Reflections [IV] Conceptual Spaces At Work: Parthemore, Unified Conceptual Space

In my notes on Hodges' model, nursing theory and conceptual spaces I've referred to Rosch, Gärdenfors and there is much of note in my copy of The Big Book of Concepts. There are gaps to fill, key sources to find and digest including the history of concepts. In Empirical Investigations in Conceptual Spaces Theory and the Unified Conceptual Space Joel Parthemore really helped this effort. His presentation began with: What is a concept? Which (for me) begs the question: What is a concept within Hodges' model? Is it a single entity?

Joel's slides included the following:

In the Beginning Was...

• Classical definitionism: concepts are like entries in a dictionary.
• Classical imagism: concepts are like pictures in the mind.

And then came their descendants:

• Prototype and exemplar theories (Rosch)
• Informational atomism (Fodor)
• Proxytypes theory (Prinz)
• Conceptual spaces theory (Gärdenfors)

Listening to Joel introduce his work on unified conceptual spaces I can relate several points to Hodges' model especially the following.

• Attempt to describe how all of an individual conceptual agent’s conceptual spaces map or weave together into a single unified space, a “space of spaces” describable along certain common axes.
• By extension, how all of the individual conceptual agents’ unified spaces map together, in linguistic human society, into a single, common unified space.
• Unlike CST, UCST is explicitly enactive: concepts are located not in the agent nor in the environment but in the interaction of agent and environment.

A couple of speakers brought up the question of a 'space of spaces'. Centeredness also preoccupies us in health and education. We are desperate to pick up the patient and the student and put them at the center of things. I keep wondering (see link below) about the extent to which structure and a theory of cognition are interdependent in terms of the resulting conceptual spaces? Since the late 1980s Buzan's mind-mapping has struck me as not being 'grounded'. This may not be an issue in many applications, but for a generic conceptual framework some underlying structure (dimensions) seems essential.

Joel also considered this:

• One major shortcoming of currently available mind-mapping software is the lack of any well-defined theory of cognition (let alone theory of concepts) underlying the application.

I hope I can make contact with Joel and return to this. He indicated papers and further projects with colleagues and a piece of software.

Additional link (Hodges' model - nexus, structure):

http://hodges-model.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=nexus

Reflections [III] Conceptual Spaces At Work: Lund University, Sweden, May 2012

The next session - Event Structure, Conceptual Spaces and the Semantics of Verbs Peter Gärdenfors, Massimo Warglien & Matthijs Westera, was presented by Peter Gärdenfors whose book Conceptual Spaces (2000) I bought in Sedbergh in 2008 (talk about serendipity!).

Just reading the title back then was enough...

There was a starter question: Why are there word classes (nouns, verbs, adverbs...)?

It became evident that first morning that conceptual space as a representational form is very much still in active development. The abstract begins:

The aim of this paper is to integrate spatial cognition with lexical semantics. We develop cognitive models of actions and events based on conceptual spaces and vectors on them. The models are then used to present a semantic theory of verbs. ...

Word classes were related (as in the book) to conceptual space elements, e.g.

nouns - categories
adjectives - properties

In addressing verbs this paper seeks a two-vector model of an event.

Agent (Force) -> Patient (Result)   - result verbs describe the change in the object.

The Professor said that cognitive and linguistic aspects are often confused. Two theses were also provided - thesis 2: single domain constraint.

In addition talk of several spaces might be troubling (adding complexity), but to me the prospects of action space, category space and physical space makes the potential for modelling more explicit and accessible to Hodges' model.

I scribbled down 'agent not always necessary (fall, growth?...)' and pondered about self-care, relatives acting as a proxy.

There was a lot of detail on language, linguistics: static verbs, intentional verbs -> physical action; telic verbs. ... Rather than feel (completely!) confused by this specialist talk, I felt enthused for what is to follow.