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.

It seems like every day I’m finding more and more reading material for my specials list. I need 150 works, and every time I take one out, I find two more that I really want to put in.

I think what is really taking place here is that I want to write not one, but two dissertations. The first covers narrative, fiction, adaptation, and cognitive models, and simulation at a conceptual level. The other is really an AI or CS thesis which focuses on AI, situated cognition, simulated and believable agents, and simulation as a methodology. Considering this, what may wind up happening is that I’d need to choose one or the other, or writing some magnificent and terrifying two-part monster. Either way, I am liable to spend the rest of my life in graduate school. Interesting things will happen, though. Sometimes it is hard to be patient.

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.

Here are some further endeavors in making my research more legible, compact, and straightforward. Also, I have updated and cleaned up my bibliography some. Good stuff for all.

My topic is simulating fictional worlds. The underlying problem is how to perform adaptation of fictional works into games. I believe that intrinsic to a fictional work is the world described by the author, in which the characters live. But more importantly, the essence of the work is the model that underlies the world, imbuing it with values and significance. To adapt fiction is to adapt this underlying model.

Recent theories in cognition emphasize the importance of models in thought and learning. Adaptation is a process and dependent on interpretation and then construction of a formal representation of the work’s meaning. I believe that the development of a model is a creative act, but simulation is necessary for the model to be understood.

Digital media, and games particularly, are adept at representing models and illustrating them via simulation. Mainstream games do not yet have an established language for simulating conventional social situations found in fiction. To remedy this, I propose a model of simulating characters based on the social theory of Erving Goffman. This idea uses a situational model of behavior, differing from the reliance on planning in contemporary AI.

My approach is theoretical and intended to cover a broad methodology for adaptation of fiction to games, but I specifically want to look at the works of Jane Austen, especially Pride and Prejudice. Austen is a good candidate for adaptation because the world found in her literature is an enormous departure from mainstream games, her works have a broad culture of adaptation already, and her world is highly structured and formalized according to explicit values.

Slowly, my once pristine web site sinks towards being a blog. Well… I suppose that’s basically been happening for a while. First the use of WordPress, then the regular posting, the Readings mod, etc. So it goes. Everything will turn into a blog after a sufficient amount of time. It’s a natural law.

Anyway. I’ve made some modifications to the underlying web code. There should be some widgets visible on the left, which will be fun. I’ve also changed the internal structure from being table based to div based. Normally I have stood in favor of tables as design tools, but got caught up in some trouble that caused me to switch. The trouble relates to a third bit of information, which is probably relevant to very few of you. In fact, I can think of only one individual to whom this matters, but the change mattering to this individual will be beneficial to me, if you catch my drift.

Or something. Anyway, the interesing thing is that the web site will print much more nicely. The sidebar disappears, and the font scales to a size that is much more reasonable for appearing as printed text. Well, it’s not much of a change… It may not seem like much to you, but it’s a nice accomplishment, and it makes me happy, so there.

Cheers!

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)