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ResponsesReflections of Lakoff, and What Does it Mean for AI? -- Matt GarrWhile Lakoff spends too much effort belittling the field of objectivist cognition, he does make many good insights regarding how we experience the world. Following in Heidegger’s tradition (though making no mention of those whose philosophy he builds on), Lakoff puts forth that it is not useful to think about the world as independent of the human mind, when considering human cognition. I liked how Lakoff did explicitly say that he acknowledges the existence of an outside world as an objective physical reality, with certain definite physical characteristics. Heidegger was less clear regarding his position in this regard. Heidegger and Lakoff are in agreement that focusing on human experiences as linked body-to-world events, rather than on how the disembodied mind models the world in isolation is the key to understanding cognition. For Heidegger understanding human experience is to understand the essence of Dasein and for Lakoff, this understanding will make strong inroads to understanding human cognition. Lakoff’s discussion of how our bodies serve as metaphors for understanding the world was quite thought-provoking. It is amazing how we project our own features upon manufactured goods. A car seems to have eyes in headlights that allow it to see, and a grill, like a mouth that allows the engine to breath. Recently, Nissan released a car with an asymmetric rear window. This seems shocking as a design concept, because it violates the axis of symmetry that our bodies have, and may be perceived to be imperfect. Good reviews of vehicles describe them as “natural extensions” of our own bodies. Perhaps this is why asymmetry in such a product could be seen as a negative feature—it less closely represents us. When reading Lakoff’s discussion of categorization techniques, I was reminded of a study which makes me inclined to believe that the level at which we categorize is tied to what works for us as a species, rather than the outside world. People cannot reliably identify different crows when presented with images of them. However, crows can make this distinction. To us, the individual crow is below the level of detail we need to categorize on a day-to-day basis. On the other hand, we are extraordinarily good at distinguishing human faces. It seems, when thinking about crows, that they all look the same, but I also know there are distinctions in feathers, size, beak, etc, that could probably allow me to make the distinction if I had the proper categorization model. We have somehow created models that work for us without realizing it, and without understanding how they work. I do wonder, however, whether with sufficient study, new models can be created. Can an ornithologist, for example, make distinctions that I cannot? By extension from the crow example, it is interesting to think about the concept of metaphors. If we can learn how to categorize crows, we should be able to create new models of the world based on learning new ways of “seeing” it. Just as we could train ourselves to visually see objects in the world with more discernment, we could create new interpretive models that characterize incoming experiences. However, changing metaphors on a grand scale is a difficult task, as metaphors become shared parts of society. Seemingly every new President of the United States is going to change the tone in Washington, imposing a new metaphor of politics as cooperation towards good policy making. However, the more widely held metaphor of politics as war seems to stubbornly hold on. While it is interesting to think about human cognitive processes, and easy to dismiss much current research, I wonder where the discussion gets us in terms of understanding the possibilities for artificial intelligence in computers. While Lakoff dismisses objectivist cognition, and with it, GOFAI, can computer-based entities ever behave in ways analogous to human experience, given the right set of initial programming and sensors? Can they ever simulate the processes by which humans understand the world, and refine their models to create their own models of understanding? Where is current research in this regard? Basic Level Metaphor - Mark Schar Participatory Texts - Jeff WearAt the time of its publication in the late 1980s, readers of Lakoff's Cognitive Semantics must have been galvanized by his words. Fellow cognitive scientists of the objectivist school must have been either viscerally repulsed, as if he had rebuked them directly; while his experientialist peers, whose words he directly incorporated into his own thesis, must have felt as if he was speaking directly to them. 20 years later, I felt left out. I knew nothing of objectivist cognition except what Lakoff revealed indirectly, through his dismissal of it. His text did not take into account my needs or my background - out of context, I could not fully appreciate his thought. This week's chapter from Understanding Computers and Cognition talked at length about how speakers in a conversation might coordinate their actions to render their intentions and actions intelligible to each other. But how can I coordinate my actions and my interpretation with a static text? It seems progressively strange to describe reading as a conversational pursuit, when the reality is that the one participant in this conversation is fixed - his line of thought has fossilized, preserved for the ages - while the other is from one of infinitely many different conversational backgrounds, for which the author cannot account now, nor have prepared for so long ago. We speak of "active" reading as "interaction" with the text, but this is solely an imaginative pursuit. The best that the reader can do is to "anticipate" the author's responses to his questions, but really all this is to say is that the reader is incorporating the author's thoughts into his own internal monologue. To some extent, we mitigate this ahistorical nature of the text by surrounding the text with commentary; we supply the context, in the form of a class meant to relate it to our modern concerns and possibilities - but this is still removed from the text itself. We read texts about hermeneutics; about language as a social, interpretative act; but these texts themselves are asocial and removed. A text which denies the existence of context-free, objective meaning in language is itself rendered the nonparticipatory object of discussion! Perhaps the incongruity lies within the practice of writing texts in which the text, once finished, is committed to the body of literature within a field and not thereafter altered. It may be cited in subsequent papers, but its thought, in itself, is frozen. I instead propose that to be continually revived and remade relevant, authors might continually update their texts with their own commentary. This model is not entirely foreign within conventional publishing: textbooks are revised each year, for instance. What if authors of all manner of publications did the same - published new editions each year, not merely to append introductions, but to update the body of the texts themselves - fixing "errata" in the light of new evidence, injecting new examples and insights as the times changed? In fact, with modern wiki technology, there exists the potential to update the author's text in realtime and to incorporate not only their own insights but also those of their readers. While this platform resembles Wikipedia, its focus would not be to present an objective discourse regarding some facet of knowledge, but rather to serve as a living testimonial to the views of the author. Enacted online, the text would truly become a living conversation for eternity, so long as there are readers; for after the original "author" was dead and gone, his student authors could continue revising his theories, such that his thought would evolve in new and unprecedented directions, and continually be made accessible to new readers. This "living" text would not only participate in discussion with each new reader, but those readers could converse with it, by merging their insights into its body. Things Hidden - Luke DahlThis week’s reading covered a large number of ideas, and having difficulty figuring out how to respond, I started to make a list of these ideas/concepts/theme. As I did this I found myself making a category I called “backgrounds” which came to include all the “hidden things” we’ve encountered so far. That is, all the assumptions, historical precedences, biases, anything that affects our perception, cognition, and behavior that we don’t usually acknowledge or even know about. Side note: is my categorization an example of a distinction arising to cope with a breakdown? So here is my list:
I also included, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, “What we mean when we keep talk about meaning” I’m sure I’m forgetting things, but I found this interesting. It seems to me that this whole pursuit of cognitive science, or perhaps science in general, can be seen as a goal to uncover hidden things. But then, examining the metaphors of my speech, does that suggest that those things existed before we uncovered them?! Can non-living things ever understand metaphors? - Danijel ReboljThe two metaphors about problems, described by Lakoff and Johnson in Metaphors We Live By (Problems are puzzles, The solution of problems – the chemical metaphor), clearly proves to me that using a language by far exceeds »message passing«. It can change my inner state, organization of my life (for example if I switch from taking problems as puzzles to understanding problems in the sense of the chemical metaphor then this will dramatically change my life). From this I conclude that computers could only understand human language if they were aware of context, self-organizing - capable of changing their inner organization (their core programs) - and thus behave in an unpredictable way, or in other words, if they were alive. (But I'm not able to prove this conclusion, because the proof would lie beyond logical reasoning and would thus not be considered a proof.) Alan Kay --NateHow is a metaphor good at creating new realties? It not only conveys meaning but it conveys meaning in a new context. This is one useful result of phenomenology. Now that we understand how ideas are conveyed and realize that things cant be understood without also understanding context like, history, culture, past personal experience, present surroundings etc. We can see that metaphors are good for changing someone's perspective, perhaps to a new paradigm. One of my favorite speakers is Alan Kay from Xerox. He is always talking in metaphors. I had a lot of little "ah-ha" moments reading his stuff and listening to him speak. As a freshman I was listening to him comment on some programming language and he said something like "think of the programing language as a user interface," and I remember thinking to myself "wow" that makes a lot of sense. And I was able to ask new questions about the purpose and effectiveness of the language. --Nate After Class and Dinner Comment on LakoffI thoroughly enjoyed the dinner with George Lakoff, and it was great to associate a face and personality with a body of research. I found the discussion of neuroscience interesting, and rooted in science and evidence. However, I was surprised at the contrast in that he bases his arguments that the systems that enable human thinking and action are not be able to be replicated on a hunch that we are so complex that the probability is zero. I was also troubled by the argument about the soul. The soul, Lakoff argues, is based in the body, and its leaving the body would divorce it of what makes it interesting. However, he argues in his writings that humans' interpretations are necessarily colored by what their bodies allow them to perceive. As our senses clearly do not allow us to sense what the essence of a soul is, it is difficult to accept the reasoning that something so un-understandable can be rendered uninteresting by the subtraction of bodily capabilities. Perhaps the soul is what coordinates all the highly complex neurons and neurotransmitters, and would provide organization to other bodies in a way it sees fit? I don't see how his argument defeats a question such as this one. --Matt Garr |