turner blending box experiment

8/12/2019 TURNER Blending Box Experiment

1/23Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1541062Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1541062

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Blending Box Experiments, Build 1.0

Mark Turner, 23 January 2010

Working Paper

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Abstract

This article concerns a central human mental ability: the ability to blend two

different conceptual arrays so as to produce an emergent outcome in the blend.

The centrality of this mental operation is widely and robustly confirmed by the

empirical data. But as far as I have found, there are no tests proposed in the

literature to detect the presence or to measure the extent of this ability across the

human lifespan(development, maturity, senescence), or under deficit(post-stroke

or trauma), oracross members of other species(mammalian, aviary). This working

paper sketches some of the difficulties encountered in trying to devise such a

test. These difficulties have not yet been surmounted. No completely worthy

test has yet been found.

A Basic Mental Operation

"Blending" is a metaphoric term used to refer to a powerful basic mental

operation in which input mental arrays are integrated to create a new mental

array (the blend). (See Fauconnier & Turner 2002;

http://blending.stanford.edu). Rudimentary forms of blending are evident

throughout mammalian cognition. It is hypothesized in the literature that the

most advanced formdouble-scope blendingis specific to cognitivelymodern human beings, roughly all neurotypical members of homo sapiens

sapiens since roughly the Upper Paleolithic Age. Blending operates according to

constitutive principles and governing principles (Fauconnier & Turner 2002).

Most notably, it involves selective projection from inputs and typically results in

emergent structure in the blend that is not available in any of the inputs.


2/23Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1541062Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1541062

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A Basic Example

The Riddle of the Buddhist Monk is a classic introductory example in the

theory of blending:

The Riddle of the Buddhist Monk:A Buddhist monk

begins at dawn one day walking up a mountain,

reaches the top at sunset, meditates at the top

overnight until, at dawn, he begins to walk back to the

foot of the mountain, which he reaches at sunset.

Make no assumptions about his starting or stopping or

about his pace during the trips. Riddle: is there a placeon the path that the monk occupies at the same hour of

the day on the two trips?

Here is a video representation of the journey of the Buddhist Monk:

Figure 1: Monks Journey, Version 1


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The riddle is challenging because it asks us to draw inferences over a distributed

conceptual network of various dynamic events.

For the Riddle of the Buddhist Monk, we can do this by blending the monks

ascent with his descent. We superimpose in imagination the ascent and the

descent. In our mental simulation, the ascent and descent now take place in the

same time interval, and on the same path. It is as if we took two video

recordingsone of the ascent and one of the descentand projected them

simultaneously onto the same screen. From the mental space of the ascent and

the mental space of the descent, we project structure selectively to a third,

blended mental space. In this space, at dawn, the monk is at two positions:

one monk at the bottom of the path and another, who is identical to the first, is at

the summit. By dusk, each monk has traveled to the opposite position. Here is a

representation of this blend:

Figure 2: Monks Meet During Journey, Version 1

It is natural to wonder whether the existence or non-existence of a point which

the monk occupies at the same hour of the day on the two successive days

depends on how the monk moves. But in the blend, no matter how the monks

move, so long as they start at dawn, end at dusk, and traverse the path without

leaving it, the monks must always cross, or meet, somewhere, and that meeting


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point will be the location which the monk occupies at the same hour of the day

on the two successive days. For example, if the monk moves as in the following

representation


there still must be a meeting point:



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And if the monk moves as in the following representation


there still must be a meeting point



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The insight provided by these blends does not constitute a formal deductive

proof.

Digression Number One: Proof. A formal deductive proof can

be provided mathematically. First, an informal graphical proof.

In the real plane, with Cartesian coordinates, let the horizontal

axis represent time of day (t) and the vertical axis represent

pathwise distance along the mountain path from the foot to the

top. The plot of the monks ascent is the plot of his distance

(from the foot of the path) versus the time of day. The domain

of this plot, that is, the possible values of t, runs from 0 at dawn

to time S at sunset, inclusive. The range of this plot, that is, the

possible values of his distance, runs from 0 at the foot of the

path to E at the top of the path. It follows from the nature of

human ontology that the plot must be a function, because the

monk can be in only one place at any given time. Call the

function for the ascent a(t). It follows from the nature of human

locomotion that a(t)must be continuous. A human being

cannot move discontinuously in space. Intuitively, a function is

said to be continuous if one can draw its graph on paper

without lifting the point of the pencil. Now consider the plot ofthe descent, d(t). Mutatis mutandis, the arguments used for a(t)

hold for d(t).We therefore have two real functions, a(t)and d(t),

continuous on [0,S]. a(t) connects points (0,0) and (S,E). d(t)

connects points (0,E) and (S,0). Imagine the rectangle whose

vertices are (0,0), (0,E), (S,E), and (S,0). Imagine drawing the

ascent from (0,0) to (S,E) and then the descent from (0,E) to (S,0).

However you draw the two functions, provided that for each of

them you do not lift your pencil from the paper, they mustintersect somewhere in the rectangle. Now for the formal proof.

A functionfis called continuous if, for all c in the domain, for

any number !> 0, however small, there exists some number ">

0 such that for all xin the domain offwith c!"< x< c+ ", the


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value off(x) satisfiesf(c) !


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value theorem applied to the difference of the ascent and the

descent. Most of the people to whom I have presented both (1)

and (2) find (2) to be more mathematical and serious, but in fact

(2) is a notational variant of (1): two conceptual inputs (the two

functions connecting opposite vertices of the rectangle) must be

blended mentally to produce an emergent outcome (the

intersection) that is not contained in the inputs. It may seem as

if this drawing of two graphs is not selective, that is, as if all of

each journey is represented on the graph paper, but in fact the

selectivity in drawing the graphs is effectively equivalent to the

mental blending of the two journeys. By putting both graphs on

the same domain of time on the x-axis, from dawn to sunset, we

have selected out the projection of the specific values of the

calendrical days. We have also selected out organisms and

intentionality, intervals of time between sunset and dawn,

background knowledge such as that one physical entity can be

in only one place at a time, and that a person who saw himself

approaching might be disturbed or distracted and give up the

journey altogether. Just as in the blending of the two journeys,

the intuitive proof is not merely induction on one case of twospecific graphs: part of the informal graphical proof consists in

seeing that, although there is an uncountable infinity of

continuous graphs connecting the two sets of opposite vertices,

the structure of variance over those alternatives makes no

difference to the outcome: the two graphs must intersect

regardless of the immaterial variations. To grasp the intuitive

proof requires seeing mentally that, on the given conditions,

all the uncountably infinite possibilities for the graphs mustproduce the same general result: at least one intersection.

The insight that comes from the mental blending includes the recognition that all

the specific cases, and therefore the abstract case, create a blend with a particular

emergent structure: a meeting. In the blend, but in neither of the inputs, there are


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two travelers, and they meet, necessarily at a particular time of day. The purpose

of the blend is not to replace the inputs (ascent and descent), but to allow us to

reason over the network, to detect structure in the network that is otherwise not

instantly apparent. The existence of the meeting place in the blend is connected

back to structure across the network. We take the meeting place as indicating a

conceptual connection between the mental space of the ascent and the mental

space of the descent: in each of those two mental spaces, there is a location on the

path corresponding to the meeting point in the blend, and there is an identity

connector between those two locations on the path in each of the input spaces

ascent and descentsuch that if the monk is positioned at the designated spot in

one mental space then at the same hour of the day in the other mental space, the

monk must be located at the identical spot.

In the terminology of blending theory, such a network is called a mirror

network, because the two inputs share a frame: a particular person traverses a

particular mountain path from one end to the other, traveling from sunup to

sundown. The two spaces differ on some lower values, such as the direction of

the traversal and the specific calendrical day, but they share an organizing frame

and considerable lower detail.

Implicit Folk Tests of Blending

This section is not essential for following the main line of this article.

The Buddhist Monk is an example of a riddle as an implicit folk test of

blending. There are many such riddles or puzzles. There are also humorous

vignettes whose humor consists in poor blending done by incompetent people.

Its slightly funny for a sailor to hear a novice propose that the ocean current can

be measured by tossing a piece of wood over the side of the boat and measuring

its displacement relative to the boat over time. That would work at a river: you

toss the twig from the bank into the water. The novice is blending the boat withthe bank or some other object that is stationary with respect to the water. But of

course, the current moves the boat, too, so the blend is incompetent in the case of

the boat.

Consider the Darwin Awards. Recitation of these awards is unsuitable in

mixed company. Darwin Awards honor those who improve the species by


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accidentally removing themselves from it. See

http://www.darwinawards.com/. The logo for the Darwin Awards is a

chestnut example of incompetent blending: a man straddles a tree limb, tongue

tucked into the corner of his mouth, as he saws through the tree limb at a spot

between him and the trunk. The blending network has an input space with the

tree and another input space, call it a carpentry space, with someone sawing a

board in two. In the blend, the board is naturally blended with the tree limb. In

the carpentry input, the person sawing the board is standing on solid ground,

where the stability of the ground is independent of the carpentry. That stability

is unthinkingly projected to the blend. What a mistake.

The Darwin Awards have several mottos, one of which is The Tree of

Life is Self-Pruning, itself an admirable blend. Another is Dumb, Dumber,

Darwin.

There is the urban legend about the terrorist who mails a letter bomb, and,

when it is returned insufficient postage, opens it and blows himself up. An

evident failure to blend. There is the story of the beleaguered mother tells her

children, I wish Id never been born. Then youd know what its like not to

have a mother!

Blonde jokes often follow this pattern of demonstrating bad blending,

which can happen in a number of ways. These humorous vignettes are alsofrequently unsuitable for mixed company, but here is one that is relatively

anodyne, the humor deriving from the blondes making the wrong blend: A

blonde was driving down the road listening to the radio and was quite upset when she

heard blonde joke after blonde joke. A little way down the road, she saw another blonde

out in a field rowing a boat. The blonde stopped her car and angrily jumped out yelling,

You dumb blonde bimbo! It's blondes like you that give the rest of us a bad name! If I

could swim I'd come out there and give you what's coming to you!Heres a similar

example in which the blonde blends, improperly: A blonde, a brunette, and a

redhead were trying out for a new NASA experiment on sending women to different

planets. First, they called the brunette in and asked her a question. "If you could go to

any planet, what planet would you want to go to and why?" After pondering the

question she answered, "I would like to go to Mars because it seems so interesting with

all the recent news about possible extra terrestrial life on the planet." They said, "well


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okay, thank you," and told her that they would get back to her. Next, the redhead entered

the room and the NASA people asked her the same question. She replied, "I would like to

go to Saturn to see all of its rings." Again, "thank you," and they would get back to her.

Finally, the blonde entered the room and they asked her the same question they asked the

brunette and the redhead. She thought for a while and replied, "I would like to go to the

sun." The people from NASA replied, "Why, don't you know that if you went to the sun

you would burn to death?" The blonde smirked and put her hands on her hips. "Are you

guys dumb? I'd go at night!"In the next joke, the first ludicrous situation comes

from accepting the blend, and the second comes from accepting the same blend

but adding another, rehabilitating projection in the face of the blends failure to

match reality. A blonde was driving home after work and got caught in a really bad

hailstorm. Her car was covered with dents, so the next day she took it to the repair shop.

The shop owner saw that she was a blonde, so he decided to have some fun. He told her

just to go home and blow into the tail pipe really hard, and all the dents would pop out.

So, the blonde went home, got down on her hands and knees and started blowing into her

car's tailpipe. Nothing happened. She blew a little harder, and still nothing happened.

Her roommate, another blonde, came home and said, "What are you doing?" The first

blonde told her how the repairman had instructed her to blow into the tailpipe in order to

get all the dents to pop out. Her roommate rolled her eyes and said... "HEL-

LOOOOOOOO ...You gotta roll up the windows!!!

The Problem: How To Devise a Test or a Measure?

There is a great deal going on in the blending solution of the Riddle of the

Buddhist Monk, to some of which we will return, but to motivate interest, I will

sketch out the lineaments of what looks like a central cognitive ability for which

no test or measurement in the literature has been found that is suitable for

applying to human beings across cultures and across the lifespan, or to members

of other species. The mental ability is this: Conceptual inputs (in this case, of the ascent and the descent) are blended

o mentallyo and selectively,


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! for example, we do not bring into the blend the calendricalday, or certain background knowledge, such as that one

person cannot be in two places at the same moment

o with crucial emergent structure arising in the blend! indeed, this is indispensable for attaining the goal: the

meeting in the blend is emergent, that is, not contained in

either input, yet this structure in the blend achieves the goal

by creating something in the mental network.

My purpose in presenting the blend of the Buddhist Monk is to give an example

of this mental ability.

The question is:

What organisms have this mental ability to blend for emergent

structure, at what stages of life, and under what conditions? To

what degree do they have it, for what domains?

Difficulties in Designing a Test or a Measure

We very quickly encounter difficulties:

How to find a suitable observable?o In one sense, cognitively modern human beings constantly engage

in observable behavior that confirms their command of this ability:they produce and understand language and gesture, play music,

solve riddles, do mathematics, and so on, as documented in

Fauconnier & Turner 2002 and elsewhere. But these behaviors are

amazingly complex and interweaving, and we cannot point so

clearly to the behavior of infants, people under various kinds of

trauma, or members of other species as evincing this ability.

Methodologically, it would be best if we could find some clearly

observable specific behavior, some clearly observable event,plausibly available to all the potential subjects of the test and not

controversial as a test. Although mental blending for an emergent

outcome is evident in many kinds of behavior, often the particular

behavior is not as common as we would like. Infants do not

speak; not everyone plays guitar; dolphins do not seem to use


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complex numbers; it can be very difficult to detect what someone

who has just suffered stroke but is conscious is doing mentally

beyond basic perception and organismic maintenance.

Additionally, to detect the nuances of the mental blending in a

particular domain often requires trained expertise. If a linguist

asserts to a nonlinguist that a grammatical structure in a particular

language that the nonlinguist does not speak shows a certain fact

about mental blending, that nonlinguist is unlikely to find the

supporting arguments compelling, at least without both learning

the language and becoming trained in linguistic analysis.

How to distinguish mental blending for emergent structure from othermethods of producing the chosen observable?

o Whatever task and related suitable observable we ultimately choseas the basis for the test, we would need to be able to distinguish

different ways of generating the observable and be sure that the

action was driven by mental blending rather than some other

methods, such as:

! Chance! Random trialby the subject! Trial-and-error tuning under feedback! The activation of an already integrated memory! Conditioning for the behavior! Instinctivebehavior! Automaticbehavior

Some Candidate Constraints On Choosing the Observable and

Designing the Test

One kind of behavior that would seem to be widely available across the human

lifecourse and across mammalian speciesincluding marine mammalswould


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seem to be motor action, and in particular motor action causal for a physical

outcome in the environment. Babies, dogs, dolphins, chimpanzees, mice, ravens,

and so on all seem uncontroversially to engage in motor action directly causal for

a physical outcome in the environment. Newborn human beings may be least

able at this kind of behavior, but then it is difficult to test them at all

behaviorally, and they do have some such behavior, plausibly more than

developmental cognitive science recognizes.

But many such specific motor actions require considerable learning, with

trial-and-error tuning under feedback, however simple they seem to the

observer. Consider surfing. The Beach Boys released a song in 1963, Catch A

Wave, that makes it sound simple:

You paddle out, turn around, and raise

And baby that's all there is to the coastline craze

You gotta catch a wave and you're sittin' on top of the world

It looks easy. And for anyone who surfs, it feels intuitive, natural, or at least like

second nature. But even top-notch surfers remember how hard it is to learn.

Similar motor behaviors include driving, bicycling, motorcycle riding, playing

pool, playing a musical instrument, typing, using a trackpad on a computer,

playing tennis, sack artist sex, playing volleyball, many cooking techniques,

carving meat at the table, dressing, undressing, carpentry routines, movingfurniture, handwriting, dancing with a partner, working with various mechanic

tools . . . I knew a guy who could do anything with a pair of channel locks . . .

It seems, therefore, that we would look for a motor action that is already

entirely within the competence of the subject, one that does not require trial-

and-error tuning under feedback

Also, as discussed above under Difficulties, we would want to find a

motor action that is not chance, random trial, trial-and-error tuning under

feedback, the activation of an already script in memory, conditioned behavior,instinctive behavior, or automatic behavior.


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A Candidate For the Observable and For the Test

Since we want a test of mental blending, not complicated by questions of motor

ability, random trial, trail-and-error tuning, or other learning involving feedback,

we seek a motor action that is effortlessly within the competence of the subject,something that, as far as motor ability goes, the subject should be able to do right

off the bat. This might seem an easy requirement to meet, but we run up against

at least two difficulties immediately, that pull in opposite directions, and it is not

immediately clear how to walk the line between them:

1. There are many examples of basic instinctive or automatic motor actionthat can be analyzed as involving two actions to produce an outcome but

that would not be taken as evidence of mental blending as opposed to

automatic integrated action. For example, if we turn around and

something small happens to be flying at our face, we might both raise our

arm and grip our fingers so as to catch it, and this can happen as one

highly integrated motor action before we are even aware that we are

doing anything. Indeed, just walking, or even standing, requires multiple

motor actions to produce the outcomes of moving forward or remaining

upright, and this can all happen below the horizon of awareness. We can

be directly evolved for these behaviors and have honed through extensive

prior experience. So we want to stay away from instinctive and automatic

motor actions.

2. But pulling in the other direction, many motor performances dependupon extensive and sustained cultural learning. That is not in itself a

problem if we are sure the subject has long ago attained the necessary

background cultural learningas opposed to the specific motor action

that produces the observable, but it is not so easy to locate such pan-

cultural learning for human populations, much less animal populations.As a first pass, suppose we choose something likepushing a button. Perhaps this

is already exotic. Although all over the world, babies, children, and adults push

all kinds of buttons to achieve an effectas we see in childrens toys, doorbells,

keyboardsit may be that it would already be exotic to require a subject to push

a button, for some populations. It is also pretty clear that in the wild, animals do


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not push buttons. Well come back to that, but lets choosepushing a buttonfor

the sake of discussion, as a way of putting the difficulties onstage. Later, well

takepushing a buttonas analogical for a range of motor actionsstepping on

something, pecking at something, biting something, barking at something,

pushing something, etc.each one ecologically valid for the organism in

question in the actual environment in which the test is run. For now, lets just

stick withpushing a button.

Suppose that we have two buttons in the physical environment, button 1

and button 2. Suppose that pushing button 1 reliably produces event 1 in the

physical environment, and pushing button 2 reliably produces event 2 in the

physical environment. We test the subject to ascertain that the subject can push

both buttons and does understand the effect of pushing each.

Now, suppose that there is an event, event 3, such that

event 3 is reliably the outcome of pushing buttons 1 and 2, if they arepushed in the right way;

the subject is uncontroversially highly motivated to cause event 3; the subject has not seen event 3; mental blending of (the conceptual structure of) events 1 and 2 can

achieve (the conceptual structure of) event 3.

What we are seeking is a mental blend of event 1 and event 2 that contains event3 and that can be the result of blending event 1 and event 2. Then that blending

network can be the basis of real motor action to cause event 3.

The Buddhist Monk blend is an example of blending event 1 (ascent) with

event 2 (descent) to create mentally an event 3 (meeting). But if we present the

riddle of the Buddhist Monk to a subject, there is no observable motor action for

the subject to take that demonstrates the subjects mental blending of the ascent

and descent to recognize the meeting. We can interview the subject, and the

subject can reply, and the right response is very strong evidence of the subjectsmental blending, but providing a linguistic reply is especially subject to

interpretation and not something generally available across the human lifespan,

including after trauma, or across other species.

Lets consider how to meet the requirements listed above concerning a

motor action that shows the blending of event 1 and event 2 to produce event 3.


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Imagine a device with two buttons, one blue and one red, and two balls, one blue

and one red. Both balls are at rest on an incline. Pushing the blue button releases

the blue ball to roll down the incline and then off the incline. Pushing the red

button releases the red ball to roll down the incline and then off the incline. Here

are two simplified cartoons, one in which the blue button is pushed, and one in

which the red button is pushed.

Figure 7: Pushing the blue button causes the blue ball to roll


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Figure 8: Pushing the red button causes the red ball to roll

Suppose we show an adult what happens when we push the blue button and

what happens when we push the red button, and we let the adult push the blue

button and see the consequences and push the red button and see the

consequences. And then we tell them that we will pay them a million dollars if

they can make the two balls land on the green oval.

Since we want to exclude chance, random trial, trial-and-error tuning,

already-learned behavior, and behavior that is conditioned, instinctive, or

automatic, we should arrange so that the motor action is not probable absent

mental blending. It should be something that strongly suggests active mental

blending. Human beings, for example, are bilaterally symmetric, and

particularly able to move in such a way that left and right mirror each other, so

we need a test where simultaneous pressing of the buttons does not produce theright outcome. Here is an example:


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Figure 9: Pushing both buttons simultaneously

does not produce the incentivized outcome

What we seek, by contrast, is evidence that mental blending (the conception of)

events 1 and 2 (blue ball rolls and red ball rolls) to produce (the conception of)

event 3 (they hit each other and fall to the green oval). We seek evidence that the

subject understands that motor action 1 (pressing the blue button) and motor

action 2 (pressing the red button), performed in the right way, will result in the

incentivized outcome (balls land on the green oval):


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Figure 10: Pushing both buttons with the right time lag

produces the incentivized outcome

So What Is Wrong With This Candidate?

Everything.

In the cartoons, the physics engine is errant fantasy; its not clear whatthe physics engine is, so the subject could not be expected to predict its

operation. The balls move in straight lines and fall as they do and collide

as they do and drop to the green oval because that is what I programmed

them to do in Flash. The physics engine would need to be made more

realistic. Impressive off-the-shelf Flash code is available for putting a two-

dimensional representation under the analog of a universal gravitational

field, including the specific one found on the surface of the earth. The

cartoons would need to be improved so that the balls rest on inclined

ramps, pushing each button clearly through some mechanism releases the

corresponding ball, the balls collide and bounce according to a

gravitational field at the surface of the earth, and so on. How the balls fall

in these cartoons would then be something that, conceivably, the subject


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could intuitively predict, given that mass is not a consideration: if !is the

angle the inclined ramp makes with the horizontal, then the net

acceleration for the ball isg(sin !) while it is on the ramp andg afterward,

wheregis gravity: 9.8 meters per second per second. Human beings are

highly familiar withgand its consequences. But even if we put aside

complications like friction, degree of elasticity of the ball and ramp, and so

on, we have two major difficulties. First, notoriously, human beings often

imagine that the acceleration of an object under gravity even in a vacuum

depends on its mass. Second, the outcome of a collision depends on mass.

Following Newtons third law, momentum will be conserved, and the

direction of motion of each ball after collision will depend on their masses.

Our subjects, not knowing the mass of each ballone ball could be taken

as a representation of a solid steel ball, the other ball of a hollow plastic

ballcant know where they will land after collision, so would not be able

to say even that it is possible for either of the balls to land on the green

oval, much less know what time lag would produce the effective collision.

An apparatus including buttons and a visual representation that respondsto the buttons seems like mothers milk to us in our culture, because we

see and use such equipment everywhere, as a principal interface with life,

but such equipment is already highly artificial and culture-specific. Pushing buttons, even if the buttons are redesigned, is even more exotic

for other animals. While animals can be conditioned, trained, and taught

to do many things, in this case we need to avoid those methods.

What would the metric be? At the most gross level, we might provide theapparatus to the subject, demonstrate the result of pushing each button,

and then see whether the subject can ever achieve the incentivized

outcome. But this would not show us mental blending free of chance,

random trial, trial-and-error tuning, and so on. Requiring success in one

try seems unsuitable for many subjects.

There are also engineering difficulties: while the adult might findincentive in the cash payment for success, that incentive would need to be

altered for other subjects.


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From the Virtual To the Real

Part of the attraction of using a virtual apparatus with two buttons was the ease

of deployment in the digital age, across a range of readily-available personal

devices. Another attraction was that such a test could be run in an fMRI

machine, with the subject watching a screen and pushing two buttons. But the

fMRI version is presumably unwarranted in any event. First, permitting the

subject just one shot at success so as to avoid random trial or trial-and-error is

out of the question given the limitations of fMRI, which has very low noise-to-

signal ratios and requires many repetitions by a subject of a performance.

Second, it is difficult to see how current fMRI techniques could offer any insight

into conceptual blending as such. If we ask, wheredoes conceptual integrationhappen in the parts of the neocortex in which fMRI can detect activity?, the off-

the-cuff guess would be everywhere. And if we ask, whendoes conceptual

integration happen in the parts of neocortex in which fMRI can detect activity?,

the off-the-cuff guess would be all the time.

If we reject candidates for a test that involve a virtual world, we give up

much convenience, but there should be no difficulty translating the abstract

requirements into the non-virtual physical world. Imagine an actual rectangular

box, like a frame, with sides and a back, a front made of transparent plastic, andinside, some inclined ramps and places for balls to rest upon them. The box

could be equipped with buttons that release the balls on the ramps. We might

hand the balls to the subject first, before the demonstration, so that the subject

can judge the mass of the balls and sense that the balls are identical in radius,

surface material, and mass. In this case, the subject would be acting under actual

physics. In principle, we should be able to find an incentive for each category of

subject. Perhaps the balls would be yummy treats for children and other

animals. We would need a way for the dog to smell the yummy treats so as to

have incentive to have them fall in such a way that they would roll out to be

eaten. We would need to alter the color scheme to something grayscale. A great

deal of ingenuity might be needed to provide the right incentive in each case and


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to arrange for the two actions to be well within the motor competence of the

subject.

One can imagine many contrivances sharing this abstract functionality.

Suppose, for example, that we have a thirsty dog and a transparent cylinder into

which the dog cannot quite get its snout, two transparent elevated water tanks

with transparent tubes from the bottoms of the tanks to the bottom of the

cylinder, and two pedals such that pressing the pedal releases the water in the

tank above it. The water flows into the cylinder. But the cylinder has a drain.

The rate of influx is sufficiently greater than the rate of drainage that the water

fills the cylinder halfway, not enough for the dog to lap up any water. Pressing

two pedals in quick succession would fill the cylinder to the top, and the dog

could lap up some water before the level of the water in the cylinder drops too

low. The advantages to such a set-up are many. For example, the dog would

have natural incentive, and the physics of the water flow would be real and at

least potentially very familiar. But in this case, it would not be clear that the dog

was doing any mental blending: the dog could vaguely connect the pushing of

the pedal to the presence of water and just press pedals to get water, without any

blended conception.

And in all similar cases, we would run up against the fact that the test

apparatus would be artificial, even strange, and accordingly lessen the ecologicalvalidity of the test.

Where Next?

To avoid all of these difficulties, I am looking for some apparatus that is

not made by human beings, but rather part of the subjects familiar natural

world. Conceptually, there is no sharp dividing line between the cultural

environment and the natural world, but still we can seek something that isviewed across cultures as belonging to the familiar natural world, is present to

other species, and was presumably familiar to even our ancestors 30 or 40

thousand years ago. Proposals for such an apparatus are most welcome.

turner blending box experiment

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