X:: Concept Expansion tags:: #source/speech dates:: 2020-06-06 URL:: Youtube

2009 🗣 Analogy as Core - Hofstadter

What: In this Presidential Lecture, cognitive scientist Douglas R. Hofstadter examines the role and contributions of analogy in cognition, using a variety of analogies to illustrate his points.
Why: This is important to me because of it is about how to talk about, and define, thinking—especially figurative language and concepts.

Notes

Analogy-making - the perception of common• essence between 2 things••
- •in one’s current frame of mind
- ••thing »» mental thing
Reminding events - A lot of analogies are reminding events. There is no purpose (sure they serve “evolution”), but they just happen. These events happen so quickly and fleetingly, often leaving no long-term effect. They appear and go away.

a shadow from the sun…then a snow shadow…then a rain shadow…a familial shadow…in the shadow of a big event…gulf stream (England casts a shadow) see Concept Expansion
By seeing new instances of the word “shadow”, we’re expanding our sense of what the word “shadow” means.
Repeated analogies expand concepts #source/quote/250

There is no fundamental difference between a single memory trace and a category/concept.
The special magic of the human mind is limitless Chunking…where primordial concepts in some interrelationship becomes part of a larger unit. We build our concepts this way and eventually the primordial concepts miraculously disappear.
There is no fundamental difference between primordial tangible concepts• and highly-chunked abstract concepts••
- •e.g., hand, chair, book, office
- ••e.g., hub, soap opera, sleazeball, wilderness protection legislation, scientific break-even for laser fusion

Labeled concepts
- Primordial words, simple words, compound words, phrases, proverbs
Unlabeled concepts
- fleeting remindings, me-too’s, political analogies, personal-situation mappings, scientific leaps
- a lot of our concepts are completely unlabeled, old experiences can be triggered by some new event in the future; i.e., Doug’s subscript disillusionment as a child connecting to his daughter’s disillusionment as a child.
Primordial concepts (not always nouns or even visible or sensory things) - Mama, good, hand, hurt, red, loud, Where?, Please! Why?, in, out, here - Please! For example, there are certain circumstances where that word (that mental concept) is evoked
Simple concepts - chair, “A”, family, mess, probably, proab-lee!, come on!, I mean,…; Well,…;Hi!, kind of, but, Anyway,.., No kidding!
Compound words: armchair, backlog, nice and easy, happy-go-lucky, notwithstanding, commuter railway, weekend, and/or, to and fro, slippery slope
Phrases: Speak of the devil!, Fancy that!, Well, excuuuuuse me!
Proverbs: “Seen one, seen ‘em all”; Fight fire with fire
Joe Becker - 1975
- The mental lexicon »» the phrasal lexicon
- Proverbs etc are situation-labels. Example: Sour grapes

Every “effortless” category assignment is actually a seething subterranean battle of analogies #source/quote When the battle is a landslide, there’s no evidence. When the battle is close, there is evidence galore.
- Individual words are the locus of a fight.
- any time a word is chosen, there is a subterranean fight taking place for primacy
- sometimes there is a clear winner “dog”
- sometimes it’s close like “vilagent” which blends “vigilant” and “diligent”
- I should “count my lucky stars” — count my blessings vs thank my lucky stars
- “insmide my mind” — in my mind vs inside my mind
- “i’m worried that my editor is going to hit the stack”
  - hit the ceiling vs blow his stack vs hit the sack (he was tired)
- we’ll “pull no stops unturned to get him” — pull out all the stops vs leave no stone unturned
“Thought is seeking the highest level of abstraction, putting one’s finger on the essence of a situation. And then bouncing back and forth between the actual situation, and the essence that one found in one’s memory” #source/quote

How Albert Einstein’s Light-Quantum Hypothesis came out of a connection between two bell-shaped curves
Conclusion: If the following list are all made of analogies, might not ALL OF COGNITION also be made of analogies? This is Hofstadter’s Cognition-core hypothesis.
- strokes of genius, personal insights, dinner-table conversations, me-too comments, random reminders, instantaneous categorizations, blends of all sorts