Form in Thought

8/12/2019 Form in Thought

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Form in Thought: How Experience is Comprehended

Based on a presentation in the Architecture and Philosophy Program, Royal Melbourne

Institute of Technology, November 2009 Revised July 3, 2012

Charles Burnette, PHD, FAIA

[email protected]


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These images (produced by my undergraduate industrial design students fifteen years

ago) are presented to tease your eyes and mind. What did you think when you looked at

each of them? There is no single correct answer. You determine the meaning of what you

see and how you feel about it emotionally and aesthetically.

Now please imagine a painting by Gerhard Richter. If you have no knowledge of his

work you will be unable to do so. If you have that knowledge you will probably think of

an image you have seen, the way pigments are shaped, colored and distributed across thecanvas and the overall mood they jointly convey. But, Richter has expressed his art in

many different forms. It remains unlikely that you will recall the same mode of

expression that someone else does. Interpretation of an image depends on prior

experience and knowledge but shared understanding of imagery depends on recalling a

common experience of image or style.

From a verbal point of view a dead shark in a glass case filled with water, is easily

visualized just from the words in quotation because we know what a shark and an

aquarium look like. But a question such as how long will the water remain clear or

thoughts on life and death stimulated by the dead fish are not so easily anticipated. Once

stimulated or aroused, interpretation of a perceived form connects to and depends on the

knowledge you find relevant to it.


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Consider the architecture of Federation Square in Melbourne, Australia, pictured above.

The tessellated surface of the building caused me to recall cracks in dry ground; the

colors reminded me of those I had seen in a satellite image of Australia. The overall form

reminded me of the hardened shell of a marsupial, and the paving around it recalled a

parched landscape and Australias vast outdoor spaces. The deep openings in the surface

of the building suggested shelter from harsh sunlight, while the atrium inside celebrated

the filtered light and life of a rain forest. For me this network of visual and verbal

associations and experiences formed a coherent and memorable architectural expression

of the country stimulated by the form of the architecture. I had created meaning from its

forms whether the architects intended me to or not. All of us respond to forms in our

environments through the feelings and associations they invoke in us as we call on our

imagination, memories, and language to interpret them.

Words have proven useful when explaining the unitary and dynamically changing forms

that we see and imagine. In the examples above, formwas discussed as features of anobject or environment. Historically, it has also been described in terms of its perception,

composition, and aesthetic appreciation as well as its mediation, production,

appropriateness, and utility. Psychologists have focused on the perception of form; art

critics and linguists on the affect, meaning and organization of its expression;

programmers and artists on its mediation, synthesis, and presentation; craftsmen and

engineers on its production and functionality; dancers and athletes on postural form and

movement; writers and their critics on its narrative effect, and designers of materialobjects on the aesthetic appeal and functionality of a form for an intended use. However,

Form in thought occurs as "mental images" that manifest the focal state of mind of the

thinker and its meaning to them. (The term mental image refers to a coherent

organization of neurons that is recognized, interpreted, or expressed through cognition.)

This internal imagery may be expressed externally through any language or medium open

to human interpretation. A theory of sufficient scope and usefulness is needed to capture


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the richness of how form occurs in thought. The theory that follows will attempt to

deepen understandings of how the mind perceives, references, organizes, synthesizes,

expresses, interprets, evaluates and recalls form in thought. This conceptual specification

attempts to formulate how form in thought is generated, structured and applied. It is an

effort to conceptualize Formative Thought, the focal mode of thought in A Theory of

Design Thinkingi. It is presented as an exploratory theory based on design thinking anddoing, not a scientific disclosure of what actually occurs in the mind. The hope is that it

will encourage others to seek a better understanding of how form in thought occurs.

A THEORY OF FORMATIVE THOUGHT

Form in thought results in part from a matrix of shifting patterns, consolidating and

compressing meaning in fractions of a second

Ian McEwan

Aided by brain scans, genetic decoding, and molecular experiments neuroscience is

rapidly expanding knowledge of how thought occurs. We now know that pictorial form

does not pass directly from the external world into the brain. What we experience as a

perceived form is not an objective property of what is seen. Nor does it constitute fully

reliable evidence of what exists. Consequently, the focus of a modern theory of form

should be on form in thought rather than form as an attribute of objects. An

appropriate theory should specify how a unitary, affective, and meaningful mental image

occurs and is interpreted, acted on, or communicated. To be useful it should promote

understanding of how mental images arise in thought, and are expressed, transformed,

and tailored to circumstances, media, and other people. It should foster consideration of

how people interpret, express and communicate what they think and how the

composition, synthesis, and blending of information from different sources occurs.

Explicit parsing of imagery to match or influence a persons communication or behavior

occurs in advertising but is only now becoming of general interest .

Every interpretation, expression, or action is constructed in the mind of an individual

thinker, often through interaction with others. Actual formulations depend on

circumstances experienced at the time, the state of mind of the thinker, their prior

experience and knowledge. Purposeful tasks focus attention, select content from relevant

sources, shape imagery, and guide action.Form in thought is also shaped through recall

of intentions, preferences, and reactions in similar contexts or situations.

Synthesis and compression into unitary form is a primary function of Formative Thought.

Filtering occurs automatically through comparative differentiation between neural

networks when an emotionally salient network or its components becomes dominant and

incompatible subnets or components are weakened or ignored. Adaptation results when

similar networks have comparable strength and the salience of elements and relations


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within them determine the outcome. Blending occurs when salient networks representing

complimentary concepts merge, diminishing irrelevant content (metaphors, analogies,

etc.) Senses, memories, and thoughts provide input that contribute to resolution of the

mental image that manifests them in the mind of the thinker.

Form in thought is a synthesis of the thinkers emotions, perceptions, thoughts, and theevents in which they are engaged. The meaningful holistic images that result are

interpreted or expressed as thoughts, plans, artifacts, or messages understood by the

thinker and capable of being communicated to others. Incoming information is

interpreted by attempting to find similar patterns in memory that suggest what the

perceiver can expect to experience in a situation. This sometimes leads us to see what

we expect to see or deny the existence of what we do see. Understanding a persons

immediate and prior experience is crucial to understanding how they may interpret new

situations. Designers cannot assume a match between their understanding of a

communication and that of another person who receives it.

Formative Thought

Formative Thought, as thought concerning form is called in this theory, is conceived as

the functioning of a single broadly capable mental agency implementing a mode of

thought through which form is interpreted, resolved, and expressed. This mode of thought

is the agency through which interaction, and communication are anticipated, resolved,

and implemented, and through which media of all kinds are interpreted and employed. It

enables a thought to be objectified, expressed, and comprehended andprovides the

primary mental bridge between people, their environments, and other people. Althoughembracing mental activity ranging from phenomenal input to social communication, its

primary function is to resolve, express, and interpret imagery meaningful to the thinker

and useful to them. It synthesizes incoming information from the brain, body and

environment to create mental images with affective meaning and utility to the thinker

regarding their focus of thought. Formative Thought compiles, blends, and synthesizes

images, feelings, and the meanings they convey. All other modes of purposeful thought

identified in the Theory of Design Thinking contribute to meaningful expressions

produced through Formative thought.

Formative thought is thefocus of all purposeful thought because other modes of thoughtneed ways to express themselves and collaborate to express a more complex thought.

Incoming information is first interpreted through the thinkers existing knowledge. Is it

similar to prior experiences? Is there relevant information in memory that can be recalled

and applied? Can the focal situation be interpreted or expressed in terms the thinker

already understands? When anomalies result from inability of the thinkers existing

knowledge to respond to situated information, an intention to resolve form in thought


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becomes the subject and imagination is engaged. Each mind generates and interprets its

own mental imagery under the influence of experience and prior knowledge.

Subordinate modes apply formative thought to interpret and express the kind of

information for which they are specialized. These processes provide structured content

that is interpreted, synthesized and expressed to give meaningful form to the primaryintention of a purposeful thought. These subordinate modes are:

The Intentional Sub Mode of Formative Thought whichsets formative goals and

manages subordinate thought to guide the purposeful creation of form in thought. Goals,

priorities, and commitments are intentional forms of thought.

The Referential Sub Mode of Formative Thought which indexes elements and features

that provide content to a cognitive form. Words and symbols are referential forms that

play an essential semantic role in declarative expression and structured analysis.

The Relational Sub Mode of Formative Thoughtwhich constructs, restructures, and

analyses relationships between Referential elements and features under constraint of

intentional thought and the focal situation. Sentence structures (syntax), organization

charts, and network diagrams express relational forms.

The Formative mode of Formative Thought whichapplies situational, intentional and

relational constraints as it applies existing knowledge to interpret incoming information.

It synthesizes and compresses information from the brain, body and environment to

express a plan of action, its projected outcome and meanings in mediums appropriate to

the intentional goal, and focal situation. Images, messages, artifacts, and plans are formsproduced through the formative Mode.

The Procedural Sub Mode of Formative thought whichproduces a formal outcome by

interpreting, expressing, and acting out plans and predicted outcomes synthesized by the

Formative mode of Formative thought. Scripts, methods, and behaviors are procedural

forms.

The Evaluative Sub Mode of Formative Thought whichassesses the products of

Formative processing against the thinkers intentional criteria and its probable affective

meaning to audiences. This assessment tests compliance with intentional criteria and

situated circumstances, verifies conceptual resolution, and predicts the likely level of

epistemic comprehension. Measurements, judgments, and valuations are evaluative

forms.

The Reflective Sub Mode of Formative Thought which assimilates formative products

and their affective meanings into existing knowledge. Evaluative outcomes that reinforce

prior experiences become more salient in working memory and more durable in long-


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term memory. These forms also become more readily recalled through the repetitive use

of appropriate cues. Preferences, histories and stories are reflective forms. Expressions

that dont satisfy intentional criteria propagate further Reflective thought to reformulate

the Formative expression being evaluated.

Goal seeking, objectification, organization, imagination, integration, evaluation andreflection are key processes in Formative thought as they are in all modes of purposeful

thought. Without goal seeking there would be no focus. Without objectification there

would be no identification, or comparability. Without organization thoughts could not be

manipulated or analyzed. Without imagination there would be no intentional

manipulation or transformation of formative expression. Without integration there would

be no synthesis, compression, or blending of meaning or affect. Without evaluation there

would be no improvement in what is expressed or understood. Without reflection there

would be no application of knowledge. There would be no expression of a focal situation,

its meaning, emotional tone, and feeling without such capabilities.

The Affective Component of Mental Imagery

In this theory a cognitive form at any level always has emotional meaning and salience.

Emotional responses to situations and prior feelings associated with relevant memories

are synthesized and blended to give affective meaning to the mental image that manifests

a focal state of mind. The level of emotional salience is presumed to weight this blending.

Affective meanings associated with subordinate expressions are integrated into higher

order expressions. The expression of Formative thought that results is understood to have

an emotional tone between extremes of pleasure and displeasure. iiThe thinker

comprehends the affective meaning of the mental image and carries its emotional toneforward in subsequent thought about the situation.

Feelings about and understandings of mental images arise through reflection, or through

construction, deconstruction, or analysis of imagistic information. Feelings, meanings,

and information are mediated through mental representations at a human scale

understood through the thinkers own experience, knowledge and circumstances. This

happens whether the mental image represents a perception, imagined image, proposal,

plan-of-action, design, or message. Perceptual, conceptual, and behavioral information is

integrated, blended, synthesized, and compressed to interpret or express the thinker's state

of mind.

Distinguishing Percept and Mental Imagery

Perception is understood as the process of becoming aware of information from the

senses, a percept resulting from such an event, or an interpretive reference such as his

perception of pain. Formative thought is broader than perception in that it concerns any

mental image however generated or interpreted.


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Sensory information is established in the mind almost instantaneously during phenomenal

experience at a particular time and place. The environmental source of such a percept

establishes its place in space and time and its identity in cognition. A thinker focuses their

senses on something in an environment during such an event but cannot create the

information they attend. Conversely, the thinker, not their environment, controls whatthey attend and how they interpret sensed information.

Percepts are both the results of perception and mental constructs that arise from it. One

can anticipate the effect of acting on sensory input as it is experienced. (To avoid

crashing the car or falling off the bike, for example.)Much of this interpretation is

through subconscious recognition of knowledge gained through prior experience or

training. Although thought of as perception, the mental images that result are the products

of reflective interpretation. The thinker determines the content of their imagination and

the meaning of the mental images that result. Images may take their form from the senses

involved or from linguistic devices generalized from prior experience.

The affect and meaning generated through perception depends on how previously

acquired feelings and knowledge relevant to the perceived situation are recalled and

applied. This renders perception and its interpretation, transformation, and expression

into acts of imagination. Although perceptual information from prior experience may be

recalled and interpreted during imagination, its spatial, temporal and experiential context

is not necessarily contingent to the situation considered, or necessarily recalled during

generation of a mental image.Dreams are so evanescent and hard to remember because

they are the products of imagination not tethered in space or time. If they are to be

communicated or more fully considered products of imagination must be apprehendedthrough drawings, words, and other forms of expression

A mental image is understood as a meaningful mental expression derived from the

association or blending of objects of cognition. In this conception,"mental image" refers

to the form generated by the interpretation of objects of cognition as they are thought

about and become meaningful, satisfying and useful. These images vary as the mind

explores alternative or subordinate interpretations of information related to a focal subject

or situation. Mental images of partial or complete thoughts may have different duration

without losing focus on what the thought is about or what its components mean in that

context. Subordinate interpretations contribute to the expression and understanding of the

whole. Such thinking is essential to problem solving, design, art or any other purposeful

activity where the outcome is not known or is known but not understood.


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The Referential Identity of Mental Images

Whether resulting from perception or pure imagination, a mental image is always

identifiable in cognition as a manifestation of the neural networks that embody it.

Identifiable in whole or in part through their networks or subnets, mental images are

referential objects that can be referred to, recalled, reorganized, selectively interpreted,imaginatively adapted, expressed, and remembered. Whether a network arises from

interpreting sensory information, compiling information relevant to some salient focus, or

from blending and synthesis, a coherent network defines a mental image, provides a

frame of reference and structure for its information, and facilitates its interpretation,

transformation, and expression.The primary network and subnets of a mental image are

unified objects of thought apprehend at the human scale as words, sentence structures,

visual shapes, etc interpreted, and applied during thought.. Mental images are holistic and

unitary only in the sense that the network of neurons by which they are embodied in the

brain has referential objectivity. Coherent networks give mental images their identity,

meaning, and emotional tone.

Complex neural structures can be manipulated through the networks they reference.

Network structures of any complexity are strengthened or weakened as the emotional

salience of constituent elements are selectively amplified through attention, activity, or

contingent affect. Mental images are compiled, blended, synthesized, and enter

awareness, or become ignored as identifiable neural nets and subnets are strengthened or

weakened. Salience also prioritizes subnets and their components to order and execute

processes. Identifiable nodes (elements) links (relations) and actions in the network of a

mental image can be selected and manipulated to construct or deconstruct it. The role and

meaning of the elements and relations that define an image are reinterpreted andtransformed when subordinate networks are selectively activated, inhibited, interpreted,

reorganized, or expressed. Something previously experienced or synthesized can be

recalled to help resolve focal information. The identifiability and adapability of content in

a mental image is critical to intentional thought and the recall, interpretation,

manipulation, transformation and expression of experience.

Whether the result of perception, imagination, or adaptive recall the neural structure of a

mental image relates to a focal situation that is the focus of the immediate experience and

manifests the state of mind of the thinker. Because the mental image expressing the

moment must resolve information of varying strength coming in from the body, brain,

and environment, elements, relationships, and operational potentials must be recognizable

and identifiable as objects of thought to enable the image to be constructed, synthesized,

analyzed or valued. These objects of thought are subject to intention, preference, or

idiosyncratic processes during recall or application.


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The Organization of Formative Thought

Form in thought is embodied in the brain through neural networks and bindings

between them. A thinker may become consciously aware of a mental image or it may not

rise to the level of consciousness.Although a coherent form may appear in whole or

part in the minds eye it is the synthesis of information in related neural nets that is beingexperienced. Only certain networks are salient at the moment a coherent form is "re-

cognized", interpreted, or expressed. Emotional tone, meaning, sense data, and

information content in the salient neural structure are expressed through a unitary mental

image.

The theory proposed here suggests that Formative thought applies two schematic

cognitive structures familiar to psychologists and psycholinguists; the center-periphery

and container schema. These schemataare conceptual organizations that represent

complex neural networks. They characterizethe kinds of organizations needed to make

form coherent, variable, and referentially objective in thought.

The Center-Periphery Schemamodels the connections of relevant neural networks to a

focal center. The center represents the focal situation and mental entities around it afford

variable definition.

This schema is conceived as the primary organizational structure underlying all

intentional thought. It represents the organization of information relevant to a focal

situation. The salience of interacting neural networks determines which information is

relevant to an intention and prioritizes which links within a network are to be addressed.


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The Container Schemarepresents the binding structure through which a unitary mental

image is created by focusing, blending, and compressing the affective meaning of

information within the boundary. This boundary is permeable and non-geometric.

Operating on content organized by the center-periphery schema the container schema

limits the information interpreted, synthesized, compressed, and expressed to give

holistic form and referential objectivity to amental image. Information inside this focal

boundary is determined by emotional salience. Elements lacking sufficient salienceremain outside the boundary but linked to information within according to their relative

salience. These links support or suppress other possible interpretations and expressions

and help to define focal information in the container. Links inside the boundary allow

conceptual manipulation and construction or deconstruction of its formal expression and

meaning. Imagination can selectively activate peripheral links to reinterpret the focal

image. This would occur through emotional motivation or intentional selection and

prioritization of neuron groups, elements and relationships. The hippocampus is highly

likely to play a role in such binding as it involves both emotional processing and memory

formation.

The Flux of Formative Thought

Core states (of consciousness) change from one to another within periods of hundreds of

milliseconds as different circuits are activated by the environment, the body and the brain

itself. Only certain of these states are stable, and thus actually become integrated. It is

this integration that gives rise to the unitary property of consciousness. Because the core

carries out reentrant interactions between perceptual categorical input and value-category

memory, both of which are continually changing, it also changes. iii

Form in thought expresses the state of mind regarding the immediate focus of thought.

Whether conscious or not, mental imagery changes instantaneously in response to

information from the senses, brain and environment as it adapts to new information,

recall, and processing. This adaptation is presumed to occur continuously in short-term

memory, over the duration of an intentional thought in working memory, and through

adaptive change in long-term memory.


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Forms are presumed to change in short term memory through d irect processing, in

working memory through intentionally directed processing, and in long term memory

through assimilation, adaptation, and forgetting.

Formative thought is presumed to be negotiable between situational information,

emotion, and reflection during short-term processing; between intention, focal context,and established knowledge in working memory; and between emotional salience and

utility when in long-term memory.

Form in thought is assumed to be communicable from short-term memory through

behavior and from working memory through expression in some medium. It is expressed

from long-term memory through dreams, stories, histories, and adaptations of short-term

and working memories.

From a designers point of view the challenge of Formative thought is to suggest forms

that stimulate short-term memory, that engage working memory, and permeate long termmemories, that inform one of a designs intent, show how it can be realized, and create

forms that persist in long-term memory.

Whether consciously or unconsciously undertaken, the primary purpose of Formative

thought is to create and deploy an expression in the form of a holistic mental image

capable of conveying emotion, meaning, and content. Needs, desires, and declarative,

organizational, situational, performative, evaluative, and experiential form are expressed

and recognized as patterns of neural information.

Recognizing Form at Human Scale

Most forms in thought are recognized at a human scale. Formal networks encode words,

sentences, features, shapes, and other abstract entities useful in thought. Associations,

metaphors, and conceptual models manifested through structural patterns can be

referenced, recalled and applied as can scripts, procedures, and patterns of action that

express or recallbehaviors. Mental images, their meanings and associated information

can be communicated outside the mind if they can be translated into forms appropriate to

a medium of communication. Subnets representing values, measures, and judgments

qualify the effective worth of expressed forms.

The creation of Form in thought recognizable at a human scale involves several

processes. These include: Focusing on one perceptual effect over another (Figure, ground) Focusing on discrete features such as a red dot in a field of green dots Attending to patterns and gestalts within neural networks with the highest

potentiation. Synthesizing information from different mental spaces. iv


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Differentiating things through boundaries, cues, and occlusions. v

Attending to movement, action or change in a situation, expression or scene. Focusing on differences, as when something is smaller or larger than a

comparable thing. Adaptive merging of events, episodes or scripts as they are assimilated into

existing knowledge or related to a focal situation or intentional goals.

The blending of concepts from different mental spaces is a function of Formative

thought. For example, the meaning of catsand feelings toward cats draw on themental spaces built on situated experiences of things previously categorized as cats. A

blend retains connectivity to the neural nets that provided input to it. The meaning of a

blend can be unpacked, edited, and reinterpreted through this connectivity. Conceptual

Blending is also involved in processes of functional processing and interpretation. For

example, for a material anchor such as a clock, the numbers on its face are interpreted as

units of time. Movement of the hands of the clock is interpreted as passing time. A

complete revolution of the hands is understood to represent half a day. We blend theseinterpretations to represent the time of day.

In summary, itis asserted that Form in thought has an embodied, structural, dynamically

changing, and situationally mediated nature that should supercede understandings of form

as a descriptive attribute of a material object. A new approach to the study, creation,

construction and deconstruction of form is afforded based on how the mind works.

iBurnette, Charles, 2006: A Theory of Design Thinking, at http:www.independent.academia.edu/

charlesburnette

iiBurnette, Charles, 2009: An emotional Basis for Design Thinking, athttp:www.independent.academia.edu/charlesburnette

iiiEdelman, Gerald M., 2004: Wider Than The Sky, Yale University Press, New Haven,

p121

ivFauconnier, Gilles and Turner, Mark, 2002: The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending

and the Minds Hidden Complexities, New York, Basic Books

vGibson, J.J., 1950: The Perception of the Visual World, Boston, Houghton Mifflin
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