Surfaces and Essences

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Surfaces and Essences Page 97

by Douglas Hofstadter


  category boundaries, treated as sharp in everyday speech, 61

  category/city analogy, 61–62, 522

  category extension: via analogy, 187, 254, 395–400, 402–407; applied to proper nouns, 217–223; as an art, 468; as deep human drive, 64, 216; by Einstein, 465–468, 485–486, 495–496; by Ellenbogen, Gelenk, et al, 463–465; guiding role of language in, 465; horizontal, 463–468; as a kind of refinement, 84; and marking, 254; of number, 439–443, 447–448; from the physical world to the virtual world, 394–400; repeated acts of, 150; as revealing hidden conceptual essences, 200–204, 255, 295, 397–398; unconscious, in me-too’s, 150; vertical, 463–468; of very recent concepts, 130, 402–407; from the virtual world to the physical world, 402–407

  category membership: context-dependence of, 58, 185–186; hypothetical courses in, 60, 65, 70; illusion of precision of, 59–60; illusion of uniqueness of, 58, 190, 192, 465–466; as intrinsically blurry, 60; measured by strength of analogousness, 399; necessary and sufficient conditions for, 55, 436; not taught in schools, 60, 65, 126, 127; versus playing a role in an analogy, 399

  category systems: building of, as education’s goal, 393; rival, 241, 243

  cat’s death, as inappropriate reminding, 157

  cause–effect naïve analogy for equations, 410–411; see also operation–result

  centrality versus marginality of members of concepts, 57–58

  chair, diversity of members of the category, 4, 5, 107

  chance favoring the prepared mind, 300

  Char (labrador), analogies by, 180

  chat room concept, contaminated by thin wall concept, 406

  chess, novices’ lack of skill in, 340

  Chi, Michelene, 342

  Chiflet, Jean-Loup, 97

  “child” concepts modifying “parent” concepts, 53–54

  children: abstraction by, 41–43; categorization by, 39–43, 45; inferences by, 391; riskily exploring usage patterns of the word “much”, 70; semantic choices made by, 41–43, 270, 273

  Chinese language: concepts different from English-language counterparts, 368; Katy’s dream in, 504; “Once bitten, twice shy” in, 105; zeugmas in, 12

  Chinese Pythagoras, 221

  Chopin, Frédéric, 312; canonized, 221

  Chrysippus, 210

  chunking: of concepts over one’s lifetime, 50–54; perceptual, and esthetics, 349–352

  chunks: in bilingual data base, 372–373, 375; of light, see light quanta

  “ciao”: competing with “grazie”, 269; competing with “salve” and “buongiorno”, 45–46

  cicada, naïve analogy concerning, 388

  “ciel”, vast number of meanings of, as typical, 375, 376

  “Cigale et la Fourmi” (La Fontaine), 388

  cigarette “melting” in ashtray, 40; as the flip side of chocolates “going up in smoke”, 126

  cigarette/penis analogy, 362

  “circle”, literal versus metaphorical uses of, 64

  circles, non-Euclidean, 498

  circular structures in Copycat domain and in real life, 355

  circumference/diameter ratio, 498; see also π

  cities, blurriness of boundaries of, 62

  city, as metaphor for concept, 61–62, 522

  clairvoyance in encoding, chimera of, 173–174, 353–354

  Claro, Francisco and Isabel, 312–313

  classical music, category in the mind of a rock-music lover, 241

  classical view of concepts, 13–14, 54–57, 435; see also Rosch, Eleanor

  classification versus categorization, 20

  cleanliness/morality analogy, 289–290

  Clement, Catherine, 436

  Clément, Évelyne, 295

  clocks, blocks, and rocks, 481

  clothing, fringe members of the category of, 528

  clouds: covering up details of sabbatical year, 50; how many in the sky?, 57

  coal/diamond conceptual unification, 454

  coattails, conceptual slippages riding on, 276, 357

  cocoons, literal versus metaphorical, 64

  coffee: drunk with a fork, 325–326, 383; marked usages of the concept, 185–186, 194, 203, 230; stirred with absurdly thin sticks, 317, 321–322; three stars awarded for, by Guide Michelin, 462

  cognitive (anti-)economy, in memory retrieval, 341–344

  cognitive dissonance: as a driving force in creativity, 483, 484, 490–491; reduction of, as a category, 115–117; situations exemplifying the drive to reduce, 116; see also pressures

  Cole, K. C., semantic-proximity error by, 275

  colloidal particles/hanging lamps analogy, 458

  Come on! situations, 42

  command languages, as blocks to progress, 252

  communism/gravity analogy, 333–334

  commutativity of multiplication, 413–416

  comparisons of numbers, as analogies, 153–154, 281–282, 285

  competition between categories, 260–278, 281

  complex numbers: algebraic completeness of, 445; discovery and gradual acceptance of, 442–443; prime numbers generalized to the domain of, 448

  compound noun phrase, unparsable, 92

  compound words: as names of categories, 86–89; in other languages, 87, 89; as requiring no more cognitive work than simple words, 88

  compression of situations to their essences, see essence-spotting

  compromise, as potential source of quality, 382

  Compton, Arthur Holley, 462, 463

  Compton effect, clinching light quanta’s existence, 462

  computers: as category-less dunces, 24–25, 369, 374; homey analogies helping people to relate to, 395–400; as revolutionary development, 394–395; as source for naïve analogies to understand the physical world, 402–407

  concepts: abstract, rooted in concrete experiences, 28–29, 286–289, 333–337; “in the air”, list of, 128–131; classical view of, 54–57; contrasted with nested boxes, 52; contrasted with physical tools, 132; distance between, imprecision of, 65; of dogs, 178–181; extended via analogy-making, 34–38; halos around, 49–50; implicit boundaries of, 106–109; internal structures of, 50–54; as modified by their “children”, 52–54; non-monolithic nature of, 3–13; order of acquisition of, 54; Platonic, hopefully obeying precise laws, 56; prototype versus exemplar theory of, 57; typical versus atypical, 390–391; unlabeled, 20; zooming in on, 50, 51; see also categories

  conceptual blends, see frame blends

  conceptual broadening, see category extension

  conceptual distinctions, made by different languages, 8–13

  conceptual halo centered on specific event, 148–153

  conceptual integration networks, 335; see also frame blends

  conceptual leaps at high levels of abstraction, 251

  conceptual-proximity slippage errors, 224–225, 270–278

  conceptual reversal, as subtle step, 249, 356–357, 482–483

  conceptual skeletons: analogies between, 354; as mediators of remindings, 30, 143; multiplicity of, for any situation, 162; revealed by caricature analogies, 326–330; verbalized in opaque legalese, 4, 144, 149, 329–330

  conceptual slippage, see slippages, conceptual

  conceptual spaces, 50; empty beyond a certain point, 119–120; filled with colored blobs, 78–84, 119–123, 132; rapid-fire maneuvers in, 128; see also semantic space

  Concorde on pedestal, ambiguous category membership of, 192

  concrete concepts: necessary but not sufficient for clear thinking, 329, 419, 424; underpinning abstract analogies, 28–29, 286–289, 333–337

  conjunctions, as names of concepts, 55, 70–75, 276

  Connes, Alain, 509

  conservation: of energy, 472, 479; of mass, 472, 475; of strange mass, 479

  constraints as catalyzing creativity, 315, 380–382

  containment, concept of, in wartime decisions, 333, 335

  contamination: of a date via analogy, 298; of one side of an analogy by another, 359–367,
365; of one’s image of a person by another person, 225; semantic, of division by sharing, 426

  content words versus grammatical devices, 76

  continuity, concept of, 391–393

  conversation: as driven by analogies on many levels, 25–27, 514; as illusory criterion for speaking a language, 61

  Copernicus, Nicolas, 44

  “copycat”, meaning of the word, 347

  Copycat analogies: frame-blending and, 359–360, 363–364; involving aabc, 363–364; involving ace, 353–354; involving dyz, 357, 360; involving iijjkk, 348–350, 353, 359–360; involving mrrjjj, 351–353, 360; involving pqrr, 363–364; involving pqrs, 347; involving tky, 348; involving xyz, 354–358, 360, 371, 477; literal-mindedness in, 348–349, 351, 355, 357–359

  Copycat domain: encodings in, 346–349, 353–354; frame-blending in, 358–360, 363–364; nature of, 347

  copycat killer, 246–247

  cork, pushed inwards instead of pulled outwards, 249–250

  cornet/Coronet conflation, 291–292; translation of, into French, 379–380

  correlational structure of the world, 345

  cosmic sense of unity, Einsteinian, 468, 473, 480, 481, 484, 486, 501

  Coulomb’s law of electrical force, 489

  counterfactual scenario implicit in “safe beach”, 362

  counting: as an intrinsically imprecise activity, 57, 61; used in solving word problems, see mental simulation

  couple #1/couple #2 analogy, 514

  courses on categorization and quotation-mark usage, 60, 65, 70

  Courteline, Georges, 509

  creativity: and category extension, 246–254; and conceptual slippage, 186–187; mechanisms of as opposed to recipes for, 251; not teachable in schools, 248; and obsessions, 300–301; stereotype of, 452; supposed inexplicability of, 501; would-be recipes for, 248–249

  cross-Channel bounces of lexical items, 122–123

  crossed wires, see errors, speech errors

  crown/body analogy by Archimedes, 251

  crux, see conceptual skeletons, essences

  cubic equation: analogy to quadratic equation, 438; broken into 13 types, 439; requiring imaginary numbers, 442; search for formula for, 438–439; unified formula for, thanks to negative numbers, 440

  cup recognition as analogy-making, 184

  Curie, Marie, 38

  curiosity, as evoking caricature analogies, 326–330

  curved space-time, 499

  “cute cookie, one”, see Doris Day

  cutting the world at its “natural” joints, 14, 77, 522–523

  Cyprus/Falkland Islands analogy, 332

  —D—

  dam harming Nubians, me-too analogy triggered by, 151–152

  Danny at the Grand Canyon, 159–167, 380–381; as category with highly diverse members, 162–166; see also Hofstadter, Danny

  Danny/Dick analogy, 159–167, 171, 172–174

  Dante Alighieri, 101, 130, 132

  Day, Doris, 75

  “de”, broken into two concepts by the English language, 78

  dead acronyms, 93

  dead end, see impasse

  dead metaphors, 64, 93, 98

  dean’s dazzling speech error, 261

  death: of a friend reminding one of other deaths, 157; of a loved one, altering perceptions of one’s environs, 300

  Debye, Peter, 461

  decapitalization following pluralization, 218

  decision-making, role of analogies in, 330–337

  decoding as translation strategy, 368, 370, 373–374

  deduction, favored by educators, 393

  deep features of situations: invisible to novices, 342; salient for experts, 342–344; supposedly missed by people in analogy-making, 337–340

  deep versus shallow analogies, 337–346, 351–357, 375–376, 454–455, 517

  deepest clues available, as mediating memory retrieval, 343–344

  default assumptions, misleading, 290–293

  defense mechanisms, 116–117

  Degustibus non est disputandum, see good taste

  Delaware of cognition, analogy-making as the, 17

  “delete” key/pencil eraser analogy, 399

  deliberate search as non-recipe for creativity, 251

  Dell, Gary, 259

  De Morgan, Augustus, 440–441

  Denver, as Frontier Airlines hub, 51–52, 54; picture of, 51

  depth as central to analogy-making, remindings, and memory retrieval, 340–346

  Descartes, René, 443

  desks, material versus immaterial, 200–204, 255, 295, 395, 401; frame blend of, 363

  detractors of analogy-making and metaphors, 21–22

  diagrams of subtraction word-problems, 432–434

  “dialect with an army”, as definition of language, 61

  Dick at Karnak, 159–162, 166, 380–381; see also Gutman, Richard

  “Dick” ⇒ “Richard” translation, 381

  dictionary definitions as opposed to concepts, 3–5

  dictionary entries cited in text, 201, 202, 397, 403, 417, 420

  Diderot, Denis, 121

  differences between analogy-making and categorization, alleged, 503: all the time versus occasional, 505–508; applying to entities versus applying to relations, 517–519; automatic versus voluntary, 513–515; jumping between levels versus making a single-level bridge, 519–522; objective versus subjective, 522–526; reliable versus suspect, 527–529; routine versus creative, 508–510; seeing disparities as desirable versus as undesirable, 515–517; unconscious versus conscious, 510–513

  dimensions of space, extended by analogy, 443–444

  Dirac, P. A. M., 453, 482

  dirtiness/badness analogy, 289–290

  disappointment as source of reminding, 169–170

  “dis-aster” of sun ceasing to exist, 489–490

  discourse flow/savanna chase analogy, 71

  discourse space, patterns and categories in, 69–76

  “discoverativity” in mathematics and science, 451

  disk ejection, naïve analogy for, 401

  disk, rotating, pondered by Einstein, 497–498

  distance, semantic: as measured by strength of zeugmaticity, 19; as revealed by speech errors, 270–278

  distant domains, linked by analogies, 16–17

  distillation of episodes, 165, 171–172

  distorted recall of math-problem statement, 431

  distrusting one’s own analogies, 528

  division: as another name for “sharing”, 421, 426; easy versus hard word problems involving, 422–425; as a highly abstract mathematical operation, 448–449; as measuring, 420–426; naïve analogies for relating to, 416–421, 425–426; as necessarily making smaller, 416–420; as possibly making larger, 417; quotative, 420; as sharing, 419–426, 514; of a skyscraper by a floor, 448; word problems illustrating, 416, 422–425

  dizzy analogies, 358, 360, 366

  “DNA” versus “deoxyribonucleic acid”, 91

  dogs: conceptual repertoire of, 178–181; expert knowledge about, 238–240; impressive analogies by, 180; starry sky as seen by, 165; subcategories of, 240; unfamiliar, dealt with by analogy, 23, 508

  domain change, in caricature analogies, 321–324, 326

  domestic as opposed to wartime decision-making, 337

  domino theory in Vietnam War, 333–335, 513

  Don’t judge a book by its cover as a category, 102

  doors, doorknobs, doorbells, used by analogy, 23, 507, 509, 516

  Doppler effect, 469–471

  dormitive virtue, 248, 249

  dots seen as moons, 44–45

  double letters, subjective amount of salience of, 363–364

  double referent of “here”, “there”, “that”, 140–143, 148–149

  Doug/Monica analogy, 169–171; summarized, 170

  down-ness, as relative notion, 491, 497

  “dressing” of a math problem as channeling its solution pathway, 430, 434

&nbs
p; “dude, one smart”, as indicative of category of speaker, 75

  dump: as example of conceptual extension, 403; as example of marking, 230–231

  Duncker, Karl, 250

  Dustbuster: brand name, genericized, 217; buttons of, analogy between, 169–170

  Dustbuster/subscripts analogy, 169–170, 174

  Duvignau, Karine, 39

  dyz analogy, see dizzy analogies

  —E—

  E = mc2, 319, 463; absent from Einstein’s first relativity article, 468; becomes famous, 482; confirmed by particle/antiparticle annhilation experiment, 482; derived by Einstein, 469–471; first appearance of, in 1905, 469, 474; first meaning of, 471, 472; second meaning of, 473–474; subsequent meanings of, 473, 482, 483–485; summary of Einstein’s mental processes in understanding the meaning of, 483–484

 

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