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Category: metaphors

Who am I: the conscious and unconscious self

Who am I: the conscious and unconscious self

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2017; 11: 126. Some excerpts: “In this article we suggest the idea that the processing of self-referential stimuli in cortical midline structures (CMS) may represent an important part of the conscious self, which may be supplemented by an unconscious part of the self that has been called an ’embodied mind’ (Varela et al., 1991), which relies on other brain structures.” “When we describe the self as structure and organization we understand it as a system. But…

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Memes are like cognitive frames

Memes are like cognitive frames

It occurred to me that memes are a lot like frames as Lakoff describes them. Lakoff has done extensive cognitive scientific work on schemas, metaphors and frames. Check out this lengthy article in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2014; 8: 958, “Mapping the brain’s metaphor circuitry.” Even though they don’t relate this to the concept of memes, there are some striking similarities. E.g.:  “Reddy had found that the abstract concepts of communication and ideas are understood via a conceptual metaphor: Ideas…

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Neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development

Neo-Piagetian theories of cognitive development

In a few previous posts I posted articles on new scientific research questioning some of Piaget’s original premises. This Wikipedia article discusses those neo-Piagetians who have taken into account the more recent science. Also see this article that discusses some of the neo-Piagetians but then focuses on Kurt Fischer’s work.

Should AI agents’ voice interactions be more like our own? What effects should we anticipate?

Should AI agents’ voice interactions be more like our own? What effects should we anticipate?

An article at Wired.com considers the pros and cons of making the voice interactions of AI assistants more humanlike. The assumption that more human-like speech from AIs is naturally better may prove as incorrect as the belief that the desktop metaphor was the best way to make humans more proficient in using computers. When designing the interfaces between humans and machines, should we minimize the demands placed on users to learn more about the system they’re interacting with? That seems…

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