Overview

This is Erving Goffman’s most well known work, and is acknowledged as the foundation for his later work. The point of the book can really be summed up in its title: everyday life is a performance. The rest of the text serves as extrapolation and analysis, applying the thesis to numerous circumstances and situations. While Goffman is writing in 1959, his work and method serve as a remarkable starting point for the problem of character simulation within virtual worlds. It can also relate to human engagement in virtual worlds: Sociology of virtual worlds can be studied by analysis of the presentation and performance of the human participants.

Performance is Goffman’s solution to the matter of interaction, but interaction and performance both presuppose an audience. So the question of the self, the agent behind the performance is left deliberately ambiguous and unresolved. Even when alone, an individual still performs for his or her own sake. One can treat the “actual” self as the performing entity that chooses the performances, which is good enough for simulation, but seems incomplete to describe human interactors.

We can look at the self which Goffman leaves ambiguous and take it to one of two conclusions. One is that direction that Sherry Turkle might argue, that presentation gives individuals multiple perspectives on themselves. Underneath the multitude of masks can be triangulated a whole self, which is projected through each mask. So observing any single mask yields an incomplete understanding of an individual, but every additional one reveals additional details and is evidence that we are truly human underneath our shells. An opposing viewpoint might be offered by Jean Baudrillard, who asserts that the multitude of reflections is indication that there is no self underneath, that each mask is a reflection not of an agent underneath, but rather of other projections seen elsewhere. Masks are presentations that assert a reality, but this reality is a simulacra, imperfectly reproducing images seen elsewhere, images that themselves are reproductions. These reflections proceed endlessly until it is impossible to determine what the real is underneath, or whether it is there or if it ever existed in the first place.

Ultimately, we may find that Goffman’s ideas can be applied to simulation, but the ambiguous self can work for us. Simulated entities have no selves, and via sufficient indirection in software, they can reflect and represent substance found in the real world. Human interactors may find via their interaction with the simulation and its many representations better lenses and reflections to understand themselves and their surroundings.

Notes

Interaction requires knowledge of the other to understand and apply stereotypes. We have little information that we know is true to prepare us for new interactions, thus individual must express and observers must be impressed with the presentation. Reason is made on the basis of inferences – William Thomas. (p. 2)

Practices emerge around the rituals of presentation and observation. Games emerge to play with these things. Fantasy, teasing, embarassing stories serve social function for easing role portrayal, they expose a conflict between the individual and the ideal projection. This slipperyness and confusion exposes a human dimension underneath the presentation. (p. 14)

Role performances and extremes: Cynicism vs belief. Both have defensive mechanisms in protecting the performer, thus one’s relation to a performance will probably fall at one extreme or the other. Transitions may occur when a performer feels immersed or disaffected by a role. (p. 19)

The front of a performance: Forms of support that help define it and lend to its credibility. Can be setting, appearance, personal characteristics, manner. The front may be internal or external in nature. The front connects to class roles, actors may find that fronts exist for roles when taking one on. (p. 24)

Dramatizing ones work means to make the invisible costs (associated with the work) visible, as well as some other things. To appear normal or undramatic, great special care must be made. This suggests that we are more in tune with our roles and that the image of the natural may be a construct. (p. 32)

On idealization: this is a semiotic/mythological reference. Roles exist beyond the individual. The ideal is a conception of the essence of a role, to which the individual is disposable. (p. 35)

Presentation vs concealment: Individuals may conceal parts of work, or aspects of their person. This echoes Freud’s Civilization and its Discontents- that to operate in civilization, one must suppress instinct and aspects of the self. The discrepancy between the parts of work and the appearance can lend legitimacy to the work and the performance. (p. 44)

Performance is something that must not be broken: It is transcendental in a fashion. Citing Simone DeBeauvoir: Performance surpasses and eclipses the body. It is an identification with something unreal, both more than life and less than human. (p. 57)

Some misrepresentation of selves is villainized or culpable. This is a matter of authorization, though: is someone authorized to perform a role? Other times, deliberate misrepresentation is acceptable or expected. (p. 61) This is especially interesting from the simulation perspective.

The performance of being: “To be a given kind of person, then, is not merely to possess the required attributes, but also to sustain the standards of conduct and appearance that one’s social grouping attaches thereto. The unthinking ease with which performers consistently carry off such standard-maintaining routines does not deny that a performance has occurred, merely that the participants have been aware of it.” (p. 75)

Teams are to be taken as a point of reference in understanding coordinated behavior. It serves to shift focus away from the individual as acting subject, replacing it with the team. Team performance implies complicity and dependence. Formal compulsion to play a role exists in individuals, and helps tighten the dependency in team performance. (p. 81)

The line (which is discussed further in Interaction Ritual), of a performance must be maintained despite failure or disagreement among participants. They must suppress the immediate desire to punish and instruct the offender in cases when a teammate fails in a task. (p. 89)

On front and back spaces: There is a certain place for a main performance, which is the front space. However, there is also a “backstage” area where different rules apply. The boundaries between them are interesting and can lead to complications and embarrassment when permeated. Examples are the kitchen in a restaurant or a teacher’s lounge. Performance still occurs on both sides, but the audience changes, and presentation can change drastically. (p. 120)

Regions are frames and situate behavior, the front for one performer may be the back for another, these standards are culturally determined. All sides have performances, but the role-space performances are different. (p. 126)

Audience segregation: roles require space and an audience. Having a blend in the audience or space introduces uncomfortability and confusion. This leads to an interesting triad: together the performer, space, and audience define a role performance. (p. 136)

On secrets: There are several types of secrets held by individuals or teams: dark, strategic (intended to be disclosed strategically), inside (knowledge is a mark of membership), entrusted (held for others), and free. Importance of secrets is relative to the knower and the team. (p. 142)

Goffman describes several discrepant roles, kinds that blend the status of performer and audience member. These orient around the relation to performance, the relation to the audience, and types of information held. (p. 166)

Communication between performers that occurs without role of character: Staging cues, to facilitate performance and direct the audience without active character cues. Derisisive collusion [biplay] is playful mocking within roles. (p. 186)

Practices to maintain countenance and continuity of performance in face of “scenes” or “incidents”. Loyalty: maintaining the border between performers and audience. Types of defensive practices made by performers: loyalty, discipline, circumspection. (p. 212)

Tact and etiquette are protective and insulating, respectively. Tact is employed by audience to evidence respect and acknowledgment over role performances, even when performance is silly or poor. Thus its function is to protect the performer. The knowledge of the application of tact is a moment which has the potential to lay bare the constructed nature of the performance: “I would like to add a concluding fact about tact. Whenever the audience exercises tact, the possibility will arise that the performers will learn that they are being tactfully protected. When this occurs, the further possibility arises that the audience will learn that the performs know that they are being tactfully protected. And then, in turn, it becomes possible for the performers to learn that the audience knows that the performers know they are being protected. Now when such states of information exist, a moment in the performance may come when the separateness of the teams will break down and be momentarily replaced by a communication of glances through which each team openly admits to the other its state of information. At such moments the whole dramaturgical structure of social interaction is suddenly and poignantly laid bare, and the line separating the teams momentarily disappears. Whether this close view of things brings shame or laughter, the teams are likely to draw rapidly back into their appointed characters.” (p. 233) Etiquette is tactful inattention by an audience to information considered private or non-appropriate for the audience to know. Normally people are left to their own business, and etiquette is the insulating activity that keeps this separate.

The individual is divided between performer and character. Character is something to build things with. It is different from “self-production”, but can lead to synchronization. Is the thing built from characters society? (p. 252)

Overview

This text is Goffman’s last book, and focuses on an unusual subject for Goffman. Frame analysis looks at the organization and analysis of human experience and the individual. Admittedly, this still is within the framework of sociology, but the focus still returns to the individual.

Frame analysis is about how we make sense of things. How we understand “what is going on?” This process involves framing, which is the application of certain cognitive procedures onto given situations. Goffman uses a very metaphorical analysis to these, especially with respect to keying, which is a very metaphorical take on cognition and experience.

Notes:

The foreword has a nice look at Goffman’s character, his perspective on rules and society. Goffman respected rules, but was also a rule breaker. He wants to uncover truths, but many of his truths are cold ones. Goffman is notable in linking microsociology to macrosociology. (p. xvii)

Goffman offers an interesting turn on the question of reality: Instead of asking what is real, Goffman echoes James’s question: “Under what circumstances do we think things are real?” (p. 2) This connection connects William James and the tradition of phenomenology.

Goffman’s aim is to isolate frameworks, understand what is going on within perspectives. “My aim is to try to isolate some of the basic frameworks of understanding available in our society for making sense out of events and to analyze the special vulnerabilities to which these frames of reference are subject. I start wit the fact that from an individual’s particular point of view, while one thing may be momentarily appear to be what is really going on, in fact what is actually happening is plainly a joke, or a dream, or an accident, or a mistake, or a misunderstanding, or a deception, or a theatrical performance, and so forth.” (p. 10) A strip is a sequence of actions. Frame analysis is meant as a slogan to refer to the examination of the organization of experience.

Frameworks are tools for meaning making and discovery. They are employed whenever we recognize an event as occurring in some context. The goal is to recognize and organize occurrences in meaningful ways: essentially this is a theory of cognition. There are many and various frameworks that we use and can be applied. One example is the physical framework vs the sign framework, where one is natural and bodily while the other is abstract and cognitive. This seems like an attempt to generalize and harmonize varying theories on human nature. (p. 21)

Analyzing a game of checkers: Goffman’s approach is very different from the standard AI perspective. Frameworks address either physical or social logic, but to be human requires both. Events may be described within a framework, and answers the question “what is going on?”. Frameworks have dependency, social frameworks are rather complex. In checkers game, examples of what is going on could be, “he is moving a piece”, “he is moving his arm and holding something”, “they are playing checkers”, “he is winning”, etc. (p. 24)

Goals and effects of frameworks: (p. 36)
1) To explain all events (the inexplicable is intolerable)
2) Push the limits of explanation
3) Learning competence in actions (“mufflings” or human slips)
4) Produce unforseen consequences (significant events may be incidentally produced)
5) There is a variability of frameworks, which have different perspectives on situations, mixing natural with social, bodily with sublime or social. Not the Sims as an example which really mixes these.

Keying

Keying is a means of understanding a framework in terms of another. Essentially it is a frame metaphor. It plays an important role in understanding what is going on. The main example Goffman uses is play. Play fighting is not real fighting, but it can be accidentally mistaken as such. It borrows many devices from fighting in an almost metaphorical manner. (p.45)

Make believe, contests, ceremonies and simulation (Goffman calls this “technical reproduction”) are instances of frame application. A simulation for “practicing” relates this to both Baudrillard and role-learning/practice/performance. Simulation in this context is used to artificially replicate certain kinds of events for some audience, and this can be understood as a simulation of something else. (p. 59) Goffman cites examples in medical training (and other serious examples), as well as an example of soldiers demonstrating riot equipment to an audience of 3000 by having a fake “mob” composed of soldiers dressed as hippies rioting and then being suppressed by tear gass. This can very naturally extend to Baudrillard. Goffman is trying to address how we understand things in terms of others, but Baudrillard’s answer is that we descend to infinite regress of references, that real events are indistinguishable from real ones. Nonetheless, we need to give Goffman some credit, because whether events truly are real or simulacra, we, as observers, do tend to make that distinction.

Keyings are adaptations of common models. Derivative models may be seen as keyings of each other, or may be re-keyed themselves. It would help to look at examples where the subjects of keyings are media and media artifacts, where adaptations may be considered rekeyings when an artifact is adapted from play to print to film, etc. Goffman intends his argument to be much more generalized, though, and we can consider keyings of social situations and examples, as well. A play or film about homosexual lovers in a war may be considered keyings of a the real thing, but a real holdup experienced on a street may be considered a keying of one seen in TV or film. In this sense, all keyings hinge on representation and are simulated. (p. 79)

Fabrication and Deceit

Goffman is often concerned with deceit. In this section, he is concerned with fabrications, both benign and exploitative. These are fabrications of experience: posing and disguising one experience in terms of another. Fabrication disguises impressions of people with each other and with situations. (p. 103) An example is a Dear Abby letter, on (p. 105) where a mother is taken aback by discovering (via rummaging through thier things) that her daughters are using birth control. There are several layers to this: Fabrication implies the misrepresentation of something false as true. The mother assumes the natural relationship with her daughters as implying their absence of using birth control, or that the daughters should be open and honest with her about all things that she might see as important. Likewise the mother is also representing falsely because her presentation as an honest mother would involve not snooping through her daughters’ things. In this example, there are many layers of assumptions and presentations, but these are all formed around the very simple events of what is going on. Essentially, this is one way of looking at how a straightforward situation is turned into a big deal.

Suspicion and doubt help organize the framing of fabrication and deception. These operate on whether we think a situation is real or false. These are natural sensations, and must exist at all times, to some degree or another. (p. 122)

The Theatrical Frame

Reviewing the theatrical frame: actors are both characters and performers. The audience acts as a vicarious conspirator. Nonetheless, staged performance is very different from real life. (p. 130)

Conventions arise in various media- “frames”, representative of real models, but must take on expressions or conventions to adequately represent meaningful actions. On stage: a novel adaptation, the adaptation process is a matter of transforming novel conventions into stage ones. In this sense, we might find a general device for adaptation. This involves a certain supposition of sufficiency in character presentation: All that is to be known is shown. (p. 149)

More on Fabrication

On deception as a power relation: the imposition of a deceptive frame yields containment over subjects, who controls the deception has a sort of power of belief. The process is referential: The devices of deception are secret monitoring, penetration, entrapment. All of these are powerful because of knowledge management. This connects to Goffman’s work on secrets. (p. 177)

Fabrication of behavior in gay culture, based on [farce of] stereotypical feminine behavior. This may further be simulated by non-gay individuals, adding another frame of reference. There is a nice Baudrillard connection here. The matter of cultural acceptability is dependent on frame. (p. 194)

Out of frame activity

Goffman cites a few “scene” like examples of behavior, where someone causes a great deal of fuss by breaking rules of actions. Decorum dictates to ignore or suppress such behavior. A scene not only disrupts a role, but the continuity of a frame. What is the role to frame relation?

Anchoring of Activity

How do we know what is real? How is a frame activity grounded in reality? Keying and fabrication lets us know how to construct reality. William James: Reality must be convincing. To seem adequately real, things must be spectacular. To seem natural, TV or radio must take extreme care. But this is a form of deception. (p. 251)

Continuity is demanded between actors and characters. Even when an actor plays a role, the role becomes associated with the actor, leading to a social concern. Goffman’s examples are actors who play risque roles later moving to play more saintly ones, and encountering a sort of backlash (p. 277). This can relate to Goffman’s earlier work on audience segregation, for instance the priest who did not want to go swimming with his congregation.

On ambiguity and how to understand it: Ambiguity incurs doubt and uncertainty. It has its foundation in error, misappropriation of frames. Note: Experience is a confrontation with an order of existence. Thus, a misperception of a fact is a misperception of existence. Thus, the actor uses not the wrong word, but the wrong language. Wittgenstein ref. (p. 308)

Frame analysis of talk

Application of keying and frame analysis to conversation: Heavily embodied nature of conversation leads to a density of keying, and introduction of many layers. Compare especially with computer mediated communication, which develops conventions, but lacks the key density of conversation. Conversation involves a certain looseness to the world. (p. 502)

On replaying: “A tale or an anecdote, that is, a replaying, is not merely any reporting of a past event. In the fullest sense, it is such a statement couched from the personal perspective of an actual or potential participant who is located so that some temporal, dramatic development of the reported event proceeds from that starting point. A replaying will therefore, incidentally, be something that listeners can empathetically insert themselves into, vicariously reexperiencing what took place. A replaying, in brief, recounts a personal experience, not merely reports on an event.” (p. 504)

Description is narrative, it is presented dramatically, and operates on a scripted nature of performances and stories. Description and narrative portray a total knowledge (or complete knowability) of the situation involved, where, realistically, that is false. Goffman uses heavy reference to playing and recording of events here, and this metaphor informs his argument. (p. 508)

Conclusion

Ordinary behavior has symbolization, but symbolized action is more akin to dance. But it ultimately derives from the body. (p. 569) Goffman concludes by citing Merleau-Ponty, in that the self is defined in terms of the other. (p. 575-576)

Overview

Goffman outlines in several essays approaches to human interaction from a dramaturgical perspective. To Goffman, all forms of interaction are kinds of performances. These performances may fall under the structure of rituals, socially acceptable formalized interactions. One of Goffman’s goals is to outline the units of these interactions so that they may be studied in a symbolic manner. Goffman is directly influenced by George Mead, and has gone on to influence others (Kenneth Burke, I think), Manford Kuhn, and McCall and Simmons.

Notes

Goffman opens by discussing the need for study of low level behavior as it relates to interaction. He wants to find the natural units of interaction. Wants to find an order that transcends the individual culture being studied. The study of interactions lies not in the individual, but within the acts between the individual and others [social grouping] (This is the oppostite of McCall and Simmons stated approach). Goffman sees here to find a minimal model of social interaction. (p. 1-2)

On Face-Work

Goffman’s first essay is on “Face Work”, this is face in the sense of saving face. It is the dramatic presentation of self displayed to others. This is exaggerated and attuned to current social drama/interaction. Also related is the concept of a “line”, which is a pattern of acts that express an engagement with the situation. Lines sound scripted and this is probably Goffman’s intent. (p. 5) Most encounters are conventionalized: there are only a few options available to an individual. The choice between the options is dependent on immediate and long term goals. (p. 7) There is behavior evidence of being in the right face for a situation: a person responds with confidence, assurance, and security when in right face. When in wrong face, a person is likely to feel ashamed, judged, or threatened. (p. 8) Face is transferable: there is a system of obligation and interaction, individuals can allow others to take face instead of themselves. Face becomes sort of an obligational currency. (p. 9)

There are several methods for responding to threats to face made by others (whether intentional or not). Intentional threats are malicious insults, while unintentional ones are faux passes, misunderstandings, and the like. (p. 14) There are rituals to address the loss of face. Avoidance is one approach, avoiding the cause of the threat. To repair threats is performed via rituals intended to restore equilibrium. (p. 19) A simple example is when A bumps into B in the street. A says “excuse me”, B says “certainly”. Those speech acts are the corrective ritual.

Aggressive interchanges are contests of face work. This is when face is used as a resource in conflicts. These exchanges generally require audiences and are performances themselves. Many social contests can be explained by this. (p. 25) Dynamics of class and other factors limits face work. In matter of choosing face work, the dilemma is not the enactment of the incident, but the confusion over what face to use to handle it. (p. 26)

Ritual means playing oneself. (p. 32) The symbolic function of discourse is not (just) the exchange or communication of ideas, but the play of assertions. (p. 38) Relationships imply some dependency for face saving. Compare with relationship dynamics described by McCall and Simmons. Face saving is a currency of the relationship. (p. 42) On finding one’s place in social establishment: “Whatever his position in society, the person insulates himself by blindness, half-truths, illusions, and rationalizations. He makes an ‘adjustment’ by convincing himself, with the tactful support of his intimate circle, that the is what he wants to be and that he would not do to gain his ends what the others have done to gain theirs.” (p. 43)

On construct-like approach to human nature: “Universal human nature is not a very human thing. By acquiring it, the person becomes a kind of construct, built up not from inner psychic propensities but from moral rules that are impressed upon him from without.” (p. 45) This justifies the validity of simulation somewhat, and calls to point Weizenbaum’s fear of the machine-like nature of individuals. Sociologists have been likening men to machines for much longer than AI researchers and computer scientists.

The Nature of Deference and Demeanor

Deference and demeanor are factors in the code of conduct between individuals. Goffman’s study focuses on an observational study of patients at a mental hospital. Goffman’s focus in this chapter are the notions of obligation and expectation. This relates to the conduct between different classes of individuals: what is expected or obliged from one class to another. (p. 50) There are boundaries of classes, and usually multiple of these present in any circumstance. In given situations certain of these boundaries may take priority. For example, in hospital, the patient/staff boundary trumps the white/black boundary. (p. 52) Some rules are symmetric or asymmetric across boundaries. Symmetric rules are ones in which individuals have the same obligations to each other. An asymmetric rule is one where one group has authority or precedence over another. Social rules may be formal or informal. Formal rules have some degree of ostensible substance or value and are formalized to protect that substance. Informal rules are ceremonial, things like greetings, whose sole purpose is to guide conduct, their substance is secondary. (p. 53-54) The ceremonial idiom is that the tokens for ceremonial purposes have meanings for certain groups. (p. 56)

Goffman on deference: “By deference I shall refer to that component of activity which functions as a symbolic means by which appreciation is regularly conveyed to a recipient of this recipient or of something which this recipient is taken as a symbol, extension, or agent.” (p. 56) In rituals of obeisance, deference is given from one under authority to someone in authority. Implies casting, separation of social groups. But there are symmetric deferences, that superordinates owe to subordinates. The meaning may be present or abstract. Over deference deprives the act of meaning. (p. 58-59) Deference exists to enforce order on top of the actual sentiment. Omission of deference implies destructuralization and rebellion. Deference also maintains artificial difference or distance. (p. 60) There are a variety of styles in personal/relationship/formal distance: polite conversation with the boss in the elevator, patient doctor communication, filling station boss. The use and effect of style depends on the situation. (p. 65)

Types of presentation rituals: salutations, invitations, compliments, minor services; these are about inclusion. Presentation rituals and avoidance rituals are opposing in nature. “Through all of these the recipient is told that he is not an island unto himself and that others are, or seek to be, involved with him and with his personal private concerns. Taken together, these rituals provide a continuous symbolic tracing of the extent to which the recipient’s ego has not been bounded and barricaded in regard to others.” (p. 72-73)

Where deference is the code of conduct with others, demeanor is the code of conduct of oneself. Demeanor creates a self image, but for others. (p. 80) There is a dilemma regarding how to fully express oneself: to express oneself as a complete person, both deference and demeanor are necessary. Individuals must interact with each other and cooperate to express wholeness. (p. 84)

Ceremonial profanations are used to express and borderline cases and broaches of deference or demeanor. These are unique in that they express boundaries or contempt, but do not change social structure. These may be playful or contemptful, there are forms of ritualized contempt that are standard forms of expressing dissatisfaction of one kind or another (the middle finger, the slap, the insult, etc.) (p. 85)

“It is therefore important to see that the self is in part a ceremonial thing, a sacred object that must be treated with the proper ritual care and in turn must be presented in a proper light to others. As a means through which this self is established, the individual acts with proper demeanor while in contact with others and is treated by others with deference.” And later: “An environment, then, in terms of the ceremonial component of activity, is a place where it is easy or difficult to play the ritual game of having a self.” (p. 91)

Embarrassment and Social Organization

This essay is about the phenomenon of embarrassment and how it fits in with social organization. Goffman’s intent is to uncover what embarrassment is, why it happens, and how it happens. Goffman asks specifically, “By whom is the embarrassing incident caused? To whom is it embarrassing? For whom is the embarrassment felt?”. There is a vast spectrum of embarrassment: mild moments versus sustained difficult embarrassed encounters. The mechanics of embarrassment: loss of equilibrium or self control, paralysis of response. (p. 100) In playing embarrassment: becomes a dance of concealment in hiding embarrassment, when that breaks down, it becomes physical response: deep physical/emotional experience. (This is something existing under the surface, as a core biological, asocial quality, independent of standard social simulation.) The collapse of the individual implies a collapse of a larger social system, unless the system ritualizes the handling of the individual. Without resolution, new social rules must be chosen or established to deal with situation. (p. 103) Embarrassment is caused by a failure of expectations: Social obligations are not sustained. In Role centric view, one’s role is not supported, and one feels embarrassed by the failure of the role-identity. (p. 105)

Embarrassment also serves an important role in social change. The social structure is made elastic by the ritual of embarrassment: Individuals may change their presentation of self (their role identities as well?) expressing additional depth via the occurrence of embarrassment, whether it is their own or otherwise. Exact moment nature of embarrassment is complicated by its establishment in social ritual, namely embarrassment is failure of ritual, but is ritualized anyway. This allows a meta-reflexivity in ritual system, this could be made to encourage elasticity, but it could be made to make it more brittle. (p. 112)

Where the Action Is

Goffman’s sense of “Action” is of the dramatic sort. This is the idea of important or meaningful or significant acts or events which are performed or are participated in by people. Action is merely a vehicle to uncover the deeper quality of character. This essay is an interesting and extended journey. It starts with discussion of games of chance and risk, and progresses to the larger sense of consequentiality in moments. One can kill time, and that killed time is inconsequential. There is an apparent axis of actions: consequential versus inconsequential, apart from that there becomes a question of whether actions are problematic, when one is at odds to figure out what to do. (p. 164)

	Consequential	Inconsequential
Problematic	fateful action	killing time
Non-Problematic	daily work	daily routine / wasting time

Corporeality and embodiment: A body is a piece of consequential equipment. Compare with a digital presence or avatar? These are usually inconsequential, but may become consequential via enactment. (p. 167) Goffman discusses body in consequential work: in perilous roles, the body is the object of practical gambles. (p. 172) When one lives consequentially when the gamble is less practical, one must cope somehow. The Calvinistic (fated) solution is to deny the effect of consequence: so nothing can really go wrong. (p. 175)

An alternative to cope is what Goffman calls “defense”, which is a ritualized defense of action. When actions are uncertain and of high consequence, a defensive ritual is performed to save culpability of the individual. Defenses imbue a fateful event with ritual and external meaning. Compare the compulsive gambler to the professional statistical gambler. To the compulsive gambler, the dice are magical. Can also compare Weizenbaum’s compulsive programmer here. (p. 178)

Games reduce all behavior to [supposedly, at least within the game world] fateful action. A social game should do the same. Action is the quality of sustained fateful behavior. (p. 181) Results of action: “making it”, vs “blowing it”. You can either win big or loose big. (p. 193) Action is also the staging ground for the cult of masculinity in Western culture; in this, females are “passive ground” for interpersonal social action. (p. 209-210)

Qualities of character: These are qualities of self control in fateful situations: Courage, Gameness, Integrity, Gallantry, Composure, Presence of Mind, Dignity, Stage Confidence. Each of these is discussed in some detail as means of engaging with action, fatefulness, and consequence. (p. 218-226) Given these, we can look at man as not need-driven, but rather character-driven. (p. 258)

For the… few that read this research journal of mine with any regularity, I just want to give you a warning.

I am going to start moving my reading annotations in full from their old location to the new bibliography, that is implemented on top of WordPress itself.  This will involve about 40 or 50 new posts all of a sudden. This isn’t new material exactly, it’s been around for quite a while, but oddly it does seem to generate, at the very least, a sense of change.

So, that’s it for the warning. Here they come!

Ron Sun: Prolegomena to Integrating Cognitive Modeling and Social Simulation

The goals described here have a great deal of overlap between my research as far as models and AI go. Sun provides an extensive discussion of literature in both cognitive modelling and social science. The important difference between the work described here is that it is focused towards scientific applications, whereas my work is in expressive applications, where simulation is used to explain or express ideas rather than emulate reality. Cognition defined here is pretty wide, encompassing: “thinking, reasoning, planning, problem solving, learning, skills, perception, motor control, as well as motivation and emotion.

Some bullet points expressing the chief questions asked by this intersection of studies:

• How do we extend computational cognitive modeling to multi-agent interaction (ie, to social simulation)?
• What should a proper cognitive model for addressing multi-agent interaction be like?
• What are essential cognitive features that should be taken into consideration in computational simulation models of multi-agent interaction?
• What additional representations (for example, “motive,” “obligation,” or “norm”) are needed in cognitive modeling of multi-agent interaction?
• What are appropriate characteristics of cognitive architectures for modeling both individual cognitive agents and multi-agent interaction?

On methodology and methods of simulation: Simulation develops and tests theories. An open question: is there a strong method of simulation to test or understand models? Sources to explore are Axelrod, 1997 and Moss 1999. Regarding the connection of simulation to cognitive science: Sun 2001.

Another reason for looking at social simulation, specifically, is that cognition is a sociocultural process. Note Lave 1988 and Hutchins 1995. This connects the idea of cognition with larger cultural and social meanings. “Only recently, cognitive science, as a whole, has come to grips with the fact that cognition is, it least in part, a sociocultural process. To ignore sociocultural processes is to ignore a major underlying determinant of individual cognition.” (p. 13) Sun mentions later that cognition emerged to satisfy needs and deal with environments, so cognition is necessarily situated and embodied (as opposed to abstract and symbolic). The environment is a part of thinking, and by extension, so must be other agents.

Discussing motivation, thinking, and existent structures, (a sort of intertwined cognitive triad), Sun explains: “The ways in which these three major factors interact can evidently be highly complex. It may therefore be argued on the basis of complexity, that the dynamics of their interaction is best understood by ways of modeling and simulation. One may even claim that the dynamics of their interaction can be understood only by modeling and simulation, as some researchers would. In this endeavor, computational modeling and simulation are the most important means currently available for understanding the processes and their underlying structure…” (p. 14)

There is a small note connecting models and theories: Specifically referenced is van Fraasen, 2002, referencing a position called “constructive empiricism”. The position is that every model is a theory. This idea pulls back to the interesting relationship between models, theory, and practice.

The introduction is primarily concerned with connecting cognition of individuals to the larger scope of social science. Individual thinking at one level is necessary to witness coherence at a higher one. This means that if we wish to understand social science from a coherent perspective, we must look at individual agents and understand how they behave locally, rather than looking at society-wide graphs. This connects to the idea of policy in simulation of expressive systems: comparing a system controlled by a drama manager versus one that is character based.

Taatgen, Lebiere, and Anderson: Modeling Paradigms in ACT-R

This chapter discusses the ACT-R cognitive architecture. ACT-R seems to be designed towards low-level modeling. The architecture seems to be heavily informed by the biological structure of the brain, using layers to handle different cognitive tasks. The system also employs an activation model for memory, which echoes the connectionist model of neural networks. However, oddly, the first example given in describing how the architecture performs is by a control problem, a “sugar factory”. This is an extremely disembodied and disconnected abstract problem. It strongly resembles the sort of feedback cycles described by Weiner’s cybernetics. In later examples, the focus of the architecture is learning when to apply different clearly defined rules.

Wray and Jones: Considering Soar as an Agent Architecture

This section documents Soar as an architecture and as a general theory of intelligence. Right away, the authors begin making the claim that Soar can be used as a holistic and complete model of how everyone thinks, falling well within Alison Adam’s feminist criticism of AI paradigms. Supposedly most or many applications of Soar are intended to be models of specific domains, rather than cognition in toto.

The main features of Soar are thinking cycles, problem solving, and operators. One criticism of the architecture as described here could be the manner in which the problem space is highly disconnected from the actual context surrounding the problem itself.

Clancey, Sierhuis, Damer, and Brodsky: Cognitive Modeling of Social Behaviors

This essay discusses several aspects of social behavior. The paper starts by using a number of terms that should be familiar in the context of social science or sociology: roles, procedures, norms, etc. The paper is also concerned with the idea of collective cognition, which shifts the focus of investigation from goals towards behavioral patterns. This idea is strongly connected to activity theory. This references Lave and social extensions to cognition.

This study specifically looks at a (real world) NASA simulation of a Mars landing team, using extensive footage of the participants enacting the simulation in the FMARS station on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic.

A key part of this study is the use of the Brahms model, which formalizes field observations for use in developing simulations. The approach used by this study includes a set of clear steps:

• Understanding activities as patterns of what people do, when, and where, using what tools or representations;
• Representing activities in a cognitive model using a subsumption architecture (i.e., conceptualization of activities occurs simultaneously on multiple levels);
• Understanding that conceptualization of activities is tantamount to conceptualization of identity, “what I’m doing now,” which is the missing link between psychological and social theory (Clancey, 1997, 1999, Wenger 1998).
• Simulating collective behavior in a multi-agent simulation with an explicit “geographic model” of places and facilities, using the Brahms tools.

The Brahms model is intended towards real-life analysis of human behavior, but it is formal enough to extend into the simulated domain. The model is intended as a system for understanding group dynamics in the workspace. Most analytic models are descriptive, that is that the cannot be used for generation or simulation, so it is notable that the Brahms model falls under this category. The focus is on practice and observing what people do, though this encompasses emotion, attitude, and personality. Most shockingly, the Brahms model uses an approach that activity is the same as identity. Being is the same as doing in this case, which resonates deeply with Goffman’s theory of social performance.

The process of simulating the already recorded events is especially tricky, as the simulation must account for many uncontrollable human variations. There is the idea of simulation fidelity, which is the capacity of the computer simulation of the model to accurately recapture the behavior of the participants without doing anything wierd, such as having them all stand up simultaneously at the end of a meeting. What arises again, though is that the FMARS habitat is a simulation as well, and its participants are all performers. So what we have here is an electronic simulation attempting to simulate a performed human simulation. If we bring a theorist like Baudrillard into play, he would probably say that there is no way to actually capture real social behavior or activity, since it is all simulated anyway. However, there is still a gap between the human simulation and the virtual, and this is a gap that can be narrowed.

The way to more closely simulate the humans is to understand that social behavior is a necessary component of individual behavior. Additionally: knowledge is also hard to model. Finally: roles are improvised and are blurry. There are some interesting formal descriptions of the behavior rules. The interaction with the environment works via a number of perception functions and stored variables. The behavior is stateful, but according to cases.

Another interesting thing in the study is the emphasis on biological needs. This makes sense for NASA, but it does not really apply to narrative in the cases that I am working on. It does however lend a certain natural credibility to the simulation, emphasizes the embodied nature of the subjects, and it echoes the decision to have biological needs expressed in The Sims. This has some interesting consequences, though: “The inclusion of biological motives in explaining human behavior provides an interesting problem for cognitive modeling. For example, consider KQ warming her drink in the microwave and then standing by the side of the table. There might be many explanations for this behavior: Her drink may be cold; she might be cold; her back may hurt; she may be bored with the meeting; someone at the table who hasn’t had a shower in a week may smell, etc. One doesn’t know her goals, aside from, perhaps, warming her drink. Even this may be a kind of convenient cover for accomplishing her ‘real intention.'”

There is a strong critique of rational frameworks present here. Simulation is generally concerned with advancing state, and not necessarily determining intention, although certain behaviors may strongly hint towards intentionality. The cognitive model described by the Brahms framework (as well as Soar and every other AI framework, also note Cavazza) involves a top-down model of behavior. These presuppose goal and structure driven models, which may not be appropriate. Top-down models cannot accomodate for human flexibility and ambiguity. This suggests that a situational and context-driven model is key to representing human behavior.

A final word on the modeling philosophy: Modeling “a day in the life” is a starting point, but on its own it is a pastiche (!), much like The Sims.

A connection to Newell’s perspective on cognitive modeling: Newell says that interaction is oganized into isolated and discrete bands, which pulls back to rational goal-driven behaviors. This does not account for social norms and personal habits, which are essential to understanding social behvior.

Gratch, Mao, Marsella: Modeling Social Emotions and Social Attributions

The focus on this paper is on emotions with social elements, stemming from human interactions. These involve not only causality, but also intentionality and free will. The essence in this idea is developing a theory of social intelligence. The social interaction described here resonates with Geertz and Goffman. The goal in this paper is to develop a framework for modeling emotions.

There are several specific points to the cognitive model developed here, building from cited sources (Minsky, Oatley, and Johnson-Laird):

1. How emotion motivates action
2. How emotion distorts perception and inference
3. How emotion communicates information about mental state

A tool used in this paper is Appraisal theory, which explains that emotion arises from two sources: Appraisal and coping. Appraisal itself is the process by which knowledge is understood and reacted to, and coping is the response to events, sometimes leading to change. A key author in developing the model here is Lazarus, 1991. Both the coping and the appraisal processes are complicated and feed back into each other significantly, so the study uses Soar to develop a model of the complex cycle between the two forces.

Appraisal is arranged into variables, and these are described:

• Perspective: from whose persepctive the event is judged
• Desirability: what is the utility of the event if it comes to pass, from the perspective taken (i.e., does it causally advance or inhibit a state of some utility)
• Likelihood: how probable is the outcome of the event
• Causal attribution: who deserves credit or blame
• Temporal status: is this past, present, or future
• Controlability: can the outcome be altered by actions under control of the agent whose perspective is taken
• Changeability: can the outcome be altered by some other causal agent

Beyond that, there are several tyeps of coping strategies:

• Action: select an action for execution
• Planning: form in intention to perform some act
• Seek instrumental support: ask someone in control of an outcome for help
• Procrastination: wait for an external event to change the current circumstances
• Positive reinterpretation: increase utility of positive side-effect of an act with a negative outcome
• Resignation: drop a threatened intention
• Denial: lower the probability of a pending undesirable outcome
• Mental disengagement: lower utility of desired state
• Shift blame: shift responsibility for an action toward some other agent
• Seek/suppress information: forma  apositive or negative intention to monitor some pending or unknown state

This collection of coping strategies is really great, especially as it pushes the classical AI scope of planning and action only. It exposes a great deal of underlying potential and variety in modeling emotional behaviors. This also raises the question of how this sort of coarse structure might be defined against the fine granularity of simulation. Note that there is a great deal of importance on interpretation.

The decision/emotional cycle represented in the EMA application is as follows:

1. Construct and maintain a causal interpretation of ongoing beliefs, desires, plans and intentions.
2. Generate multiple appraisal frames that characters the state in terms of appraisal variables.
3. Map individual appraisal frames into individual instances.
4. Aggregate instances and identify current emotional state.
5. Propose and adopt a coping strategy in response to the current emotional state.

Note that the current implementation emphasizes task oriented goals. This relates to the general criticism of Soar and planning-based AI paradigms. The authors mention that the selection of tasks does not account for social norms and standards, and propose a model of dis-utility to associate with breaking these, but it still involves a utility based model, which does not seem to be a satisfying solution.

Attribution theory connects to the idea of intention and responsibility, which might better handle credit and blame. The theories on this fall under Shaver and Weiner. However, embedded into the implementation model described is the ever present figure of authority. Attribution is of great importance in a chain of command, but exact attribution is never really used in real circumstances. Every action in this model contains not only the performer, but also the individual who coerced or ordered the action. This model is appropriate in a military simulation, but carries an undesired value in other circumstances.

The authors give a very significant and powerful logical model of attribution theory, basing on a set of primitive logical functions, axioms, and rules for discerning attribution. These all hold from a rational perspective, which again makes sense in a serious application where the logic is meant to solve problems and discern information, but not in an expressive application. The entire layout forms a powerful attribution framework, but with the idea of increasing complexity and partial or faulty information, the idea breaks down for other social simulations.

Overview:

Mackay’s ultimate goal in this work is to develop a legitimate framework for interpreting role playing games as a performative art form. His analysis covers the cultural, formal, social and finally aesthetic structures of RPGs. Mackay is interested in the artificial world and the networks of meaning established by the performance of the games. Performance is the key element that makes role-playing an aesthetic subject.

Mackay’s arguments in the later stage of the book situate the idea of role-playing in history as a natural consequence of the desire to recreate a sense of lived otherworldliness which has been supressed since the age of Enlightenment. Role-playing leads to the development of deep and personal imaginary worlds, which becomes an artistic object or artifact when recalled in memory.

This book ties together the diverging threads of performance, simulated worlds, and the expressive power of participation and interpretation.

Notes:

Introduction frames the goal and direction of study: Analyze role-playing games as an art made up of both role-playing, and game. The ultimate value of the game comes as performance, which has its own aesthetic background. The “Performance of the role-playing game brings the game into existence, and it is therefore of the foremost importance.” This study is not a poetics, which would describe how to create games, but an aesthetics, which defines a system of analysis of games. The analytic structure for games is taken from Eric Zimmerman and Frank Lantz. A game is split into three dimensions: formal, social, and cultural. Mackay adds a fourth dimension, which is the aesthetic dimension.

The word “narrative” has been used to describe the over-arching story of the game. This makes sense, as the narrative is the history of the game, and the use of the term is supported by the fact that it is verbal telling that is used to drive the game. This construction operates against the sense of archetypical dramatic narratives: narrative here is something that is told (enacted) and then re-told (described).

Cultural Structure

Mackay opens discussing the cultural structure of role-playing games by examining their history and origin arising from war games, which arose in the early 1800s with “Kriegspiel”. Most traditional games, ie card or board games are zero-sum games. War games diverged from this model with a nonzero-sum approach, which led to interesting dynamics using cooperation and subterfuge.

There is a very explicit connection to RPGs and literature. RPGs that emerged out of the wargaming tradition were heavily anchored in settings defined by pulp literature. Mackay writes an equation that sums this up: “Fantasy Literature + Wargames = Role-Playing Games”. This connects to the idea of models, but we do not yet see a connection of the world to game mechanics. We also primarily see fantasy, sci-fi, and pulp literature used here, as opposed to settings that are more “highbrow”. Literature forms the world and the cultural frame of meaning around the game itself. This point connects very strongly to Jenkins (and possibly Michel DeCerteau), and encourages the idea that fans are coopting these cultural artifacts.

The emergence of D&D in the 60s and 70s is also rooted in American culture, exposing a sort of backward-looking nostalgia for a pre-technological era, and a setting without the moral ambiguity present in the political climate. The desire for clarity in distiction between good vs. evil was not satisfied by the “mirages of communism versus free world, cowboy versus Indian, and good guy versus bad guy that permeated the political rhetoric and cultural climate of the 1950s.”

The influence of role-playing games and culture is the most evident in computer games and especially online environments from MUDs to MMOGs. The importance specifically relates to world setting and the interpretation and cultural meaning thereof. Mackay pulls Baudrillard into this connection using the idea of the “semiosphere”, an atmosphere of signs. RPGs regurgitate cultural myths, narratives, and world settings.

The aesthetic of fantasy is the depth of detail and setting. The fiction can be so detailed that it can be imagined. This idea not about realism, but the impression of reality. This idea connects back to the immersion. Player engrossment is through the character, the player co-constructs the fantasy through his or her own imagination. Electronic games cannot do this because they establish a role that is opposing the player. Human imagination is stiffled when presented with observable detail. There must be something about writing and fiction especially that enables this.

Formal Structure:

An interesting connection is made here to amusement parks and “themed entertainment”. The player as spectator model is consistent with how I personally run games, but it is not universal. A connection is made to the aspect of simulation, specifically through Barthes and Baudrillard: The idea is that the logic internal to the game comes to have a life of its own, and detaches from both the real world and its origins. That is, a game world may have originated there, but it no longer lives in sourcebooks, it comes to have a mythology and life detached from physical anchors. Uri Rapp wrote explicitly on this in “Simulation and Imagination, Mimesis as Play” in 1984.

Mackay brings up the interesting example of Everway, which is about “Visionary Role-playing”. This has an abstract conceptual ambiguity that is diametrically opposed to D&D’s rigorous attention to mathematics. It represents a contrast with Cartesian and non-Cartesian thinking. In Everway, aesthetics are incorporated into the formal structure.

Connecting Schechner on performance: Rules guide a performance through constraint, creating safety and security. Note that this is entirely consistent with conversation with Miashara earlier. The RPG narrative is created by performance. This is interesting to compare with other game studies, the relationship between performance and play. The difference between Schechner and the RPG model has to do with the code that defines the performance: “The role-playing game exhibits a narrative, but this narrative does not exist until the actual performance. It exists during every role-playing game episode, either as a memory or as an actual written transcription by the players or game master. It includes all the events that take place in character, nonplayed character backstories, and the preplayed world history. It never exists as a code independent of any and all transmitters, like Schechner’s definition for drama suggests.” (p. 50)

There is some discussion connecting Goffman and framing to the levels at work in games. This describes the various principles and rules and forces that are at work in guiding the game experience. Drama is described as a force that operates on the game at a meta-level. This is explicitly stated in Everway. While players may be aware of the dramatic force at work, the player characters are not. This enforces the notion that drama is simulated like any other rule. This makes an interesting connection to drama managers, which operate on a meta-level in a very similar way.

Social Structure:

Performance and experience exist in all frames simultaneously. The character/player exists in all these levels as well, and identity blurs as the levels meet. Mackay is using Schechner to critique the borders of frames as defined by Goffman, Fine, and Gregory Bateson. Schechner argues that ritual takes place on a level that transcends the frames of interaction.

This section is also called “The Structural Foundation of the Role-Player’s Subjectivity”, which echoes Bogost’s description of simulation, as the gap between the rule-based representation of a world and the player’s subjectivity. The player’s subjectivity in this case also represents the agency of the player to co-construct the game world. Drawing on Barthes, Mackay argues that role-playing games function by exposing the construction of meaning. He muses that the religious right has reacted strongly against role-playing games because they represent a world where people give meaning to things and “try to render intelligible the process behind creation.” (p. 68) The creation of meaning is driven by “blanks” as described by Wolfgang Iser.

Game worlds and game culture take on the idea of speculative or fantastic recreation. Fantastic recreation is what drives the “global villiage” of the Epcott Center. This connects with Bakhtin’s idea of the desire for an alternate or unofficial culture, which also sounds connected to utopian desire.

The relationship between culture and gaming: Constructed characters are reflections/echoes of existing culture, like Deleuzian assemblages. An interesting concept mentioned here is the notion of the “decontextualized tropes” or “fictive blocks” which are tiny bits of culture that can exist without context. Fictive blocks are essentially instances of meaning in a sound-byte culture. To explain how these are used, Mackay references Arnold Van Gennep (1908), who describes stages of separation, liminality, and reincorporation, which are used in rites of passage. The three stage process applies here to fictive blocks in cultural artifacts. A sound byte or image or idea might be taken from a fictional work, then isolated and disconnected from its context, and later reincorporated into some other creative material. This idea connects again very strongly to DeCerteau and Jenkins.

Mackay brings up Foucault to describe power relations in role-playing. The space of the role-playing game is an interesting target for studying power play, especially given the absolute power of the game master. However, this idea goes back and can be applied in an interesting way to power in electronic games. In electronic games, the player has no power, but is not surveiled, but given a certain autonomy, players have massive freedom. The level of personal relation in RPGs allows for odd features that relate to discipline. In a role-playing game, the player is certainly compelled to behave with a certain level of discipline, especially in terms of keeping in character and observing social standards. In electronic games, both the online and offline varieities, players have no compulsion, and will behave very rudely, inconsistently, and incoherently. The strongest example of this is when players attempt to push the limits of a game and break it. There is a strong cultural tradition of this, but it is something that will not be tolerated in role-playing sessions, even when the game mechanics allow for abuse of in-game power. Why this is the case is a deep and complex question.

Aesthetic Structure:

The aesthetic structure is a necessary component to role-playing games. Discussing the engrossing and enchanting power of other types of games, Mackay writes: “The role-playing game performance shares these structures with other activities. However, it also participates in a fourth structure, an aesthetic commonly attributed to art: a cathartic structure that encourages identification with its content and that persists after the performance has disappeared. This structure is at once a social process, a cultural process, and a formal process, but it is also something more. It is the creation of an aesthetic object that results from the collective interpretive process of the role-plaing game performance.” (p. 122) This also exposes some of the lack in electronic games: players have control over the social, cultural, and formal levels of experience, but are not able to contribute to the aesthetic structure.

Connecting art and theatricality: According to Michael Fried, art is opposed to theatricality. Modernist (literalist) art takes the extreme position of reducing art to pure objects. For instance: a painting is just paint on canvas. Fried describes Tony Smith’s car ride on the New Jersey Turnpike before its completion. The idea here is that kinetic, immersive, explosively imaginative experiences work towards the aesthetic of the role-playing game narrative. The aesthetic is the residue left behind in memory after the experience has passed.

In describing historical reenactment, Mackay connects once more the world of literary fiction and wargaming. “I see this moment, when the increasing aestheticization of the war gaming narrative finally culminated in the development of role-playing game performance form, as a reaction to the poverty of the imagination that emptied the architecture of everyday life of any meaning and the scarcity of vision that burdens contemporary philosophy and literature. The imaginative faculty is a built-in function of the human organism–the equivalent to pulses of the heart or respiration of the lungs. If a people do not find that faculty fulfilled in the world they have been handed, they will build their own.” (p. 153)

Symbol systems are most important development in recent work of cognitive science, linguistics, and psychology. An interesting note: “Thus it is a hypothesis that these symbols are in fact the same symbols that we humans have and use everyday of our lives. Stated another way, the hypothesis is that humans are instances of physical symbol systems, and, by virtue of this, mind enters into the physical universe.” (p. 136) This treatment is important because it establishes the symbol as the media by which the mind interacts with the physical world. Secondly, it seems to echo the notion of the Jungian symbol. Though this is probably not what Newell is intending to connect, the Jungian symbol exists at a cultural and semantic level, and could be used to extend symbol manipulation to be more of a trans-cognitive phenomenon.

Symbol systems have their roots in mathematical logic, as well as in previous work in philosophy, linguistics, etc. Newell mentions Whitehead specifically on the importance of symbols. The work on symbols is existing in parallel between cognition and computer science. Newell is arguing simultaneously for the importance of symbol processing in computation, and also in human thought. These two are intrinically linked in his argument, making AI a natural conclusion. This link extends from a broad cultural history of likening humans to machines in thought and function, stemming from Cartesian Dualism. The human created machine, through mathematics, is something that reaches towards the platonic ideal of pure disembodied meaning. The proclamation of AI is a natural conclusion from this thinking, where human thought belongs in this world of perfected formalism. That Newell should conclude that physical symbol systems are “simply evident” is a continuation of this mode of thought.

Formal definition of a symbol system “SS”: memory, operators, control, input, and output. Memory is a list of symbol structures, or expressions. An expression is a list of symbols, with a type and roles associated with the symbols. Newell writes an expression formally: (Type: T, R1:S1, R2:S2, … Rn:Sn). The number and the roles depend on the type, and the symbols may be repeated. An operator takes some symbols as an input and produces some symbols as an output. The symbol system has several operators, which seem to relate to classical computer IO and memory operations: assign, copy, write, read, execute, exit if, continue if, quote, behave externally, input. No example is given of this system in operation, so we cannot easily see how these properties will cause the system to behave.

The symbol system described is seems to be fairly “garden-variety”, but has the property of universality. This seems to be more than computational universality, but relate to interaction and responsiveness with input and environments. Newell compares this to Weiner’s Cybernetics, where systems used feedback to appear purposive. Newell points out that SS is limited because of its ability to behave in the world, and input symbols. The most significant limitation that he describes is on the limitation of computation, and the existence of non-computable functions.

Newell continues to express concern over this and describe computational universality and relating the capacity of symbol systems to the Church-Turing thesis. It seems, though, that this is getting beyond the problem of cognition. Cognition is about how humans think, and, by virtue of being physical ourselves, we are limited by the laws of computation. The concern over completeness seems unfounded to me. The extreme generalization of Turing’s minimal functions seems to imply that most any symbol system is bound to be universal.

Further embracing the idea of universal machines, Newell forms a definition of symbol systems: “Symbol systems are the same as universal machines.” (p. 154) This argument goes in the direction that symbol systems and universal machines are equivalent, or that they can simulate each other.

Applying this principle: The purpose of symbols is in their ability to signify or stand for something, and Newell describes this as the process of designation. Newell mentions several other words: reference, denotation, naming, standing for, aboutness, or even symbolization or meaning. “The variation in these terms, in either their common or philosophic usage, is not critical for us.” I find this casual rejection very fascinating, as the relation between cognition and the various forms of symbols, especially in terms of metaphor, (and in Piercian linguistics: symbols, icons, and indicies), these variations of meaning are extremely important. The designation intended by Newell is a mechanism used in the means by which one universal machine might represent and simulate another.

The other capacity is interpretation, the ability to derive symbols from given input. Later, discussing assignment, Newell mentions some examples of symbols that might be used to designate things. Symbols processed by machines must be totally and fundamentally arbitrary, even though the words and symbols used by humans in various contexts encode a great deal of information into the symbol itself. One particular example is the word “unhappy” which references the symbol “happy”, even though associated meanings may be more than mere opposites. Also mentioned are labeling conventions in geometry. These sorts of conventions are exactly the type of cognitive extensions that are encouraged by others.

The physical symbol system hypothesis: “The necessary and sufficient condition for a physical system to exhibit intelligent action is that it be a physical symbol system.” (p. 170) General intelligent action: “means the same scope of intelligence seen in human action: that in real situations behavior appropriate to the ends of the system and adaptive to the demands of the environment can occur, within some physical limits.” This does hold and is backed up logically, but fails to describe further context of the ends of the system or the demands of the environment. These details are things that must be carefully constructed and supplied. Furthermore, the hypothesis also is addressing specifically the idea of rationality, which is a loaded and biased term. The hypothesis focuses on rationality in prefrence to a more general “phenomena of mind”. This is described as a preference, but it is also a severe limitation, as humans are not necessarily rational.

Representation and knowledge also get a special treatment. Representation is the quality by which symbols might map from aspects of one object to aspects of another. The idea is that the symbol system has an image of the object in its symbolic structure. This is a useful concept, but is subject to a great deal of value judgements and concerns in terms of formulating the structure of representation. The relation to knowledge is framed in an equation: “Representation = Knowledge + Access”.

Understanding the idea of “situated cognition” by comparative terms. Concludes that definitive characteristic is *cognitive extension*. Embodied cognition is a continuation of this idea.

History of cognition: Individualistic cognition, mind alone, wedged between perception and action.
Approach also suggests that cognition takes place on the features of symbols, as opposed to features of the individuals themselves.
Significant works in the individualistic thread include Fodor, Pylyshyn, and Newell and Simon. Pure example is the Cyc project, which (as we know from Alison Adam) promotes a sort of “view from nowhere”, presenting a sort of assumed identity.

Putnam and Burg
e challenged individualistic perspective, leading to perspective of taxonomic externalism, and these have been extended to more radical theories of externalism. Externalism pushes the idea that cognition extends beyond the individual thinker, even past the flesh and into the environment. When externalism is first introduced, when cognition is pushed outside of the brain (or abstract symbol system) into the body, then it becomes a slippery slope to determine where the edge of cognition stops. This naturally leads to a diversity of conflicting theories.

Extended computation (or wide computationalism, which is a synonym), is not a severe departure from computation, but simply an extension thereof. These are ideas that look at computation as taking place spread across an environment, as opposed to inside the skull of the thinker. Computationalism is not incompatible with situated or extended cognition, but those rather extend from it.

Examples of extensions are bodily extensions, technology and prosthetics. Symbolic thinkers have also used the analogy of prosthetic, but emphasized the prosthesis of the mind, eg Vannevar Bush. This idea has been continued with Don Norman with the notion of affordance. This is described in Wilson and clark as “cognitive augmentation”. Part of the issue with this is how augmentation extends, but also restricts. Augmentation fits with the planning-oriented perception of the world, but stumbles when faced with the idea of expression or limitations (a hammer encourages you to think in terms of nails).

Social structures are mentioned. A crucial example is writing (in terms of cognitive supplement).

An example given is the “task specific device” or TSD. This is something that exists either in the environment or in the actor, and is used to enable certain types of action. Like the case with prosthetics, it promotes an instrumental and intentional model of behavior. Related to TSDs are “transient extended cognitive systems” or TECSs, which seem to be ways of approaching cognition on a per-context basis. The idea of the TECS is similar to the tool oriented approach, but seems to be much more flexible and free-form.

Looking at the boundary between cognition and non-cognition. An argument against extended cognition is the “Dogma of Intrinsic Unsuitability”, which states “Certain kinds of encoding or processing are intrinsically unsuitable to act as parts of the material/computational substrate of any genuinely cognitive state or process”. At odds with Intrinsic Unsuitability is the “Tenet of Computational Promiscuity”, which is the property of computation to spread out across many parts of mind and body.

Another challenge to extended cognition is embedded cognition, which claims that cognition is embedded in things external to the body. One idea in this is memory. Other ideas are the confusion associated with examining changing thinker+tool combinations as cognitive subjects. The authors dispute this because embedding implies heirarchy and order which is missing in application.

Michael Mateas visited today, and gave a presentation about his Expressive Intelligence Studio at USC. The project is about automated game design, which is interesting, since that was one of the original goals of my MS research, before I turned it into a space generation thing. Basically, this idea is something that would support formal game studies by exposing and finding new ways to put together mechanics. It also encourages thought about design at a meta level, reasoning about types of mechanics and how they can be put together. The existing work doesn’t do much yet, but it looks like it might yield some interesting results.

The work involves four layers of work:

1. Game mechanics: State and state evolution. The actual mechanisms by which state is represented and can advance are part of a larger meta-model.
2. Concrete representation: Audio, visual elements that represent the mechanics to the player.
3. Thematic content: Real world references, common sense associations. This makes the game meaningful outside of a purely symbolic context.
4. Control mappings: User interaction and verbs.

The starting point for the EIS lab was to look at the thematic content, which is arguably the hardest part of the problem. This bit has to make meaningful associations between game mechanics and the underlying concepts. For instance, if the game is about chasing, the player can either chase or be chased, and whatever is being chased must be something that someone would have reason to chase. The associations here were defined via Open Min, ConceptNet, or WordNet. I forget exactly which combination of these was used. The goal was to enforce consistency in game mechanics with the thematic concepts. The result of this was unfortunately rather messy and somewhat absurd in a lot of cases, due to conceptual slippage.

The more interesting area of work I found was in the reasoning about the mechanics themselves. This was done via event calculus, which has been described very effectively by Eric Mueller. The event calculus can reason about events, states, and can be used under the hood to restrict the types of states that can be reached by a given set of game mechanics. Essentially, the calculus can be used to define a suite of invariants, almost like unit tests, and test these on a given set of mechanics, allowing a designer or an automated tool to modify the mechanics quickly and find out whether the invariants are met.

Food for further investigation.

This article describes a study done by Oatley and some others on the cognitive effects of reading fiction. The study finds that fiction specifically enhances the ability of readers to empathize and understand emotions. The suggested reason why this occurs is because in reading fiction, the reader simulates the characters mentally, and thus builds a better model of human emotions.

The article does not address more specific qualities, such as how the reader simulates and how knowledge is gained from this. Some open questions I might have are whether the reader is absorbing the protagonist’s emotions as the correct ones, or if the reader is vicariously experiencing the situations and merely correlating his or her own emotions with those of the protagonist. I would lean towards the latter, but the question is open.

The study specifically finds that there is a distinction between this empathy when the story is rendered as a documentary versus fiction. This suggests that there is something special about fiction that enables a certain kind of empathetic processing. Another open question is what is so special about fiction? A possible answer is that fiction frames a situation as a safe cognitive playground where the reader can choose how to experience certain roles. A documentary misses this because it frames the situation as factual, thus restricting the reader’s freedom to “experience as”.

Oatley explains: “In our daily lives we use mental models to work out the possible outcomes of actions we take as we pursue our goals. Fiction is written in a way that encourages us to identify with at least some of the characters, so when we read a story, we suspend our own goals and insert those of a protagonist into our planning processors.”

The idea presented here is directly in line with the notion of simulation, developing an imaginary frame and executing it. This idea continues:

“This is why I liken fiction to a simulation that runs on the software of our minds. And it is a particularly useful simulation because negotiating the social world effectively is extremely tricky, requiring us to weigh up myriad interacting instances of cause and effect. Just as computer simulations can help us get to grips with complex problems such as flying a plane or forecasting the weather, so novels, stories and dramas can help us understand the complexities of social life.”

Interesting things can be extended from this: Roleplaying and games especially. Roleplaying has been demonstrated to have uses in therapy, and it has been suggested in several places that it helps the players develop themselves emotionally (a conclusion I can vouch for based on personal experience). However, both of these have the capacity to be non-developmental, discouraging critical and emotional reasoning. This conflict resembles the conflict framed between Turkle’s view of games and computers as evocative, versus other critiques of games and geek culture as reactionary and exploitative.

That aside, the study still finds significant positive power within fiction, and connects it to the ideas of modeling and simulation.