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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
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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
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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.
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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
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Cognitive Prism More Than a Metaphor of Metaphor 249
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
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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.
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Cognitive Prism More Than a Metaphor of Metaphor 251
[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?
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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.
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Cognitive Prism More Than a Metaphor of Metaphor 253
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,
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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].
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Cognitive Prism More Than a Metaphor of Metaphor 255
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
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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
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Cognitive Prism More Than a Metaphor of Metaphor 257
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].
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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)
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Cognitive Prism More Than a Metaphor of Metaphor 259
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
-
Cognitive Prism More Than a Metaphor of Metaphor 261
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
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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.
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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
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