Metapattern > interdisciplinary foundations > cognitive psychology
Identity management occurs in relationships. Actors engage in interaction from their respective motives.
in: Semiotics of identity management
[A]t least according to the semiotic ennead, what we are calling context/signature/intext, just as we do situation/identity/behavior, are 'all in a man's imagination,' that is, his interpretation (motive/focus/concept).
in: Notes on Metapattern and enneadic semiosis, part 2
Metapattern makes no such claims about all of reality. Its structural definitions are limited to how people perceive their world, so what is defined “only” refers to a model of information objects and their relationships. All Metapattern assumes about objects and how they relate to the world is that it’s as if the information set is the world’s representation—or at least, that it represents a relevant part of the world.
in: Metapattern as context orientation: meeting Odell's challenge of object orientation
Formally, when a sign is — potentially — ambiguous for a user at the scale of ‘her’ system, contexts need to be made systematically explicit within that very information system, too.
in: note 23.1
Mentioning motives is a first hint at the difficulties of maintaining a single focus.
It is in the nature of semiosis that you never encounter the same sign twice. Every application of the ennead changes the cognitive mass from which it is brought to bear the next time around.
in: Notes on Metapattern and enneadic semiosis, part 2
The ennead is a sophisticated metamodel for connectionism. On the basis of the formal articulation of perspective, a classification of intelligence, mind, etc. may be erected. At the one extreme is an actor whose motive, focus and concept remain fixed. Only values of the concept(s) can change. This is the proverbial thermostat. At the other end of the spectrum is an actor who is able to change perspective completely, i.e. including his uppermost motives. Findings in evolutionary psychology are straightforward: man’s perspective is nowhere near perfectly plastic.
in: Metapattern for converging knowledge management with artificial intelligence
[A] subject exhibits a phenomenological faculty when (s)he experiences the world as related objects. Other names for such a faculty are mind, intellect, cognition.
In the human perspective (that is, in reality) objects never appear fully self-contained but always, as Gestalt psychology has shown, as a foreground against a background. Metapattern starts with the recognition of this double movement in the single act of human understanding.
in: Metapattern as context orientation: meeting Odell's challenge of object orientation
A phenomenon, then, is an experience from a particular behavioral perspective. It is the perspective that controls the experience of object-for-subject.
[T]he ennead 'operates' individually, that is, an assumption for variety is semiosis as an integrated aspect of personal existence, contributing to, if not constituting, experience's subjective nature.
in: Victoria Welby's significs meets the semiotic ennead
I've condensed punctuated shifts to occur from focus to focus. […] Motive and concept are dynamically 'created' from a particular focus. As associations change, so may motives and concepts change over time even when 'triggered' from a focus that itself has so far remained unchanged. What I want to say is that the mind is not a repository of stable, static thoughts. There is at most a dynamic stability, resulting from focal reinforcement.
in: Mannoury's significs, or a philosophy of communal individualism
Abstracting from (human) language, the semiotic ennead helps to recognize that cognition essentially involves a behavioral function. Language use should comply with such a functional explanation, not the other way around.
in: Semiotic connectionism in artificial intelligence
The experience of a signature or a point of view is a focus.
in: Metapattern: information modeling as enneadic dynamics
[F]ocus is both where the tension between figure (concept) and ground (motive) occurs and where their tension is resolved.
in: Notes on Metapattern and enneadic semiosis, part 2
What is assumed to be inside cognition, are motive and concept revolving around focus. Then, a belief that is acted upon is a motivated concept. However, the same may be said about a desire. Or an intention. Belief, desire and intention are not atomic concepts. Their dynamics can only be recognized from the vantage point of an irreducible model.
in: Semiotic connectionism in artificial intelligence
The plane of focus-identity-signature is critical for semiosis-as-dynamics, i.e. movement of/in the cognitive mass. I would say that semiotic life entails that any 'node' may become focus etc. and that from any node any other node can be reached. Now, that's the principle. For a sound theory of cognition, it 'only' remains to work out the constraints. :-)
in: Notes on Metapattern and enneadic semiosis, part 2
We are performing at the level of semiosis, with the irreducible subjectivity it entails, period. We cannot 'do' semiosis outside ... semiosis. Call it the semiotic imperative.
in: Notes on Metapattern and enneadic semiosis, part 2
Human language is a late evolutionary development. Cognition is a much older phenomenon. Abstracting from (human) language, the semiotic ennead helps to recognize that cognition essentially involves a behavioral function. Language use should comply with such a functional explanation, not the other way around.
in: Semiotic connectionism in artificial intelligence
Starting from situation, identity and behavior as elements, I outline a direction for artificial intelligence that might lead to a closer formal correspondence with natural intelligence.[
in: Semiotic connectionism in artificial intelligence
A discipline where I would like to see the semiotic ennead applied is cognitive science/evolutionary psychology. With any neural node potentially a 'focus,' and a mechanism for focal shifts, motivational annex conceptual variety 'naturally' follows.
in: Notes on Metapattern and enneadic semiosis, part 2
Balanced capacities for self-identity management are constituents of evolutionary fitness.
in: Semiotics of identity management
I also consider a change of mind as motivated behavior.
in: Mannoury's significs, or a philosophy of communal individualism
What the semiotic ennead aims to summarize is a theory of cognitive relativity. At some time, a particular node is focus, while at some other time it may contribute to constitute a motive or a concept. The ennead builds the case for — subjectively believing in — a corresponding objective reality, that is, structured as behavior of a situated object. Then, the task for Metapattern is to exhibit the intermediary signing, corresponding in structure to what has been assumed for both (subjective) cognition and (objective) reality.
in: Open conceptual modeling with Metapattern
What the ennead is trying to tell you, correction, what I am trying to tell you by suggesting the ennead is that any concept you have, develop, or whatever, is essentially motivated. Where it says ‘motive’ in the model you may also read; interest, emotion, desire, … That’s all cognition, too. And cognitively ‘connecting’ motive with concept is focus. It correlates with attention. At the ‘back’ of attention is always a motive … yielding a related concept.
in: note 47.17
The semiotic ennead as a conceptual framework implies that in an absolute sense the goal of ?unambiguous communication? is illusory. In fact, a major reason for keeping a conceptual model, say, open, is that it is … conceptual, and therefore involves interpretation by an … interpreter (also read: subject). In order to limit ambiguity it may be necessary to include — reference — to particular subjects[, including variety of their motives,] in a model.
in: Metapattern for complementarity modeling
The semiotic ennead’s irreducible elements imply that what is ‘really’ nested occurs in interpretation through the mutually relative elements of motive, focus, and concept (and expressed with signs along context and signature). Nestings therefore differ from one subject to the next, as developed from their different experiences.
in: Invitation to contextualism
A particular motive is such a both constraining and guiding factor, it ‘means’ looking for a corresponding context, mediating a corresponding situation (which is unknowable directly). Of how semiosis proceeds, I only strongly suspect that traditional computational models are way off. I suppose that in semiosis some behavioral threshold is reached when subsequent configurations of motive-focus-concept no longer diverge (whatever the criteria). As the correspondence relationships of the ennead suggest, the particular concept-in-motive determines the execution of behavior-in-situation. Monitoring behavior through signature-in-context then becomes part of the next indeterminacy, and so on.
in: Invitation to contextualism
[B]ehavior is irreducibly related to all of the ennead’s other elements, including motive. That is, behavior is motivated. And motive is behavioral. I therefore agree with Pepper to attribute critical importance to “the purposive act” which I consider equivalent with an instance of motivated behavior.
in: Contextualism means selectivity
In terms of semiosis, there is no identity across dimensions. Semiosis is … process. Correspondence indicates qualitative transfers from and to motivational control.
in: Contextualism means selectivity
The relativism that is implied by the triplet of
cognitive/interpretative elements (motive, focus, and concept) might
explain “novelty” as (re)configuration. A simple model
would start from a bunch of loose units. They may be turned into nodes
through (inter)connections. Now, activate a particular node as focus.
From that alone, some nodes will ‘be’ (a) motive and yet
some other nodes (a) concept. Change the focal node, and another
triplet of motive-focus-concept results. When the same unit is
activated as focal node at some time later, a different triplet may,
and most surely will, result on account of other nodes added or removed
and/or (inter)connections changed, and so on …
Please note that with such a “mechanism,” the
“cognitive mass” as Peirce call it, is not like a
digital computer, i.e. processing information. It just changes —
active — state. What happens is integral to what it is (which may
be taken as analogous to how an … analog computer
‘operates’). It would also explain parallelism, i.e.
several such states spread over the cognitive mass active
simultaneously, one for controlling breathing, another for …, et
cetera.
in: note 53.13
An evolutionary advantage lies in adaptability. When an organism can change its behavior, there is a survival premium. At the low end of adaptability, an organism selects from preset, fixed behaviors (including recognizing situational difference from a preset, fixed variety). Much more adaptable, of course, is an organism that can learn to differentiate situations and perform behavior accordingly. Where does a subject come in? An organism may avoid many risks when it can simulate a situation including both its very own behavior and that of other objects and subjects. Variable is what count as objects (including subjects) and situations, and therefore situationally partial objects with their behaviors. The objectivity of object gets lost.
in: Analytic philosophy for synthesis from early education on
Imagine a — brain as a neural — network. A particular focus, as an enneadic element, is the node currently being directionally active (whatever that means). As a result of the direction of activity, some connected nodes act as motive, and some most probably other nodes as concept. As a configuration, or state of interpretation: a motivated concept. A different interpretative state already occurs when the same node is active in a directionally different manner. It should even be obvious that yet another configuration/state results when another node has become directionally active, and so on.
in: note 56.24
[F]ocus implies a motivated concept, that is, no concept is self-contained; it is always determined, accompanied, et cetera, by a motive. In other words, every concept is a perspectival concept.
in: note 56.26