Challenging the Computational Metaphor: Implications for How We Think

This paper explores the role of the traditional computational metaphor in our thinking as computer scientists, its influence on epistemological styles, and its implications for our understanding of cognition. It proposes to replace the conventional metaphor--a sequence of steps--with the notion of a community of interacting entities, and examines the ramifications of such a shift on these various ways in which we think

Why 'scaffolding' is the wrong metaphor : the cognitive usefulness of mathematical representations.

The metaphor of scaffolding has become current in discussions of the cognitive help we get from artefacts, environmental affordances and each other. Consideration of mathematical tools and representations indicates that in these cases at least (and plausibly for others), scaffolding is the wrong picture, because scaffolding in good order is immobile, temporary and crude. Mathematical representations can be manipulated, are not temporary structures to aid development, and are refined. Reflection on examples from elementary algebra indicates that Menary is on the right track with his ‘enculturation’ view of mathematical cognition. Moreover, these examples allow us to elaborate his remarks on the uniqueness of mathematical representations and their role in the emergence of new thoughts.Peer reviewe

Some Thoughts on Hypercomputation

Hypercomputation is a relatively new branch of computer science that emerged from the idea that the Church--Turing Thesis, which is supposed to describe what is computable and what is noncomputable, cannot possible be true. Because of its apparent validity, the Church--Turing Thesis has been used to investigate the possible limits of intelligence of any imaginable life form, and, consequently, the limits of information processing, since living beings are, among others, information processors. However, in the light of hypercomputation, which seems to be feasibly in our universe, one cannot impose arbitrary limits to what intelligence can achieve unless there are specific physical laws that prohibit the realization of something. In addition, hypercomputation allows us to ponder about aspects of communication between intelligent beings that have not been considered befor

Acting and being aware

One often assumes that we, rational human beings, first think and than act. This paper is an attempt to describe the mental characteristics governing the performance of regular everyday actions; and shows that no mental act has to precede our actions, instead of consciously thinking before we act, we mostly act while simultaneously overseeing our acting. The case of ball juggling is used to underpin the analysis with practical facts

Metaphor as categorisation: a connectionist implementation

A key issue for models of metaphor comprehension is to explain how in some metaphorical comparison , only some features of B are transferred to A. The features of B that are transferred to A depend both on A and on B. This is the central thrust of Black's well known interaction theory of metaphor comprehension (1979). However, this theory is somewhat abstract, and it is not obvious how it may be implemented in terms of mental representations and processes. In this paper we describe a simple computational model of on-line metaphor comprehension which combines Black's interaction theory with the idea that metaphor comprehension is a type of categorisation process (Glucksberg & Keysar, 1990, 1993). The model is based on a distributed connectionist network depicting semantic memory (McClelland & Rumelhart, 1986). The network learns feature-based information about various concepts. A metaphor is comprehended by applying a representation of the first term A to the network storing knowledge of the second term B, in an attempt to categorise it as an exemplar of B. The output of this network is a representation of A transformed by the knowledge of B. We explain how this process embodies an interaction of knowledge between the two terms of the metaphor, how it accords with the contemporary theory of metaphor stating that comprehension for literal and metaphorical comparisons is carried out by identical mechanisms (Gibbs, 1994), and how it accounts for both existing empirical evidence (Glucksberg, McGlone, & Manfredi, 1997) and generates new predictions. In this model, the distinction between literal and metaphorical language is one of degree, not of kind

Learning morphological phenomena of Modern Greek an exploratory approach

This paper presents a computational model for the description of concatenative morphological phenomena of modern Greek (such as inflection, derivation and compounding) to allow learners, trainers and developers to explore linguistic processes through their own constructions in an interactive open‐ended multimedia environment. The proposed model introduces a new language metaphor, the ‘puzzle‐metaphor’ (similar to the existing ‘turtle‐metaphor’ for concepts from mathematics and physics), based on a visualized unification‐like mechanism for pattern matching. The computational implementation of the model can be used for creating environments for learning through design and learning by teaching