Todd Oakley, English & Cognitive Science Per Aage Brandt, Modern Languages & Cognitive Science Case...

Todd Oakley, English & Cognitive Science

Per Aage Brandt, Modern Languages & Cognitive Science

Case Western Reserve University

Cleveland, Ohio

USA

Meta-Representation, Mind Reading, and Fictive Interaction

A Collector’s Conceit

How to Produce a “Fiction”


• Presentation – A present perception resonates as a “remembered present”


• Presentation – A present perception resonates as a “remembered present”

• What is


• Presentation – A present perception that resonates as a “remembered present”

• What is• Representation

– An Imaginative variation that creates hypothetical or counterfactual events, states, or processes



of the here-and-now• What is

• Representation– An Imaginative variation that creates a hypothetical or

counterfactual events, states, or processes of the there-and-then• What if?






• Meta-Representation:– A fictional representation that projects a there-and-then into the

perceptual here-and-now






• Meta-Representation:– A fictional representation that projects a there-and-then into the

perceptual here-and-now• As if

Hypotyposis

• Classical rhetorical theorists call this as if phenomenon: hypotyposis or enargia– Aristotle calls is a tactic of visualization: pro ommatōn poiein, or

“bringing before the eyes”

Hypotyposis

• Classical rhetorical theorists call this as if phenomenon: hypotyposis or enargia– Aristotle calls is a tactic of visualization: pro ommatōn poiein, or

“bringing before the eyes”

• Cognitive Linguists call these “fictive realities”• Fictive motion

– The wainscoting runs along the perimeter of the room

• Fictive action– The French doors open onto a terra cotta patio

• Fictive reference– The kettle is boiling

• Fictive interaction (E Pascual 2002)– We need to avoid creating he-said-she-said-situations

• Among others

Attention & Intersubjectivity

• Claim: meta-representations so defined are necessarily intersubjective.

Intersubjectivity

• Claim: meta-representations so defined are necessarily intersubjective.– Cognizers must (at least) tacitly know how to

represent the conditions of mutual intelligibility and interaction in order to use them in imaginative variation

Intersubjectivity

• Claim: meta-representations so defined are necessarily intersubjective– Cognizer’s must (at least) tacitly know that

how to represent the conditions of mutual intelligibility and interaction in order to use them for imaginative variation

– This fact is captured most strikingly in instances of hypotyposis in discourse, in pictorial representation, and in curatorship

• Fictional representations are staged in time and space

Cinematic Model


• The scene of fictional representations has a complex attentional and intersubjective structure

Cinematic Model

Cinematic Model


• The scene of fictional representations has a complex attentional and intersubjective structure

• Scenarial integration of fictional representations can be approached by using the cinema as a model

Cinematic Model

• Components of the Model– The screen

• a focal area within a bounded site

Cinematic Model

• Components of the Model– A screen

• focal area within a bounded site

– A projectionist• presupposed agent doing the screening

Cinematic Model

• Components of the Model– A screen

• focal area within a bounded site

– A projectionist• presupposed agent doing the screening

– An audience• perceives the events on the screen as

representing something beyond the screen

Attention

• One person attends to the “story” the film ‘tells’ through the optical events on the screen. This is called primary (deictic) attention

Attention


• Another person attends to the first person. This is called secondary (refracted) attention

Attention


• A second person attends to the first person. This is called secondary (refracted) attention

• The second person attends to what the first person is attending to. This is called tertiary (harmonic) attention

From Attention to Intention

• The projectionist—the presenter of the fiction—is the agent who intends the audience to attend to the show

From Attention to Intention

• The projectionist—the presenter of the fiction—is the agent who intends the audience to attend to the show– This intentional instance requires the strategic

use of representational resources for interactivity, both of conversation and mentation

Mental Spaces

• These features of the cinematic model can be formally modeled semiotically by a modified version of the Mental Spaces framework developed by Fauconnier & Turner (2002)

Mental Spaces

• We adopt the mode of analysis developed by Line Brandt & Per Aage Brandt (2005), and Line Brandt (2006)

Mental Spaces

• We adopt the mode of analysis developed by Line Brandt & Per Aage Brandt (2005), and Line Brandt (2006)– To review

– Mental spaces are scenes and scenario or facets of scenes and scenarios representing past, present, future, and otherwise imagined events, processes, and states

– Meaning arises when scenes and scenarios are activated and sometimes blended

– Mental space networks are ontologically grounded in a semiotic “base” space

A Famous Example of Fictive Interaction in Discourse

• The Debate With Kant– A philosophy professor leading a seminar on

the philosophy of mind is reported as saying the following:

I claim that reason is a self-developing capacity. Kant disagrees with me on this point. He says it’s innate, but I answer that that’s begging the question, to which he counters, in Critique of Pure Reason, that only innate ideas have power. But I say to that, What about neuronal group selection? And he gives no answer.

– From Fauconnier & Turner (2002: 59-60)

Situation

Setting

Semiotic

Intelligibility Condition

Participants

Philosophy Professor

Students

Persons unbound of time and space, primarily through modes of written communication

A university classroom with tables, chairs, chalkboards, etc.

Situational relevance

Situation

Setting

Semiotic

Presentation space Reference space

Exhibitory Condition

Oral debate as format of teaching

Kant’s philosophical writings on “mind” (as they appear in translation)

Participants


Students




Situation

Setting

Semiotic



Virtual space 1: Fictive debate1st person plural

Virtual space 2:1st person plural with 3rd person viewpoint

Pragmatic implication: Contemporary significance of a fictive debate with Kant

Professor

Oral debate as format of teaching

Kant’s philosophical writings on “mind” (as they appear in translation)

Participants


Students



Kant with Professor

Students witness Kant’s error against the truth of the professor’s views


Magritte’s Tentative de l’impossible (1928)

Situation

Setting

Semiotic



Virtual space 1: Fictional 1st person plural

Easel painting

Artist working with a nude model.

The model posses for the artist.

Representation of a nude woman on canvas

Participants

Rene Magritte

Model Viewer

Expression and content merge; usual objects in very unusual contexts

The viewer is looking through a catalogue of the artist’s work

The artist paints the woman into being

Uses paint, brushes & palette to create a 3D woman


Situation

Setting

Semiotic



Metarepresentation space

Pragmatic implication: Artists do bring there subjects into being!

Easel painting

Artist working with a nude model.

The model posses for the artist.

Representation of a nude woman on canvas

Participants

Rene Magritte

Model Viewer

Expression and content merge

The viewer is looking through a catalogue of the artist’s work

The artist paints the woman into being

Uses paint, brushes & palette to create a 3D woman

The artist knows that the viewer knows this is an impossible state of affairs


Virtual space 1; Fictional 1st person plural

Henry Clay Frick & Hans Holbein: A Curator’s Conceit

<htttp://www.euroweb.hu/art/h/holbein/hans_y/1528/4more.jpg><htttp://www.euroweb.hu/art/h/holbein/hans_y/15235/*ccromwell.jpg>

Situation

Setting

Semiotic space


Participants

museum patrons

security guards

Patrons walk through the gallery looking at the collection and listening to commentary

The Living Hall at the Frick mansion on 5th Avenue in NYC; depictions of St. Jerome and St. Paul, among others.

Situation

Setting

Semiotic space

Presentation space


Hans Holbein, the Younger

Portrait of Thomas More (1527) Enface position

Portrait of Thomas Cromwell (1532) Profile position

Henry C. Frick =Protagonist

Participants

museum patrons

security guards



Situation

Setting

Grounding







Thomas More

(protagonist)

Thomas Cromwell(antagonist)

Political rivals in the Tudor Court of Henry VIII

Participants

museum patrons

security guards



Situation

Setting

Grounding



Virtual space 1: 1st person singular experience of a fictive 3rd person viewpoint





Thomas More

(protagonist)

Thomas Cromwell

(antagonist)


Participants

museum patrons

security guards



Situation

Setting

Semiotic Space




Illocutionary Force: Look at this!





Thomas More

(protagonist)

Thomas Cromwell

(antagonist)


Participants

museum patrons

security guards



Virtual space 2: 1st person plural experience of a fictive 3rd person viewpoint

Situation

Setting

Grounding




Metarepresentation space: fictive 3rd person omnipotent perspective

Illocutionary Force: Look at this!

Pragmatic implication: Frick was a clever collector





Thomas More

(protagonist)

Thomas Cromwell

(antagonist)


Participants

museum patrons

security guards



Virtual space 2: 1st person plural experience of a fictive 3rd person viewpoint

Discussion

• Reconsider representation and metarepresentation in light of a cognitive semiotic analysis

Discussion

• Various forms of interaction are fundamental to the formation of fictional representations

Discussion

• Shared attention as it relates to intentional meaning needs to be explicitly modeled in these instances

Discussion

• We’ve attempted this by integrating mental spaces theory with a ‘cinematic model’ of attention, for understanding a three step process from presentation to representation to metarepresentation

Discussion

• this model offers a systematic means of accounting for the richly intesubjective nature of fictional interactions and, we think, offers an important addition to mental spaces framework

Discussion

• Our goal was to analyze properly the nature of meaning as it relates to these issues

Discussion

• Our goal was to analyze properly the nature of meaning as it relates to these issues

• We have said nothing about how these processes evolved or developed. Perhaps this workshop can point us in a fruitful direction

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