Cognitive Prism – More Than a Metaphor of Metaphor.pdf

Cognitive Prism More Than a Metaphor ofMetaphor

Tiansi Dong

Thuemchenswall 39, 50668 Koeln, [email protected]

Abstract. In this chapter we address a basic question in the func-tional model of the mind: with which mechanism a cognitive agentcan understand new concepts? and propose an answer: the cognitiveprism mechanism. This mechanism is rooted in the information pro-cess of a neuron. Research results in cognitive psychology and linguis-tics support that such mechanism is used in concept-understandingin our everyday-life. We show that this mechanism is used to inte-grate spatial environments existing at dierent temporal points andform a spatial concept. Lakos theory in concept-understanding canbe reformulated in terms of the cognitive prism mechanism. The clas-sic mathematical logic, as well as fuzzy logic, can be understood asthe (prism) mapping from language to true or false values. In Chi-nese medicine, human-body structure is referenced to spatial conceptsthrough certain cognitive prism mechanism. We argue that metaphoris not only the mechanism to relate concepts in non-physical domainto physical ones, but also the mechanism to relate concepts withinthe physical domain. We briey criticize the current theory of jokeand propose a novel perspective to the understanding of jokes in termof potential tension of cognitive prism. We conclude that equippedwith the cognitive prism mechanism and concepts of spatial environ-ment cognitive agents shall understand quite a lot of spatial/non-spatial concepts.

1 Introduction

At the opening ceremony of an international meeting, a British gen-tleman said, let us drink for the ladies from the east sphere. In returnfor this, a Chinese gentleman replied, let us also drink for the ladiesfrom the west sphere. A French gentleman would also show his hos-pitality, and said, for the third cup let us drink for the two spheres ofthe ladies.

People hear jokes and laugh, funny things happen in their mind. A pre-condition to enjoy jokes is that some terms in the joke text are related withsome others which are beyond the text. In the joke above, two spheres ofthe ladies shall be related with to ladies of the two spheres. In this chap-ter we are interested in the mechanism of mind with which one concept is

Y.Wang, D. Zhang, andW. Kinsner (Eds.): Advances in Cogn. Informatics, SCI 323, pp. 245264.springerlink.com c Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010

246 T. Dong

referenced to others and briey explain how this mechanism is applied injoke-understanding.

[Lako and Johnson, 1980] argued that the conceptual system of themind ismetaphorical. Their main claims are that new concepts are understood by ref-erencing to known concepts through the selecting and highlighting mechanismsand that concepts about the physical domain are primitive. [Wang, 2003] and[Wang, 2007] presented a functional model of the mind, including the sensa-tion layer, the memory layer, the perception layer, the action layer, the metacognitive layer, and higher cognitive layers, and proposed that the meta cog-nitive process layer carries out the fundamental and elementary cognitive pro-cesses commonly used by processes in higher cognitive layers, as illustrated inFigure 1.

Meta Cognitive Layer

High Cognitive Layer

Co e Lta Met C ertivog

Fig. 1. The meta cognitive layer is used as a reference model for all high cognitivemodels

Several questions remain open: are selecting and highlighting mechanismsnative to the mind? are the two mechanisms really not used in understandingconcepts about the physical domain? If what claimed in cognitive linguisticsis correct, how will it aect the functional model of the mind in cognitive in-formatics? That is, if our conceptual system is metaphorical, how can highercognitive domains be referenced to the primitive domain through the two

Cognitive Prism More Than a Metaphor of Metaphor 247

mechanisms? The rest of the chapter is structured as follows: Section 2 ar-gues that the signal processing of a single neuron can be understood througha so-called cognitive prism mechanism that selects and distorts input infor-mation; Section 3 reviews research results in cognitive psychology and showsthat the prism phenomena exist in the cognitive activities in everyday life.Section 4 shows that the cognitive prism mechanism exists in spatial cogni-tion and that the cognitive prism mechanism is used to integrate snapshotspatial environments into a constant spatial concept. Section 5 exemplieshow higher cognitive models, including metaphor, logic, acupuncture, andjoke-understanding, are referenced directly or indirectly to the spatial modelthrough the cognitive prism mechanism. Section 6 summarizes the article anddiscusses some future work.

2 Signal Processing by Neuron

The neuron cell contains soma (cell body), dendrites, and an axon, as il-lustrated in Figure 2. Dendrites are message input terminals, and the axonis the single output terminal. Dendrites receives messages (chemically, theyare ions charged atoms) from the axons of other neurons. The neuron cellprocesses all the input signals, and may send out a signal through the axon.The signal processing of a single neuron is selective and distortive.

Fig. 2. The structure of a neuron

Selectiveness. Signal input is selectively received by a neuron. There is agap (synapses) between the axon terminal of one neuron and the dendriteterminal of the message-receiving neuron. In the gap, the signal ions moverandomly. Each kind of them has specic channels in the membrane of thereception neuron. Reception channels are proteins. When they detect specickind of ions, they will change their shape and form a channel for these ions,as illustrated in Figure 3.

248 T. Dong

Fig. 3. The membrane of a neuron

+

v0

v5v4

v3

v2

v1

w4

w3

w2

w1 w0

w5

unselected signal

unselected

signal

unselected

signal

unselected

signal

output signalthreshold

Fig. 4. The prism mechanism of neurons signal processing. Signals vi (0 i 5)are selected, others are neglected; selected signals are distorted (weighted) by wi(0 i 5) respectively. When the weight sum reaches a threshold, a output issignaled


Distortion. Signal-processing inside a neuron is so-called all-or-none, whichcan be understood as follows.

We can think of the neuron as having the following job: to decide,about a hundred times per second, whether or not to send an outputsignal. Since this is a yes/no decision, the neuron can be seen astreating each of its input as voting for or against emitting a signal atthis instant. [Feldman, 2006, p.53]

Interestingly, input votes do not have the same weight in deciding whetherto emit or not. Some are more important than others. The existence of suchweights can be understood as a kind of information distortion mechanismof a neuron: When the weighted sum of positive votes against the weightedsum of negative ones reaches certain value (threshold), the neuron signal anoutput, as illustrated in Figure 4.

Fig. 5. When white light passes through a triangular optical prism, a spectrum willbe formed

Fig. 6. When spectrum lights passe through a triangular optical prism, a beam ofwhite light will be formed

The cognitive prism mechanism. When a beam of white light reachesan optical prism, part of the light will be reected and the part that passesthrough will be re-arranged forming a spectrum based on dierent wavelengths: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet, as illustrated in Figure 5.When beams of the spectrum light reach the optical prism, part of them willbe reected, the rest part which pass through will be distorted and form a

250 T. Dong

beam of white light, as illustrated in Figure 6. When signals reach a neuron,some will be neglected, and the selected will be distorted with a particularweight inside of the neuron. The neuron works like an optical prism. It istherefore called a cognitive prism. Two main properties are selectiveness(select some while discarding others) and distortion (signals are weighted).

3 Prism Phenomena in Everyday Life

The properties of selectiveness and distortion are preserved under neuronconcatenation. A network of neurons is also selective and distortive. Thought(cognitive activity) can be understood as structured neural activity,[Feldman, 2006]. Therefore, thoughts shall be also shaped by the cognitiveprism, and prism phenomena shall be revealed in the thought of everydaylife.

From Selectiveness to Categorization. Perceptual stimuli of an objectis selectively passed by unit cognitive prisms, ultimately our mind only ac-quires part of properties of the object. The normal meaning of recognizingan object is that the object is successfully categorized into a particular ob-ject class, [Liter and Bueltho, 1996]. Research in cognitive psychology showthat objects are recognized rst at a particular level of abstraction, i.e.,[Rosch et al., 1976], [Jolicoeur et al., 1984].

[Rosch et al., 1976] argued that categories are structured such that thereis generally one level of abstraction at which humans nd it easiest to nameobjects and recognize them the fastest, namely basic level category. Basic levelof abstraction is the level at which categories carry the most information,possess the highest cue validity, and are, thus, the most dierentiated fromothers. [Jolicoeur et al., 1984] proposed the notion of entry point level, whichmeans that every object has one particular level at which contact is maderst with semantic memory. This level corresponds to the basic level in mostcases.

From Distortion to Cognitive Reference Points. Selected perceptualstimuli might be distorted such that the distorted stimuli will be catego-rized into certain ideal types [Wertheimer, 1938] or cognitive reference points[Rosch, 1975]. An introspective judgment by Wertheimer was: A line of 85

was almost vertical, but a vertical line was not almost 85.[Rosch, 1975] conducted psychological experiments for three domains: Col-

ors, line orientations, and numbers. For the color system, red, yellow,green, and blue are preferred cognitive reference points: The desaturatedred was judged muddy by subjects but still named red; and the o-huered was judged purplish, but still red [Rosch, 1975, p.536]. For decimalnumbers, multiples of 10 are cognitive reference points of numbers. Peoplesay that 99.231 is around 100 rather than 100 is around 99.231. For lineorientations, vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines are reference orientations.


[Sadalla et al., 1980] and [Couclelis et al., 1987] investigated cognitive ref-erence points in large scale spatial environments. [Sadalla et al., 1980] foundthat landmarks are used to dene the location of adjacent spatial objects andthat subjective distances between reference points and non-reference pointsare therefore asymmetrical. [Couclelis et al., 1987] found that landmarks maybe discriminable features of a route, or discriminable features of a region, orsalient information in a memory task. Locations in large spatial environmentsare partitioned into sub-regions each having a reference point.

4 Cognitive Prism in Spatial Cognition

In this section, we show that the cognitive prism mechanism is used in basiccognitive tasks in spatial cognition, therefore, this mechanism is native to themeta cognitive layer.

4.1 Introduction to Spatial Recognition

People receive stimuli from the surrounding environment, partition them,and recognize objects and their relations in the environment. Recognizingobjects means categorization, which means objects in the same category areequivalent and indistinguishable in isolation. For example, if the category ofyour coee machine has one million members, recognizing the coee machinemeans that it is yours with the probability of one millionth. If it is putamong a cluster of objects of the same category, your object recognitionability cannot help you recognize your coee machine. If someone replacesthe coee machine with another one in the same category, you will not noticethe dierence.

Recognizing spatial environments is dierent from recognizing single ob-jects. Your home, your oce, the entrance hall of your oce building, etc. areunique in the world. The question is raised: If people, on one hand, catego-rize objects, on the other hand, identify spatial environments, how can theyachieve this? Suppose our lab is an open air lab which consists of three ob-jects: A coee machine, a desk and a chair. Suppose that the coee machinebelongs to a rare category, such that there are only two such machines in theworld; so are the desk and the chair, then when we recognize the coee ma-chine, its probability to be the one of our lab is 50%. When we recognize thecoee machine, the desk and the chair, the probability that they all belong toour lab would be 50%50%50% = 12.5%. Now, think of the real situation,a lab may have a coee machine, some tables, computers, a white board, etc.,each of them are one of the millions that we cannot distinguish in isolation.So, the probability that all of them to be ours is almost 0%. However, wenormally recognize our labs, our homes, our oces quickly, accurately, andcondently. How do we recognize spatial environment?

252 T. Dong

4.2 Cognitive Prism Mechanism in Spatial Recognition

Anenvironment as awhole ismore than a cluster of objects. [Wilson et al., 1999]reported a memory impaired patient (LE), a sculptress with an autoimmunedisorder ( systemic lupus erythematosus). This impairs her visual short-termmemory (dissociation between spatial span and pattern span) with mental im-age generation. She could not retrieve images from her memory, thus, she couldonly remember contours of objects. Consequently, she failed to distinguish twowindows with dierent images in the church and she even had diculty in rec-ognizing the face of her husband. However, she can locate objects; and amaz-ingly, she can recognize her home. This case provides evidence that recognizingspatial environments rely on categorizing spatial objects and spatial relationsamong them. It is the co-relations among the objects that make the environ-ment recognized easily, quickly, accurately, and condently.

Selectiveness. When you enter your oce, you shall recognize your desk,your chair, etc. However, you recognize that it is your oce, before you iden-tify all objects in the room. You normally do not open your safe to checkwhether it is your oce you neither check your dustbin, nor check allbooks in the bookshelf to recognize your oce. [Ullmer-Ehrich, 1982] con-ducted experiments to explore the mental schematization of indoor spatialenvironments. The result was that people discarded all small objects, like ap-ples, cups, books, pens, etc. and only selected big ones. That is, when we areperceiving environments, we only select part of the objects in it and neglectothers.

Distortion influenced by Knowledge of Stability. When a pilot haslost his location information, he expects the location information such asyou are above the South Pole rather than you are in your plane, becausethe latter provides no information about the location of the plane. His relativelocation should be referenced to more stable objects. People have knowledgeof object stabilities in spatial environments. The knowledge of stability leadsto the systematical distortion in linguistic descriptions, in order to keep thedescription informative. For example, in describing relative locations of thesun, people prefer to saying that the sun is in the sky and the sun movesaround the earth instead of the sky surrounds the sun or the earth movesaround the sun. People prefer to saying the bike is beside the tree, thebike is on the lawn, the car is on the plaza, the carpet is on the floor,the picture is on the wall, instead of the tree is beside the bike, the lawnis under the bike, the plaza is under the car, the floor is under the car-pet, the wall is behind the picture. This is summarized as the systematicaldistortion in scene perceiving as follows: When we are perceiving a scene, theselected objects are subjectively assigned with the property of stability whichleads to the distortion of spatial conguration in the mind.


Fig. 7. A picture in everyday life. People prefer to say there are some fruits on thetable, instead of there is a table under the fruits

Cognitive Prism for Environmental Observation

Space is simply the order or relation of things among themselves.Leibnitz

When a snapshot view of a spatial environment passes through peoples eyes,it is partitioned and understood as objects and spatial relations. Knowledge ofthe snapshot environment is structured by selecting some of the objects whileneglecting others and ordering the selected ones based on knowledge of stabil-ity. For example, perceiving the snapshot view as shown in Figure 7, peoplemaysay, the chair is near the table; there are some fruits on the table. The structureamong objects includes spatial relations, e.g., near and on, and the referenceordering objects are referenced to more stable objects nearby, e.g., the chairis referenced to the table, and fruits are referenced to the table. The knowledgeof a snapshot view of an environment is as follows: the most stable object is ta-ble, fruits and the chair are less stable than the table; fruits are referenced to thetable through the on relation, and the chair is referenced to the table throughthe near relation, as illustrated in Figure 8.

Environmental Recognition through Cognitive Prisms. Our spatialenvironments are 4-dimensional entities. Their congurations change moreoften than not. Albeit we perceive a changed layout of our oce, we do notrefuse to accept that it is our oce. If we understand that recognizing aspatial environment is the judgment of whether the perceived environmentparticipates to the 4-dimensional target entity, we will be in trouble. Becausethis requires the knowledge of the 4-dimensional structure of spatial envi-ronment. Generally speaking, this structure can not be completely knownto us in everyday life. For example, the traces of cars and people on thestreets are unknown at the next second; the exact locations of books, cups,owers are unknown on the next day. A better way is to consider the envi-ronment as a whole, and to compare the spatial layout at two dierent times,

254 T. Dong

The Cognitive Prism

Banana

Chair

Table

fork ...

Cognitive Prism

cognitive spectrum

Fig. 8. A scene is selectively perceived and systematically distorted by a cognitivesystem

[Dong, 2005b]. That is, to use cognitive prism two times: When people get toa spatial environment, they have a snapshot view and have knowledge of thisview by selecting some objects and ordering them based on their stability.Then, they compare the current perceived conguration with the one they re-member, and make judgement of the possible transformation between them.This transformation is also a cognitive prism mechanism: input to this prismis the knowledge of the perceived environment, output is the knowledge ofthe remembered environment. If the input can be transformed to the output(kind of distortion), the perceived environment will be recognized as the tar-get one. If the transformation is very dicult, e.g., the perceived window islocated at a dierent location, then a negative judgment will be made; if thetransformation is easy, for example, dierently located chairs and books, thena positive judgment will be made, i.e. [Dong, 2005a]. Therefore, the cognitiveprism mechanism do exist in spatial cognition, and also the meta cognitivelayer of CI.

5 How Far Can We Go with Cognitive Prism

5.1 Metaphor as a Cognitive Prism

In this section we show that metaphor is a kind of cognitive prism and thatmetaphor is rooted in the meta cognitive layer.

Metaphor. [Lako and Johnson, 1980] found that metaphor is pervasive ineveryday language and thought, argued that our ordinary conceptual systemis fundamentally metaphorical in nature and metaphor is the key to givingan adequate account of understanding. The metaphorical systematicity isachieved by highlighting and hiding as follows:

When we say that a concept is structured by a metaphor, we mean thatit is partially structured and that it can be extended in some ways but notothers, [Lako and Johnson, 1980, p.13].


The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind ofthing in terms of another, [Lako and Johnson, 1980, p.5].

The two assertions entail the facts that when a concept is structured by ametaphor, we only select part of the properties of this concept and can extendthe selected properties in some ways according to the selected properties ofthe other. Such mapping relation is a cognitive prism mechanism. Let us takeReddys conduit metaphor as an example. Reddy found that COMMUNICA-TION IS SENDING. That is, the speaker puts ideas into words and sendsthem to a hearer who takes them out of the words, e.g., It is dicult to putmy ideas into words, [Lako and Johnson, 1980, p.10-11]. From the cognitiveprism perspective, the conduit metaphor can be understood as follows: thesource image is sending a container with objects and receiving the containerand getting the objects, the target image is talking/writing sentences whichhave ideas and hearing/reading sentences and knowing the ideas containedin the sentences. The cognitive process selects part of the properties in thesource image and maps them into the target image, e.g., ideas mapped to ob-jects, sentences mapped to containers, and sending,receiving,getting mappedto talking/writing, hearing/reading,knowing, respectively. A metaphorical ex-pression is a mixture, which may select objects in the target image and re-lations (between objects which correspond to those in the target image) inthe source image, e.g., In put ideas into words the cognitive process selectsideas and words in the target image, and selects the put . . . into. . . re-lation between objects and containers from the source image. These twoobjects are mapped with ideas and words. In linguistic expression, theselected parts are mixed and a metaphor is produced.

Roots of Metaphor. Lako and Johnson claimed that most of our con-cepts are metaphorical (that is, concepts are partially understood in termsof others) and this leads to the question: what is the grounding of our con-ceptual system? Their answer is that people typically conceptualize the non-physical in terms of the physical that is, we conceptualize the less clearlydelineated in terms of the more clearly delineated [Lako and Johnson, 1980,p. 59]. This entails that there is a ground domain (very likely, the physicalworld) which can be conceptualized directly (without using metaphor) andthat conceptualization about other domains is achieved by referencing to theground domain with metaphor. This is convergent to the claim in CognitiveInformatics: there is a meta cognitive model in the mind which is referencedby other high cognitive models; the meta cognitive model contains spatialknowledge, [Wang et al., 2006].

Primary Metaphors. [Grady, 1997] elaborated the theory of metaphor byidentifying terms of primary metaphors. Primary metaphors are metaphorswhich are directly grounded in the physical world and which are used to con-struct complex metaphors. Primary metaphors listed by Grady are: aectionis warmth, intimacy is closeness, important is big, happy is up, badis stinky, more is up, and help is support. All of them take properties

256 T. Dong

in the physical world as the reference. In aection is warmth, temperatureis the reference concept, e.g. President Bush was greeted warmly in Moscow;in intimacy is closeness, distance is the reference concept; in important isbig, size is the reference concept; in happy is up and more is up, orienta-tion is the reference concept; in bad is stinky, smell is the reference concept;in help is support, physical support is the reference concept. Although it isnot clear how all these properties are integrated as a systematical referencemodel, it is clear that spatial relations, such as distance, orientation, size,and connection relations are intrinsically co-related, i.e., [de Laguna, 1922]and [Dong, 2008].

5.2 Classic Logic as Cognitive Prism

In this section we consider such a cognitive prism: given a text, this cognitiveprism only select sentences which is meaningful to say that its content istrue or false [Hilbert and Ackermann, 1938, p.3], and neglects others. Forexample, given the text: You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt losesits saltiness, how can it be made salty again?. This prism selects you are thesalt of the earth and the salt loses its saltiness, while neglecting how can itbe made salty again? Given the text: 2 is a positive integer, 2 is less than 3,it selects both. The mechanism of this cognitive prism is constructed basedon ve basic functions: not (), and (), or (), if ..., then ... (), if, andonly if (), and works as follows: let p and q have true or false values, thenp, p q, p q, p q, and p q all have true or false values. Their valuesare dened as illustrated in Table 1 and Table 2. For a correct input to thiscognitive prism, it outputs true or false. For example, given 2 is greater than3 as false and if 2 is greater than 3, then the sun goes around the earth astrue, it outputs true. Such kind of cognitive prism has a more familiar name:sentential calculus, [Tarski, 1946].

It is not dicult to believe that the rst-order logic is another kind ofcognitive prism, which selects more detailed structures from sentences andoutputs truth-values. For example, given man is mortal and Socrates is a

Table 1. The functionp ptrue false

false true

Table 2. The functions , , ,

p q p p p p p p p ptrue true true true true true

false true false true true false

true false false true false false

false false false false true true


man as true, a rst-order logic prism will output true which represents thatSocrates is mortal. As summary, we claim that mathematical logic can beunderstood as such a metaphor that its source is sentences in natural lan-guage, its target is truth-values, its working mechanism is those logical rulesas normally called.

As mathematics has been used by many other disciplinary, e.g. physics,economics, biology, geography, etc. and mathematics and logic are identical(that what is commonly called mathematics is simply later deductions fromlogical premises) [Russell, 1903], we conclude that every axiomatic scientictheory can be understood as a cognitive prism which selects true sentencesfrom certain perspective. These true sentences can be organized into axiomsand inference rules. Give a sentence to the cognitive prism, its output is true,if and only if, this sentence either is one of the axioms, or can be deducedbased on the axioms and the inference rules.

5.3 Fuzzy Set as Cognitive Prism

A fuzzy set A is characterized by a membership function fA such that foreach element x, fA(x) gives the degree in which x belongs to A, [Zadeh, 1965].Degrees can be represented by numbers in the interval [0,1]: the greater thenumber is, the higher the degree, 0 represents an element not belonging tothe set, and 1 represent an element belonging to the set. If fA(x) only givestwo values 0 and 1, the fuzzy set A will reduce to a classic set and fA(x) willreduce to a classic predicate which decides whether an element belongs to theset A. Thus fA(x) can be viewed as a generalization of the classic predicate,and fuzzy set is a generalization of classic set. A fuzzy set can be viewed asa cognitive prism such that it receives elements in the domain and emit acontinuous spectrum ranging from 0 to 1 based on to which degree the inputelements belong to the fuzzy set.

5.4 Acupuncture

When ancient Chinese civilization was developed thousands of years ago, theirliving world had a system of water courses, including tiny streams, huge rivers,canals and irrigation pipes, etc. Ancient Chinese selected part of the feature ofthe physical space and subjectively projected them to the internal space of thebody. This is a typical usage of the cognitive prism mechanism. The humanbody was envisioned as a similar system of moving, life-giving uid. This uidwas the Qi, and the body was structured by the pathways through which Qiowed: the Meridians. Qi owing through Meridians was understood as waterowing through streams. Water ows could be blocked o by a fallen tree,or a dam, causing ooding; Qi ows could be blocked o by eating improperfoods, or bad weather, causing illnesses. After the blockage of the water owwas cleared away, the steam could resume its natural course. Similarly, afterthe blockage of the Meridian was cleared away, the Qi could resume its normalcourse and the body is recovered, e.g. [Dharmananda, 1996].

258 T. Dong

Ancient Chinese doctors interpret that disease and illness were caused bythe abnormal ows of Qi through the Meridians. Their medical research wasto draw the map of the Meridians of the human body, to nd the correlationbetween a disease and its blockage location(s) along the Meridians, and to ndthe technique to dredge this blockage. The technique was the acupuncture a small needle was inserted into the blocked location in the Meridians (anacupuncture point), which would have a signicant impact of the ow of Qi.Many acupuncture points were named after geographical names, like moun-tains, streams, ponds, and oceans. The rst medical book on it was HuangdiNeijing (Yellow Emperors Classic on Internal Medicine) almost 2000 yearsago. The acupuncture has been successfully applied to treat lots of disorders,e.g. Asthma, Pleurisy, Bronchitis and Emphysema, Common cold, Inuenza,loss of smell, Ulcers, Arthritis, Injuries of knee and ankle, Smoking and drugaddictions, Anaesthesia during childbirth, neurological or psychological Anx-iety, Depression, Insomnia and Nervous Tension, etc.

A Distortion of the human body. Instead of being described in bloodvessels, nerves, or skeletons, the structure of the human body is understooddierently in acupuncture as that in modern medicine. In acupuncture thereare Meridians that run and connect all parts of the body and make them func-tion correctly. The main and collateral channels of Meridians, called regular

Fig. 9. Acupuncture chart from Hua Shou (. 1340s, Ming Dynasty). This imagefrom Shi si jing fa hui (Expression of the Fourteen Meridians)


Fig. 10. The acupuncture points of the body. The picture is copied from[Stonefoot and Freeman, 2004].

Meridians, one of them is shown in Figure 9, run from the top of the bodyto the bottom of the body by which the inner organs are related with outerorgans, such as skin, limbs. The collateral branches of Meridians interweaveand reach to all parts of the body. The Chinese medicine researches empiri-cally the structure of Meridians, the relation with diseases, and the methodsof curing diseases by altering the Qi in Meridians.

The existences Meridians and Qi lie in the fact that needling along Merid-ians is able to cure illnesses by aecting Qi. Meridians are paths where Qiows. The human body is structured and functioned based on them. Merid-ians is a trac map for the ow of Qi of the human body. Acupuncturepoints, shown in Figure 10, are stations along the trac map. The ow ofQi can be adjusted by needling at these stations.

An amazing map of the human body. The structure of body in termsof Meridians and Qi is quite dierent from that in the modern medicinewhich describes the human body in terms of cells, biochemical substances,and structures; and researchers took pains to nd the substances (Ontology)that correspond to Qi and physical structures that correspond to Meridi-ans. However, they found noting. From the modern perspective, diseases arecaused by microorganisms, metabolic failures, or changes in DNA structure,or breakdown of the immune system, rather than blockages of circulation ofQi in the Meridians. Though modern studies have revealed that acupuncture

260 T. Dong

stimulates the nervous system, which can increase the rate of healing re-sponse, they failed to explain why the acupuncture points are along the Merid-ians. On the other hand, the traditional medicine of acupuncture even doesnot have the concept of the blood pressure. From each perspective (modernmedicine or Chinese traditional medicine), the other would be a fiat world,after [Smith, 2001].

5.5 Understanding Jokes

When we hear jokes, we are amused and laugh. According to Raskins Se-mantic Script Theory of Humor (SSTH), [Raskin, 1985] , and its revision,the General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH), [Attado and Raskin, 1991], atext is a joke, if it satises conditions as follows: (1) The text is compatible,fully or in part, with two dierent scripts; (2) the two scripts with which thetext is compatible are opposite in a special sense. While we are reading ajoke text, we understand one script rst; when we read to the punch line, weswitch to another script, and laugh. Let us return the joke at the beginningof this chapter: We begin with the script about formal and friendly meeting.When we read to the punch linetwo spheres of the ladies, we switch to aninformal sex-related script (which is incompatible with the rst script), andlaugh.

Such script-opposition theory takes a symmetric relation between two op-position scripts in a joke. As long as readers switch from one script to anopposite one, they should be amused. Are readers also amused by switchingfrom informal script into a formal one? If we append the following text tothe joke at the beginning of this chapter, An American lady stand up andsay, let us drink for people all around the world, readers will switch from aninformal sex-related script back to the formal and friendly script. They willprobably not continue to laugh. Therefore, we would abandon the symmetricrelation of script opposition in humor theory, and argue that a text is a joke,if it satises the third condition as follows: switching from the rst script tothe second, readers shall release the potential tension. We explain the termof potential tension in detail as follows.

Physical objects have potential energy. It demonstrates as a force whichtends to pull them back to the original position. A spring has potential en-ergy. When the spring is stretched to the left, its potential energy exerts aforce to the right to bring it back to its original position. When an object islifted up, its potential energy exerts a force (gravity) to bring it back downto its original position. When we are reading texts, our mind works as a cog-nitive prism for reading, which selects part of the information, processes theinformation inevitably based on personal biases, and has an understandingabout what has been read and an expectation for what will be read. Thiscognitive prism for reading is initiated somewhere in the mind and a spe-cic conguration. It has potential tension which demonstrates as a forcewhich tends to keep itself in its original internal conguration. When we are


reading the punch line of a joke text, our mind will experience a transfor-mation from one cognitive prism into the other. The two prisms have thesame input, dierent internal conguration and output. If the second cogni-tive prism requires less potential tension than the rst to keep the internalconguration, the extra tension will be released, and act as a force to makeus laugh.

6 Conclusions and Discussions

This chapter outlines the cognitive prism mechanism with which the metacognitive model in CI can be referenced by many cognitive models. The nameof the mechanism is a metaphor such that the mind works like a optical prismwhich selects only parts from the input, and distorts the selected ones. Thismechanism is motivated from the inspection of information processing of asingle neuron. We show that metaphor in cognitive linguistics can be re-interpreted in term of cognitive prism and that the prism mechanism existsin the conceptualization of the physical world. As the theory of metaphor incognitive linguistics claim that the reference domain metaphor is the physi-cal world and that primitive metaphors are all related with physical space,metaphor in cognitive linguistics shall not exist in the concept understandingof the physical space. In this way, the term cognitive prism is an extensionof the term metaphor. Therefore, cognitive prism is more than a metaphorof metaphor.

This article brings cognitive informatics (CI) to a relative center position inthe network of interdisciplinary research in the sense that the meta cognitivemodel in CI can be the reference model for others through the cognitiveprism mechanism. A rich theory of meta cognitive model can even providea theoretical base to explain ancient Chinese medicine, which is still missingtoday; can serve as the ultimate reference domain for metaphors in cognitivelinguistics; can generate computation theories, such as mathematical logic.

The prism mechanism introduces more research problems that it solves.First is the problem of formalization: Can the prism mechanism be for-malized? Is there a formalism for the prism mechanism in the spatialdomain, which can also be used by other higher cognitive models? Theformalization of spatial concepts can date back to [de Laguna, 1922],[Whitehead, 1929], [Clarke, 1981] and [Clarke, 1985]; however, these workwas either informal, or only formalized a subset of the spatial concepts. Inthe last two decades, many separate spatial representations appeared, e.g.[Randell et al., 1992], [Frank, 1991], [Freksa, 1992], [Hernandez et al., 1995],[Freksa, 1999], [Renz and Mitra, 2004]. Each of them represented one aspectof spatial relations: either distance, or orientation, or topology. Recentresearch shows that all these spatial relations can be integrated into onesystem, [Dong, 2005a] and [Dong, 2007b], and that all the qualitativeorientation representations in the literature are trivial cases of the integrated

262 T. Dong

system, [Dong and Guesgen, 2008], and that certain qualitative representa-tion is awed as pointed out in [Dong, 2007a] and [Dong, 2008]. However, itis not yet clear whether the integrated system is sucient to be used as theformal base for further development of the conceptual system. This leads toa deeper problem in methodology: is it possible to structure the cognitiveprism mechanism? By structure, we refer to a limited set of primitives andconstruction rules, such that each complex structure is constructed by theprimitives following the rules. In exploring metaphor researchers are more orless inuenced by such structurism style, e.g. [Grady, 1997] identied prim-itive metaphors and conceptual combination of primitive metaphors. Whatmetaphor tells is that given two domains, we can establish a mapping betweenthem by selecting and highlighting. That is, we need to identify two struc-tures in them such that they can be mapped. However, structurism does nottell how to obtain a structure from a domain; it starts with a basic structureand tell how others are structured. That is, metaphorism is more than struc-turism. The existing methods in formalization might fail to model metaphor,as well as the cognitive prism mechanism.

Another problem is that how cognitive prism mechanism is connected withemotions. At the end of the chapter we briey proposed a novel method toexplain the understanding of jokes in term of the potential tension of acognitive prism. It is for the future research on how well this term can berelated with research results in cognitive psychology and cognitive linguistics.

Acknowledgement

Thanks goes to Dr. phil. Peiling Cui for the constructive discussion on jokesand humor, and two anonymous reviewers for their critical comments. I apol-ogy that I fail to integrate all of their suggestions into this nial version.

References

[Attado and Raskin, 1991] Attado, S., Raskin, V.: Script theory revis(it)ed: jokesimilarity and joke representation model. HUMOR International Journal ofHumor Research 4(3), 293347 (1991)

[Clarke, 1981] Clarke, B.L.: A calculus of individuals based on connection. NotreDame Journal of Formal Logic 23(3), 204218 (1981)

[Clarke, 1985] Clarke, B.L.: Individuals and points. Notre Dame Journal of FormalLogic 26(1), 6175 (1985)

[Couclelis et al., 1987] Couclelis, H., Golledge, R.G., Gale, N., Tobler, W.: Explor-ing the anchor-point hypothesis of spatial cognition. Journal of Environmen-tal Psychology 7, 99122 (1987)

[de Laguna, 1922] de Laguna, T.: Point, line and surface as sets of solids. TheJournal of Philosophy 19, 449461 (1922)

[Dharmananda, 1996] Dharmananda, S.: An Introduction to Acupuncture and howit works. Institute for Traditional Medicine, Portland, Oregon (1996)


[Dong, 2005a] Dong, T.: Recognizing Variable Spatial Environments The The-ory of Cognitive Prism. PhD thesis, Department of Mathematics and Infor-matics, University of Bremen (2005a)

[Dong, 2005b] Dong, T.: SNAPVis and SPANVis: Ontologies for Recognizing Vari-able Vista Spatial Environments. In: Freksa, C., Knau, M., Krieg-Bruckner,B., Nebel, B., Barkowsky, T. (eds.) Spatial Cognition IV. LNCS (LNAI),vol. 3343, pp. 344365. Springer, Heidelberg (2005b)

[Dong, 2007a] Dong, T.: The Nine Comments on the RCC Theory. In: AAAI 2007Workshop on Spatial and Temporal Reasoning, Vancouver, Canada, pp. 1620 (2007a)

[Dong, 2007b] Dong, T.: Towards a Spatial Representation for the Meta CognitiveProcess Layer of Cognitive Informatics. In: Proceedings of the 6th IEEEInternational Conference on Cogntive Informatics, pp. 5261. IEEE CS Press,Lake Tahoe (2007b)

[Dong, 2008] Dong, T.: A Comment on RCC: from RCC to RCC++. Journal ofPhilosophical Logic 37(4), 319352 (2008)

[Dong and Guesgen, 2008] Dong, T., Guesgen, H.W.: A Uniform Framework forOrientation Relation based on Distance Comparison. In: Proceedings of the7th IEEE International Conference on Cogntive Informatics, pp. 7582. IEEECS Press, Stanford University, California (2008)

[Feldman, 2006] Feldman, J.: From Modecule to Metaphor: A Neural Theory ofLanguage. The MIT Press, Cambridge (2006)

[Frank, 1991] Frank, A.: Qualitative spatial reasoning with cardinal directions. In:Proceedings of the Seventh Austrian Conference on Articial Intelligence,pp. 157167. Springer, Berlin (1991)

[Freksa, 1992] Freksa, C.: Using Orientation Information for Qualitative SpatialReasoning. In: Frank, A.U., Formentini, U., Campari, I. (eds.) GIS 1992.LNCS, vol. 639. Springer, Heidelberg (1992)

[Freksa, 1999] Freksa, C.: Links vor prototyp oder gebiet? In: Richheit, G. (ed.)Richtungen im Raum, pp. 231246. Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden (1999)

[Grady, 1997] Grady, J.: Foundations of meaning: Primary metaphor and primaryscenes. PhD thesis, University of California, Berkeley (1997)

[Hernandez et al., 1995] Hernandez, D., Clementini, E., Felice, P.D.: Qualitativedistances. In: Kuhn, W., Frank, A.U. (eds.) COSIT 1995. LNCS, vol. 988,pp. 4557. Springer, Heidelberg (1995)

[Hilbert and Ackermann, 1938] Hilbert, D., Ackermann, W. (1938). Principles ofMathematical Logic, Berlin. Citeation based on the reprinted version by theAmerican Mathematical Society (1999)

[Jolicoeur et al., 1984] Jolicoeur, P., Gluck, M.A., Kosslyn, S.M.: From pictures towords: Making the connection. Cognitive Psychology 16, 243275 (1984)

[Lako and Johnson, 1980] Lako, G., Johnson, M.: Metaphors We Live By. TheUniversity of Chicago Press, Chicago (1980) (Citation is based on the versionreprinted in 2003)

[Liter and Bueltho, 1996] Liter, J.C., Bueltho, H.H.: An Introduction to ObjectRecognition. Technical report, Max-Planck-Institue fur biologische Kyber-netik. Technical Report No. 43 (1996)

[Randell et al., 1992] Randell, D., Cui, Z., Cohn, A.: A spatial logic based on re-gions and connection. In: Nebel, B., Swartout, W., Rich, C. (eds.) Proceeding3rd International Conference on Knowledge Representation and Reasoning,pp. 165176. Morgan Kaufmann, San Mateo (1992)

264 T. Dong

[Raskin, 1985] Raskin, V.: Semantic Mechanisms of Humor. Reidel, Dordrecht(1985)

[Renz and Mitra, 2004] Renz, J., Mitra, D.: Qualitative direction calculi with arbi-trary granularity. In: Zhang, C., Guesgen, H., Yeap, W. (eds.) PRICAI 2004.LNCS (LNAI), vol. 3157, pp. 6574. Springer, Heidelberg (2004)

[Rosch, 1975] Rosch, E.: Cognitive Reference Points. Cognitive Psychology 7(4),532547 (1975)

[Rosch et al., 1976] Rosch, E., Mervis, C.B., Gray, W., Johnson, D., Boyes-Braem,P.: Basic objects in natural categories. Cognitive Psychology 8, 382439(1976)

[Russell, 1903] Russell, B.: The Principles of Mathematics. W.W.Norton& Com-pany, Inc. (1903) (citation, if any, according to the Norton paperback editionreissued in 1996)

[Sadalla et al., 1980] Sadalla, E., Burroughs, W.J., Staplin, L.J.: Reference pointsin spatial cognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Learningand Memory 6(5), 516528 (1980)

[Smith, 2001] Smith, B.: Fiat objects. Topoi 20(2), 131148 (2001)[Stonefoot and Freeman, 2004] Stonefoot, S.G., Freeman, H.C.: A need for needles

Acupuncture Does it really work? University at Bualo, State Universityof New York. National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science (2004)

[Tarski, 1946] Tarski, A.: Introduction to Logic and to the Methodology of Deduc-tive Sciences. Oxford University Press, New York (1946) (citation based onthe Dover edition, rst published in 1995)

[Ullmer-Ehrich, 1982] Ullmer-Ehrich, V.: The Structure of Living Space Descrip-tions. In: Jarvella, R.J., Klein, W. (eds.) Speech, Place, and Action, pp.219249. John Wiley & Sons Ltd., Chichester (1982)

[Wang, 2003] Wang, Y.: On cognitive informatics. Brain and Mind 4, 151167(2003)

[Wang, 2007] Wang, Y.: The theoretical framework of cognitive informatics. In-ternational Journal of Cognitive Informatics and Natural Intelligence 1(1),1015 (2007)

[Wang et al., 2006] Wang, Y., Patel, S., Patel, D.: A layered reference model of thebrain (LRMB). IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (PartC) 36(2), 124133 (2006)

[Wertheimer, 1938] Wertheimer, M.: Numbers and numerical concepts in primitivepeoples. In: Ellis, W.D. (ed.) A source book of Gestalt psychology, Brace Co.,Harcourt (1938)

[Whitehead, 1929] Whitehead, A.N.: Process and Reality. Macmillan PublishingCo., Inc., Basingstoke (1929)

[Wilson et al., 1999] Wilson, B., Baddeley, A., Young, A.: LE, A Person Who LostHer Minds Eye. Neurocase 5, 119127 (1999)

[Zadeh, 1965] Zadeh, L.A.: Fuzzy sets. Informations and Control 8, 338353 (1965)

Cognitive Prism More Than a Metaphor of MetaphorIntroductionSignal Processing by NeuronPrism Phenomena in Everyday LifeCognitive Prism in Spatial CognitionIntroduction to Spatial RecognitionCognitive Prism Mechanism in Spatial Recognition

How Far Can We Go with ``Cognitive Prism''Metaphor as a Cognitive PrismClassic Logic as Cognitive PrismFuzzy Set as Cognitive PrismAcupunctureUnderstanding Jokes

Conclusions and DiscussionsReferences

/ColorImageDict > /JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict > /JPEG2000ColorImageDict > /AntiAliasGrayImages false /CropGrayImages true /GrayImageMinResolution 149 /GrayImageMinResolutionPolicy /Warning /DownsampleGrayImages true /GrayImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /GrayImageResolution 150 /GrayImageDepth -1 /GrayImageMinDownsampleDepth 2 /GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeGrayImages true /GrayImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterGrayImages true /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /GrayACSImageDict > /GrayImageDict > /JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict > /JPEG2000GrayImageDict > /AntiAliasMonoImages false /CropMonoImages true /MonoImageMinResolution 599 /MonoImageMinResolutionPolicy /Warning /DownsampleMonoImages true /MonoImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /MonoImageResolution 600 /MonoImageDepth -1 /MonoImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeMonoImages true /MonoImageFilter /CCITTFaxEncode /MonoImageDict > /AllowPSXObjects false /CheckCompliance [ /None ] /PDFX1aCheck false /PDFX3Check false /PDFXCompliantPDFOnly false /PDFXNoTrimBoxError true /PDFXTrimBoxToMediaBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXSetBleedBoxToMediaBox true /PDFXBleedBoxToTrimBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfile (None) /PDFXOutputConditionIdentifier () /PDFXOutputCondition () /PDFXRegistryName () /PDFXTrapped /False

/CreateJDFFile false /Description > /Namespace [ (Adobe) (Common) (1.0) ] /OtherNamespaces [ > /FormElements false /GenerateStructure false /IncludeBookmarks false /IncludeHyperlinks false /IncludeInteractive false /IncludeLayers false /IncludeProfiles false /MultimediaHandling /UseObjectSettings /Namespace [ (Adobe) (CreativeSuite) (2.0) ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfileSelector /DocumentCMYK /PreserveEditing true /UntaggedCMYKHandling /LeaveUntagged /UntaggedRGBHandling /UseDocumentProfile /UseDocumentBleed false >> ]>> setdistillerparams> setpagedevice

Documents

Cognitive Prism – More Than a Metaphor of Metaphor.pdf