Oh the Possibilities

For this week I wanted to look at what I think I want my paper to be. I was very interested in the virtual reality and emotional manipulation sections. I wanted to write on the possibilities of literature if applied to a virtual realm as well as the minds cognitive/ToM effects resulting. Primarily my paper is going to involve my in-class presentation and a mix of readings from the emotion-literature and VR weeks. I have a possible Thesis below but it is very rough looking and Still needs a little clarification or a small restructuring. Basically I want to dissect the character of Christopher in order to exhibit the humanity from his inhumanity and relate this to artificial intelligence/robots/computers and how our cognitive functioning both is changed or mirrored similar to our functioning with other "normal" human individuals. This will help draw parallels with literature and the Theory of Mind involved, but also can help show the possibility of the future of literature. Another problem that could be possibly tackled is the problem of transitioning literature into VR (I don't know if I will do this) because of the variability of experience based on the placement of the user. If they are simulating the protagonist, their view on the story is completely different from if they were a third party member because of the separation between the characters experience and the outsider's mindset. A different problem is determining what changes in cognition will bleed through to the real world. Finally by changing to a visual platform, it changes the amount of imagination and creative  thinking but enhances the reality and physicality of the storyline. 

Possible Thesis:

            The view of the mind being a viewing platform is one that is tackled in a couple of works, most importantly the Curious Incident. It is through this novel that Attention and reflection are handled in a way that produces a dichotomy between human and computer. However with increasing virtual reality tests and studies it is clear that computers may be able to mimic emotion and become humanized. It is possible that techniques of theory of mind may be able to be applied to these computer characters in order to effect real world outcomes just as literature and other arts do.

Whoever does read this, I would love feedback or perhaps additional tips, ideas, or resources that will help me find a more well-rounded thesis and write a more complete paper. Hope to hear some response in order to help. And Good luck to others writing Final Papers.

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?.

      Virtual Reality allows possibilities that seem endless, but the cost of programming and technology limits its ability. With virtual reality technology social and cognitive experiments can be done in a controlled environment without compromising the facade of a natural setting. A new world can be created and engaged with by a variety of individuals through quick-access cognitive pathways: vision. In the section read this week, examples of practical and experimental uses for virtual reality were listed with interesting results. However, learning about ToM and other immersion techniques has made me question the comparability of virtual reality to literature. It would seem to me that both have pros and cons to cognition. While virtual reality handles all visual attributes it lacks in the complexity of real-world scenarios that only the imagination could achieve, but then again, literature requires much attention in order to be fully immersed. It would be most interesting to be able to do a side by side comparison between the effects of both on the mind and individuals actions.
          Of course, certain individuals may not be able to participate well in one or the other. If, for example, Christopher were given the choice of the two he would of course choose virtual reality because of his strong affinity for the computer and dislike of surreal fiction. Others such as Dyslexics would also prefer the virtual world to its plain text counterpart because of their inability to immerse fully due to their disability. However, what about simulating one of these individuals as a "normal" being. Which would be a more convincing or enlightening experience. Do you think reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time would trump the virtual experience? Is it the fact that you are allowed to be witness to the mind of the character or rather to be placed in the environment of them. If it is the latter, then virtual reality would be a better immersion device, but i would think that not everyone would act in a similar way unless of course pressured by a group or some outside restriction. Only witnessing the mind of one individual takes away from the experience necessary to fully understand the mind's development and how certain choices are made.
         Lets take this further, could we use either of these two processes or a combination of the two in order to influence cognition for an artificial brain. This is assuming the fact that we can teach other humans. However, if we could influence the ideas of human cognition using these two means then it could be plausible to teach patterns to an artificial intelligence in order to learn how to think or develop human-like thought.

Separate but Equal

       This week we read about two abnormalities in human cognition. The first was Dyslexia, which is a general term for a set of reading disorders, in a chapter of Dehaene's Reading in the Brain. The other is Autism and this is a disorder of varying degrees of both social and cognitive disability. While they have different causes, we assume since we do not know the causes of either,  both disorders have similar outcomes when it comes to reading, they have problems with the comprehension of literature. In the case of Autism, many of those affected cannot grasp two key concepts needed for healthy social growth. These two concepts are fictionalization, the ability to create a spatial or metaphorical nonexistence, and theory of mind, the ability to predict anothers actions and thoughts through gestures and speech patterns. Dyslexia, on the other hand, deals with the construction of words themselves. This can be a trouble in phonetic sound memorization and/or visual recognition of letters due to word density. But one question that comes along is this, "Why do we care?"
        This question is a serious one and with a little education one can learn the answer. If one were to look at the number diagnosed, then they would have the short answer: a lot of people are affected by these disorders. 1 out of every 88 children are diagnosed with Autism and many other children are diagnosed with dyslexia in varying degrees, numbers cannot be tallied because of lack of a set diagnosis criteria. This means that a large amount of the population have a problem with literature and thus education. If in fact this large amount of children cannot understand literature, then this same population will have trouble understanding other key concepts and relations made both in academic and social education. It is then our duty to dedicate perhaps a new style of teaching one that could thwart such inability and perhaps let those who have no disorder to learn easier and be able to interact just as well with those who do.

Poetic Dissection

"Our analysis also identifies a subset of brain regions in which the activity in the listener’s brain precedes the activity in the speaker’s brain. The listener’s anticipatory responses were localized to areas known to be involved in predictions and value representation (20–23), including the striatum and medial and dorsolateral prefrontal regions (mPFC, dlPFC). The anticipatory responses may provide the listeners with more time to process an input and can compensate for problems with noisy or ambiguous input (24). This hypothesis is supported by the !nding that comprehension is facilitated by highly predictable upcoming words (25). Remarkably, the extent of the listener’s anticipatory brain responses was highly correlated with the level of understanding (Fig. 4B), indicating that successful communication requires the active engagement of the listener (26, 27)." Stephens and Hasson On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer By John Keats Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,

And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

Round many western islands have I been

Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;

Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

When a new planet swims into his ken;

Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men

Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—

Silent, upon a peak in Darien. Handy Guide By Dean Young Avoid adjectives of scale. Dandelion broth instead of duck soup. Don’t even think you’ve seen a meadow, ever. The minor adjustments in our equations still indicate the universe is insane, when it laughs a silk dress comes out its mouth but we never put it on. Put it on. Cry often and while asleep. If it’s raw, forge it in fire. That’s not a mountain, that’s crumble. If it’s fire, swallow. The heart of a scarecrow isn’t geometrical. That’s not a diamond, it’s salt. That’s not the sky but it’s not your fault. My dragon may be your neurotoxin. Your electrocardiogram may be my fortune cookie. Once an angel has made an annunciation, it’s impossible to tell him he has the wrong address. Moonlight has its own befuddlements. The rest of us can wear the wolf mask if we want or look like reflections wandered off. Eventually armor, eventually sunk. You wanted love and expected what? A parachute? Morphine? A gold sticker star? The moment you were born— you have to trust others because you weren’t there. Ditto death. The strongest gift I was ever given was made of twigs. It didn’t matter which way it broke.             Both poems are similar in that they tell about a comment on a very real happening. The first on the translation of Homer and the other begins with a caution of some sense. However, the latter goes on to an unpredictable pattern. This is where the Stephens article becomes key. This article was a study on oral speaker-listener connection and its cognitive effects. This is interrelated to the Theory of Mind talked about in an earlier class The small excerpt brings up a very interesting point and one that relates well to these poems.            When one treats these narrators as though they are a speakers, which is indeed the case due to our theory of mind, they might in fact exhibit these same qualities. The above excerpt tells how the listeners mind in fact activates before the speakers in order to find a pattern in speech and thus in the conversation's content and timing. This can be clearly seen in Keats poem. While his colorful language is a little unpredictable, the majority of the poem is easily predictable and can be followed with ease. However, the Young poem is a contradiction to this process. It uses unpredictable sentences that lack a cohesive superficial meaning such as: "My dragon may be your neurotoxin." or "Your electrocardiogram may be my fortune cookie." Because of this unpredictability, the poem baffles the "listener" and their progression to a pattern-filled conversation. However, this makes poetry more true to its purpose of imagination and interpretation. Through this lack of pattern, one must come to conclusions through self-interpretation and possible education on topics unknown. How a dragon could be a neurotoxin is not a normal statement, but a dragon could stand for many things (like strength, mysticism, fire, evil, etc.) that could possibly correlate with neurotoxin. This allowance for variability allows for a freedom of the mind for the mind. In other words, it allows for the listener to disengage predictability and thus nonchalant care towards the poem in order to allow the full imagination and interpretation that lets the poem speak differently to each member of its audience.

Baby Don't Hurt Me, Don't Hurt Me No More.

"Emotions play out in the theater of the body. Feelings play out in the theater of the mind. As we shall see, emotions and the host of related reaction that underlie them are part of the basic mechanisms of life regulation; feelings also contribute to life regulation, but at a higher level. Emotions and related reactions seem to precede feelings in the history of life. Emotions and related phenommena are the foundation for feelings, the mental events that form the bedrock of our minds and whose nature we wish to elucidate." Antonio Damasio in Of Appetites and Emotions

"On the other side of a mirror there’s an inverse world, where the insane go sane; where bones climb out of the earth and recede to the first slime of love.

     And in the evening the sun is just rising.

      Lovers cry because they are a day younger, and soon childhood robs them of their pleasure.

      In such a world there is much sadness which, of course, is joy . . .   " Antimatter by Russell Edson

       This little snippet of a fascinating article, by Demasio, sums the entire paper. It tells of the bio-psychological occurrences that are associated with humans at various levels of cognition, both conscious and not. He says that there should be a distinction between "Emotions" and "Feelings." While this is fine, he makes a distinction that is not normal to conventional thinking. This thought that the outward emotions are the cause of feeling rather than the result is different yet ingenious. In this view, feelings are a reflective process that allows one to reason actions/emotions and influence personality and future actions. With this view, the above poem becomes a story that makes sense in more than just a metaphorical way. The poem on first glance is about opposites becoming the natural order of a parallel world. But after reading the article the last few lines really stand out. "Lovers cry because they are a day younger, and soon childhood robs them of their pleasure. In such a world there is much sadness which, of course, is joy . . ." This line becomes much more interesting with the edition of emotions preceding feelings. Their feelings of joy and sadness are different because their world is different and because emotions exhibited are different. Lovers cry because this emotion of sorrow is then reflected on the loss of time of maturity. All in all this mirror world is one that is wholly not unlike our own, but the details seem askew.

        However my one concern with this article is the lack of definition of the cause of emotions. It is mentioned that emotion is biological and that we do not need to learn how to exhibit them but why we exibit them changes. I questions this drive to show emotion and why it is undefined. This drive to exhibit an emotion is not classified by the Spinoza Appetites or Desires. I would just like to know the classifications of this state otherwise known as the emotional development. For example, anger is sometimes grown from annoyance but this is then developed from an unknown "feeling" or another appropriate word.

Imaginative Entities

"The close relation between navigating social- and story-worlds has a number of
implications, not the least interesting of which is the proposal that readers of predominantly
narrative fiction may actually improve or maintain their social-inference
abilities through reading. The same is unlikely to be true of non-fiction readers.
Although in both cases individuals are removing themselves from true social interaction
by virtue of the solitary nature of reading, non-fiction presumably does not
sponsor the same simulation of the social world as narrative fiction. Frequent readers
of non-fiction, then, by sacrificing human interaction and replacing it with no similar
substitute, may actually impair their social skills. Individual differences in reading
habits and preferences, then, may relate systematically to individual differences in
social-processing ability." By Raymond A. Mar et al. "Bookworms versus nerds: Exposure to Fiction
versus non-fiction, divergent associations with social ability, and the simulation of fictional social worlds"

         This study opens with a discussion of social stereotypes that comment on the charisma of those who predominantly read more than other activities. It brings up the hypothesis that, while those who read non-fiction may be inept in social situations, those who read fiction are actually better in social situations and are stronger in things dealing with the "Theory of the mind." It tells the process and subjects used in the study (which included a wide age range and many types of tests). The article takes into account some uncontrollable variable (like age leading to wisdom or knowing English for longer period of time) by halving results multiple times to ensure trends. This resulted in a slight but significant correlation between fiction and social ability.
           While these were taken into account, the main fact was that the narratives found in fiction novels are the main result. However, the question I have is, "Can this be taken further?" My question is fueled by curiosity but more importantly in pursuit of education. Perhaps a study comparing those who read fiction very little if at all and those who read fiction a lot. One point I would like to raise is reminiscent of my talk about the education of language. If one can learn to pronounce words and talking in ones mind and experience language without a personal attachment (through a computer for example) then can one learn social actions and personality from fiction alone? Of course one would have to read the books of the culture of the time because of the ever changing social aspects of different cultures. If this could be overcome, then can one learn how to socialize in a manner that seems very unorthodox, but perhaps has an educational and social validity.
         One other idea that could be interesting is to try and teach other primates about human society. Primates have the ability to learn sign language and memorize with great speed and accuracy. If there was a way to have these animals "read" fiction novels with great narration, could they be able to function in society. Charles Darwin commented on humans and other animals saying, "their differences are in degree not kind." Other ethologists have said that animals show emotions and other human actions to a lesser degree, and by accomplishing a feat such as this perhaps we could see that the development of complex society is not unique and rather can be learned. The foundation for such social intricacy then can be implied as being biological. This would have to be taken cautiously because this could be twisted into a dark place (i.e. sociobiology and eugenics). However, it could lead to a revolution in not only animal biology but in cognition as well. It could help us perhaps trace the lineage of different thinking processes among species and more.

Getting down to Business

Bare with me that I haven't had much time to look at this (just got the critiques on wed.) but I have gotten some great tips and creative direction from our Professor.

Circles, Brains, and Squares Oh My! - Margaret Cavendish           

           The 18^th century was a time of much discussion and contention involving the brain and its inner-workings. However, there was a backlash from other scientists for a movement against defining the brain and the mind. Those in literature as well as science contested this definition of a unified brain including one young prolific author, Margaret Cavendish. Cavendish argued against the merging of the mind and brain, especially the fact of placing the mind in the organ known as the brain. Cavendish outright humiliated those who tried to demystify it. Through her poem, “The Circle of the Brain cannot be Squared,” Cavendish sets a message that confronts the defining of the mind in the confines of the brain, but also sends a silent outcry against the mathematical simplicity implied about and the worn methodology used to analyze the mind-brain complex.

Possible Sentence beginnings to paragraphs:

1st: The circle was a symbol that had a deep significance to philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians alike. 

2nd:While Cavendish used the imagery of geometry to explain the complexity of the mind, she also critiqued the tendency of those who studied the brain to confine both the brain and mind to a simplistic idea.

3rd: The final major point that Cavendish makes is that those studying the brain have been trying relentlessly for a long time without much result.

Conclusion:

           Cavendish was an extravagant writer that had a passion for her fancies. She wasn't respected in her time but she still expressed her thoughts because the valued both the mind and the brain. She argued against those minds at her time because she just could not stand idly and watch the brain with all its complexities and fullness be transformed into a simple formula or graph. She believed in the ability of natural perception and reasoning and by having this outrageous idea that it, the brain, can be boiled down to the simplicity of the same magnitude as a square. Cavendish and her opinion are very valuable to scientific and educational philosophy and through studying her words one can appreciate the complexity of the brain and of human thought.