arXiv subjects

Liane Gabora

Publications and source records attributed to Liane Gabora.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

A Cross-disciplinary Framework for the Description of Contextually Mediated Change

We present a mathematical framework (referred to as Context-driven Actualization of Potential, or CAP) for describing how entities change over time under the influence of a context. The approach facilitates comparison of change of state of entities studied in different disciplines. Processes are seen to differ according to the degree of nondeterminism, and the degree to which they are sensitive to, internalize, and depend upon a particular context. Our analysis suggests that the dynamical evolution of a quantum entity described by the Schrodinger equation is not fundamentally different from change provoked by a measurement often referred to as collapse, but a limiting case, with only one way to collapse. The biological transition to coded replication is seen as a means of preserving structure in the fact of context-driven change, and sextual replication as a means of increasing potentiality thus enhancing diversity through interaction with context. The framework sheds light on concepts like selection and fitness, reveals how exceptional Darwinian evolution is as a means of 'change of state', and clarifies in what sense culture, and the creative process underlying it, are Darwinian.

physics.gen-ph↗

arXiv2019

Two Cognitive Transitions Underlying the Capacity for Cultural Evolution

This paper proposes that the distinctively human capacity for cumulative, adaptive, open-ended cultural evolution came about through two temporally-distinct cognitive transitions. First, the origin of Homo-specific culture over two MYA was made possible by the onset of a finer-grained associative memory that allowed episodes to be encoded in greater detail. This in turn meant more overlap amongst the distributed representations of these episodes, such that they could more readily evoke one another through self-triggered recall (STR). STR enabled representational redescription, the chaining of thoughts and actions, and the capacity for a stream of thought. Second, fully cognitive modernity following the appearance of anatomical modernity after 200,000 BP, was made possible by the onset of contextual focus (CF): the ability to shift between an explicit convergent mode conducive to logic and refinement of ideas, and an implicit divergent mode conducive to free-association, viewing situations from radically new perspectives, concept combination, analogical thinking, and insight. This paved the way for an integrated, creative internal network of understandings, and behavioral modernity. We discuss feasible neural mechanisms for this two-stage proposal, and outline how STR and CF differ from other proposals. We provide computational evidence for the proposal obtained with an agent-based model of cultural evolution in which agents invent ideas for actions and imitate the fittest of their neighbors' actions. Mean fitness and diversity of actions across the artificial society increased with STR, and even more so with CF, but CF was only effective if STR was already in place. CF was most effective following a change in task, which supports its hypothesized role in escaping mental fixation. The proposal is discussed in the context of transition theory in the life sciences.

q-bio.NC↗

arXiv2019

How Insight Emerges in a Distributed, Content-addressable Memory

We begin this chapter with the bold claim that it provides a neuroscientific explanation of the magic of creativity. Creativity presents a formidable challenge for neuroscience. Neuroscience generally involves studying what happens in the brain when someone engages in a task that involves responding to a stimulus, or retrieving information from memory and using it the right way, or at the right time. If the relevant information is not already encoded in memory, the task generally requires that the individual make systematic use of information that is encoded in memory. But creativity is different. It paradoxically involves studying how someone pulls out of their brain something that was never put into it! Moreover, it must be something both new and useful, or appropriate to the task at hand. The ability to pull out of memory something new and appropriate that was never stored there in the first place is what we refer to as the magic of creativity. Even if we are so fortunate as to determine which areas of the brain are active and how these areas interact during creative thought, we will not have an answer to the question of how the brain comes up with solutions and artworks that are new and appropriate. On the other hand, since the representational capacity of neurons emerges at a level that is higher than that of the individual neurons themselves, the inner workings of neurons is too low a level to explain the magic of creativity. Thus we look to a level that is midway between gross brain regions and neurons. Since creativity generally involves combining concepts from different domains, or seeing old ideas from new perspectives, we focus our efforts on the neural mechanisms underlying the representation of concepts and ideas. Thus we ask questions about the brain at the level that accounts for its representational capacity, i.e. at the level of distributed aggregates of neurons.

q-bio.NC↗

arXiv2019

Synopsis of the workshop on humor and cognition

We summarize the proceedings of the Workshop on Humor and. The principal type of humor considered, slippage humor, is defined and contrasted with aggression-based humor. A variety of slippage humor, based on Hofstadter's notion of a frame blend, is presented. Given that a frame is a small coherent cluster of concepts pertaining to a single topic (similar to a script), a frame blend results when elements extracted from two distinct frames are spliced together to yield a new hybrid frame. Diverse ways of blending two frames can produce varying degrees and types of humor. Studies of this phenomenon are presented. We discuss the connection between frame blends and analogies, focusing on the Copycat domain: an idealized microworld in which analogy making can be studied and modeled on computer. It is shown how jokes can be mapped into that domain, giving rise to a kind of abstract microworld humor. This highlights the relationships amongst good jokes, defective analogies, and frame blends. We discuss the notion that many jokes can share the same abstract structure, and propose the term ur-joke for the most abstract level of a joke. Several specific ur-jokes are presented, each with a set of fully fleshed-out jokes based on it. We recount efforts at translating two jokes from one subject matter to another in an attempt to determine whether a joke's funniness is due more to its underlying ur-joke or its subject matter. We discuss the relationship between the Raskin's overlapping-script theory of humor, Hofstadter's frame-blend theory, and a theory that incorporates multiple-level analysis of jokes. Finally, a speculative theory about the adaptive value of humor is presented.

q-bio.NC↗

arXiv2019

Introduction to the Special Issue on Quantum Cognition

The subject of this special issue is quantum models of cognition. At first sight it may seem bizarre, even ridiculous, to draw a connection between quantum mechanics, a highly successful theory usually understood as modeling sub-atomic phenomena, and cognitive science. However, a growing number of researchers are looking to quantum theory to circumvent stubborn problems within their own fields. This is also true within cognitive science and related areas, hence this special issue.

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arXiv2019

Conceptual Closure: How Memories are Woven into an Interconnected Worldview

This paper describes a tentative model for how discrete memories transform into an interconnected conceptual network, or worldview, wherein relationships between memories are forged by way of abstractions. The model draws on Kauffman's theory of how an information-evolving system could emerge through the formation and closure of an autocatalytic network. Here, the information units are not catalytic molecules, but memories and abstractions, and the process that connects them is not catalysis but reminding events (i.e. one memory evokes another). The result is a worldview that both structures, and is structured by, self-triggered streams of thought.

nlin.AO↗

arXiv2019

An Evolutionary Framework for Culture: Selectionism versus Communal Exchange

Dawkins' replicator-based conception of evolution has led to widespread mis-application selectionism across the social sciences because it does not address the paradox that inspired the theory of natural selection in the first place: how do organisms accumulate change when traits acquired over their lifetime are obliterated? This is addressed by von Neumann's concept of a self-replicating automaton (SRA). A SRA consists of a self-assembly code that is used in two distinct ways: (1) actively deciphered during development to construct a self-similar replicant, and (2) passively copied to the replicant to ensure that it can reproduce. Information that is acquired over a lifetime is not transmitted to offspring, whereas information that is inherited during copying is transmitted. In cultural evolution there is no mechanism for discarding acquired change. Acquired change can accumulate orders of magnitude faster than, and quickly overwhelm, inherited change due to differential replication of variants in response to selection. This prohibits a selectionist but not an evolutionary framework for culture. Recent work on the origin of life suggests that early life evolved through a non-Darwinian process referred to as communal exchange that does not involve a self-assembly code, and that natural selection emerged from this more haphazard, ancestral evolutionary process. It is proposed that communal exchange provides a more appropriate evolutionary framework for culture than selectionism. This is supported by a computational model of cultural evolution and a network-based program for documenting material cultural history, and it is consistent with high levels of human cooperation.

q-bio.PE↗

arXiv2019

Reply to Commentaries on 'An Evolutionary Framework for Cultural Change: Selectionism versus Communal Exchange'

The commentators have brought a wealth of new perspectives to the question of how culture evolves. Each of their diverse disciplines--ranging from psychology to biology to anthropology to economics to engineering--has a valuable contribution to make to our understanding of this complex, multifaceted topic. Though the vast majority of their comments were supportive of my approach, it is natural that a reply such as this focus on points where my views differ from that of the commentators. ... I conclude by saying that I am grateful to the commentators for their diverse perspectives and insights, their overall support for the project, and provocative ideas for where to go from here. Clearly there are many fascinating avenues to explore as we move forward on our quest to understand how culture evolves.

q-bio.PE↗

arXiv2019

Ideas are Not Replicators but Minds Are

An idea is not a replicator because it does not consist of coded self-assembly instructions. It may retain structure as it passes from one individual to another, but does not replicate it. The cultural replicator is not an idea but an associatively-structured network of them that together form an internal model of the world, or worldview. A worldview is a primitive, uncoded replicator, like the autocatalytic sets of polymers widely believed to be the earliest form of life. Primitive replicators generate self-similar structure, but because the process happens in a piecemeal manner, through bottom-up interactions rather than a top-down code, they replicate with low fidelity, and acquired characteristics are inherited. Just as polymers catalyze reactions that generate other polymers, the retrieval of an item from memory can in turn trigger other items, thus cross-linking memories, ideas, and concepts into an integrated conceptual structure. Worldviews evolve idea by idea, largely through social exchange. An idea participates in the evolution of culture by revealing certain aspects of the worldview that generated it, thereby affecting the worldviews of those exposed to it. If an idea influences seemingly unrelated fields this does not mean that separate cultural lineages are contaminating one another, because it is worldviews, not ideas, that are the basic unit of cultural evolution.

q-bio.PE↗

arXiv2019

The Recognizability of Individual Creative Styles Within and Across Domains

We present a set of studies that tested the hypothesis that creative style is recognizable within and across domains. Art students were shown two sets of paintings, the first by five famous artists and the second by their art student peers. For both sets, they guessed the creators of the works at above-chance levels. In a similar study, creative writing students guessed at above-chance levels which passages were written by which of five famous writers, and which passages were written by which of their writing student peers. When creative writing students were asked to produce works of art, they guessed at above-chance levels which of their peers produced which artwork. Finally, art students who were familiar with each other's paintings guessed at above-chance levels which of their peers produced which non-painting artwork. The findings support the hypothesis that creative styles are recognizable not just within but also across domains. We suggest this is because all of an individual's creative outputs are expressions of a particular underlying uniquely structured self-organizing internal model of the world.

q-bio.NC↗

arXiv2019

Revenge of the 'Neurds': Characterizing Creative Thought in terms of the Structure and Dynamics of Memory

There is cognitive, neurological, and computational support for the hypothesis that defocusing attention results in divergent or associative thought, conducive to insight and finding unusual connections, while focusing attention results in convergent or analytic thought, conducive to rule-based operations. Creativity appears to involve both. It is widely believed that it is possible to escape mental fixation by spontaneously and temporarily engaging in a more associative mode of thought. The resulting insight (if found) may be refined in a more analytic mode of thought. The questions addressed here are: (1) how does the architecture of memory support these two modes of thought, and (2) what is happening at the neural level when one shifts between them? Recent advances in neuroscience shed light on this. Activated cell assemblies are composed of multiple neural cliques, groups of neurons that respond differentially to general or context-specific aspects of a situation. I refer to neural cliques that would not be included in the assembly if one were in an analytic mode, but would be if one were in an associative mode, as neurds. It is posited that the shift to a more associative mode of thought is accomplished by recruiting neurds that respond to abstract or atypical microfeatures of the problem or task. Since memory is distributed and content-addressable, this fosters the forging of associations to potentially relevant items previously encoded in those neurons. Thus it is proposed that creative thought not by searching a space of predefined alternatives and blindly tweaking those that hold promise, but by evoking remotely associated items through the recruitment of neurds in a distributed, content-addressable memory.

q-bio.NC↗

arXiv2019

An Analysis of the 'Blind Variation and Selective Retention' Theory of Creativity

Picasso's Guernica sketches continue to provide a fruitful testing ground for examining and assessing the Blind Variation Selective Retention (BVSR) theory of creativity. Nonmonotonicity--e.g. as indicated by a lack of similarity of successive sketches--is not evidence of a selectionist process; Darwin's theory explains adaptive change, not nonmonotonicity. Although the notion of blindness originally implied randomness, it now encompasses phenomena that bias idea generation, e.g. the influence of remote associations on sketch ideas. However, for a selectionist framework is to be applicable, such biases must be negligible, otherwise evolutionary change is attributed to those biases, not to selection. The notion of 'variants' should not be applied to creativity; without a mechanism of inheritance, there is no basis upon which to delineate, for example, which sketch ideas are or are not variants of a given sketch idea. The notion of selective retention is also problematic. Selection provides an explanation when acquired change is not transmitted; it cannot apply to Picasso's painting (or other creative acts) because his ideas acquired modifications as he thought them through that were incorporated into paintings and viewed by others. The generation of one sketch affects the criteria by which the next is judged, so sequentially generated sketches cannot be treated as members of a generation, and selected amongst. Although BVSR is inappropriate as a theoretical framework for creativity, exploring to what extent selectionism explains the generation of not just biological form but masterpieces such as Picasso's Guernica is useful for gaining insight into creativity.

q-bio.NC↗

arXiv2019

Five clarifications about cultural evolution

This paper reviews and clarifies five misunderstandings about cultural evolution identified by Henrich, Boyd, and Richerson (2008). First, cultural representations are neither discrete nor continuous; they are distributed across neurons that respond to microfeatures. This enables associations to be made, and cultural change to be generated. Second, 'replicator dynamics' do not ensure natural selection. The replicator notion does not capture the distinction between actively interpreted self-assembly code and passively copied self-description, which leads to a fundamental principle of natural selection: inherited information is transmitted, whereas acquired information is not. Third, this principle is violated in culture by the ubiquity of acquired change. Moreover, biased transmission is less important to culture than the creative processes by which novelty is generated. Fourth, there is no objective basis for determining cultural fitness. Fifth, the necessity of randomness is discussed. It is concluded that natural selection is inappropriate as an explanatory framework for culture.

q-bio.PE↗

arXiv2019

Clinical and Educational Applications of LIVEIA: An Immersive Visualization Environment

The association between light and psychological states has a long history and permeates our language. LIVEIA (Light-based Immersive Visualization Environment for Imaginative Actualization) is a new immersive, interactive technology that uses physical light as a metaphor for visualizing peoples' inner lives and relationships. This paper outlines its educational value, as a tool for understanding and explaining aspects of how people think and interact, and its potential therapeutic value as a form of art therapy in which the artwork has straightforwardly interpretable symbolic meanings.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2019

A Layperson Introduction to the Quantum Approach to Humor

Despite our familiarity with and fondness of humor, until relatively recently very little was known about the underlying psychology of this complex and nuanced phenomenon. Recently, however, cognitive psychologists have begun investigating how people understand humor and why we find certain things funny. This chapter introduces a new cognitive approach to modeling humor that we refer to as the 'quantum approach', which will be explained here in intuitive, non-mathematical terms later (a formal treatment can be found in Gabora & Kitto, 2017). What makes the quantum approach a promising candidate for a theory of humor is that it can be useful for representing states of ambiguity, and it defines states and variables with reference to a context. Contextuality and ambiguity both play a key role in humor, which often hangs on an ambiguous word, phrase, or situation that might not make sense, or even be socially acceptable outside the specific context of the joke. The quantum approach does not attempt to explain all aspects of humor, such as the contagious quality of laughter, or why children tease each other, or why people might find it funny when someone is hit in the face with a pie (and laugh even if they know it will happen in advance); what it aims to do is to mathematically represent the underlying cognitive process of "getting" a joke. After briefly overviewing the relevant historical antecedents of the quantum approach and other related approaches in cognitive psychology, we present the theoretical basis of our approach, and outline a recent study that provides empirical support for it.

q-bio.NC↗

arXiv2019

The Creative Process of Cultural Evolution

Even this saying itself is a variant of a similar statement attributed to Bernard of Chartres in the 12th Century, and inspired the title for a book by Steven Hawking and an album by Oasis. Creative ideas beget other creative ideas and, as a result, modifications accumulate, and we see an overall increase in the complexity of cultural novelty over time, a phenomenon sometimes referred to as the ratchet effect (Tomasello, Kruger, & Ratner, 1993). Although we may never meet the people or objects that creatively influence us, by assimilating what we encounter around us and bringing to bear our own insights and perspectives, we all contribute in our own way, however small, to a second evolutionary process -- the evolution of culture. This chapter explores how we can better understand culture by understanding the creative processes that fuel it, and better understand creativity by examining it from its cultural context. First, we look at some theoretical frameworks for how culture evolves and what these frameworks imply for the role of creativity. Then we will see how questions about the relationship between creativity and cultural evolution have been addressed using an agent-based model. We will also discuss studies of how creative outputs are influenced, in perhaps unexpected ways, by other ideas and individuals, and how individual creative styles "peek through" cultural outputs in different domains.

q-bio.PE↗

arXiv2019

Evolution of the Science Fiction Writer's Capacity to Imagine the Future

Drawing upon a body of research on the evolution of creativity, this paper proposes a theory of how, when, and why the forward-thinking story-telling abilities of humans evolved, culminating in the visionary abilities of science fiction writers. The ability to recursively chain thoughts together evolved approximately two million years ago. Language abilities, and the ability to shift between different modes of thought, evolved approximately 100,000 years ago. Science fiction dates to at least the second Century AD. It is suggested that well before this time, but after 100,000 years ago, and concurrent with the evolution of a division of labour between creators and imitators there arose a division of labour between past, present, and future thinkers. Agent-based model research suggests there are social benefits to the evolution of individual differences in creativity such that there is a balance between novelty-generating creators and continuity-perpetuating imitators. A balance between individuals focused on the past, present, and future would be expected to yield similar adaptive benefits.

q-bio.NC↗

arXiv2019

Creativity: Linchpin in the Quest for a Viable Theory of Cultural Evolution

This paper outlines the implications of neural-level accounts of insight, and models of the conceptual interactions that underlie creativity, for a theory of cultural evolution. Since elements of human culture exhibit cumulative, adaptive, open-ended change, it seems reasonable to view culture as an evolutionary process, one fueled by creativity. Associative memory models of creativity and mathematical models of how concepts combine and transform through interaction with a context, support a view of creativity that is incompatible with a Darwinian (selectionist) framework for cultural evolution, but compatible with a non-Darwinian (Self-Other Reorganization) framework. A theory of cultural evolution in which creativity is centre stage could provide the kind of integrative framework for the behavioral sciences that Darwin provided for the life sciences.

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