relevant input from the world is constantly changing, rather than remaining fixed.
3. All activity is mostly routine. Activity is most frequently something which has been done before.

Representation and indexicality

Actions are about the world. This is an important idea! Aboutness ties into intentionality. At the same time, Agre argues that “world models are the epitome of mentalism. On its face, the idea seems implausible: a model of the whole world inside your head. The technical difficulties that arise are obvious enough at an intuitive level.” (p. 225) Knowledge representation is either mentalistic or platonic, and both reinforce the planning approach. Mentalistic models imply the existence of a world model in some memory state somewhere. Platonic models refer to nouns and items in purest abstract, appealing to universal qualities. Models of this nature resemble things like the Cyc project.

For a variety of reasons, I am very defensive of models, but world models have to do with an area that is extremely problematic, specifically knowledge representation. Understanding of an agent or character’s general knowledge, as well as knowledge about other characters and the world, are extremely difficult to model coherently. Existing theories, especially those around mental models, tend to use propositional models, which do not seem appropriate. Agre’s alternative is indexical representation, which is relevant for situational circumstances, but does not seem appropriate for larger scale activity. Agre’s alternative approach derives from phenomenology, especially Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty.

Diectic representation

Diectic representation is a different kind of world representation. The examples given are immediately situational: “the-door-I-am-opening, the-stop-light-I-am-approaching, the-envelope-I-am-opening, and the-page-I-am-turning.” (p. 243) These are diectic entities, which are indexical and functional. They are also immediately given a perspective, as all of these contain some reference to the entity itself. I would argue that these diectic entities absolutely tie into models, but those models are situational ones. There is considerable challenge to the idea of diectic entities as symbols (note Vera & Simon), but their use is very different from that of conventional symbols.

The most important distinction between diectic entities and symbols is their situated and non-objective nature. “A diectic ontology, then, is not objective, because entities are constituted in relation to an agent’s habitual forms of activity. But neither is it subjective. These forms of activity are not arbitrary; they are organized by a culture and fit together with a cultural way of organizing the material world.” (p. 244) This phrasing anchors diectic representations in a cultural basis. Given this context, it would make sense for diectic representations to be variables in defining activities in a simulated world populated by agents.

Conclusion

Mentalism ties into psychic unity (note Shore). “Perhaps the most unfortunate cultural consequence of mentalism is its tendency to collapse all of the disparate inside phenomena into a single ‘mind’ vaguely coextensive with the brain.” (p. 307) Mentalism too yields to objective accounts of reasoning, which proclaims a kind of universality of goal oriented thought characterized by Western philosophy.

Ortony, Clore, and Collins define a cognitive approach for looking at emotions. This theory is extremely useful for the project of modeling agents which can experience emotions. The cornerstone of their analysis is that emotions are “valenced reactions.” The authors do not describe events in a way that will cause emotions, but rather, emotions can occur as a result of how people understand events. This approach is surprisingly subtle and nuanced. There are many constraints and caveats, but these are all logical considering the perspective of the model.

The goal of this book is not to claim that the representation of emotion is exactly correct, but that the approach for thinking of them is cognitively viable. Emotional systems, as analyzed, are culturally dependent. There is a claim for generality, but not for universality. Emotions may be understood in terms of eliciting factors and valenced reactions. This is the heart of the theory. The actual emotions that result, including how they are thought of, and the words we use to describe them, are not claimed to be absolute, necessarily dependent on the factors, or universal.

It is extremely challenging to study emotions. There is a conflation between emotions and emotion words. The study here looks at enabling factors and conceptualized situations. The challenge in this study is to determine the relationship between cognition and emotion. Existing theories are: arousal/appraisal, and activation/valence. These theories account for (1) what the emotions are, and (2) their relative intensity. The existing approaches of study tend to return to emotion words, which are problematic because of their cultural and linguistic dependence. Words tie into systems of meaning that surround language, and rarely map one-to-one with emotions themselves. Instead, the authors arrive at the following definition: “Our working characterization views emotions as valenced reactions to events, agents, or objects, with their particular nature being determined by the way in which the eliciting situation is constructed.” (p. 13)

The Structure of the Theory

A question that is introduced are “what are basic types of emotions?” The authors view these as being grouped together by similar eliciting conditions. An idea that is introduced is to test the theory with computer models. In these cases, the computer programs are not thought to experience emotion, but rather, to be able to understand human emotions. There is a concern about the humanistic and phenomenological issue of understanding emotions. It may be argued that experience is necessary to understand emotion. This argument is reasonable, but does not seem to be a problem in the structure, given the way the reasoning works here. The theory describes reactions, valences, and eliciting conditions, but not the actual experiences themselves.

The formulation of the emotion types relate to how the world is understood in terms of agents, objects, and events. How emotions might emerge is very dependent on how individuals actually perceive and interpret the events. The authors give a somewhat distressing example of the emotions one might experience on learning that their neighbor is a child beater (p. 20). The person might think of the neighbor as an agent, which would give rise to reproach because of violation of standards. Thinking of the event might give rise to pity for the neighbor’s children. The person might consider the neighbor as an object, and experience hatred. This is a complex network of emotions that may arise from a relatively straightforward situation, but they may be accommodated within the model. Models in games and other forms of social simulations rarely address the multiple ways that the world may be perceived emotionally.

A predominant approach in cognitive science of emotions has been to view emotions as arising from a palette of “basic emotions.” This has been supported by many authors, including Oatley and Johnson-Laird. These perspectives tend to perceive basic emotions as “low level” feelings such as anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise (from Ekman et al., 1982). These are chosen based on actions and behaviors, universal facial expressions, instincts, etc. The view of these emotions as basic is inconsistent with the theory of emotions as valenced reactions. They poke a few holes in the basic emotion theories, especially with the conflation of anger with distress, or anger with aggression, and avoidance with fear. Anger especially is given as a complex and joint reaction: as a combination of distress and reproach, unlike other theories which describe it as basic. There is also a conflation of emotions with mental states, although this is particular to the definition of emotion given by the authors.

Mental states can lead to valenced reactions, but are not necessarily reactions in of themselves. An example given by the authors is abandonment. The state of being abandoned is not an emotion until the individual reacts to that state. Furthermore, the type of reaction can be dramatically different depending on how the individual construes the reception of the state. Mental states can affect emotions, for instance, surprise is a state, but it tends to intensify emotions that react to the surprising event.

The Cognitive Psychology of Appraisal

This section is on appraisal, which is how situations are interpreted, so as to enable valenced reactions. Appraisal operates on three levels: motivation, standards, and attitudes. The authors first discuss appraisal as it connects to motivations (which are generally referred to as goals). Motivation is also a good term, due to the depth given by Maslow. Goals on their own tend to be rather shallow, dwelling on one thing at a time. The focus at the moment is on goals. The authors acknowledge that goals as employed in life tend to be spontaneous as opposed to planned. They suggest that a goal structure as might be imagined by a person is “virtual”, meaning that it is self-perceived. This gives some flexibility, enabling a certain freedom in how individuals might imagine their goals as to construe reactions to them. In this sense, goals are imagined. A virtual goal structure may be improperly formed (subgoals may not lead to completion of supergoals) and the goals themselves may not even be what the individual wants.

The virtual goal structure forms a graph reminiscent of planning systems. Nodes (goals) relate to each other by links that describe necessity, sufficiency, inhibition, and so on. The framework which is used later is borrowed from Schank and Abelson. The different goals are Active Pursuit, Interest, and Replenishment (A, I, R). An active pursuit goal would be something that the agent is engaged in pursuing, an interest goal is something that the agent wants to occur (it may even be something impossible for the agent to achieve on its own!), and a replenishment goal is something which must be renewed with some regularity (such as satisfying hunger). Appraisal of motivation and goals relates to the emotions which are reactions to events. These affect the emotional dimension of desirability. Goals are usually desired, but an agent may have goals for things not to occur, which would make those events be undesired.

Standards, like goals, may not necessarily be consistent. Standards tie into the appraisal of agents, who may conform with the observer’s standards or not. The degree of conforming ties into the emotional variable of approval. Standards are complicated to formulate, but very flexible, especially in consideration of cultural value systems. Some examples of standards given by the authors are “one ought to take care of other people’s things.” So, in fictional domains, for instance, characters might have wildly different morals and standards, and these would affect how characters approve or disapprove of each other. Events which bear on standards can also be reacted to on their own, and yield event related emotions. Attitudes are much more obtuse, and relate to personal tastes. Attitudes affect the attraction emotions, which focus on objects rather than events or agents.

Desirability ties into goals, but also expectations. Appraisal of an event is done in perspective. The authors give an event of an IRS refund of $100, which would be desirable if one expected nothing or to owe money, but would be less desirable than a refund of $300. Praiseworthiness relates to standards, and because it relates to agents, a central variable is responsibility. An agent must be considered responsible in order to be accountable to standards. This perception of responsibility may not be rational (such as blaming the dog that ate your birthday cake, or the computer program that erased your paper), but it is consistent with our understanding of intentionality.

Appealingness reflects attitudes. An attitude is a disposition, which is not an emotion alone. One may have a disposition to like ice cream, but this does not indicate an emotion on its own, rather it indicates the potential for an emotion when ice cream is present. The relation between attitudes, dispositions, and emotions are difficult to express in language because common usage tends to conflate the concepts.

The Intensity of Emotions

There are 4 global variables that affect the intensity of emotion. Local variables are ones that affect the individual emotions themselves. Global variables affect all emotions that one might experience at a given moment. The authors divide between local and global intensity variables based on isolatability. Variables ought to be independent and not modulate each other.

1. Sense of reality. When the eliciting conditions are perceived as real, the emotions are more intense. This has to do with both literal understanding of reality (the plane might be delayed, versus the plane is delayed), as well as a sense of investment. If an aspiring author wants to write a best-selling novel, then the emotions associated with the success of the novel will be relative to whether the author considers the project to be realistic or a fantasy.
2. Proximity (psychological). Proximity relates to factors such as time, so emotions pertaining to remembered events are less strong than the experience of the events. Proximity also relates to psychological nearness, as relates to reactions to consequences for others. Proximity can be an issue in the case of reactions to tragedies in far away places, or good or bad things happening to strangers.
3. Unexpectedness. Unexpectedness relates to both likelihood and suddenness. Reactions to a sudden catastrophe is more intense than one that was forseen (although the emotions themselves may change from shock to self-reproach). The disappointment at losing at the lottery is less severe because loss is expected, than say being rejected from a job application which seemed very likely. The intensity due to unexpectedness has much to do with the perceived normality of the situation.
4. Arousal. Arousal is the total experience of emotions that one has experienced over a period of time. Gradually, arousal dissipates, but successive reactions can increase arousal, which will in turn, increase the intensity of subsequent reactions. The authors give an example of someone who is preparing breakfast for his family, but everything goes wrong. He burns the toast, forgets to start the coffee soon enough, overcooks the eggs, and so on. These events lead to reactions which ultimately cause a great deal of frustration. He might slam cabinet doors or speak rudely to people. The situation may be attributed as events, or as agents (either the cook or the appliances are agents which are behaving irresponsibly), and these reactions may activate scripts about personal failure and inadequacy.

The chief local variables are desirability, praiseworthiness, and appealingness, as discussed in the previous section. The authors introduce further local variables that pertain to other emotion types:

1. Desirability: event based emotions. (pleased/displeased)
2. Praiseworthiness: attribution emotions. (approving/disapproving)
3. Appealingness: attraction emotions. (liking/disliking)
4. Desirability for other: fortunes of others. Whether the event is desirable for the other.
5. Deservingness: fortunes of others. Whether the other “deserves” the event.
6. Liking: fortunes of others. Whether the other is liked or not. These distinguish between: happy-for, pity, gloating (schadenfreude), and resentment.
7. Likelihood: prospect emotions. (hope/fear)
8. Effort: prospect emotions. How much effort the individual invested in the outcome.
9. Realization: prospect emotions. The actual resulting outcome. These distinguish between: relief, disappointment, satisfaction, and fears-confirmed.
10. Strength of identification: attribution emotions. The stronger one identifies with the other, that distinguishes between whether pride or admiration is felt.
11. Expectation of deviation: attribution emotions. Distinguishes whether the other is expected to act in the manner deserving of admiration or reproach. These distinguish between: pride, shame, admiration, reproach.
12. Familiarity: attraction emotions. (love/hate)

Reactions to Events: I

The authors give a fine grain analysis that explores specific context of emotion instances. Loss is a specific instance of distress in this typology, and other emotions, that are kinds of losses derive accordingly. Grief is loss of a loved one, homesick is loss of the comforts of home, loneliness is loss of social contact, lovesick is loss of the object of romantic love, regret is loss of opportunity (p. 91). These may be considered different emotions in the sense of emotion words, but derive from the same kinds of experiences, the same kinds of reactions.

Reactions to Events: II

The authors give a table of relative outcomes matched with prospects and expectations. This lends to a mix of prospect and well being emotions. (p. 129)

Newell and Simon are enormously influential in AI and cognitive science. Their approach to human problem solving has however been a favorite target for criticism among advocates for embodiment, situated action, and activity based approaches to cognition. I have been finding myself taking up the mantle of this group, so I am approaching Newell and Simon from a critical perspective. It is not my aim to reject symbolic approaches to problems and problem solving, but rather to change how symbols are conceived of and used.

This is the text that introduces the General Problem Solver, or GPS. GPS eventually was transformed into Soar, which remains a usable problem solver.

Introduction

Early on, the authors introduce the aim of the book as to develop a theory of cognition. Cognition is framed as a combination of three elements, which are performance, learning, and development. The emphasis in this book is performance, which is how cognition is used. The study of the book is introduced very early: “The present study is concerned with the performance of intelligent adults in our own culture. The tasks discussed are short (half-hour), moderately difficult problems of a symbolic nature. The three main tasks we use–chess, symbolic logic, and algebra-like puzzles (called cryptarithmetic puzzles)–typify this class of problems. The study is concerned with the integrated activities that constitute problem solving. It is not centrally concerned with perception, motor skill, or what are called personality variables.” (p. 3-4) This isolation of the problem is very specific and cuts out a huge class of cognition and activity. We should take Newell and Simon’s conclusions from this study as being applied specifically to this domain of problems, but it often gets conflated with something much greater. Performance and problem solving of chess, logic, and cryptarithmetic puzzles are not at all representative of cognition on the whole.

Performance on problems is compared to learning. Learning is described as a secondary activity, which is primarily dependent on performance. This type of reasoning is directly at odds with work by Vygotsky and Tomassello and other developmental psychologists. The study also omits “hot cognition,” which is cognition that is emotional, reactive, or dependent on personality. These forms of cognition are arguably much more embodied than the “cold” problem solving described by the problem domain. The authors argue that hot cognition should follow and derive from problem solving. This is emblematic of a trend in this form of thought, that other more tricky areas of cognition can just be added on to the architecture.

The study can also be viewed as a theory of psychology. Unlike other forms of theories, this one is content oriented (as opposed to process-oriented). Here the authors explain that a content oriented theory can serve as a model for the content: “The present theory is oriented strongly to content. This is dramatized in the peculiarity that the theory performs the task that it explains. That is, a good information processing theory of a good human chess player can play good chess; a good theory of how humans create novels will create novels; a good theory of how children read will likewise read and understand.” (p. 10-11) What is described here seems to be a generative model, as opposed to an analytic model. However, this authors’ claim is fraught with three counterexamples. Chess programs approach a game of chess very differently than chess players do. Algorithms for story generation (to say nothing of whole novel generation) are leagues behind actual human writers. And text understanding systems are also fraught with difficulty (notably the Bar-Hillel problem for word contextualization).

There is another more fundamental critique with the claim that a content oriented theory will perform the task in question. The issue is that a theory does not actually practice or perform the task that humans do, it merely models it. AI does not think, but it models thinking. It does not solve problems, but solves models of those problems. This distinction is subtle but important. If a problem is easily and non-problematically transformable into a symbolic model, then the solved model should solve the actual problem, but this is only as good as the transformation of reality into the model. Someone may program a computer to solve a model of a problem, such as a disease outbreak, but if the model in the program omits crucial details that arise in the complexity of real life, then the solution is intrinsically flawed.

It is relevant to note the authors’ use of the word “dramatized” in the citation. Dramatization can take on an interesting meaning here when compared to the elements of performance, resemblance, and enactment. A wholly legitimate way to examine AI and problem solving is that the computer dramatically enacts the problem. That is, it represents the problem and the solution dramatically, in the sense of performing to the user meaningfully.

Task Environments

Problem solving takes place in a task environment. The task environment contains the symbolic content necessary to solve the problem. The authors propose using the model of the rational economic man (who maximizes utility). The task (and hence utility) are defined by the task environment: “The term task environment, as we shall use it, refers to an environment coupled with a goal, problem, or task–the one for which the motivation of the subject is presumed.” (p. 55) Performance is inextricably tied to rationality, and the situation is transformed to the task environment. Task environments are internally represented. The internal representation is a symbolic construction which illustrates the problem space: all moves, states, and outcomes.

Internal representations are tied to linguistic structure (which is inherently semiotic). For transcribing problem solving into an information processing system, objects are mapped to symbols. This is unproblematic in the examples given (chess moves, symbolic logic problems), but is much more troublesome in other situations. Even in the example of a chessboard, there are many ways to look at the positions of pieces and encode them symbolically. For example, a pattern would probably be treated as a symbol by a grandmaster. It is obvious to represent piece coordinates as symbols, but it is not the only approach. In domains where the units are less obvious, the symbolic transformation is even more fraught with complexity.

Newell and Simon give their definition for a problem: “A person is confronted with a problem when he wants something and does not know immediately what series of actions he can perform to get it.” (p. 72) This definition alone is rather interesting. Here, a problem is tied to desire as well as possession and attainment. These are very embodied qualities. Given this definition, it is far from obvious what it would mean for a computer to be confronted with a problem. The answer the authors give is that problems can be represented using symbols, as constructed from set or 1st order logic.

Problem Solving

The problem solving process given resembles the architecture of Soar. (p. 88)

1. An initial process, here called the input translation, produces inside the problem solver an internal representation of the external environment, at the same time selecting a problem space. The problem solving then proceeds in the framework of the internal representation thus produced–a representation that may render solutions obvious, obscure, or perhaps unattainable.
2. Once a problem is represented internally, the system responds by selecting a particular problem solving method. A method is a process that bears some rational relation to attaining a problem solution, as formulated and seen in terms of the internal representation.
3. The selected method is applied: which is to say, it comes to control the behavior, both internal and external, of the problem solver. At any moment, as the outcome either of processes incorporated in the method itself or of more general processes that monitor its application, the execution of the method may be halted.
4. When a method is terminated, three options are open to the problem solver: (a) another method may be attempted, (b) a different internal representation may be selected and the problem reformulated, or (c) the attempt to solve the problem may be abandoned.
5. During its operation, a method may produce new problems–i.e., subgoals–and the problem solver may elect to attempt one of these. The problem solver may also have the option of setting aside a new subgoal, continuing instead with another branch of the original method.

Logic: GPS and Human Behavior

Work here shows students solving problems and their actions written in the formal logic of GPS. Experimental subjects are either Yale or CMU students. The question of what the students are doing seems to trace back to their formal logic training. The problem domain is still a highly symbolic one to begin with. The problem solving approach is thus not really a representation of how humans solve problems, but how problems tend to be solved within the formal structure of this problem domain.

The Theory of Human Problem Solving

This section is where GPS (and Information Processing Systems in general) are translated into human problem solving. Obviously, my scruples are with the assumptions. The propositions which pose the questions for human problem solving (the assumptions) are these: (p. 788)

1. Humans, when engaged in problem solving in the kinds of tasks we have considered, are representable as information processing systems.
2. This representation can be carried to great detail with fidelity in any specific instance of person or task.
3. Substantial subject differences exist among programs, which are not simply parametric variations but involve differences of structure and content.
4. The task environment (plus the intelligence of the problem solver) determines to a large extent the behavior of the problem solver, independently of the detailed internal structure of his information processing system.

The propositions to be answered by the chapter are as follows: (p. 788-789)

1. A few, and only a few, gross characteristics of the human IPS are invariant over task and problem solver.
2. These characteristics are sufficient to determine that a task environment is represented (in the IPS) as a problem space, and that problem solving takes place in a problem space.
3. The structure of the task environment determines the possible structures of the problem space.
4. The structure of the problem space determines the possible programs that can be used for problem solving.

External memory is discussed, but affordances and cognitive extension into situation or environment are not discussed. This has a very mentalistic approach, where symbolic structure of environment is not addressed. The only symbols are in the problem space itself.

I’m updating to WordPress 2.7. Hopefully this will not break anything. In case it does, it will likely take a little while for it to get fixed. Just a heads-up.

So, I spent some time fiddling around with the Henon applet. It’s possible to discover and get a feel for several properties of the map just through experimenting, and that’s a really positive sign. You can easily identify the two fixed points, and it’s possible to tell what their relative stabilities are. It’s also possible to make some other interesting visual observations.

One thing that stands out in mind is a way in which the Henon map is different from, let’s say, a Julia set. The filled in gray region represents the space where the orbit of every point in the set does not diverge. Generally, points in this region will fall into the characteristic parabola saddle shape shown by the white points. This means that points in this region have a chaotic orbit. Points in this region that are somewhat apart will eventually be separated no matter how close they start together. However, if you choose any point on the border of the gray region, it will converge to the unstable fixed point on the left of the map. Even though this point is unstable along one axis, it is very compressed along the other. I don’t have a proof for this, but it seems visually evident.

What is interesting about this, is that the situation here is exactly the opposite of Julia sets in the canonical z->z^2+c map. In these cases, the border of the filled-in Julia set is chaotic, any two points on this border will eventually become separated. Whereas points within the filled-in set will always converge to some cycle.

It seems, given this, that the filled-in region is actually the Henon map’s Julia set, whereas the border is the “filled-in” Julia set. Or maybe there’s a different term for it. It’s been a while since I’ve done math, so it’s hard to know.