Douglas Hofstadter, author of Godel, Escher Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (1980 Pulitzer Prize), editor of Scientific American and professor at Indiana University gave a talk at Stanford today entitled "Analogy as the Core of Cognition". I've always had trouble with the titles of his books and articles, and today's lecture is no different; I've had to look it up several times as I titled this post (which is appropriate, considering the subject of today's talk).
While they were definitely plugging their website, (shc.stanford.edu), I noticed that they haven't posted any new videos of their lectures since May of last year. So they may be a little slow in updating.
In the event that they don't promptly post Hofstadter's talk, I've posted my own copy of
Douglas Hofstadter: Analogy as the Core of Cognition in MP3 format (63.5 Megabytes) to share. It's nearly 70 minutes long, and you'll have to deal with the background noise of typing and other sounds. It's the whole thing, from introduction to closing. Hofstadter's lecture starts at about 13 minutes.
kwc also has notes on the talk which are much more readable than mine, and hits all the main points of the lecture and you get to see the transparencies.
Too much to cover, so my notes in the extended are mainly the text of the transparencies he used during the lecture (with a few longer explanations where necessary).
He starts using traditional analogical frameworks to explain how his viewpoint of analogy doesn't really fit in those.
analogy making is the perception of common essence* between 2 things**
* in one's current frame of mind
** thing --> mental thing
He tells a story about himself when he was young, being fascinated with superscripts, and how exponential
functions were related to it, and how he came upon subscripts in math, and was fascinated by them, and asked his dad what they meant, and he was crushed when he found out that they did nothing. Fast forward 40 years, and he has a daughter who is fascinated by the dustbuster. Press one button, and it vacuums, and she was at this for a while. Then she notices the other button, and he crushes her expectations by showing her that the other button is just the release latch for the vacuum bag.
He then shows this as analogy by showing his relationship with his father, and his own with his daughter.
A lot of analogies are reminding events. Some people think they serve some kind of purpose, but they don't serve any purpose at all, they just happen.
repeated analogies expand concepts.
counting, fractions, negative numbers, irrational numbers.
concepts expand by new instances.
there is no fundamental difference between a single memory trace and a category. = concept.
the special magic of the human mind, endless limitless chunking.
new concept. we don't think so much about it, it just becomes an individual concept, instead of the little parts that make it up.
How amazing is our mind at concepts?
Imagine if you were trying to explain wikipedia to a caveman? What would you have to explain in addition to just the Wikipedia.
the mental lexicon becomes the phrasal lexicon (Joe Becker)
proverbs are situation-labels (Roger Shenk)
example: sour-grapes
rival situation labels
buongioro!/salve!/ciao!
instaneous on-the-fly triage
analogy does the trick
the locus of a fight
what is the room where i do my work
your office (Kellie and Dick)
my study (-me)
rival situation labels
instantaneous, on the fly triage
analogy does the trick.
The last part of his lecture was on word blends. Word blends are the things we are trying to decide between two concepts and end up combining the two into one work. Hofstadter gave a long list of examples:
is denny there?
i don't know, i'll go seck (see/check)
don't leave your car there
you mate get a ticket" (may/might)
i can't keep all these things in my bread at the same time (brain/head)
hey wait up i'll gum with you (go/come)
every morning i took a capsi ride (cab/taxi)
"i was having trouble ffind it" (find/figure out)
it was poizzed on the banister
(posed; poised)
fight between words
phrase blends
i hope the package got there in one shape (in one piece / in good shape)
he was a real easy-go-lucky-guy"
(easygoing/happy go lucky)
i should count my lucky stars
(count my blessingsl thank my lucky stars)
i'm worried that my editor is going to hit the stack
hit the ceiling; blow his stack; hit the sack)
we'll pull no stops unturned to get him" (pull out all the stops; leave no stone unturned)
Thought is a seething subterrain battle of anologies; when the battle is an landslide, there is no evidence, when the battle is close there is evidence galore.
thought is seeking the highest level of abstraction and putting one's finger on the essence of the situation and bouncing back and forth between the actual situation and the essence found in one's memories.
If strokes of genius are made out of analogies and personal insights, politcal decisions, dinner table conversations and me too comments and instaneous categories and blends of all sorts are all made of analogies... Might not all of cognition be made of analogies? cognition core hypothesis (Hofstadter)
i'm having fun finally catching up on your blog posts. this post particularly was neat to read.
on word blends, i find it so cool that he blended "cab" and "taxi" to get "capsi," because it applies the rule of blending the place of articulation.
and, i think a lot of immigrants tend to blend phrases together. i am doing it more often these days too, but i am verbally-challenged a lot of the time. "p
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