On Sun, 17 Dec 2006 21:33:04 +0000, Alasdair Turner <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
>Dear David,
>
>(...)
>
>The "agents" I mentioned are an approach to space syntax analysis. Each
>"agent" might be considered as a robot unleashed in an environment,
>although both the environment and robots are simulated. In artificial
>life terminology, they would be called "animats".
Alasdair is right, of course, although, to my knowledge, there aren't any
publications in the animat series of conferences which touch on space
syntax. For those who don't know about this, the animat community has been
working on simulation of adaptive behaviour since the early 90s (led, here
in the UK, by Dave Cliff and Phil Husbands).
Rui
>
>The aim of the analysis is to understand the process of engagement of
>the agents and their environment. One can add or remove senses from the
>agents, one of those senses being vision, and thus alter the process of
>engagement. (Although even our implementation of "vision" is as
>pre-existing sight-line possibilities in the environment which the agent
>may sample, very much following Gibson.)
>
>Now, I am indeed from the analytic side of space syntax, so I am
>interested in the relationship of how people act to how the agents act.
> However, I would not call this reductive. The agents are not meant to
>represent the essence of life stripped out from people, but as I have
>suggested, as their own being, which may or may not resemble human life.
>
>So, I am interested in whether or not the pattern of agent movement, or
>hanging out, or whatever the agents happen to do, resembles the pattern
>of people movement, hanging out, or whatever people happen to do.
>
>The importance of vision to this situation (and read simply an ability
>to sense other objects remotely) is that its addition leads to a pattern
>which more resembles the pattern of people's activity. This is
>certainly a reductive step (the identification of pattern for both agent
>and people).
>
>I believe this reductive step is necessary if we are to understand the
>interplay of environmental configuration and human occupation. For
>example, Sam's study will surely analyse how Sheffield cutlers were
>arranged at any one point in time. If processes take place that lead to
>some other arrangement, that other arrangement must also be specified.
>
>That said, the "importance of vision" argument itself relates to the
>onward argument of how to bring axial analysis (the staple of space
>syntax analysis) within the same agent-environment coupled system
>approach to space syntax, which I would simply call an "embodied"
>approach to space syntax.
>
>Alasdair
>
>David Seamon wrote:
>> Alasdair,
>>
>>
>>
>> We understand the situation of person/world so differently that it is
>> difficult for me to fathom what you’re saying. From the way I see what
>> you’re saying, you arbitrarily suppose so much about the nature of
>> environmental and place encounter: e.g., you write “The main point
>> though is that the agents respond directly to their environment through
>> vision.” Who says? This is an a priori claim that phenomenologically is
>> questionable, since it is an assumption—not a “lived fact” demonstrated
>> through careful examination of the way, through lived experience, real
>> people encounter real places, whether moving through them or just
>> “hanging out.”
>>
>>
>>
>> Note, phenomenologically, vision and seeing are largely beside the point
>> in terms of understanding the human dealing with place. Rather, the key
>> phenomenon is what I have called in my work “encounter,” which I defined
>> as “any situation of attentive contact between the person and the world
>> at hand.” Obviously, sensuously, encounter often involves vision but the
>> seeing is only part of a qualitatively different lived structure that
>> “brings” the place closer to the person in terms of awareness (or does
>> not). You’ll agree with me that much of the time that anyone moves
>> through an environment, he or she is oblivious—there is no real seeing
>> at all even though, at some level (what I called “basic contact” in
>> GEOGRAPHY OF LIFEWORLD) there is vision and a kind of uself-conscious
>> awareness OF THE BODY that allows for an ease of “getting around.” At
>> other times, we may “notice” something, we may “watch,” or we may even
>> have some sort of “heightened encounter” with a place. But this way of
>> seeing the person/place relationship is much different that reducing the
>> situation down to “agent” and “vision.” This kind of reductive picture
>> “kills” the situation and thus the phenomenon studied.
>>
>>
>>
>> The phenomenological interpretation of bodily movement argues that much
>> of everyday actions is “below” the realm of cognition and of the
>> preconscious “body-subject.” One important work that has begun to broach
>> the cognitive and phenomenological understandings is cognitive
>> psychologist Raymond Gibbs’s EMBODIMENT AND COGNITIVE SCIENCE (2006,
>> Cambridge), which demonstrates that, even in mainline cognitive science,
>> there is growing recognition that something is askew with the
>> conventional cognitive argument. Here’s the blurb we produced for our
>> Last EAP in regard to some of Gibbs’ conclusions (still phrased in too
>> much of an analytic, positivist language for my taste and giving still
>> too much attention to cognition but a light-year advance for cognitive
>> scientists):
>>
>>
>>
>> Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., 2006. /Embodiment and Cognitive Science.
>> /Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
>>
>>
>>
>> This psychologist examines “how people’s subjective, felt experiences of
>> their bodies in action provide part of the fundamental grounding for
>> human cognition and language….We must not assume cognition to be purely
>> internal, symbolic, computational, and disembodied, but seek out the
>> gross and detailed ways in which language and thought are inextricably
>> shaped by embodied action.” An important book for the phenomenology of
>> embodiment as indicated by some of Gibbs’ major conclusions in regard to
>> “embodied mind”:
>>
>>
>>
>> ¨ Concepts of the self, and who we are as persons, are tightly
>> linked to tactile-kinesthetic activity.
>>
>> ¨ Embodiment is more than physiological and/or brain activity, and
>> is constituted by recurring patterns of kinesthetic, proprioceptive
>> action that provide much of people’s felt, subjective experience.
>>
>> ¨ Perception is not something that only occurs through specific
>> sensory apparatus (e.g., eyeballs and the visual system) in conjunction
>> with particular brain areas, but is a kinesthetic activity that includes
>> all aspects of the body in action. Perception is tightly linked to
>> subjunctive thought processes whereby objects are perceived by imagining
>> how they may be physically manipulated.
>>
>> ¨ Many abstract concepts are partly embodied because they arise from
>> embodied experience and continue to remain rooted in systematic patterns
>> of bodily action.
>>
>> ¨ Cognitive processes are not located exclusively inside a person’s
>> skin as computations upon mental representations (e.g., propositions,
>> productions, mental images, connectionist networks). Cognitive processes
>> are partly constituted by physical and bodily movements and
>> manipulations of objects in real-world environments. Cognitive
>> mechanisms have evolved to operate in conjunction with environmental
>> structures. Thus, cognitive processes are composed of both internal
>> processes and bodily manipulation of external objects outside the skin.
>>
>> ¨ Emotion, consciousness, and language evolved, and continue to
>> exist in many ways, as extensions of animate motion.
>>
>>
>>
>> DS
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Dr. David Seamon
>>
>> Architecture Department, Kansas State University
>>
>> 211 Seaton Hall
>>
>> Manhattan, KS 66506-2901
>>
>> 785-532-1121
>>
>> [log in to unmask]
>>
>>
>>
>
>--
>Alasdair Turner
>Course Director MSc Adaptive Architecture and Computation
>Academic Director EngD VEIV Programme
>
>http://www.vr.ucl.ac.uk/people/alasdair
>========================================================================
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