EMOTIONS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS — Modeling and Measuring the Affective Salience of the Mind

UNIVERSITÀ DEL SALENTO

Dottorato di ricerca in Scienze della mente e delle relazioni umaneTeorie psicodinamiche dell'intersoggettività

Ciclo XXIV

EMOTIONS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS

Modeling and Measuring the Affective Salience of the Mind

Candidato

Marco Tont

Relatore

Prof. Sergio Salvatore

A.A. 2011–2012

Keywords

Psychodynamic unconscious

Matte Blanco

Emoton measurement

Cognitve architecture

Complex systems

Table of Contents

Introduction..........................................................................................5

Chapter 1 — Formalities on Formal Systems.......................................17

1. Formal analysis of logical systems..................................................17

1.1 The definition of the town....................................................... 17

1.2 Information in formal systems................................................20

2. A critc to the logical approaches to the study of the mind............22

3. Conservaton of informaton in formal systems.............................25

Chapter 2 — The Logic of the Unconscious..........................................27

1. Logic, symmetry and ratonal thought...........................................27

1.1 Asymmetry and the unconscious functioning of the mind.......29

1.2 Symmetrization, abductive relations and timelessness...........33

2. Homogenizaton and generalizaton..............................................37

2.1 Dynamic interplay of symmetrical and asymmetrical thinking 45

2.2 Generalization through bags of symmetry..............................54

2.3 Further regulative mechanisms of the symmetrical–

asymmetrical interplay................................................................. 62

2.4 Emotions and context..............................................................65

2.5 Phenomenological consequences of symmetrical thinking......70

Chapter 3 — The Unconscious (Complex Dynamical) System..............77

1. Computatonal approaches to the unconscious.............................77

1.1 Genetic algorithms for gestaltic selection...............................78

1.2 Classifier systems.................................................................... 87

1.3 The mind as a complex (psycho-)dynamic adaptive system.....97

1.5 Embedding in current cognitive architectures.......................100

2. Categorizaton and emotons....................................................... 101

2.1 Emotional response Categorization.......................................102

2.2 Conceptual–Act Model.......................................................... 106

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Marco Tont — “Emotons and the Unconscious” — Doctoral dissertaton

2.3 Emotional categories: building, use and maintenance..........110

Chapter 4 — The Measure of Emotions as Effect of the Unconscious

Functioning....................................................................................... 119

1. Other emoton measuring techniques......................................... 119

2. A generalizaton-based measure: the FFMCT...............................122

3. A Kalokagathia-based measure: The EGO-ME test.......................132

3.1 The numerical measure of the emotion.................................138

3.2 General experimental method and setting............................142

3.2.1 Sample and experimental setting............................................143

3.2.2 Interpretaton of the semantc differentals............................143

3.2.3 Studies overview......................................................................145

3.3 Study 1.................................................................................. 145

3.3.1 Method.................................................................................... 146

3.3.2 Results and discussion............................................................. 147

3.3.3 A further data-driven result..................................................... 148

3.4 Study 2.................................................................................. 150

3.4.1 Method.................................................................................... 150


3.5 Study 3.................................................................................. 152

3.5.1 Method.................................................................................... 153


3.6 Study 4.................................................................................. 154

3.6.1 Method.................................................................................... 154


3.7 Study 5.................................................................................. 155

3.7.1 Method.................................................................................... 156


3.8 General conclusions on the EGO-ME results..........................159

Chapter 5 — Conclusions and Future Work.......................................163

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1. Overall consideratons................................................................. 163

2. Future lines of development........................................................ 169

3. Conclusion................................................................................... 175

Appendix A — List of Stimuli.............................................................176

1. Stmuli of the FFMCT computer-based implementaton..............176

2. Stmuli employed in the EGO-ME experiments............................177

Appendix B — Descriptive Results of the EGO-ME Experiment.........178

1. Pleasantness................................................................................ 178

2. Relevancy..................................................................................... 178

3. Overall object evaluatons...........................................................179

Bibliography......................................................................................180

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4

Introducton

Introduction

The goal of this dissertaton is to analyze the emotonal functoning of the

mind in a psychodynamic framework. This is accomplished proposing a

series of three studies analyzing the emoton construct respectvely under

a formal, modelistc and metrical perspectve. The formal stance of this

work is based on Matte Blanco's logical formalizaton of conscious and

unconscious mental functoning. In partcular, unconscious mental

functoning relies heavily on the emotonal dimension of experience. On

the basis of Matte Blanco's formal defnitons, these rules are employed

as the grounding of a model for a computatonal system able to operate

under these principles involving the emotonal attributon of functoning

and representatons. The proposed model is based on well-known

technical instruments (genetc algorithms and classifer systems)

conceived to operate following the theory of complex dynamical adaptve

systems. The third study of this work is the defniton and the

experimental validaton of a psychometric instrument (the EGO-ME test –

Emotonal Grouping of Objects for the Measurement of Emoton) based

on Matte Blanco's concepts and conceived to measure the emotonal

involvement of a person in an evaluatve task.

When searching for the keyword “emoton” in Google Scholar, the search

engine founds 1,510,000 results. Is it possible that such an obvious and

natural everyday experience to be the subject of so much research? As it

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seems, the famous phrase by St. Augustne “I know what tme is untl you

ask me for a defniton about it, and then I can’t give it to you.” could be

restated replacing “tme” with “emoton”. In a review of the diverse

defnitons of emoton (Kleinginna & Kleinginna, 1981) have counted more

than ninety different defnitons, and is likely that in the last 32 years

more defnitons have been proposed to be added to the list. Another

countng has ben done in (Izard, 2010): “Only three decades ago [...] it

was difcult to fnd books and empirically based journal artcles on

emoton. Now we have a cornucopia of emoton books—amazon.com has

347,272 ttles, and it is not unusual for a university library to have more

than 400 scholarly books on the topic. Today there are at least fve

scientfc journals with 'emoton' in their ttles and there are many more

that publish research on emoton, resultng altogether in 2,732 artcles in

the past decade” (p. 363).

According to (Gendron & Barrett, 2009; Gross & Barrett, 2011) the history

of theories of emoton can be coarsely divided in four approaches: “basic

emoton”, appraisal, psychological construct and social construct.

The “basic emoton” view consider emotons as being biologically-based

reactons triggered automatcally by objects and events in the world.

Every emoton instance labelled as “fear”, for example, share a common

biological basis and is supposed to show the same pattern of behavior,

bodily actvaton, facial actons and experience, so that persons around

the world can easily recognize that emoton. In this perspectve, emotons

are ofen considered to be focused on the survival of the organism

experiencing them. A feared state (e.g. for the presence of a snake) would

prepare the organism in that state to react more rapidly to threatening

situatons, increasing his/her probability of survival. But if the felt

emoton is the same, how come that the manifestatons of the very same

6

Introducton

emoton could bear to different reactons? Basic emoton models deal

with the variability in emotonal responding by hypothesizing the

existence of display rules (as cultural norms that infuence the expression

of emoton) or some other kind of cognitve processing triggered by the

perceived emoton. In this view, emoton recognizing is based on

dedicated neural programs or circuits that are assumed to be hardwired

into the brain at birth, or developed shortly afer. In this approach, the

emoton expression is so much tghtly encoded in the brain that for some

it is sufcient, for example, to simulate the facial expression for disgust or

happiness to actually feel that emoton. In this view, the salience of the

stmulus triggering the emoton have to be found in special neural

networks genetcally encoded in the brain.

The appraisal approach, on the contrary, assume that emotons are not

just triggered by objects in a refexive or habitual way, but arise from a

meaningful interpretaton of an object by an individual. Generally

speaking, these models rest on the assumpton that emotons are evoked

by an object or situaton in the world, but states that is the process of

detecton of meaning that assigns to the emoton its specifc kind. The

focus is moved therefore from the “genetcally encoded” salience of a

stmulus in the brain to the internal detecton of meaningful stmuli in the

world. The specifc emoton caused by an object or event lies in the

process of appraisal and evaluaton of that specifc stmulus, which can

change from person to person. The process of appraisal is considered to

be automatc and potentally unavailable to conscious awareness.

In the approach that sees emotons as psychological constructs some of

the elements of the previous two are incorporated. This approach sees

emotons as being rooted in the biological constructon of the human

being, but not encoded in specifc patterns to be labelled with clear

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names. There is no hardwired “fear”, or special mechanism detectng

specifc emotons, but a set of bodily changes forming a set of stable

patterns which culturally are labelled as “fear”. This attests for the

incredible variability in the response to emotons labelled under the same

name. A person could react to wrath, for example, in a cold and calm way,

while another (or the same in a different situaton) could react by

shoutng or attacking the presumed origin of that emoton. This approach

share some concepts also with the appraisal approach, in which the

emoton is the appraisal of the internal pattern of affects (which are not

exclusive nor specifc to emotons) felt by a person. The appraisal is not of

the situaton, but of the internal state of the subject. This process of

appraisal is able to label, in the person's experience and cultural

background, the contngent and specifc pattern of bodily signals under a

precise name.

In the social construct approach, emotons are viewed as social artfacts

or culturally-prescribed performances that are consttuted by

sociocultural factors, and constrained by partcipant roles as well as by

the social context. Some social constructon models treat social

confguratons as triggers for basic emotonal responses, while other

models in this approach view emotons as sociocultural products that are

prescribed by the social world and constructed by people, rather than by

nature. Both the mental and the behavioral components of emoton are

thought to co-evolve as a functon of local social meanings, and are

considered primarily for their social functon. For example, knowing the

social script for anger allows one to be angry, or to feel anger, and to

enact the behaviors of anger depending on the specifc cultural context.

Emotonal meaning and specifcity derives from the emoton’s functonal

signifcance within a partcular social context.

8

Introducton

The approach in which this dissertaton collocates is a psychodynamic

perspectve that sees emotons not as something separated from the

other functons of the mind, but as a fundamental consttuent of thought

and intelligence. The importance of emotons is not in their capability to

interact with the higher cognitve functons in order to enrich our

interacton with the world; neither in their being a social form of

communicaton. Emotons are not juxtaposed to the other functons of

the mind, rather they are a fundamental component of thought. This

contrasts strikingly with the common percepton that emotons are “the

opposite” of thought. As (D’Andrade, 1981) said (cited in (Ratner, 1989))

"There is a strong positve correlaton phylogenetcally between

intelligence and emotonality". Intelligence would not be possible without

emotons.

Emotons are not just the product of an appraisal of some relevant object

or events of the world, but are the reason for which some elements in the

world are relevant, and the way in which it is relevant. The emotonal

saliency is exerted also, if not mainly, on the abstract features of the

world, like contexts, ideas and relatons. Given their capability of

connotng contexts and relatons, emotons are also regulatve functons

of the process of segmentaton of reality. For example, a person feeling

the desire of getting ftter could notce (perhaps for the frst tme) the sign

of a gym close to his/her workplace. Another example is in the saying: “if

all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.

In this perspectve emotons start to be modeled in infancy on the basis of

very basic bodily feelings mainly in a pleasure-displeasure directon. In

this, as for the “basic emoton” approach, psychodynamic emotons have

a biological origin which is lived with the higher intensity by the baby. The

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trace of this absolute intensity is lef in the adult in every circumstance,

and becomes the “compass” orientng our percepton of the world. While

normally we are guided by a moderate emotonality, in some

circumstances the absoluteness of child emotonal experience can be felt

in its entrety.

Given their genetc role in the constructon of reality, which results in the

operaton of meaningful segmentaton and interpretaton of the world,

emotons in the human must not be considered just as a datum, a

connotaton of percepton. Emoton are consttuent of everyone's internal

reality, and emotons are rooted in a period of life when every emotonal

experience was completely and exclusively physical, totalizing and

overwhelming. Therefore emotons can be attested to be what makes our

percepton of the world so much intense and “real”: emotons are the

perceptons' value-of-life (Salvatore & Freda, 2011; Salvatore & Venuleo,

2008). Perceptons are pieces of early emotonal experience.

Under this explanaton, it is easy to notce a series of phenomena that can

be explained in these terms. Anthropomorphizaton is such a

phenomenon, in which (ontologically) inanimate objects are attributed

with a certain degree of human features and agentvity. It is likely to be in

everyone experience to be angry against a stuck screw addressing it with

a “Damn screw, I'll get you out of there!”; or to be angry with the leg of a

chair we hit in the night going to the kitchen for a glass of water: “Damn

chair, what are you doing here?!”. This is the same mechanism that make

us see an elephant made with the clouds in the sky: it clearly not an

elephant, but our urge to give meaning to the reality we see is

unstoppable and pervasive. We can ratonally know that it is not an

elephant, but this knowledge occurs afer it have been recognized as

such: in our percepton, there is an elephant in the sky.

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Introducton

In the psychodynamic perspectve of this dissertaton, the mechanisms

underpinning these phenomena are to be found in the unconscious

functoning of the mind (Salvatore & Freda, 2011; Salvatore & Venuleo,

2008). The theoretcal basis grounding this statement will be found in

Matte Blanco's seminal work “The unconscious as infnite sets” (Matte

Blanco, 1975), which is an attempt of defning the logical rules (even if

different from the rules of traditonal logic) that drive the unconscious

functoning of the mind. The fundamental tenet of the theory is that the

conscious and the unconscious functoning follow two distnct and yet

coherent logical functoning, respectvely called asymmetrical and

symmetrical logic. The asymmetrical logic is fundamentally the traditonal

logic, where in general the relaton between elements are regarded to

follow a certain order (“Bruno is the father of Andrea”). The symmetrical

logic on the contrary transforms every relaton in a symmetrical one

(therefore if “Bruno is the father of Andrea” then “Andrea is the father of

Bruno”). The symmetrical actvity has as a consequence the

homogenizaton of the elements into sets in which every element is

identcal to the others. The actvity of homogenizaton of perceptons with

other pieces of experience is grounded in the affectve experience of the

world a person had built during his/her infancy, and the sets of

homogeneous emotonally-equivalent elements are modeled on the

constructon of the world a person accomplished during his/her life.

Matte Blanco proposes a set of logical rules governing the conscious and

the unconscious actvity, as well as the rules regulatng their interplay in

the constructon of an internal structured representaton of the world.

These rules, though, cannot be directly implemented in a formal system,

because their descripton originates and is given prevalently in

psychoanalytcal terms. A work of rephrasing the concepts of Matte

Blanco in more formal terms is required.

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In order to do so, the frst chapter is devoted to describing discursively

some basic logical notons about formal systems. In partcular the concept

of conservaton of informaton in formal systems (and logical openness)

will be briefy presented as it would offer an interpretatve basis

connectng Matte Blanco's formalizaton to the complex system theory.

In Chapter 2 is described in the details the Matte Blanco's theory of mind

functoning. The original concepts will be reformulated following a more

formal approach. This descripton will form the basis for the following

chapters. In partcular, the formal descripton of Matte Blanco's work will

be the basis for the proposal of a computatonal system working on the

basis of the described rules in a complex system perspectve.

Furthermore, the same concepts will be the basis, in the fourth chapter,

for the instrument conceived to measure the emotonal contributon to

the process of segmentaton and evaluaton of the world. In the second

chapter the theory of Matte Blanco will be presented in its fundamental

concepts, specifcally in terms of the operaton of symmetrizaton and

generalizaton (which are the basis of unconscious functoning) and the

interplay of these rules with the coextensive conscious and ratonal

functoning of the mind. The concept of “bag of symmetry”, introduced by

Matte Blanco, offers a fundamental formal construct conceived to insulate

the unconscious homogenizing process, avoiding its pervasive invasion

and dissoluton of the ratonal and conscious functoning. Lastly, some

phenomenological consequences of the unconscious functoning will be

presented, namely absolutzaton (the tendency of the unconscious

functoning of melt representatons in an ever growing and generalized

affectve set), reifcaton (the phenomenon for which internal

12

Introducton

representatons and ideas are felt as being “real” and concrete

components of reality), and the “Kalokagathia effect” (the tendency of the

unconscious functoning to assimilate different aspects of a same object

in a homogenized affectve evaluaton of the object itself). The

“Kalokagathia effect” (which will be referred to as “K-effect”) will be the

fundamental phenomenon that will be detected and measured in the

fourth chapter by means of the EGO-ME instrument.

In Chapter 3 is sketched a computatonal implementaton of the rules

defned in the second chapter. This is obtained through a variant of

genetc evolutonary algorithms and classifer systems, which are mult-

agent systems belonging to the category of the computatonal complex

adaptve systems. Representatons and relatons between representatons

are coded in such a way to form fragments of knowledge able to interact

in a regularized and yet unsupervised and complex fashion. It is

hypothesized that, due to the constructon of such systems as general

optmizing algorithms, the operaton performed with the different

fragments of knowledge about identfcaton of objects and their

emotonal weight would converge in the producton of a set of related

elements able to describe this specifc aspect of mental functoning. Since

this system is conceived to model just this specifc aspect of the mental

functoning, an integraton with a long-lastng and widely regarded

cognitve architecture (ACT-R) is proposed.

One specifc aspect, which have already been introduced, is that emotons

should not be considered just in terms of connotatve attributon of the

objects extracted from reality, but rather as a ubiquitous component of

experience. In order to make those systems, that being computatonal

systems suffer from the drawback of being “cold”, the constructon of the

13


internal representaton along with their emotonal value, must be the

product of the functoning of the system, rather that an informaton

defned outside of the system and then hardwired into the system. In

order to do so, it is important to describe the microgenetc mechanism

through which classes of objects (i.e. the emotonal structure of

experience) are created from scratch. This is accomplished in this chapter

presentng two recent theorizaton of emotonal categorizaton of

perceptons (Emotonal Response Categorizaton and Concept-Act Model).

The two cognitve and constructvistc proposals are involved in the

discussion because of their focus on categorizaton and emotons, which

are also the fundamental elements of the theorizaton of Matte Blanco,

already found in the concept of “bag of symmetry”. On the basis of these

theoretcal insights it is possible to hypothetcally develop a microdynamic

of category forming.

Chapter 4 is dedicated to the techniques of measurement of the emotons

as defned in the preceding chapters. The frst instrument is the Famous

Faces Multple Choice Test developed by Rosapia Lauro-Grotto (Ciaramelli,

Lauro-Grotto, & Treves, 2006; Lauro-Grotto, 2006, 2007, 2008) and

conceived originally to measure the amount of semantc memory vs.

episodic memory in elderly persons and persons suffering from

Alzheimer's disease. In a subsequent interpretaton of the mathematcal

apparatus underpinning the instrument, reformulated in terms of

ultrametric topological spaces, the theoretcal structure become

analogous to the concept of homogenizaton and generalizaton as

conceived in the works by Matte Blanco.

In Chapter 4 it is also presented a new instrument built to measure

emotons in the given defniton, the EGO-ME test, the development of

14

Introducton

which has been the core actvity of the research program followed in

Author's doctoral course. The test is built to detect and quantfy the

phenomenon called “Kalokagathia”, i.e. the tendency of unifying the

judgment of different aspect of the same object. In presence of the K-

effect an object is perceived as an affectvely unique item which shares all

the emotonality of which the representaton of the object is imbued. The

evaluaton therefore is given on the specifc aspects, but on the super-

ordered affectve representaton of that object. The amount of similarity

in the ratngs of two different aspects (pleasantness and relevancy) of a

series of objects (listed in Appendix A) gives a measure of the emotonal

dimension of that object in the subject's mind. The experimental studies

of the EGO-ME focused on inter-theoretcal as well as intra-theoretcal

approaches, namely behavioural, cognitve and psychodynamic. The

experimental results, although inital, gave a confrm to the fundamental

hypothesis of the test.

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16

Chapter 1 — Formalites on Formal Systems

Chapter 1 — Formalities on Formal Systems

This chapter is devoted to setting a theoretcal frame about formal

questons that arise when considering logic as an instrument of

investgatng human knowledge. This will provide a conceptual basis and a

cultural perspectve for the following chapters.

1. Formal analysis of logical systems

In a computer-scientfc perspectve the study of mind cannot avoid the

confrontaton with the fundamental characteristcs of the more

traditonal Artfcial intelligence systems. These systems are typically logic-

based, algebraic-based and so on. All of these systems share, as a

consequence of their formal origins, some characteristcs that are typical

of formal systems, the one of relevance here is the capability of

conserving the informaton contained in the system which will be

discussed later. Formal systems are structured in such a way that in order

for a conclusion to be correct, it must be the fnal step of a chain of steps

beginning from the axioms of the system going through truth-conserving

transformaton rules tll the conclusion.

1.1 The definition of the town

In order to briefy illustrate the fundamental functoning of formal

systems, let's follow an essay by Georges Perec in his book “Species of

spaces”, ttled “The town” (Perec, 1998). In this essay Perec try to list “[...]

17


what is the town and what isn't the town.” Deciding whether a physical

entty (buildings, streets, “[...] stone, concrete, asphalt”) belongs or not to

a specifc town then becomes, in Gödel's terms, like deciding if a specifc

asserton is true or false for the formal system in which it is expressed. In

deciding what is in a town and what is not, one must have some criteria.

For example, if one can reach through streets any point of a town startng

from any other point it could be one of these criteria; but we must be

careful: one can go from Paris to Berlin in this way and this would not

mean that they are one single town. This therefore can be considered as a

necessary but not sufcient criterium, to be further constrained by other

criteria. But this criterium must hold right from the beginning, since when

a town is made of only one building and the criterium successively

repeatedly applied in order to extend the “logical” boundaries of a city.

We could say for example that the Mairie is part of the town we call Paris,

and every other contguous building to be part of the town as well. It is

necessary then to make an arbitrary startng point, to state that “this

building is a town”. This is what in formal terms is called “axiom” – an

arbitrary self-evident truth from which to start. Having a startng point A

we can now decide if another point B is connected to A through streets. It

is possible then work recursively: wondering if a parking lot P belongs to

the town we can see (as a frst step) if it is connected to B, which in turn

belongs to the town because B is connected to A which, by axiomatc

defniton, is part of the town. Another criterion we could add is that at

every corner there must be at least one building (not strictly logical, but

at least descriptvely meaningful enough), in order to avoid the extension

of the town limits to every other town through freeways. The town that is

being depicted here is therefore like a network responding to the logical

criteria of “what a town is”, an abstract one, but yet also a real town could

represent abstract features. In fact, in Perec's struggle of defning the

18


town, he says that “I'd like to think up and solve problems analogous to

the one about the bridges of Königsberg* or, for example, fnd a route that

would cross Paris from one side to the other taking only streets beginning

with the letter C”. Incidentally, in Perec's essay can be found a paragraph

about foreign towns (and the one of formal systems are always, being

abstract, foreign towns) that, read in the light of the metaphor drawn

with the formal systems, explains brilliantly the very work of a scientst:

“The day you fnd out that the statue of Ludwig Spankerfel di Nominatore

(the celebrated brewer) is only three minutes from your hotel (at the end

of Prince Adalbert Street) whereas you've been taking a good half-hour to

get there, you start to take possession of the town”. The very work of

science is the one to fnd such secret and unexpected connectons. As the

mathematcian André Weil said: “Nothing is more fruitul [...] than those

obscure analogies, those disturbing refectons of one theory on another;

those furtve caresses, those inexplicable discords; nothing also gives

more pleasure to the researcher.

Given that the criteria we posed are not confictng (this is to say, that is

not possible to state that a certain building X belongs to the town by

following a set of criteria, and that it does not belong to the town

following another set of criteria), the given set of operatons and

defniton are able to determine exactly the quality for a building to be

part of a town or not, defning therefore with perfect precision the

borders of the town.

* “This refers to a celebrated old puzzle, as to whether is was possible to walk round the

city of Königsberg, which had seven bridges, crossing each bridge once and no bridge

twice. The soluton was found in 1736 by the great Swiss mathematcian, Leonhard

Euler.”

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1.2 Information in formal systems

What is the meaning of the concept of “conservaton of informaton”

introduced earlier? A strictly logically structured system (as the ones

typical of the traditonal logic) is a logically and informatonally closed

system (following the defniton by (Licata, 2008; Minat, Penna, & Pessa,

1998)), because it is possible to defne exactly the input data and the

internal states of a system leading to an output. This is to say that the

amount of (explicit and, more importantly, implicit) informaton is

constant. Logical structures are defned in order to not cause informaton

reducton or, as strange as it could seem, increment.

To show the difference between implicit and explicit informaton, just

consider this formula: x – 7 = 2. The logical system used to solve the

equaton, named “algebra”, is accurately built to not to burn any

informaton contained in the formula. When we add 7 (or any other

number) to both of the sides we are modifying the equaton without

destroying any informaton, and we obtain the new formula that, for us, is

a result: x = 9. If it was allowed to destroy informaton it would have been

sufcient to remove the “-7” to obtain the result “x = 2” which, in an

informaton-inventng system, is correct but fundamentally useless. The

value of x is an implicit piece of informaton, intrinsic and hidden into the

system1. All the formal rules of a system are usually built to keep it

coherent (otherwise every statement could be proved true and false at

the same tme), and to keep all the contained informaton (and normally

to use as much informaton as possible).

1 Even if a value exists, it is not always possible to determine it exactly, for example

equatons with a degree equal or greater than 5 do not admit general analytcal

solutons (Abel-Rufni's theorem). This notwithstanding the soluton exist somewhere,

it is just that we do not know how to determine it analytcally.

20


A perfect example of the informatonal implicitness of a formal system is

the well-known puzzle called Sudoku. A scheme is made of nine blocks of

nine cells and the rules say that in every block, column and row must be

present all the symbols from 1 to 9. The puzzle consist of deriving the

missing numbers from the ones put in the scheme by the creator. When

the solver states that in a certain cell there is a certain number, s/he is

proving a theorem, which is based on the axioms (the numbers initally

present in the scheme), on the already proved theorems (the other

numbers added by the solver) and the rules of the systems. Given the

rules and the axioms is possible to derive the entre resultng scheme,

meaning that the values contained in the cells are already implicitly

defned in the system, even if the specifc value is unknown.

The usefulness of these system is in the fact that they can be used to

develop proofs based on rules; and those rules are defned in order to not

introduce inconsistency in the system. The rules are made to not

introduce contradictory statements where contradictons are not already

present, but can do nothing to remove contradictons whenever they are

already present in the premises. There is a famous anecdote attributed to

Bertrand Russell: when a journalist asked him harshly during a press

conference: “Professor, you said that even the smallest contradicton

would allow to proof everything. Now tell me, if I state that 2+2=5, prove

me that I am the Pope”. Russell replied promptly: “2+2=5 means 4=5, in

which we can subtract 3 from both sides and obtain 1=2, therefore I can

say that you are one man but also two men, namely, you are yourself and

the Pope. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.” In this case the contradicton was

present in the premises and have not been introduced by the system of

rules. An example where apparently the contradicton is introduced by

the rules is the following derivaton by De Morgan: take two numbers a

and b such that a=b; then ab=b2; ab-a2=b2-a2; a(b-a)=(b+a)(b-a); a=b+a; if

21


we now set a=b=1 we obtain 1=1+1=2. This is clearly impossible since no

contradicton can be introduced by the rules. The fact is that the rules

have not been applied properly in the simplifcaton step, where we

divided something by 0 (a=b means a-b=0). This “false step” violated the

system of rules and introduced a discrepancy creatng an absurdum, from

which everything can be derived as a “logical” consequence, as Russell

proved to the journalist.

Even the most naïve observer of human beings knows that coherence and

constancy of informaton are not properly human characteristcs. We can

be completely incoherent and assert completely contradictory statements

(like “Tax evaders must be punished” and “When taxes are too high it is

morally allowed to evade them”) and stll be perfectly human, in good

health and well alive2 – and stll intelligent. If such a contradicton was

present in a logical system, it would have caused it to inevitably collapse

into a useless bunch of symbols.

2. A critic to the logical approaches to the study of the

mind

Since the frst creaton of the feld of Artfcial Intelligence, the paradigms

of logics and mathematcs have been broadly (if not exclusively) employed

in the study of the mind. Nowadays the inital ambitous program of

understanding the fundamental mechanisms of intelligence is regarded to

be mostly a failure at least in its general form. The huge efforts employed

in the pursuit of the understanding of what “intelligence” is had forced

the development of a vast and faceted set of ofen very specialized

techniques. The practcal usefulness of these techniques is evident, but

somehow their successful applicaton hindered the development of new

2 And contnue to be the (now ex) Prime Minister of Italy.

22


conceptual approach to the problem. This engineering mode of

investgate the mind, dividing it in specifc and well defned functons to

be faced in different and optmally construed theories and techniques

moved the focus so much away from the original formulaton of the

problem to push the scientfc community to rename AI in AGI, Artfcial

General Intelligence, to emphasize that the aim of their research was to

study the functoning of the mind as a whole, rather than a modular

collecton of specialized instruments.

In the Author's opinion, the failure of the “big” project of AI (due to the

fragmentaton and the specializaton of the different aspects of the mind)

can be traced in a deeper aspect of the scientfc enterprise that is

fundamental for disciplines like mathematcs and logic: the obsession for

the absolute truthfulness of the conclusions. Far from being a wrong thing

(quite the opposite, in fact) this tendency to look for the absoluteness of

the conclusions can be an obstacle to the comprehension of the mind

rather than a help. The mechanism is the one at the basis of the

mathematcal/logical proofs introduced earlier: startng from a set of true

assertons, and transforming them using rules that does not modify the

truthfulness of the statements, the conclusion must be true as well. The

truthfulness of a conclusion therefore is the result of a rigid applicaton of

rules in an ordered sequence. At every step the truth-value is maintained

and the whole enterprise of proving theorems has the power of this

“infallible” method. Since this inferental process is about transforming

true statements in new true statements, it is needed a “sparkle” to start

with: the axioms, which are considered to be fundamental and self-

evident truths.

This approach, even if not always employed in the study of the traditonal

AI, has molded the psychology and the abstract method of research in this

23


feld. The general approach therefore had ofen the shape of a

mathematcal proof: if something is “intelligent”, then transforming it

(composing, modifying...) in a way that maintains the “intelligence” makes

every step “intelligent” at least as the one before, consequently the result

must be “intelligent” as well. The employment of probability in this

process (i.e., at every step using transformaton that probably maintains

the “intelligence” status) is clearly not a way of overcoming this limit,

since when used in this way it is fundamentally used as an approximaton

of the absolute “intelligence” just described. The reason of using the

quotes around “intelligent” is that what is “intelligence” is stll unknown.

To try to build “Intelligence” then, many approaches tried to employ

commonsensical or extremely specialized knowledge (expert systems),

dictonaries for grammatcally based natural language processing, and so

on. Instead of observing how we are able to create intelligence, this

strictly mathematcal approach reifed the construct of “intelligence” and

tried to analyze it as it would have done with a bacteria or a theorem.

What is supported here is that the main reason for AI's failure is to be

found in this epistemological misunderstanding.

In this dissertaton is not obviously critcized the mathematcal and logical

methods, which are regarded to be the backbone of the human

knowledge and the purest form of thought. What is critcized here is the

(direct or indirect) transplant of the logical methods in the study of the

mind. Not just because we are not fully logical beings, but also because of

the inappropriateness of the approach to the problem.

A more appropriate standpoint in regard to this queston is regarded to be

the one that considers the infuence of unforeseeable and unknown

informaton (and non logical informaton transformaton) in the formaton

of thoughts.

24


In the following chapters this problem will be addressed employing a

complex system approach, which do not rely on the perfect

appropriateness of every single rule, but rather on the overall complex

interacton of the rules under a general regulatve mechanism. This

approach is the one commonly referred to as belonging to the “complex

adaptve system” perspectve.

Facing briefy the queston of emotons in the study of artfcial

intelligence, emotons are considered in some regard, but (untl recently,

(Gratch, Rey, Marsella, & Petta, 2009)) it has been broadly regarded, in

the best case, as a “useful” antagonist of intelligence. It is considered as

useful, for example by Simon, when interrupts normal cogniton when

unattended goals require servicing, a signal that something unexpected

was happening. The goal-directed nature of emotons is also commonly

considered, and also the social usefulness of an emotonal awareness.

Stll, the role of emotons is marginal at best, being considered as useful

informatons attached (or even interactng) with normal cogniton. As

stated in the introducton, the view pursued in this dissertaton is exactly

the other way around: cogniton are not just “helped” or “colored” by

emoton, but emotons are one of consttutve components of cogniton.

3. Conservation of information in formal systems

Open logical systems, in an interpretaton close to the one by (Licata,

2008; Minat et al., 1998), have a more complex relatonship with

informaton. Many data are not known, and the data received from the

outside are not strictly foreseeable and codifed. This is the typical

situaton of a physical system, which is normally exposed to a number of

infuences which are not exactly codifed.

25


About conservaton of informaton, human being tend to forget things, to

not to recognize data as informaton, to blend informaton in order to

make economy of resources, to categorize them in homogeneous groups

and, most prominently, to create informaton which was not present

before, neither implicitly nor explicitly. Since we are not (strictly logically

speaking) coherent, we are entrely enttled to do so.

Any theory willing to get close to human intelligence must face this fact:

from a logical point of view, we are wrong. Some scholars, recently,

supported the idea that this is not just about the human kind of

intelligence, but to be consttutve of intelligence tout court (Schank,

2009). A mathematcal proof of the fact that intelligence implies

contradicton is proposed in (Frosini, 2009).

While we, as human beings, are not technically contradicton-free, we are

not completely incoherent. And while we tend to forget things and to put

things together treatng them as the same thing, we do not forget and

confuse everything, and, in partcular, we do not always invent facts. Even

the most basic of the self-observatons makes apparent that we are a

mixture – most likely inextricable – of logical and “illogical” behaviors,

beliefs and ways of being. But “illogical” does not mean random. Even the

most illogical belief has a reason to be. What is needed is a system of

rules able to describe this complexity, to melt together the two

fundamental logical extremes of perfect ratonality and perfect

irratonality in a single and balanced system of rules. Such a system is

clearly non-logical, since even the smallest incoherency would make it

useless from a formal truth-based point of view, but should be able to

regulate the life and the living together of these two different-tempered

fatmates.

26

Chapter 2 — The Logic of the Unconscious


In this chapter will be presented the ideas developed by Matte Blanco

regarding a formal descripton of the unconscious functoning of the

mind. It will be shown how the unconscious force exertng on the mind is

a fundamental component of normal functoning of the human beings,

and how emoton is regarded to be the “fuel” of the unconscious force

shaping the thought.

1. Logic, symmetry and rational thought

Ignacio Matte Blanco1 proposed a system of rules able to describe and

regulate the relatonship of the logical and a-logical ingredients of mind

functoning. His seminal book “The unconscious as infnite sets” (Matte

Blanco, 1975) has as subttle “An essay in bi-logic”, making immediately

apparent the scope of the work. He proposes a theory of mental

functoning based on two distnct and relatng forces actng following two

“logics”: “symmetrical logic” and “asymmetrical logic”. The asymmetrical

logic is, substantally, the logic which is at the base of the consideraton

made so far. In the book Matte Blanco refers to it as “Aristotelian logic”

1 Born in 1908 in Santago, Chile, Matte Blanco was educated in Chile. He trained in

psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital and in psychoanalysis at the London Insttute,

where he was in supervision with Anna Freud and James Strachey, becoming a member

of the Britsh Society in 1938. Then he worked in New York with mathematcian Richard

Courant, who encouraged his seminal paper on the relatonship of set theory and

psychoanalysis. He subsequently worked in the United States, Chile, and Italy. He died

in Rome at the age of 86.

27


even if many other kinds of logic were available (for example modal and

non-monotonic logics) with the declared intent to take it as a

representatve of the general feld of logic and no to reduce all the logical

feld to just the Aristotelian one.

What is the reason behind the need of assigning the label “asymmetrical”

to the ordinary logic? The name is derived from one of the propertes that

could defne a relaton, namely the property of symmetry. A relaton R is

symmetrical if given that aRb we can conclude that bRa, for example the

relaton “is brother with” is symmetrical, since two brothers are brothers

to each other. The relatons can also be non-symmetrical, as in the case of

the relaton “loves”: is ofen the case that when a loves b, b does not love

a, but since luckily is not always like that, this relaton is neither

symmetrical nor asymmetrical. There is fnally the asymmetrical case, for

which the relaton is always asymmetrical, as in the case of “younger”. If a

is younger than b then necessarily b is not younger than a.

The reason for the attributon of “asymmetrical” to the Aristotelian logic

is rooted in that property of relatons: a logic is asymmetrical when relies

strongly on asymmetrical relatons. This kind of relatons are fundamental

for the life as we conceive it and, accordingly, it is part of the fundamental

toolbox of a logical system. It is sufcient to try to fgure what could the

world look like if we were unable to establish asymmetrical relatons:

there could not be an “earlier” and a “later” and we would be living in an

eternal present; there could be no money since every amount of money

would be at the same tme greater and smaller of every other amount of

money; there could not be a “before” and an “afer” so every movement

could not follow steadily any directon, or to put it better, the very idea of

“movement” would be meaningless. Even the writng could not be

possible, because words and letters have a meaning only when presented

28


in a certain sequence, without in words fact sequence possibleim to

dnatsrednu a are generally.

Observing these facts in the light of the “conservaton of informaton”

concept expressed before, we could say that such asymmetry is necessary

to save, in the logical transformatons, some informaton which is

contained in our operatve descripton of the world. The swapping of the

element of a relaton entails the inversion of the relaton, in order to save

the informaton about “in which way” one element is different from the

other. If a<b then, when swapping the terms, b>a where > is the inverse

relaton of <. Thus asymmetrical relatons are absolutely necessary in

order to maintain the amount of informaton present in a logical system.

As have been shown before, this is a fundamental tenet of formal logic-

based systems which are build to be ratonal, or to behave ratonally.

Asymmetrical relatons are the basis of any kind of ratonal thought, and

ratonal thought could not exist without asymmetrical relatons2. In the

words of (Salvatore & Freda, 2011), “[...] in order to produce meaning

(knowledge, understanding...) thinking has to involve asymmetrical

relatons”.

1.1 Asymmetry and the unconscious functioning of the mind

Psychoanalysis in over a century of research have settled that the ratonal

one is not the only modality of human functoning. In fact, while it is the

most apparent one in many cases, it is likely to be the “tp of the iceberg”

of the mental functoning. What Freud, and many other before and afer

him, pointed out is that ratonal thinking is just one part of human

thoughts. Irratonality can be considered the most characterizing and

general property of the unconscious. But is not easy to talk about

irratonality, because in the common sense what is irratonal is deprived

2 Afer all, the term “ratonal” is the basis of the Latn “rato”, separaton, division.

29


of any possible structure and logic. This is not the case, as pointed out

before, for we are a blend of both the ways of being that constantly

interact independently and cause us to be, the most of the tmes, in a

balanced situaton of equilibrium between ratonal and irratonal modes

of thinking.

Matte Blanco built a theory of the unconscious following an algebraic and

logical approach. While his formulaton has some formal faws, saying that

his system has no grounding means putting his ideas in the wrong place

and considering them in the wrong conceptual frame. The discussion

about the logicality of his proposal must therefore be placed in the

context described in the frst chapter, in order to comprehend not just its

psychodynamic profle but also its inherent formal functoning. For this

reason Matte Blanco’s formal restatement of the functoning of mind is

incredibly rich and fruitul and deserves to be explored more in deep,

trying to not to be infuenced by the more formalistc approaches.

Matte Blanco proposes to consider the unconscious aspects of the mind

as the dynamic produced by (or, for (Salvatore & Freda, 2011), coincident

to) the “Principle of symmetry”: in the unconscious thought is not

possible to establish asymmetrical relatons, every relaton even if “in the

reality” is asymmetrical, is considered completely symmetrical.

Matte Blanco bases his work on the characteristcs that Freud used to

describe the dreamwork (condensaton, displacement, symbolic

transformaton, absence of negaton and tme). The principle of symmetry

is openly, almost proudly, an a-logical mechanism producing,

phenomenically, the effects usually attributed to the unconscious. It is

clear that if not somehow bounded, this symmetrizing drive would cause

the total collapse of every logical structure. Matte Blanco was aware of

30


this and built his bi-logical theory in order to keep things well separated

and yet interactng.

The use of the term “dynamic” underlines an important aspect of the

system being described here: conscious and unconscious are not

(differently from the Freudian later descriptons) objects or places. Rather,

they are forces that operates interactng independently in the formaton

of the inner structures of knowledge, ideas and thoughts. In the following

discussion of the concept it must be made clear that when talking about

“the unconscious” with its peculiarites and functoning, it is not

addressed the structure of the unconscious, but its contributon to the

overall structure of the mind. The functoning of the mind is the result of

the interacton of these two forces, none of which can exist in its purest

form. Therefore in the following discussion a certain effort must be put in

order to comprehend the examples as being only referring to partal

descripton of a more complex dynamic, and not of the behavior of a part

of the mind. As trying to describe a pendulum, one must consider a

number of interactng and contrastng forces in the result of the moton:

the centripetal force exerted by the thread on the body, and the

gravitaton. Taken alone, neither of them is able to describe the overall

behaviour of the system: they must be necessarily described separately in

their specifc characteristcs but keeping in mind that is the focus of

interest here is how they interact in a way that cause the oscillatng

dynamic of the pendulum. Likewise, the two forces of symmetrical and

asymmetrical functoning are described in vitro, but with the awareness

that these are abstract descripton of processes that always operate in

vivo, in order to comprehend their mutual “blind” and yet competng

effects.

31


The frst consequence of the principle of symmetry is the homogenizaton

of things in classes. A practcal example of this was already presented: the

concept of money could not be meaningfully described only in

symmetrical terms because every amount of money would be at the same

tme lesser and greater than any other; a consequence of this is that, de

facto, no distncton can be made between different amounts of money:

from the unconscious point of view one euro and a million euros are

equivalent amounts of money. This is also meaningful from a traditonal

logical stance: the propertes required for a relaton to be an equivalency

relaton are: refexiveness, symmetry, transitveness. In order for a

relaton to be an “order relaton” is instead required to be refexive,

antsymmetrical3 and transitve. The only difference between the two is

the required type of symmetry. When transforming asymmetrical relaton

in symmetrical ones, we are practcally transforming order relatons into

equivalence relatons.

Therefore the effect of the unconscious functoning is the tendency to

transform different objects4 into equivalent ones, in other terms to form

groups of homogeneous items, all equivalent with the others under a

certain relaton. From the algebraical point of view, the unconscious mind

is thus organized as a quotient set, i.e. a partton of the totality of the

objects on the basis of an equivalence relaton under a specifc relaton R.

In logical terms the set of objects is defned by a propositonal functon

which is the basis of the equivalence.

The specifc descripton of homogenizaton as the operaton performed by

the unconscious functoning that makes an object identcal (i.e.

3 Antsymmetry and asymmetry are very alike: the antsymmetry relaton requires that

the two arguments of the relaton to be distinct.

4 An “object” in the psychoanalytc – as well as the computer-scientfc – sense could be

everything: an idea, a concept, a situaton, a feeling, a person, a part of the body.

32


interchangeable) with another is the startng point of the subsequent

descripton and of the computatonal implementaton that will be

exposed in the next chapter.

1.2 Symmetrization, abductive relations and timelessness

An interestng formal consequence of the applicaton of the principle of

symmetry can open a way of defning abductve relaton (Peirce) as the

symmetrizaton of traditonal deductve relaton. The classical deducton

can be stated in Gentzen's formalism as:

A → B A

B

which reads: “if it is known that whenever A is true then B is true, and

given that A is true, then B is true”. When the principle of symmetry is

applied to the relaton of implicaton we obtain:

B → A A

B

(“if it is known that whenever B occurs then A occurs, and given that A

occurred, then also B occurred”) which is a possible “basic” formulaton of

the abductve process defned by Pierce.

One further fact is that the principle of symmetry maintains the validity of

both of the symmetrized relatons, therefore we do not have just “if A →

B for symmetrizaton then B → A”, but more explicitly: “if A → B then for

symmetrizaton A → B AND B → A”, that is: “if A → B then for

symmetrizaton A ↔ B” (bi-implicaton). The bi-implicaton relaton (A ↔

B ) is defned to be true if and only if both A and B occur, or neither occur

(equivalently, either A is true and B is true or if A is false and B is false).

But one of the propertes of the unconscious thinking is that it cannot

33


admit the absence of something (thus everything imagined is present),

then it is necessary to exclude the case in which A and B are non-existent,

since if they are present as objects in the mind then they are perfectly

existent5. What remains (once excluded the cases in which A and B are

false) is the logical relaton A ↔ B for the cases in which A and B are

present (i.e., true) at the same tme: A ↔ B is true if and only if A is true

and B is true. But this is exactly the defniton of the AND relaton, which

is true if and only if A AND B (A and B are true, or occurs, at the same

tme).

If we consider the → relaton as a causal relaton tying a cause to the

effect, the AND relaton instead is the pure co-occurrence relaton: the

contemporary occurring of A and B is the unconscious version, and

possibly the logical basis in the human, of the cause–effect relaton. A

number of cognitve studies confrmed this idea in terms of pattern

formaton on the basis of covariaton of stmuli, for example (Lewicki,

1986). For instance, imagine a baby feeling bad, and then crying as an

immediate “natural” reacton. The crying causes the appearance of the

mother. Initally, from the point of view of the baby, this is a mere co-

occurrence of phenomena, but afer some tme the baby will realize that

the mother appears afer the crying, following precisely this order in tme

(otherwise we could see a calm baby startng to cry afer the mother

arrived, which is rarely the case). Then if the presence of the mother is

required, the crying would be triggered even without a direct and

compelling physical reason — so to speak, the crying “causes” the mother

to arrive. This fact can be regarded as a basic form of learned causal

relaton between percepts of events.

5 The problem of the pain felt for the absence of something needed or desired is

translated in the unconscious language saying that the object is present in the

unconscious with a negatve emotonal valence (Klein).

34


As shown with the latest example, the main difference between → and

AND is that in order to effectvely implement the former, the temporal

ordering must be present: when A occurs, then later B occurs6. This idea is

also supported in (Rayner, 1995) where is said: “The implicaton in its 'if-

then' contains futurity [...]” (p.14). Consequently we can, at least for this

very basic analysis, use as a working hypothesis that the main difference

between the conscious and the unconscious thinking is respectvely the

presence and the absence of some capability of maintaining the temporal

ordering needed for the causal relatons. Matte Blanco also suggest this

fact when considering repression of thoughts: “[...] if a memory is not

structured asymmetrically it is not a memory” (p.81). On the other hand,

lack of tme awareness makes everything be present in the same instant,

at the same tme, in a higher dimensionality of thought which is not

possible in the ordered space-tme axis that organize our conscious life. A

somehow analogous concepton is presented in (Brown, 1990) where the

fow of tme, even if perceived as contnuous, is made of “capsules” (the

substantaton of an “absolute Now”) of events which form an

interconnected succession of bits of experience.

Another, more theoretcal study inherent to this point is the one

presented in (Atmanspacher, Filk, & Scheingraber, 2005). The study is

based on formal analysis of neuronal assemblies, and shows how the

stability of these patterns (entailed by causal neuronal interactons)

implies a psychological tme arrow. The study is of relevance here since it

states the possibility that tme awareness in mind is produced by the

establishment of causal relaton.

6 From an experiental perspectve, to keep the memory of the events and understand

when it is a mere co-occurrence or a causal relaton allows to “do” A in order to obtain

B, or to avoid doing A in order to avoid the occurrence of B (even though this is not a

guarantee, since 0 → 1, i.e. even if A does not occur B could stll occur, as in

superstton).

35


From a logical and speculatve point of view, the lack of tme awareness in

the unconscious functoning could attest also for its inability of conceiving

an absence: everything gaining a status of presence in the unconscious,

being this unable to be positoned in tme (operaton possible only for a

memory-aware system) is necessarily occurring at the present tme. Also

the inability of the unconscious of conceiving negatons can be explained

in the same terms, since negaton is an operaton (NOT) performed on

something already formed (A, then the negaton is written as NOT A). To

accomplish this it must be possible to first defne A, and then produce its

negaton. But this two-step operaton is impossible for the unconscious as

a consequence of its tme-lacking structure. It is interestng to note that

obviously the “opposite” of A is potentally existent, but cannot be found

as the result of a logical operaton. As for the spatal awareness

(distncton of objects in a spatal environment), it is possible to fgure

that we conceive the “closeness” of an object in respect to another in

terms of the tme needed to reach it, therefore an object is farther than

another if the tme needed to reach it is greater7. The inability of the

unconscious functoning to be aware of spatal differentaton has been

employed in a series of studies (Brakel, 2004; Brakel, Kleinsorge,

Snodgrass, & Shevrin, 2000; Brakel, Shevrin, & Villa, 2002; Vanheule et al.,

2011) where patterns of simple fgures were shown to the partcipants.

When the expositon was subliminal (i.e. only unconsciously accessible)

the subjects associated them to the same set of fgures but in differently

spatal confguraton (attributonal similarity), while when the fgures

were presented superliminary the associatons were with different fgures

but in the same spatal confguraton (relatonal similarity).

7 It is interestng to note that a catchphrase about transports is that with the car (or the

train, or the airplane) the distances are reduced. This is clearly false, as it is the tme

needed to cover them that has been reduced, not the space in the middle.

36


Stretching this logical constructon even more, the lack of tme awareness

could even be the basis of symmetrizaton and not vice-versa, for the fact

that when an object is unconsciously recognized, its recognizing evokes all

the preceding and melted experiences and traces that object lef in the

mind (afer all, that is the meaning of “recognize”, “To know again”) all

together and at the present time, for the inability of the unconscious

functoning to set them in distnct tmes. This series of consideratons is

not to be considered as a claim about the intmate structure of the

unconscious, but just as a logical analysis of the structural congruencies

that could be found in the phenomenical “traditonal” descripton of the

unconscious processes.

2. Homogenization and generalization

Since every object, in everyone’s experience, is part of a network of

experience, regularites, recollectons, co-occurrences, associatons and so

on, the object is involved in an “endless” number of relatons with other

objects. The complete set of features of an object could be defned as the

intersecton of all the sets containing that object (i.e. of all the sets of

objects equivalent to that one for some reason). Every different form of

relaton defne a different quotent set and different sets of homogeneous

objects. Since a quotent set is based on an equivalency relaton, every

element of the set is equivalent to all the others and can be used as a

representatve of the set. Therefore if a∈S and b∈S and c∈S, then

a=b=c. And S is the set of all the equivalent objects. The equivalence

relaton makes possible to associate objects to many other objects under

certain relatons, thus spreading the unconscious associaton of every

other related object to that one, making it equivalent to many others.

37


The principle of symmetry applies also to the set related relatons, mainly

the “is subset of” relaton, which is written ⊆. Objects, in Matte Blanco's

view, are always belonging to a set, i.e. are representatves of a

homogenized set of objects. In principle, the set could contain just one

object, which is called in mathematcal jargon “a singleton”. If we say that

A⊆B (A is a subset of B) then, for symmetrizaton, B⊆A. For the two

relaton to be true at the same tme, the only logical possibility is that

A=B. This is an interestng fact: the logical consequences of this operaton

are not just the one typical of the set theory of describing sets of items

and relaton between them, but it becomes a declaratve structure: even

if A and B are different, the functoning of the unconscious treats them as

identcal. It is not anymore a descripton, it becomes a statement, an

applicaton of the arbitrary power of the unconscious functoning of

manipulatng the informaton contained in the system. Statng that A=B,

the symmetrizaton principle imposes an attributon to the two sets which

was not present before. Not just the two sets are identcal, but every

element in them are consequently identcal. Therefore every element of

each of the two set can possibly be the same as the frst object. As a limit

case, if the set A contains just one element, this singleton is made

identcal to the broader set B. For example, if I meet X, a friend of mine,

the structure of categories I use to classify him starts with the set of the

male friends, then in the set of the males, then in the set of the persons

and so on; this is the operaton of categorizaton, i.e. the one described

above in which the element a is identfed as belonging to a set A. The

parallel unconscious operaton of symmetrizaton works on this structure

making X identcal to every other friend of mine (he is all the friends of

mine), and identcal to every other male, and to every other person. If for

example he says something harsh to me, even ratonally knowing that he

38


is just one person, I could feel wounded not just by him but also by all my

friends, and all the males, and all the persons that I know8.

Even if the derivaton just described is not logically sound, it can be read

as an elegant formulaton of a characteristc of the unconscious

functoning: every element of a set is not just a representatve, but also it

has all the power of the set it belongs to, the power of all the other

contained objects. The object and the set, for the reasons expressed

before, are made identcal. The power of the object is then “multplied” in

the unconscious, making it the bearer of all the characteristcs of every

element of a set to the highest degree (since it represents every other

element in the set and the set itself). For example, the statement “Alice is

the mother of Bob”, which is perfectly logical, is symmetrized it becomes

“Bob is the mother of Alice”, which is irratonal under more than one

aspect. Nevertheless, this is the fundamental working mechanism of the

unconscious. The set of the objects which are equivalent to the two in the

“mother of” relaton are the elements of the class of the equivalent

objects, of all the objects bound by a “mother of” relaton. The resultng

set is not just a “bag” containing some elements, but it becomes

(extensionally), for every person, the meaning of the relaton of “mother-

ness”. This process is the fundamental step in the formaton of semantc

meanings (see (Salvatore & Freda, 2011) and (Salvatore & Venuleo,

2008)). Since sets defned in this way are objects on their own (semantc

meanings, concepts...)9 they are subjected to the very same rule of

8 Recall the example of the pendulum: this must not be considered as actually occurring

with all the depicted power, since this would be the behavior of a person totally and

exclusively overwhelmed by the unconscious drive, which is usually not the case.

9 It could be argued that not every set forms a full-fedged semantc category available to

be homogenized with others categories. This is a complex point that deserves more

attenton in the future, for now it is possible to conceive the sets as a primitve

semantc meanings that become part of objects that happen to be in that set, and not

39


generalizaton described so far. Sets therefore are part of other broader

and more general sets, with which they can be made identcal. To make

an example, one person’s unconscious functoning could categorize the

“boss” in the set of powerful persons, and the set of powerful persons in

the set of the fathers, and the set of the fathers in the set of the

persecutory objects and so on; the boss is therefore a persecutory object

but not only that, for the principle of symmetry it contains all the

elements of the set of the persecutory objects, making the boss

persecutory to the highest degree.

A nice literary example of this process of homogenizaton is present in

Kafa’s book “The castle” (1926):

“You’re a difcult problem,” said K., comparing them, as he had

already done several tmes. “How am I to know one of you from

the other? The only difference between you is your names,

otherwise you’re as like as...”

He stopped, and then went on involuntarily, “You’re as like as

two snakes.”

They smiled.

just the vice versa. To make an example, the set of the “good mothers” could contain a

mother (independently from her goodness-badness value) solely because of her

mother-ness property. In this operaton this new element gains the attributon of

“good” attached to the one of “mother”, becoming a “good mother” even without the

need of a verifcaton of the specifc object’s goodness-badness: she is a mother,

therefore she is good. On its turn, this inclusion slightly modifes the set which

becomes now a somehow different one, i.e. it modifes the semantc of “good mother”

for the observing person. Thus the semantc category is already present before the

aggregaton of the objects under that category, and can be considered as an object on

its own. cf. Chapter 3, paragraph 2.3 .

40


“People usually manage to distnguish us quite well,” they said

in self-justfcaton.

“I am sure they do,” said K., “I was a witness of that myself, but I

can only see with my own eyes, and with them I can’t

distnguish you. So I shall treat you as if you were one man and

call you both Arthur, that’s one of your names, yours, isn’t it?”

he asked one of them.

“No,” said the man, “I’m Jeremiah.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said K. “I’ll call you both Arthur. If I tell

Arthur to go anywhere you must both go. If I give Arthur

something to do you must both do it, that has the great

disadvantage for me of preventng me from employing you on

separate jobs, but the advantage that you will both be equally

responsible for anything I tell you to do.

How you divide the work between you doesn’t matter to me,

only you’re not to excuse yourselves by blaming each other, for

me you’re only one man.”

In this fragment, K. could also be called U., for Unconscious, because it

behaves exactly like the principle of symmetry as described above: puts

together two different persons because they are undistnguishable, and

order them to make the same things. K. declares that the only distncton

he could see between them is in their name, then removes this distncton

giving to the both of them the same name because “for me you’re only

one man”. Here is clearly in acton also the principle of generalizaton,

when K. says that they are not just identcal, but identcal “as two snakes”.

The steps connectng the frst-level homogenizaton to this “involuntarily”

41


identfcaton with two snakes are unknown, but can be easily guessed:

the two men are identcal, so they belong to the class of the “identcal

things” together with snakes which are identcal as well. But the snakes

could be also part of the “treacherous” objects. The path is then: identcal

one to the other and felt like treacherous, then the two men are made

identcal to the set of snakes, which are all the same identcal and

treacherous. In this example could also be traced down a ratonal

interventon, a tentatve injecton of ratonal asymmetrical thought,

where the two men say that other persons are perfectly able to

distnguish them, and K. says that he himself “[...] was a witness of that”,

thus he is perfectly aware of the fact that the two men are not the same

one, but stll he could not see any difference10. Furthermore, in the same

homogenizing fashion, he states that “you will both be equally

responsible for anything”, making the identfcaton not just categorial but

also operatve: the behavior of one of them is the behavior of the both of

them. Just like in the unconscious, all the objects of an equivalence set

are responsible of the same behavior. This phenomenon is considered as

the basic mechanism of transference (from (Taylor, 1988) ):

[…] a therapist may possess certain characteristcs

unconsciously defned by the client as paternalistc. In terms of

Symmetric logic—which is manifested to a greater extent in the

transference—the therapist is regarded at one level as being

10 As a meta-observaton on the text, notce that also the author, when referring to the

two men, treat them as a whole. Kafa writes: «“People usually manage to distnguish

us quite well,” they said in self-justfcaton» as if the two men were saying the same

thing at the same tme, making a confusing effect on the reader which now is involved

not just in the fcton, but also in the alternatve symmetrical reality of the protagonist

of the book. There is a homogenizaton of the levels of reality that is an effect, once

again, of the principle of symmetry in its generalizing incarnaton. Compare, further on,

the concept of “reifcaton”.

42


the father, since he (or she) possesses one or more features of

set S ['characteristcs of the father'] which, when defned as an

infnite set, is taken to be equivalent to the entrety of S. The

entrety of this set, of course, is the father. (p.428)

(Or, we would rather say, the “father-ness”.)

Complementary to the symmetrical logic is the asymmetrical one, as

already introduced. Here is recalled just to underline that, from a

dynamical point of view, it operates in the opposite fashion. If the

symmetrizaton creates sets inside which every element is identcal to the

others, the asymmetrizaton operates by fragmentng the sets and fnding

differences. A similar process is described in Hoffmansthal’s “The letter

from Lord Chandos”:

For me everything disintegrated into parts, those parts again

into parts; no longer would anything let itself be encompassed

by one concept.

This is the descripton made by a schizophrenic subject, the imaginary

author of this letter to Francis Bacon. To be noted, as it is recalled in the

quotaton, that when applied to its extreme, this process destroys the

semantc knowledge because it pushes the mind in making smaller and

smaller sets of everything, reaching the point in which every object

belongs to only one set, which is the maximum resoluton in the

descripton of the reality, but it cannot be the only basis for the mind

functoning. Again, this process cannot be found in its purest form in an

individual, but it must be considered as the complementary operaton of

symmetrizaton which shapes the inner mind structure of a person.

The inclusion of the whole in the part operated by the symmetrizaton of

the generalizaton is the fact that inspired Matte Blanco about the

43


“infnite sets” of the ttle of his book. The analogy is based on the

algebraic defniton of infnite set given by Richard Dedekind: a set is

infnite if and only if there is a proper subset of it that can be put in

biunivocal correspondence with the former11. Matte Blanco found in this

defniton an analogy (even a strict one) with the identfcaton of the part

in the whole made by the symmetrical generalizaton.

Due to the central importance given by Matte Blanco to this defniton, in

the Author's opinion is important to clarify some details about the

mathematcal component of the idea. From a mathematcal point of view,

this must be taken just as an analogy because in the reality it is not

possible to observe any “infnite” set. The mathematcal infnite is defned

and used only intensionally through its defniton without any practcal

existence (to the Author's knowledge12), and does not allow for different

uses. Since the brain of a person is made with a fnite number of atoms

which might combine in an enormous but stll fnite amount of patterns, it

is incorrect to attribute any kind of infniteness to a physical object. Matte

Blanco himself realizes the difculty of the mathematcal formulaton of

the Principle of symmetry:

[The principle of symmetry] seems to be able to comprehend

and express accurately many facts of clinical reality. There is

11 For example the subset of the pair numbers can be put in correspondence with the

whole set of the natural numbers simply dividing every pair number by 2, or

multplying every natural number by 2. This defniton though is not compatble with

the axiomatc set theory by Zermelo and Fraenkel, which gives another defniton of

infnite sets. It must also be noted that a biunivocal correspondence is to be applied

mechanically and rigidly in an infnite number of exemplars, operaton that does not

seem to be quite appropriate to describe the arbitrary and irregular connectons taking

place in the unconscious.

12 Einstein was used to say that only two things are infnite: the universe and the human

stupidity, and that he was not quite sure about the former.

44


one case, however, in which it seems to express more than it

should, although I am not sure that this critcism is valid. What I

have in mind is that, according to it, if a is included in B, then B

is included in a, which is not the case in the relaton between

the whole and the proper part in infnite sets. (p.147)

The kind of biunivocal correspondence needed to establish the infnity of

a set following the Dedekind’s defniton cannot in any case be established

for fnite sets13. But the importance of the intuitons of Ignacio Matte

Blanco cannot be reduced to a trivial critc about his brilliant but inexact

use of mathematcal concepts and abuse of notaton. In fact, the concept

of infnity in the unconscious can be interpreted as the exponental

growth of identfcaton performed by the unconscious actvity in the

process of symmetrizaton. When an object is considered identcal to an

increasingly wider array of other objects, the sudden “explosion” of

objects (everyone partcipatng to the experience with its connected

emotons), like in a short-circuit, can be straightorwardly assimilated to

an infnite and overwhelming experience.

2.1 Dynamic interplay of symmetrical and asymmetrical

thinking

Going back to a previous observaton about formal systems, some tme

must be devolved to explain how could a system which incorporates the

principle of symmetry be in a dynamic and yet stable equilibrium. As have

13 This is a consequence of the “Pigeonhole” theorem. As a special case such a

correspondence exist for fnite sets exclusively when the two sets have the same

number of elements. Precisely the number of all the possible correspondences is N! =

1·2·3·...·(N-1)·N. It must also be added, as a small but fundamental remark, that a

biunivocal correspondence allow us to draw conclusion exclusively about the number

of the elements, and not about their relations.

45


been said, the process of symmetrizaton, if not constrained, is likely to

make anything identcal to everything, a conditon simply unft for human

life.

The frst queston to face is how it is possible for a formal system to

incorporate the principle of symmetry and not to collapse. Matte Blanco

is perfectly aware of this point: “[...] the principle of symmetry as a

unique and all-embracing principle of logic completely dissolves all logic”

(p.54). Matte Blanco uses the image of the drop of an acid that dissolves

the fabric of asymmetrical thinking but just in the point in which it drops:

“[...] in the midst of the structure of [traditonal] logic the principle of

symmetry makes its appearance at certain points and, like a powerful

acid, dissolves all logic within its range, that is, in the territory where it is

applied. But the rest of the logic structure remains intact” (p.54). Further

on he proposes the concept of “bag of symmetry” in order to defne more

formally this concept. The concept is based on the consideraton that the

unconscious is able to homogenize distnct sets, but for the sets to be

“distnct” it is necessary that another complementary and contrastng

force to act on the categorial structures, giving them the shape on which

the symmetrizaton operates. The set of the mothers, for example, is

different from the set of the fathers, even if they could stll be united as

elements in the super-set of the parents. To explain this it is necessary to

realize that to make the symmetrizaton possible, it is needed a flm

insulatng the different sets, like a wrapping around the boundaries of the

sets, modeled by the asymmetrical process. That is, a minimum amount

of differentaton is necessary even in the land of the undifferentated

thought: “Symmetrical being alone is not observable in man” (p.104).

The concept of bag of symmetry offers a fundamental element of balance

between the two different drives because it allows to separate radically

46


two completely incompatble dynamics. The symmetrical logic does not

interfere with the rules of the symmetrical logic, and vice-versa. To restate

it more clearly: no interchange of rules occurs between the two logics,

they just happen to operate, in diferent ways, on the same data

structure.

This conclusion is present also in Matte Blanco:

It can be concluded […] that, however much symmetrical and

asymmetrical being are ‘given’ together, and however much

they may be inextricably linked to each other in the most varied

ways, they remain, as far as their being is concerned,

permanently separate. (p.288)

It is now tme to ask how can these two systems interact without,

normally, overpowering each other. To answer to this point it must be

realized that the two logics operate by applying different rules to the

same data. The consequence of the applicaton of the respectve rules are

the transformaton of data in other data which is again subjected to

transformaton in an everlastng cycle. The data could be received (simply

said, for the sake of clarity) from the outside as a bodily or perceptual

stmulus (cf. the concept of “core affect” by (Russell, 2003; Russell &

Barrett, 1999) ) or produced by the internal functoning of the cognitve

system14. Therefore, the two systems operate by transforming the data on

the basis of the respectve system of rules15. The point here is that the

data on which they operate are the same16. The operatons performed by

14 “Cognitve” in a broad sense.

15 Incidentally, this is also the defniton of a computer program.

16 It should be defned what “data” are, but this would take this expositon too far away.

Sufce to say that the objects (which are represent by data) are defned

developmentally, through the constant evaluaton of their salience, in the interacton of

the two logics startng from the most basic ones and then building complex structures

47


the symmetrical thinking are taken by the asymmetrical system and

treated asymmetrically, and data produced by the asymmetrical thinking

are taken by the symmetrical one and treated symmetrically.

This point is central in this discussion and deserves to be explained

through an example.

In the presence of a teacher a student could feel and behave in quite

different ways depending on how the data (as result of an operaton of

categorizaton) is transformed mainly by the symmetrical system. Imagine

that the object in the focus is the “knowledge”, i.e. what is “carried” and

“given” by the teacher. If “knowledge” is classifed within the set, among

the other pertnent ones, of “nourishing things” (symmetry), then

“teacher” belongs to the set of “persons giving nourishment”

(asymmetry), but also the mother usually is a “person giving

nourishment” then the teacher consequently, being in the same set,

would be seen and felt as a mother17 (symmetry), and the behavior of the

student would be a logical consequence of this attributon: s/he would

behave towards the teacher as s/he does towards her/his mother.

Furthermore, as previously explained, the feeling of the student would

encompass not just the teacher, but also all the other objects made

identcal to the teacher. This path of transformatons is partly symmetrical

and partly asymmetrical, and in the two domains these steps are perfectly

coherent with the respectve rules, even when applied on the data

transformed by the other process18 19. It is possible to describe this

in which the data are stored. (cf. Chapter 3, paragraph 2.3)

17 Actually, to be coherent with Matte Blanco’s formulaton, the teacher is the mother

and the mother is the teacher.

18 Here is used the term “data”, but it would be more appropriate the term “type of data”,

which is fundamentally the set (or even better said the structure of sets) it belongs to.

19 As an interestng remark, this operaton is very similar to the concepts on which the

computatonal theory of concurrent processes are based. Actually, to avoid this kind of

48


process (quite inexactly, but in the sake of clarity) saying that the output

of a process becomes the input of the process and vice-versa.

This object-transforming interacton between the two systems is common

in artstc representatons. One example of these is the hallucinatory

vision of Pink (see fgure 2.1), the protagonist of “Pink Floyd—The Wall”.

The hammers become the symbol of his hallucinatory delirium of being a

fascist dictator, certainly recalling the nazi swastka. In the animated

movie we see the hammers marching goose-pass as soldiers. A hammer

becomes a leg, and melts together (i.e. homogenizes) the aggressiveness

of the object with a martal and anthropomorphic representaton,

operatng a condensaton, following Freud’s terminology.

To describe this process with a vignette, try to fgure a cook preparing a

meal following a recipe in the kitchen of a haunted castle. In the kitchen

there are some poltergeists that have fun in moving things around and

interference between computatonal processes it is needed a great theoretcal and

technical effort to coordinate and synchronize the processes, but in this case what is a

threat for the computers, is the main functoning of the human being. This could be a

startng point for another way of describing the interacton of the two systems.

49

Figure 2.1 — A photogram from "Pink Floyd—The Wall" (© 1982 Turner Entertainment

Co./Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc)


replacing ingredients and tools. The cook must manage somehow the

disturbance of the ghosts which s/he cannot stop anyway. Dealing with

the substtutons, the dish s/he was intended to prepare would become

quite different, but not necessarily a bad one. Quite the opposite in fact,

having to deal with the differences introduced in the ingredients the cook

would be forced to introduce creatvely variatons and changing in the

process, possibly discovering that incredibly tasteful combinaton which

he would have never found otherwise. It must be noted, as a side

thought, that this is ofen the process of not just culinary but also

scientfc and intellectual discoveries. To connect this example to the

expositon made before, it is possible to notce the presence of two

concurring and reciprocally infuencing set of rules. The recipe is, just like

an algorithm, a well-defned set of rules and procedures to be followed.

The procedure is to be applied on objects (the ingredients) to combine

and manipulate them in order to prepare a specifc dish. But if the object

changes (as operated by the symmetrical thinking following its own rules),

the procedure should be adapted to the new situaton which is stll

reasonable and meaningful, but changed in some way. For example the

poltergeists could enjoy replacing the black pepper with chili pepper since

both are spicy, or pasta with rice, or the knife with a spoon, or the boiling

pot with an oven, etc. The procedure ought then to be modifed (for

example changing the cooking tme of some ingredients) in order to

produce a different but stll reasonable dish. It could be interpreted in this

light also the relatonship with the formal logical systems: in a formal

system if the resultng dish is not what was expected then some errors

have occurred in the executon of the recipe, so it must be trashed and

the cook should not be considered reliable. But observing it in another

perspectve, if the resultng dish is stll good, interestng, edible, or even

better than the one expected, the overall interacton of the two system

50


could be considered successful. This structural and well-defned

interacton allows for such a result: that is, the two set of symmetrical and

asymmetrical rules are completely independent and communicate only

through the manipulaton of the data, i.e. of the objects. Must be also

noted that, in this systemic organizaton, not everything, in principle, is

possible. This happens because the asymmetrical system tend always to

adequate its rule appliance in order to keep an internal coherency, and

the symmetrical system can impose substtutons of the objects, but just

of the objects, and furthermore not arbitrarily but following some internal

substtutons based on past experience. More importantly, the

substtutons (unlike the example) are not defnitve and do not result in

single objects, but the objects could be, at the same time, a variety of

different potentally replaceable objects. This multtude of objects, which

are identfed in only one, single, multfarious object, thinkable just in a

higher-dimensional space, is employed by the asymmetrical process

following an actvaton network infuenced by the circumstances and the

state of affairs. As will be seen in a moment, the equilibrium of the two

system is gained through an interplay in the object–selecton, rule–

adapton dynamic20.

20 A better, although much more technical statement, would be that the objects do not

exits in themselves (as also Matte Blanco states), but they exist in terms of elements of

a set. The hierarchy of sets to which an element belongs is its “type”. Types of objects

are the basis of rule-based operatons, for example the operator “+” can be applied

only to data of type “number”, and to all its subtypes. An applicaton in Matte Blanco’s

terms could be, for example, the operator “feeds” which could be applied only to

objects of type “nourishing things”, of which “mother” would likely be a subtype. This

approach could offer a way to “build” emotonally based operators, which are the

“names” of existng relatons between two objects: “Mother feeds me”, then the

relaton “feed, nourishing” would emerge from the interactons and the experience

that the individual recognizes in the world. Moreover, this approach would extend

nicely to type-inference theories: “Computer science is bad but the professor is

51


The example given earlier about the teacher and the student seems to be

quite elementary, but hides many complex facets. Why, just to start,

among all the possible attributons that is possible to give to “knowledge”,

the unconscious of the student “choose” to consider it as “nourishing”?

“Knowledge” could also be persecutory (when one is not able to acquire

it) or shameful (because it could reveal an ignorance), or even the

concept itself of “knowledge” could be fundamentally extraneous to an

individual. The specifc attributon could also depend on the type of

knowledge the teacher tries to transmit21. It is reasonable to think that

“knowledge”, among the many others, could be part of all of these sets

(see fgure 2.2).

nourishing as a mother then I must accept either that (1) computer science is good; or

(2) the professor is poisoning me”. Considering therefore the symmetrical system as a

“type builder” that assigns many types to the objects, would be an approach that could

offer an even more formal and mathematcally sound basis for the descripton of the

theories by Matte Blanco, which may be pursued in the future.

21 For example, the class of Computer Science in the course of Psychology, in the Author's

direct experience, has been broadly (but fortunately non always) perceived –

inexplicably – as persecutory.

52

Figure 2.2 — Afective categorial placement of "Knowledge" as a mental object.

Knowledge

Shameful things

Nourishing things

Persecutory things


Similarly, a teacher, on the basis of the perceived features (behavior,

appearance, style, sex, voice etc.) could be categorized in a variety of sets

as in fgure 2.3.

This overlapped highly-dimensional categorizaton, as said, is typical of

the symmetrical thinking. But what makes the specifc categorizaton to

be selected or, at least, prevalent? Moreover, the selected category of

both of the elements (“knowledge” and “teacher”), are not mutually

independent since they are part of a logical asymmetrical structure tying

them each other. The specifc combinaton of the two “winning”

attributons is a gestalt, it is a pattern of things and attributons that make

that schema to be recognized and assimilated to other patterns being part

of the experience of a person22. This dynamical and interactve approach

in the transformaton of data offers a structural model which could be

22 In order to describe more formally the formaton of a gestalt that resembles in its

structure already known patterns (or the need for the introducton of a new pattern) a

powerful and extremely sophistcated instrument is the mathematcal theory of

categories. In this case “category” is a technical term distnct from “class” and “set”.

53

Figure 2.3 — Afective categorial placement of "Teacher" as a mental object.

Teacher

Devaluing persons

Nourishing persons

Authoritarian persons


employed to describe processes of this type. For example it is now easy to

see how a teacher (of a matter previously hated by the student) which,

for his personal features as perceived by the student, happened to be

included in the set of “nourishing persons”, could be able to create a

different gestalt in the symmetrical transformaton of the data. In this way

a student could stop to perceive a certain topic as persecutory because it

is received by a “nourishing person”23 and develop an interest for the

taught topics. Similarly a certain behavior could be annoying to us in a

stranger, or be felt as sweet when coming from the person we are in love

with. This model is close to the one proposed in (Indurkhya, 1999) that

formalizes algebraically the structure and the creatvity of metaphors on

the basis of the algebraic construct of isomorphism.

2.2 Generalization through bags of symmetry

It is now possible to give a graphical representaton of the general process

of defniton of relatons between two elements. The frst phenomenon to

be given a graphical representaton is the homogenizaton, where an

element belonging to a set is the same as any other element belonging to

the same set. See fgure 2.4.

23 A fundamental regulatng parameter (which will be discussed further on) in this

interplay between objects and classifcatons is the amount of emoton connected to

the circumstances.

54


The representaton of the bag of symmetry containing an object A, where

the different level of generalizaton are explicit is shown in fgure 2.5, with

the arrow representng the directon of the generalizaton.

Another case is the displacement, which is a combinaton of

homogenizaton and generalizaton, shown in fgure 2.6.

55

Figure 2.4 — Graphical representation of the process of homogenization of any two

objects in a set.

A A'

Figure 2.5 — Graphical representation of the process of generalization of an object A in the

containing sets.

A


But clearly every element could belong to more than a bag of symmetry,

as shown in fgure 2.7.

A similar structure can be imagined for the triad made of the objects A

and B and by the relaton R present between them, as in fgure 2.8.

56

Figure 2.6 — Graphical representation of the process of displacement.

A

Figure 2.7 — Belonging of an object A to more than one hierarchy classification, in terms

of bags of symmetry.

A


In this fgure are expressed (in a simplifed manner) the potental

elements belonging to the bags of symmetry of A, R and B. Every one of

them could take part in the actual relaton. In general, as explained

earlier, all of them take part in the defniton of an extended relatonship

between the elements A and B (see fgure 2.9).

All of the relatons are actve to some degree, even if only few of them

can be present in the asymmetrical conscious thinking due to the ratonal

57

FIgure 2.8 — Belonging of the elements of a triad A R B to multiple hierarchies of sets.

A BR

Figure 2.9 — An example of the possible combinations of generalized objects and relation.

A BR


constraints. Every possible relaton existng in this situaton is a possible

gestalt between the elements and their relaton, on the basis of the

culture, the history and the experience of the individual. The specifc

gestalt of the relaton and elements gaining the most prominent positon

depends instead on the contngent emotonal state of the individual. In

turn, this modifes the general experiental dimension of the person and

becomes part of his/her history. It must be noted that this feedback

exerts its infuence only in the formaton of the possible gestalts, and only

rarely (in the case of a correspondent intense emotonal actvaton) on

the probability of the making pertnent one of them and not another.

What has been described before is, so to speak, the normal functoning of

the mind, of a mind already formed, full-fedged and functonal. But one

queston arises: how these sets of objects and relatons take form? It is

not possible that they are completely inherited, or that they are an

“internal” copy of the commonsensical culture in which the individual is

immersed. They are formed obviously on the basis of personal experience

and of the categorizaton of objects and relatons the individual have

done over tme. A detailed descripton of this process would be given in

Chapter 3, paragraph 2.3, but for now it would sufce to observe some

phenomena to understand in general how this could happen.

The specifc combinaton of the elements involved in the relaton is ofen

straightorward and familiar, as occurs for example observing the fgure

2.1024.

24 Thanks to Ettore, Valentna e Lara for the kind permission for reproducing this photo.

58


The fgure could be taken as an example of perceived relaton, because

we have two main elements (the dad and the daughter) and a familiar set

of relatons (love, protecton...) expressed through the acton of holding

and hugging. But fgure 2.11 deserves a more careful analysis, because

the involved gestalt is less familiar (but not so unfamiliar to be

incomprehensible).

In this case the relaton and the two involved elements are somehow

confictng, and a cognitve adjustment must be done in order to give

59

Figure 2.10 — An instance of relationship between objects: a father holding the daughter.

Figure 2.11 — Is it the same relationship existing between the dad and the daughter?


sense to this image. In this case the relaton, which is the same as the

previous fgure, is the strongest clue we can use in order to classify the

element B, the computer. The computer is then “forcefully” inserted in

the set of the “lovable” things25. In this case one of the object and the

relaton modifed the feld of experience and features of the computer in

order to create a sense. But try fguring the a baby observing the picture,

and assume that s/he does not know what a computer is: s/he would

categorize that unknown thing partly on the basis of its resemblance to

other things, but likely much more on the relaton of hugging s/he likely

recognized. It is interestng to note that this interpretaton of “love”

towards the computer has likely been infuenced by the actvaton of such

relaton following the expositon to the previous photo, that acted like a

priming.

Another case is when the relaton is unclear and the objects are clear, as

in fgure 2.12.

25 This can also be considered the basis of the phenomenon of anthropomorphizing.

60

Figure 2.12 — A mysterious relationship.


We do see a young and handsome man holding an apple. The meaning is

not immediately apparent because the relaton between the two

elements is not clear, the comprehension therefore requires some

digging. It could be a commercial about the healthiness of fresh fruit, or

promotng a partcular brand of apples, or an actor impersonatng William

Tell, or a historicist telling the story of Newton's discover of gravity, or a

modern version of the myth of Adam and Eve, or Snow- White's prince.

While some of them are appealing, none is partcularly convincing. But

the “right” gestalt in the combinaton of the elements, that allows to

defne very clearly the relaton between the two elements, can be

achieved notcing that the man is a young Steve Jobs, one of the founders

of Apple Computers. The relaton at this point becomes perfectly

comprehensible, almost snow-blinding: he is the owner, the creator of

Apple, and “holds” it in his hands. What happened again is the extension

of a previously existng relaton, or possibly the creaton of a new one.

The simultaneous presence of different interpretaton of this example is

apparent: we certainly see a man holding an apple, but also the Creator

holding an apple, and the Man holding Apple, and so on with all the

possible variatons.

It is interestng to notce that, for the homogenising effect of the

symmetrical transformaton, the relaton “holds”, apart from being

symmetrized itself (“the apple holds Steve Jobs”26), it is made equal to all

the other relatons analogous or more specifc than “holds”, like

“controls”, “possesses” and so on. The apple itself, referring to Apple

Computers, extends to the it all the propertes of the apple: the freshness,

the ripeness, the crunchiness, the naturalness, but also (from the myth of

26 Here this kind of symmetrizaton is referred to as “horizontal” symmetrizaton, as

opposed to the one producing generalizaton through bags of symmetry which is called

“vertcal”.

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Adam and Eve) the sin, the transgression, etc. The relaton refects also

this variety of interpretaton of the apple, then Steve Jobs is also

transgressive and wicked. For symmetrizaton if the evil apple is held by

Steve Jobs, then the evil apple holds Steve Jobs, bringing the conclusion

that Steve Jobs is the devil, and therefore (in a possible subsequent idea)

the computers are an instrument of the devil27. All of these interplays

(and likely thousands others) are unconsciously present when observing

that picture. All of these gestalts of relatons are made identcal to the

main one and equally present, even if unawarely, in the meaningmaking

of the picture.

The detecton of objects to be combined in relatons (the salience of the

perceptons) can be regarded to be a process similar to the one described

so far. Which pieces of the perceived reality (not yet objects) are

relevant? Is there a combinaton of these pieces that makes “sense” of

the perceptons? The process of looking very rapidly and in parallel for

combinatons to be tested against their meaningfulness is precisely what

is expected to be done by the unconscious processing.

2.3 Further regulative mechanisms of the symmetrical–

asymmetrical interplay

Another regulatve mechanism could be identfed in the difference of the

tme scale of functoning of symmetrical and asymmetrical processes. The

symmetrical system operates extremely fast and moving

multdimensionally in a parallel fashion; on the contrary the asymmetrical

one works more or less linearly and on a much coarser tmescale. The

transformaton operated on the data under the principle of symmetry are

used only in minimal part by the asymmetrical functoning. As if it was

27 This process is analogous to the already evoked “type inference” process, we could call

it an “open type inference”, for its lack of formal constraints.

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watching a movie of reality one photogram at tme, ignoring all the

transformaton occurred in the between of the photograms.

The phenomenon just described in terms of operatons have been

formulated by Matte Blanco in terms of “unfolding functon”. The

symmetrical thinking clearly forms a network of “endless” connectons,

expressed in the formalism used so far as overlapped hierarchies of

nested sets. To describe the unconscious functoning therefore it is

requires a higher dimensionality than the one employed in the

asymmetrical thinking. This higher dimensionality explains also the fact

that the diverse objects (like the ones used in the examples) are not “as

if” (the teacher is considered “as if” s/he were a mother) but as “is”: the

teacher is a mother. The higher dimensionality of the unconscious

thinking permits to do so. But these high-dimensional overlapping

structures must be at a certain point reduced to a lower dimension to be

allowed to be used in the asymmetrical thinking. This “unfolding” follows

the lines of the gestaltc confguraton of the sets28. Recently a surprisingly

similar concept is presented in (Rauterberg, 2010) in the feld of artfcial

intelligence. In Rauterberg's paper is sustained that the emotons are

originated by the very operaton of reducton from high-dimensional

unconscious to low-dimensional consciousness.

Going back to the consideratons about the constancy of the amount of

informaton in a logical system, it is now possible to explore the dynamic

interacton of the asymmetrical and symmetrical systems from another

perspectve. The introducton of the concept of symmetrical thinking

allows for a modifcaton in the total amount of informaton of the mind-

28 A parallel with the quantum physics can be drawn here: the unconscious is the place

where the “partcles” are in a superposed and interfering state which collapses when

the asymmetrical thinking “probes” the unconscious state in order to contnue with its

functoning.

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system. The symmetrical thinking both creates and destroys informaton

which the asymmetrical system employs. Without this process of

creatve29 informaton manipulaton it would not be possible to develop a

meaningful model of the functoning of a human being, or perhaps of any

other vertebrate.

This creatve process occurs whenever an object (e.g. a person) is

categorized in a set because this inclusion gives a type to the object on

the basis of some features, but at the same tme this process ignores

some other details about the person keeping just the ones that are

“relevant” (salient), i.e. sufcient to put that person arbitrarily in a series

of categories. Furthermore, once the person is part of a series of sets, the

individual aspects of that person tend to be shaded and melted with the

other elements of the same set. At the same tme, the person is enriched

with all the collateral propertes defning the sets which s/he belongs to.

This process of creatve manipulaton of informaton occurs every

moment in every respect of the objects present in the system. Such a

creatve process of integraton is fundamental because otherwise an

individual would be constantly immersed in a world made of microscopic

details and too busy in calculatng the detail of the world to just to live

“in” the world. Therefore the unconscious actvity is fundamental in order

to protect the ratonal one from the overwhelming details of reality.

A fundamental consequence of this is that the stmuli are unconsciously

selected (and thus subjected to all the rules of the unconscious

29 “Creatve” implies also the process of informaton destructon. It could even be

possible to call it “creatve destructon” because it takes a certain amount of creatvity

to know what has to be ignored, forgotten or considered to be identcal to other things.

It is like Cinoc's profession in Perec's “Life a user's manual” (Chapter 60) who used to

be a “word-killer”: “[...] he worked at keeping Larousse dictonaries up to date. But

whilst other compilers sought out new words and meanings, his job was to make room

for them by eliminatng all the words and meanings that had fallen into disuse.”

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functoning) in a contnuous interplay of categorizaton, generalizaton

and looking for meaning (see also (Cole, 1998), cited in (Salvatore &

Venuleo, 2008)). This is the process of salience evaluaton which is able to

identfy the objects of relevance not just detectng the objects in the

reality and then considering them ratonally, but including the very

process of cognitve evaluaton in the process of detecton, infuenced

also by the unconscious process of abstracton and symbolizaton.

2.4 Emotions and context

In the above discussion a queston have remained partally without

answer: what makes a specifc categorizaton among the possible myriads

the one of preference? The partal answer was “the gestalt of the

confguraton”. Another element though needs to be considered: the

emoton. In Matte Blanco’s view emotons are the inextricable “fuel” of

the unconscious functoning. For example, when a newborn starts to face

the world, his/her only way of perceiving the world is through basic bodily

manifestatons (pleasure–displeasure, excitement–relaxaton,

intensifcaton–de-intensifcaton). These are also the axis of the frst

differentaton of the world, the frst proto-categorizaton. Things and

experiences are categorized primarily following these axes, and then,

during the development, in more and more specifc categories. A

fascinatng consequence of this is that the differentaton, the asymmetry,

on the basis of which the ratonal thinking is founded takes origin from

the frst and fundamental emotonal hedonic distncton based on the

emotons. To use the words of (Salvatore & Freda, 2011):

[…] the hedonic values can be conceived as the “antagonist” of

the unconscious, introducing a quantum of differentaton

within the symmetrical totality. In the fnal analysis, Matte

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Blanco’s theory leads to an inversion: while according to the

classical view there is the object and then its affectve

connotaton, according to the bi-logic model it is the

differentatng hedonic connotaton that generates the object as

a mental fact, a source of further semiotc actvity. (p.126)

Emotons therefore are deeply intertwined with the generalizatons

performed by the symmetrical functoning, and leave trails of their

presence in every categorizaton. Emotons, in the theorizaton of Matte

Blanco, are the fuel of the unconscious process, and the higher the

emoton involved in the categorizaton of an object, the broader the

generalized class of belonging. Emotons are the value-of-life we give to

the unconscious experience, as differentated by contexts and moments,

and based on the experiences.

The contextual infuence in the functoning of a person has been

described in terms of “affectve semiosis” (Salvatore & Freda, 2011) in

which

[…] the semiotc standpoint looks at affect not merely as a

reactve embodied actvaton but as the use of this actvaton as

a basic form of meaning, that is as the frst interpretant

motvated in the interpreter’s mind, in turn triggering further

interpretng signs. For this reason, affect is to be considered in

terms of process rather than of state – affect then, as affectve

semiosis. (p.122)

The model of affectve semiosis relies extensively, although not

exclusively, on the symmetry principle:

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We use “affectve semiosis” to refer to the mind’s functoning

that works (predominantly [...]) according to the symmetry

principle. (p.125)

Since emotons are consttutve of the most basic and generalized super-

sets, they contribute decisively in the task of contextual defniton,

guiding the semantc emersion of meaning from the hierarchies of sets.

Moreover, the generalized affectve state infuences the segmentaton of

the world and the salience of the perceived elements. The partcular path

followed in the interplay between symmetrical and asymmetrical thinking

is led by the emotons the person lives in that moment, both in terms of

contngent emotonal response to stmuli and general emotonal texture.

Emotons thus help in the process of interpretaton of the situaton, since

there always is an unavoidable deal of ambiguity (not just in the

elements, but about the elements to be considered as relevant) which is

modeled through the affectve connotaton of the context. If the meaning

of the perceptons is in the categories elicited by the elements of the

world, and the combinaton of these categories under emotonal guidance

and gestaltc organizatonal criteria is the complex meaning of the

situaton, the generalized affects evoked by the situaton have the power

to steer the gestaltc pattern towards a different combinaton of

meanings, or to involve different objects. “For instance if the infant is in

the state of pleasantness it will be more probable that at the same tme

she/he perceives the smell of the mother’s skin than the sound of the

father shoutng” (Salvatore & Freda, 2011).

Making yet another literary example of this process of contextual

connotaton, think of “Mr Palomar” by Italo Calvino (1983) in the short

story “The naked bosom”. Mr Palomar is walking along a lonely beach

where there are few bathers. However, “one young woman is lying on the

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sand, taking the sun, her bosom bared. Palomar, discreet by nature, looks

away at the horizon of the sea.” Mr Palomar though is sensitve to the

situaton in which a man approaches and the woman feels obliged to

cover her bosom. “This does not seem right to him: because it is a

nuisance for the woman peacefully sun-bathing,” and so he turns his gaze

away on the shape of a bronze-pink cloud in the distance (which happens

to also have the shape of a naked female torso)30; showing in this way his

“civil respect for the invisible fronter that surrounds people.” But afer

passing the young woman, he realizes that in doing so, he displayed “a

refusal to see […] reinforcing the conventon that declares illicit any sight

of the breast… My not looking presupposes that I am thinking of that

nakedness, worrying about it; and this is basically an indiscreet and

reactonary attitude.”

So, returning from his walk and again passing the girl, “this tme he keeps

his eyes fxed straight ahead, so that his gaze touches with impartal

uniformity the [...] waves, the boats [...], the great bath towel [...], the

swelling moon of lighter skin with the dark halo of the nipple, the outline of

the coast [...].” Mr Palomar is satsfed, succeeding “in having the bosom

completely absorbed by the landscape.” But he further refects. “Does it

not mean fattening the human person to the level of things [...]?” Is he just

simply perpetuatng the old habit of male superiority?

Going back once again, neutrally gazing at the beach, “he arranges it so

that, once the woman’s bosom enters his feld of vision, a break is

notceable, a shif, almost a dartng glance.” Now his positon is quite clear,

with no possible misunderstandings. But he refects once again: “Couldn’t

this grazing of his eyes be fnally taken for… an underestmaton of what a

breast is and means?” No, this does not have to happen. “With frm steps

he walks again towards the woman lying in the sun.” This tme, giving the

30 Clearly for a symmetrical homogenizaton.

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landscape a quick glance, his gaze “will linger on the breast with special

consideraton”. “This should be enough to reassure once and for all the

solitary sunbather and clear away all perverse assumptons. But the

moment he approaches again, she suddenly springs up, covers herself with

an impatent huff, and goes off, shrugging in irritaton, as if she were

avoiding the tresome insistence of a satyr.” As for Mr Palomar, he bitterly

concludes that “the dead weight of an intolerant traditon prevents

anyone’s properly understanding the most enlightened intentons.”

The two protagonist of the story are exposed to the very same feld of

experience but their interpretaton is radically different and based on the

specifc emotonal confguraton of the subjects31.

As for now it is possible to consider, as a temporary conclusion, the

absolute relevancy of the emotonal profle of the generalized affectve

functoning of the mind. Emotons as directng our semantc

interpretaton of the world (even more: shaping the elements which will

become our representaton of the world), of the intersubjectve interplay,

of the drive to perceive in a generalized category of situatons the stmuli

of the outside (and inside) world. Emotons as the energy giving the

system of rules its value-of-life.

The value-of-life endowment of perceptons is rooted in the identfcaton

of representaton with the substantal quality of the objects, objects

which are in the frst place modeled on the basis of affectve lines which

gave them all the affectve qualites of other persons (or, better said, the

process of affectve recogniton of the world is the same, and based on

the same emotonal involvement, for every kind of object in the feld of

experience). As brilliantly described in (Salvatore & Freda, 2011), “Being

affectvely actvated means producing a kind of vital commitment – it

31 Could be added as a marginal remark that it is not quite clear who gave the most

sensible interpretaton of the situaton.

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means experiencing the world as something animate, engaging us in a

relatonship[...]. It is no coincidence that in daily language we do not only

feel emotons – we are caught up in them.” (p.126)

2.5 Phenomenological consequences of symmetrical thinking

The fundamental mechanisms of the unconscious have been already

exposed: condensaton, displacement, absence of tme and space,

absence of negaton. These mechanisms can be restated in terms of

symmetrical thinking: condensaton is the multdimensional superpositon

of an object belonging to many classes at the same tme; displacement

occurs when an object is identfed with another one belonging to the

same super-class; absence of tme and space is a consequence of the

unavailability of the asymmetrical relatons, as happens for negaton.

The extensive applicaton of the principle of symmetry leads to other

noteworthy consequences, namely extremizaton, reifcaton and the

“kalokagathia effect”.

The extremizaton (or absolutzaton) of the categorizaton of an object is

a consequence of the incorporaton, by symmetrizaton, of the whole sets

containing it with the object itself (given that a∈A, if A⊆S then S⊆A).

When the emotons are added to the equaton it becomes clear that the

object a∈A is charged with the emotons related to the sets becoming

identcal to it. Therefore, in the purest functoning of the symmetrical

thinking when not contrasted by the asymmetrical differentaton, the

emoton tends always towards the highest and absolute intensity.

Accordingly, the categorizaton is pushed towards the most general and

comprehensive fundamental classes. This fact has an important basis in

the mental functoning. The general classes in the hierarchy of

symmetrizaton are rooted in the early experiences lived in infancy, where

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the unmodulated emoton produced by the bodily changes are felt as

absolute and pervasive: “in this stage the infant does not have the

cognitve competences to modulate these states of the mind: they are

experienced in an absolute fashion, in all-or-nothing terms. […] [T]he

classes of affectve meaning maintain their original absolute potentality

of actvaton even in the adult. This means that when an adult subject

affectvely symbolizes a given feld of experience in terms of

goodness/pleasantness (or badness/ unpleasantness), she/he is

experiencing it in the same absolute way as she/he inhabits such a state

of the mind in the frst stages of her/his life” (Salvatore & Freda,

2011) (p.126).

The second fundamental fact is about reifcaton. The term means “make

something real”, “give something the propertes of a concrete thing”. An

example of this process have already been referred when talking about

the “knowledge” as if it were a concrete thing, a fact due to a direct

percepton of the world, which clearly cannot be. Without entering in

details on this topic, could be sufcient to consider the distncton

between the reference and the referred thing. In the asymmetrical

thinking the distncton is of the kind that can be fully represented using

the conventonal notatonal: a≠ref(a) (a is not equal to the reference of

a)32. But since in the unconscious the negaton is unavailable, the formula

becomes a=ref(a), that is, the object become identcal to the reference. It

would not be possible to make any model of the human functoning

without including this mechanism. Without this mechanism there could

not be the possibility to explain the pervasive presence of reifcaton

which occurs every second of our life. The feeling sad for watching a

movie, the favorite mug because it reminds us of a nice trip, the appette

32 More properly, since the actual objects could not be present in the mind, it should be

written as ref(a) ≠ ref(ref(a)).

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we could notce afer viewing the picture of a cake, the shoutng “liar” to

a politcian speaking on television. It is partcularly interestng to observe

the behavior of people with “dirty words”. A person in anger uses them as

real objects, and shouts them loudly as possible as an object thrown to hit

the target. Notce also embarrassment of a person referring a “dirty word”

said by someone else: even when no-one else is listening the person ofen

pronounces it in a whisper, as s/he was spreading dirt all around if the

word was said too loudly.

Obviously, reifcaton is contrasted and delimited by the asymmetrical

component of mind which protects us (most of the tmes) from eatng

pictures of cakes, from hitting the television, from kissing the cinema

screen, or from feeling too much offended afer having been targeted

with an offensive term. It is interestng to remark that this protecton

sometmes fails, when, for example, the swearing hits the target; it

happens when the words elicit a partcularly emotonal bag of symmetry,

bringing it quickly to an extreme of symmetrical involvement, temporarily

overpowering the asymmetrical logical differentaton – and we are

caught in a rage.

Reifcaton (being a mechanism strictly analogous to anthropomorphizing)

is also what gives value-of-life to things, through emotons. An object in

the feld of experience forms a representaton in the mind through the

symmetrical thinking, and in doing so it is involved in the emotons

relatve to the actvated system of sets. But through reifcaton the

representaton becomes real and present and the involved emotons

make it strong and vivid. They make it real.

The “kalokagathia effect”, (which will be referred from now on as the “K-

effect”) from the ancient Greek term meaning “beautful and good”, is

part of the Plato’s philosophy, which states that whatever is beautful is

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also good and vice-versa. In the emotonal process of categorizaton

performed by the unconscious, not only the objects are grouped together

but also the emotonal criteria that organizes such categorizaton. This is a

consequence of the emotonal connotaton of the context: the emotonal

state of an individual connotes the context, and if this attributon has a

positve valence everything pertaining to the context assumes a positve

nuance, changing the gestalt that produces the interpretaton of the

world. Emotons induce the objects of percepton in the emotonally

congruent categories, producing an effect of homogenizaton of the

modality of categorizaton. As an example, sufce to think to what

happens when we see a beautful cake (i.e. a cake belonging to the class

of “beautful things”): that cake is certainly not just beautful, but also

delicious, and fragrant, and fresh, etc. The very same mechanism could be

attested for phenomena like racial discriminaton (the subject of

discriminaton bears all the possible negatve traits to the extreme),

football teams enthusiasm (“the other team sucks”), the being a fan of a

writer (everything s/he wrote is beautful), etc. What is homogenized here

is not just the class of beautful things, but also the criteria defning that

class, its propositonal functon (e.g. “x is beautful” goes together with “x

is delicious”, thus what is good is also delicious and what is delicious is

also good). This mechanism is pervasive and present in every instant of

everyday experience, as shown by a famous marketng study about

perceived qualites of products (Plassmann, O’Doherty, Shiv, & Rangel,

2008) where it has been shown that the same wine, when tagged with a

higher price, was perceived as having a better taste. The effect is in fact so

powerful and deep to be physically detectable through fMRI techniques.

In other terms, the percepton of good taste was not just in the reported

evaluaton (that could have been the effect of cognitve inferences about

the wine), but it was “felt” as better, it had (using the term introduced

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earlier) a proper value-of-life. Marketng relies heavily on this

phenomenon, which can be elicited, e.g., in the ofen suggested

connecton between good smell, luminosity and purity. It is ofen the case

in advertsements to hear statements about a certain cleanser “washing

whiter” or giving a “smell of clean”, explicitly relying on the presumed

equivalence of whiteness, fragrance and cleanness.

Very ofen, despite our idea to be prevalently ratonal beings, we are

unawarely transported to some degree by this dynamic, and tend to

avoid, for example, a can of peaches with a tarnished label even knowing

perfectly that the content is completely identcal to the others. It is

possible to recognize this very same phenomenon as described in the

following words by Matte Blanco:

The most accurate way of describing what happened to him in

his emotonal state would be to say that individual, subclasses,

the general class and the propositional function defning the

class were all one and the same thing. (p.278, added italics)

Another manifestaton of this effect, conjoined with absolutzaton, can be

observed in someone in love, for which the beloved one is like the

Descartes’ god, the sum of every perfecton to the highest degree. Using

an example taken from Matte Blanco:

[…] we may say that this man had been, for her, a father image

[…]. Idealisaton had made him appear in her eyes as a

summum of perfectons […] She had attributed to him all the

good features which she attributed to the class and which do

not necessarily have to be possessed by every one of its

elements. In other words, she had identfed him with the class,

and this latter was conceived in her unconscious as having in a

maximum degree the characteristcs that defne it. (p.166)

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Yet another literary example of this is found in “The book of the it” by

Georg Groddeck (Groddeck, 1949). The author tells the story of a friend...

[...] who was on the lookout for a wife. When he notced that he

was beginning to fall in love, he contrived to go to the toilet

immediately afer the presumptve queen of his heart. “If it

smells nice to me then I do love her. But if the smell is horrid,

then she's not for me.” (p.207)

In this case, the person relies heavily on the K-effect mechanism, to the

point to use it as a proof of his feelings for a certain woman. If the effect

is present, then the woman is the right one for him, it is real love.

All these phenomena, even if listed as specifc ones and possibly

recognized as distnct facts, are structures that are natural consequences

of the interacton of symmetry, generalizaton (which is also a

consequence of symmetry) and emoton. In the following expositon these

phenomena will be considered as substantally coincident with the

symmetrical functoning of the mind.

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76

Chapter 3 — The Unconscious (Complex Dynamical) System

Chapter 3 — The Unconscious (Complex

Dynamical) System

1. Computational approaches to the unconscious

An implementaton of the principles introduced in the frst chapters, also

following the critc advanced to the traditonal logical approach to

computatonal intelligence, must necessarily be based on novel

approaches which do not presuppose the logicality of every step of

computaton.

In the last decade or so, a new approach has become increasingly

followed and researched: the one that considers intelligence as an

emerging property of a system composed of a vast array of elementary

objects, none of which necessarily sportng “intelligence” in itself. The

complex interacton of such a system with the environment and the

adapton of “swarms” of objects in order to interact fruitully with the

environment is considered to be the process underpinning the formaton

of intelligence. The name given to such systems is “complex adaptve

systems”.

In this secton two algorithmic optmizaton techniques will be presented,

genetc algorithms and classifer systems1, which are considered to be

part of the “complex systems” approach to computaton. These two

techniques offer a computatonal structure able to model some of the

features of the symmetrical and asymmetrical thinking as exposed earlier.

The two techniques will be presented very briefy and without many

technical details in order to keep this secton accessible and as short as

1 Both of the techniques will be presented on the basis of Chapters 20 and 21 of (Flake,

2000).

77


possible. It must also be clearly stated that both of the presentatons of

these concepts are fundamentally theoretcal and limited to the simplest

cases. Given the complexity of the involved topics it must also be stated

that the expected efcacy of the proposed techniques relies on a well-

established use of these algorithms as powerful general soluton-seeking

and optmizaton procedures.

The purpose of this proposal is not to build an autonomous system

capable of simulatng the whole mind's functoning, but to show a

possible implementaton of the component of thought that can be

attributed to the unconscious rules. The following paragraphs therefore

must be considered as a proposal for a module to be incorporated in

more complex and complete cognitve architectures. As already specifed

the rules regulatng the unconscious functoning are only a part of the

overall functoning of the mind.

1.1 Genetic algorithms for gestaltic selection

This technique is based on the evolutonary concept of adapton,

represented in the simplifed formula adaption = variation + heredity +

selection. This technique has been developed by John Holland2 in the

Seventes in order to simulate the evoluton of a populaton of candidate

soluton to a problem (Holland, 1975). The algorithm works as follows:

• Initalize the populaton P

• Repeat for some length of tme:

2 A member of The Center for the Study of Complex Systems (CSCS) at the University of

Michigan, John H. Holland is an American computer scientst and mathematcian,

Professor of Psychology and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is a pioneer in complex systems and

nonlinear science.

78


◦ Create an empty populaton P'

◦ Repeat untl P' is full:

▪ Select two individuals from P based on some ftness

criterion

▪ Optonally mate, and replace with the offspring

▪ Add the two individuals to P'

◦ Let P now be equal to P'

For example, if the problem is to fnd the point in which a mathematcal

functon (e.g. f(x)=x7+sin(x)/x+10) reaches its maximum value, the frst

step would be to a populaton P of, say, 1000 random numbers. These

numbers are the candidates of being the value in which the functon has

its maximum value. The so-called “ftness” value measures how one

candidate is “ft” in relaton to the given goal, i.e. how much it contributes

to the global quality of the populaton of being close to the goal. In this

simple case the ftness value of a point p belonging to the populaton P is

simply the value of the functon in that point, f(p). This is so because the

goal is to fnd the value that maximizes the functon, then a value

producing a higher result is ftter than another producing a lower value.

The two individuals within the populaton (two number of the candidates)

with the highest ftness value (i.e. for which the functon has the higher

result) are taken. The pair of values are the fttest element of the

populaton, i.e. the elements which push the soluton closer to the

maximum. Since the two individuals are the most important elements,

their “survival” is mandatory. The survival can be obtained either by

putting them directly in the next generaton or by “matng” them hoping

that the one of the offsprings would inherit the “good” part of the

parents, and then to be ftter than them. This translates in the fact that

79


this new candidate soluton gets closer to the maxima in respect to the

previous generaton. This operaton of matng is repeated with every pair

of individuals in the populaton, taking them on the top of the list ordered

on the basis of the ftness value. The fact that are chosen to be mated the

pairs of fttest individuals guarantees that a good individual would not

waste its genes by matng with an individual with a poor ftness value

(love, of course, is not considered).

The matng procedure takes the frst half of the frst number and swaps it

with the frst half of the second number3:

Parent 1: 1234 5678 Parent 2: 9753 4643

Sibling 1: 1234 4643 Sibling 2: 9753 5678

The parents are replaced by the siblings in the following generaton P'.

The effect of this operaton is to hopefully join the two parts of the highly

ft parents that could lead to an even higher ft offspring. This is true in

general only for one of the siblings, the other taking the bad part of the

parents will fall down the social hierarchy in the next iteraton for its poor

ftness value. This process goes on untl P' is not flled with a new

generaton of individuals. At this point it is possible to repeat the whole

procedure or stop, if the overall ftness value seems to be stable. The

resultng individual with the highest ftness value (i.e. the highest value in

the populaton for the functon we are testng) is the maximum value.

This method of research for an optmal value using an iteratve criteria

can be applied to the research of a gestalt (i.e. the “best” combinaton of

the types of the values) between the three elements of a relaton: A, R

and B. It is in order to recall here that A, R and B belong each to at least

3 This operaton is called “crossover” and is just the simplest way of matng two

individuals. The main method depends greatly on the code used to represent the data

and on the problem of concern.

80


one bag of symmetry, which multplies the possibility of use of the

representaton A on the basis of the extended hierarchies it belongs to.

The same goes for R and B (Cf. Chapter 2, Paragraph 2.3).

The process described is able to try not all the combinatons of the

objects A and B ted by a relaton R, but the combinaton of the ones

giving a meaningful pattern of gestalts.

Remains the problem of the “how” the mind fnds the possible

combinatons of them, i.e. the possible gestalts of the elements. The

interestng fact is that the at every generaton, the result is a set of

possible combinaton of A R B that are potentally useful combinaton.

Since the functoning of the mind is not a sequental process, the set of

possible gestalts is in every moment a source of types of objects and

relatons among them.

In the sake of simplicity, considered the technical complexity of this

technique, this technical explanaton will consider every element as

belonging to only one bag of symmetry. The frst step is the defniton of

the coding. Assume that A belongs to a bag of symmetry where the

elements are organized following the schema in fgure 3.1:

Every element in the set A is denoted with A', A'', A'''... (the elements

made equal to A), for the set A1 is denoted with A1', A1'', A1'''... (the

81

Figure 3.1 — The hierarchies of set defining the nested type of an object A.

A

A1

A2


elements made equal to A afer a step of generalizaton) and so on untl

the most general set.

It is now possible to express the populaton of the equivalences of A with

all the possible equivalences with the elements belonging to the same

bag of symmetry4. Some examples:

A A' A'' A''' A1' A1'' A1''' A2' A2'' A2'''...

1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

(A equals itself and A'' – displacement)

A A' A'' A''' A1' A1'' A1''' A2' A2'' A2'''...

1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0

(A equals the whole set – homogenizaton)

A A' A'' A''' A1' A1'' A1''' A2' A2'' A2'''...

1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0

(A equals itself and A1'' – displacement)

A A' A'' A''' A1' A1'' A1''' A2' A2'' A2'''...

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0

(A equals the whole containing set – generalizaton)

The same operaton is done for B.

The code for the relaton R is different, because it must list the possible

types that the relaton can support on both sides, and the specifc type of

the relaton. The type of the relaton follows the same principles of

generalizaton holding for A and B. The types of A and B are defned as the

containing set of the elements, then a relaton R can be described with

binary arrays like in the following example:

A A1 A2 ... B B1 B2 ... Type1 Type2 Type3

1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0

4 The coding is very naïve and useful only for illustratve purposes.

82


(The element of type A on the lef can relate to every type of B on the

right for relaton of Type 1)

In order to adapt the “matng” operaton to the different codings

necessary for A, B and R it is possible, as a technical “trick”, to consider

them as belonging to three separate populatons which get in touch at the

moment of the selecton of the fttest triplets. This is, so to speak, to

insulate species with different genomic structures.

The ftness functon, which selects the individuals in the three populatons

for A, B and R, is the degree of abstracton. The remarkable fact in this

choice is that following this ordering and selectng schema, the

populatons of A, B and R are ordered from the most abstract to the most

concrete.

Relaton are always asymmetrical, it is only that they can be made

symmetrical in the unconscious thinking, so it is necessary to code them

in this way. When the populaton of the As is then confronted with the

populaton of the Bs through the populaton of the Rs, the populaton of

the matching triplets is submitted to the ftness evaluaton that order the

fttest triplets in order to promote the presence of their elements in the

next generaton.

In order to explain the technique with an example, let's try to code and

enact the example about Steve Jobs given in the previous chapter. Some

caveats though must be made clear. As frst thing, the categories that will

be shown are arbitrary and extremely limited. Secondly, the given

categories are arbitrarily chosen among the many thousands possible on

the base of their relevance for the given example. Thirdly, a real

simulaton is not possible on the basis of this sole data since a complex

system relies on a large number of elements, which are not available as

for now; furthermore, to be meaningful a simulaton should be based on

83


very large amounts of data derived from system's “inner” and not on

arbitrary injected structures. Lastly, the complete functoning of this

system is possible only when joined with a complementary system of

object detecton, representaton and memorizaton.

Possible categorizatons and generalizatons of object A (Steve Jobs).

A

Actor-

Brad

Pitt

Actor-

Rock Hudson

Actor-

Christan

Bale

Owner-

Bill

Gates

Owner-

Landlor

d

Person

-Adam

Pers

on-

Bob

Pers

on-

Carl

Powerful

Person-

Boss

Powerful

Person-

God

Powerful

Person-

Devil1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 01 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 01 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 01 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 11 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 11 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 11 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 01 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 01 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 11 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

The presence of some actor's names is because the identfcaton is made

with every object in the set of actors, which represent extensionally the

set (the “type”) of object “actor”. The same holds for all the other

elements

Possible categorizatons and generalizatons for object B (the apple)

B

Fruit-

Apple

Fruit-

Banana

Vegetable-

Carrot

Vegetable-

Aubergine

Symbol-

Newton

Symbol-

Adam

Symbol-

Health

Symbol-

William

Tell

Symbol-

Computer1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 01 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 01 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 01 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1

The table describing the possible relatons R has an even more complex

structure:

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R

Lef-

Actor

Lef-

Owner

Lef-

Person

Lef-

Powerful

Person

Right-

Fruit

Right-

Vegeta

ble

Right-

Symbol

Type-

Hold

Type-

Owns

Type-

Controls1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 01 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0

*1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 01 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 01 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 01 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 01 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 01 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 01 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 01 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 01 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 01 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 01 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 01 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 01 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 01 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 01 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 01 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 01 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 01 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 01 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 01 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 0

**1 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 01 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 01 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 11 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 11 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 11 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 11 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 11 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 11 1 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 11 1 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 11 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 11 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 11 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 11 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 11 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 11 1 0 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 11 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 11 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 11 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1

***1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1

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Admittedly, the notaton is cumbersome and hard to read. To explain it

with some examples, the three rows with the asterisks read as follows:

• * = an actor which is also a person and a powerful person is in a

holding relaton with a fruit.

• ** = an owner which is also a person is in a holding and owning

relaton with a fruit which is also a vegetable.

• *** = an owner which is also a person and a powerful person is in

a holding and owning and controlling relaton with a symbol.

Afer the process of algorithmic selecton, the result, from the more

generic to the more specifc, of possible relatons could comprehend the

following triads:

• a powerful person that controls a symbol

• a person controlling a symbol

• an owner owning a vegetable

• an actor holding a vegetable

• an actor holding a fruit

But among these, since the operaton of genetc algorithms is also to

combine characteristcs of different individuals (i.e., it is an operaton that

manipulates, creates and destroy informaton), could be found also

results which were not already present or meaningful, for example an

owner holding, owning and controlling a symbol or an owner controlling a

vegetable. The presence of such “odd” triads sounds strange, but this is

altogether the result of unconscious transformatons based on the given

rules of symmetrizaton. It must be noted that without such

transformaton the most “correct” triad, which is “an owner holding,

86


owning and controlling a symbol” would not have been present. This is a

basic example of the already cited “type inference” process.

Something, yet, is stll missing. Even if such a result would be a plausible

model of the unconscious functoning, it is “cold”, It does not contemplate

the possibility that some elements could be for the individual more

relevant than others. The categorial structure of the mind, which is

shaped by the opposing symmetrical and asymmetrical dynamics, holds

the experience (also the emotonal one) the subject had with the objects

encoded in his mind. Emotonality therefore in this case cannot be

encoded nor used, making this a promising but yet incomplete model:

triads have no value-of-life dimension.

1.2 Classifier systems

The drawback of the genetc algorithms is that it is not possible to encode

any form of experience nor emotonality in the probability of selecton of

one individual in the populaton in respect to another. In other words,

they operate as if the unconscious system was exclusively a combinatorial

machine completely blind to emotons. While from a certain point of view

the unconscious functoning is a blind force ignoring the reality and the

consequences of its functoning, on the other hand it operates on objects

that are imbued with emotonality. This is the same emotonality which

makes some objects, and relatons between objects, more salient than

others and then more likely to be employed.

This queston can be put in correspondence with the concepts expressed

in the second chapter about the infuence of emotons in the unconscious

operatons. Emotonal experience is codifed in the mind in terms of

emotons connected to a partcular object (and to its related objects).

Therefore an object in a bag of symmetry which is deeply irradiated with

87


emotons would have a greater weight than another, and the equivalences

(as described above) need to be weighted on this basis. A highly

emotonated object can be considered as an attractor in the system of

transformaton occurring in the mind. The elicitaton of objects in the

process of classifcaton and recogniton of relatons which are charged

with emotonality causes emotons to be elicited as well. The individual

therefore feels the emoton attached to the objects evoked by the

operaton of segmentaton, categorizaton and relatonalizaton of reality.

Furthermore an object leading to an emotonally intense situaton will be

probably loaded, in the structure of mental objects, with the produced

emotonal involvement. Therefore some mechanism of connectng the

experiental/situatonal dimension of an individual with the

deep/unconscious dimension, in terms of emotonated objects, is

required.

Classifer systems (Booker, Goldberg, & Holland, 1989) offer a way to

embed the memoryless opera tons performed in the

unconscious/symmetrical functoning of the mind (as described and

operatonalized in the previous paragraph) in a strategic and memory-

aware functoning. Its main building block is the so called “classifer”, a

simple rule that for an input (possibly a generalized one) produces an

output. Each classifer has a weight (a “strength”) used to record its

relevancy in the general interacton with the environment. The basic

structure of a classifer is a triplet in the form condition:message:strength,

which in the model under development becomes object:identical-

object:emotion (for example, recalling the examples in the preceding

paragraph, for a computer maniac it could be apple:computer:100, where

100 is the emotonal intensity of the transformaton; for a non computer

maniac this transformaton could be attested a lower emotonal value).

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The set of classifers are matched against the perceived features of the

environment (and to previous internal objects) in order to select the

applicable rules. A schematc descripton of the system is in fgure 3.2.

The system operates in this way:

1) The detectors observe the features of the environment, codify

them and then put the codifed descriptons in the message list.

This operaton, as already shown in Chapter 1, is in itself subjected

to the symmetrizing operaton of the mind and therefore this

model have to be adapted in a way that the percepton of the

environment is performed accordingly. A possibility is that the

block detectors is implemented with a genetc algorithm or

another classifer system recursively interconnected to the main

one. The functon of this block (considering the unconscious

aspect) would be to detect the discrete objects perceived in the

world. Due to the current theoretcal nature of this proposal this

89

Figure 3.2 — General structure of a classifier system. (From (Flake, 2000), p.367)


problem is not further investgated here and is assumed that the

output of the block is a descripton of the objects perceived in the

environment.

2) The match list is flled with all the classifers that match (in their

lef part) the messages received from the environment. This is the

applicaton of all the identfcatons (in terms of its bag of

symmetry) of the perceived objects. This step is similar, so far, to

what described for Genetc Algorithms. The classifers block

therefore contains the set of all the possible transformatons

(identfcatons) of every objects in other objects. Looking at the

fgure, a # sign can be seen in the classifers. This means that the

value in that positon is not relevant. This descriptve

indeterminacy could be employed to represent generalizatons in

the hierarchies of the bag of symmetry with a lighter encoding.

3) The fltered classifers present in the match list compete to

perform the transformaton contained in the rules (as described in

(Flake, 2000) they “bid against each other for the right to post

their messages” (p.366), remember that in this case the message

contains the generalizaton of the object to which is applied). The

bid is done on the basis of the strength of every potental

transformaton, and can be infuenced by the generality of the

conditon (i.e., the level in the bag of symmetry). The “winning”

classifers, selected on the basis of their strength (emoton value),

form the action set that contains, for example, the more

emotonally laden transformatons. Other criteria can be defned,

e.g., the “winning” classifers could be the ones with the average

value, or the criterium, as before, could be allowed to change

dynamically over the tme as a functon of the current emotonal

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state (that could be, in turn, the effect of the previously actvate

classifers).

4) The “winning” classifers present in the action set share a part of

their strength with the classifers that previously contribute to

their winning positon, creatng in this way a trace of the steps

involved. The interestng fact (and the main reason for which

classifer systems are here believed to be a good model of this

specifc functoning of the mind) is that the memory of the

interacton is not tme-aware, but spreads over the different

transformatons (identfcatons) of the objects present in the

unconscious mind. This experiental track is codifed in terms of

amount of emoton connected with the transformatons in the

representatons of the objects, therefore this model is apt to

represent the sophistcated interactons occurring in the Matte

Blanco's model of mind, taking into account the emotonality

involved in the unconscious existence of the objects.

5) The previous message list is erased and replaced with the resultng

transformatons of the classifers present in the action set. The

message list therefore contains a new set of objects, many of them

of intra-psychical origin, which are placed again in the game, and

subjected to a similar cycle as before, startng from point (2). This

is another interestng fact of this technique, because it offers the

possibility to involve purely mental objects, merely evoked by

previous elaboratons and not strictly present in the “real”

environment. The mental objects are then re-entered in the cycle

and are allowed to produce further effects.

6) If in the message list are present objects of interest for the

asymmetrical functoning, they are taken and employed in the

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interacton with the environment. The environment is not

necessarily the physical one, but it could represent the operatve

environment of a larger cognitve system architecture. This can be

considered as the “output” of the whole process.

7) The emotonal feedback given by the environment (that could be

positve or negatve) is again shared somehow with the involved

classifers, in order to award or discourage them for the future,

implementng a form of experiental and non-tmed memory. An

interestng fact is that the classifer that have been involved in the

derivaton, comprising the previous ones, are kept in the Action

set block. This short-lived memory is useful to keep track of the

different transformatons occurred in the process and allows for

the redistributon of emotonality (resultng from the operaton) to

the objects actvated in order to produce the result. This step can

be seen roughly as analogous to the backpropagaton functon of

neural networks.

This is the classical version of classifers system as defned in (Booker et

al., 1989). It is possible to introduce many variatons in order to make it

more adapt to describe the dynamics discussed in this dissertaton. For

example, the strength of a classifer could be composed of two values,

one long-term value and one contngent value of emotonality (i.e.

instead of object:identical-object:emotion it could be object:identical-

object:em+cont). The long-term emoton value em would codify the

emotonal knowledge derived from cultural and structural aspect of the

individual, while the added contngent cont value would represent the

current actvaton state of the object. This distncton, while technically

equivalent to the classical version of classifer systems (since the two

values can just be summed up to obtain the traditonal overall value),

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would offer a simple and yet expressive way to describe the more stable

aspects of the mind as contrasted with the contngent ones. Moreover,

the objects which are “present” can gain in this way a temporary

emergent role from the background of the processing without the need of

altering the “normal” mental structure of the objects.

Another important remark is that this technique, like the one of Genetc

Algorithms presented before, being a general goal-seeking optmizaton

algorithm has been conceived and developed to converge to some stable

confguraton. This property holds independently from the coding of the

data, therefore it can be safely stated that such a system would offer a

sensible instrument for the simulaton of mind functoning. In the case of

classifer systems, the algorithm would not be only employed for this aim,

but also as an ever actve “engine”, which produces, along with temporary

results, more stable results on the basis of emotonal strength of

representatons. This system modifes itself over tme, producing new

representatons of objects under the pressure of emotonal constraints

and of the effects of the results in a more complex cognitve system.

An important side-effect of the use of such an approach is that the

iteratve functoning of the system can be recorded in snapshots and

interpreted semantcally on the basis of the applied transformatons of

objects. This is to say that it is possible to explore actual process of

identfcaton of objects in other objects in order to “understand” how

and (to some extent) why the process converged onto specifc

representatons. Potentally this approach could offer a meaningful way of

simulatng the mental functoning allowing for a semantc comprehension

of “what happened” inside it, on the basis of the descripton of the

objects. This detail is a fundamental distncton from neural networks,

which are used for this kind of computaton as well. An extraordinary

93


powerful instrument for engineering and applied science, neural networks

are also ofen employed in the simulaton of human thinking and

behavior, but their contributon to this feld is hinged by the fact that

neural networks are practcally “black boxes” receiving some input and

responding with some output, without offering a real knowledge of what

happened in the middle. As (Sowa, 2005) puts it:

[…] that black-box quality, which the behaviorists considered an

advantage, is one of the greatest weaknesses of neural nets:

there is no way to explain or justfy their responses. Although a

programmer can look inside the nets, there is nothing to see

but a meaningless jumble of numbers. (p.144)

To present a simple example of functoning, and describing it abstractng

from the binary form employed for genetc algorithms, the set of

transformatons of the previous example can be described with the

following rules (where, to make things clearer, the “:” separatng the

object and the identfcaton have been replaced with a “→”, and the

emoton values are random):

Object A (Steve Jobs):

A → Actor(Brad Pitt):10

A → Actor(Rock Hudson):2

A → Actor(Christan Bale):12

A → Person(Adam):15

A → Person(Bob):10

A → Person(Carl):3

A → Owner(Bill Gates):20

A → Owner(Landlord):2

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A → Powerful Person(God):70

A → Powerful Person(Devil):80

For the object B (the apple):

B → Fruit(Apple):30

B → Fruit(Banana):10

B → Vegetable(Carrot):5

B → Vegetable(Aubergine):2

B → Symbol(Adam):20

B → Symbol(Newton):4

B → Symbol(William Tell):1

B → Symbol(Health):20

B → Symbol(Computer):5

Some examples for the relaton R:

R(Actor, Fruit, Hold) → R(Person, Fruit, Hold):20

...

R(Person, Fruit, Hold) → R(Powerful Person, Symbol, Controls):50

The exposed examples are made in order to retrace the previous

consideraton made about genetc algorithms, but classifer systems are

much more complex and versatle and allow for a more elegant and

realistc descripton of the mind functoning. Just to make an example,

there could be a rule such that “Fruit(Apple) → Symbol(Health)” (which

encodes the cultural experience that apples are a symbol of health – as

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the saying goes: “An apple a day keeps the doctor away”). Making the

hypothesis that one of the classifers “B → Fruit(Apple)” have survived to

the frst cycle, it would be re-entered in the Message list block, which

represents the detected objects from the environment. In this case,

thought, the object is completely internal. This further object will match

with the rule “Fruit(Apple) → Symbol(Health)”, transforming the apple in

the representatve of healthiness, which could match with another

“Relaton” rule involving “symbols” on the lef side. “Symbol(Health)”

could, in turn, be re-entered in the game as an internal representaton

evoking other identfcaton, and so on and so forth.

When a set or A R B is stable among iteratons and involves a certain

amount of emotonality, it can be considered the “output” of the process,

this is to say the “winning” gestalt. The involved emotonality then

“shares” its success with the transformaton that contribute to making it

the “winner”. This process of backpropagaton of the emoton value is

hypothetcally able to model, iteratvely, the experience of the subject by

shaping its emotonal and structural organizaton.

Another important aspect of this technique, made possible by its

versatlity, which is evident from the given example, is that it is able to

mix in the very same functoning both the emotonal categorizaton of

percepts and their ontological structure, mixing them in a complex

process of interacton. In many cases, in fact, the salient emotonal

content of an object could be traced not just in the object itself, but in its

“cognitve” super- or sub-classes which are not strictly emotonal, but

however rooted in the experience of the subject. An apple, for instance,

has in itself an emotonal dimension, but in some contexts its salient

emotonal aspects could be found in its being a fruit, or in its being a

“living” thing, or a red thing and so on. Mixing these two coordinates of

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the organizaton of experiences offers a powerful and versatle way of

detectng the diverse natures of relatonships in the world.

Apart from the many technical details requiring for a better defniton, a

serious limit of this proposal is that the hierarchies of sets representng

the ontologies and the bags of symmetry should be (at least partly) hard-

coded into the system from the outside. A clear example of this limit is in

the proposed examples with its curious populaton of categories like

“Fruit”, “Owner” and “Actor”. This is a serious queston since the actual

structure of emotonal representatons is, in the last analysis, what makes

us different from each other and cannot be adapted from a “standard”

structure. A theoretcal formulaton that could offer a basis for the

overcoming of this limit will be presented in the second part of this

chapter.

1.3 The mind as a complex (psycho-)dynamic adaptive system

The dynamicity of psychological processes is an ever-growing feld of

analysis, because of the versatlity of the theoretcal concepts in the

defniton of models and the power of the employable technical

instruments. See for example (Lauro-Grotto, Salvatore, Gennaro, & Gelo,

2009). In the cited contributon it is stated that the theorizaton of Matte

Blanco should not be considered as a dynamical system, which is the

exact opposite of what is supported here. In this paragraph will be shown

that Matte Blanco's theory, under the extended formalizaton and

implementaton presented earlier, can be considered, at the opposite, as

the basis of a dynamical system.

The purpose of the previous sectons is clearly not to propose a complete,

detailed and coherent cognitve architecture of the mind. Rather, the

presentaton and the hypotheses presented are highly speculatve and

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theoretc and have been presented in order to show that it is possible to

conceive an operatvely functonal model of the mind which blends Matte

Blancos' principles with well-known and long-standing general techniques

from computer science. As shown before, the principle of symmetry and

generalizaton, when used as logical rules to be embedded in a dynamical

system made with many fragmented elements, is expected to result in a

system capable of dynamic equilibrium.

Complex adaptve systems are are usually placed, with an evocatve

expression, at the “edge of chaos”, meaning that their functoning

incorporates characteristcs of periodic regular systems and of chaotc

dynamics (see fgure 3.3).

A neat example of complex dynamic system is the famous “sandpile”.

Given a handful of sand, one gently drops individual grains of sand into

the center of the sandpile. As tme goes on, the pile will grow in size by

increasing in height and expanding the perimeter. Sometmes, adding a

single grain of sand have very little effect on the whole sandpile, that is, it

deposit itself on the top and just stay there. Other tmes, a single grain of

sand can push other grains that start a small avalanche that moves a

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Figure 3.3 — Classification of systems, adapted from (Flake,

2000) p.244.

Fixe

d

Com

plex

Periodic Chaotc


certain amount of sand. This happens because the sandpile was at a

critcal state: If lef alone, it would have remained at its previous state,

but a slight perturbaton causes a signifcant change. The self-organizing

structure at the “edge of chaos” of the example is evident in which it

naturally approaches an organized state without any superior design, but

following simple physical rules and being subjected to elementary forces.

This complex adaptve and self-organizing dynamic seems very apt to

represent the interacton of the symmetrical (chaotc and informaton-

altering) and asymmetrical (regular and informaton-conserving)

functoning of the mind, towards the balance (and occasional imbalance)

of everyday human life.

A striking resemblance between this approach (of constructon–

destructon of informaton) can be found in (Brenner, 2009):

[S]ystems are not possible if there is no force of repulsion or

exclusion between elements which prevents their

“agglomeraton” into an undifferentated mass, and not

possible if nothing attracts or associates two or more elements;

they all fy apart, so to speak. (I consider here that repulsion;

exclusion and dissociaton are equivalent terms.) Accordingly,

for a system to form and exist, its consttuents must be able, at

the same tme, to both attract and repel one another, associate

and dissociate, to integrate and disintegrate. Every system is

therefore a functon of two antagonistc forces, linked to one

another, consttutng a relaton of antagonism. Every interactng

system, be it nuclear, atomic, molecular or at the level of the

macroscopic objects of our senses is always, in this view, a

functon of, in its consttuton, this relaton of antagonistc or

opposing forces. (p.45–46)

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1.5 Embedding in current cognitive architectures

The proposed system, admittedly, is not able to survive on its own. Its

acquires meaningfulness only when casted in a larger system. Apart from

this consideraton, some resemblance can be found with other well-

established cognitve architectures. In the following it is briefy presented,

as an example, just one of them, the ACT-R architecture.

In the ACT-R cognitve architecture (Anderson, 2007) represented in fgure

3.4 can be traced a resemblance with the classifer systems presented in

the previous paragraph where the Message List corresponds to the Buffer

block, the Action Set to the Production Execution and so on. In partcular

the block Patern Matching is the place where the recogniton of the

applicability of the rules is performed, and therefore a place where the

unconscious functon seems to be specifcally present. To implement the

“unconscious” aspect in current the ACT-R architecture, the producton

rules are elaborated through a subsymbolic connectonist and parallel

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Figure 3.4 — The general structure of the ACT-R cognitive system.

(Taken from http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/about )


evaluaton system. As it is put in the ACT-R ofcial website: “the

subsymbolic structure is represented by a set of massively parallel

processes that can be summarized by a number of mathematcal

equatons. The subsymbolic equatons control many of the symbolic

processes. For instance, if several productons match the state of the

buffers, a subsymbolic utlity equaton estmates the relatve cost and

beneft associated with each producton and decides to select for

executon the producton with the highest utlity”. Following the ideas

sketched in this chapter, this operaton could be ideally modifed in order

to incorporate the more formal and less arbitrary rules derived from the

Matte Blanco's theory. It is noteworthy that in the ACT-R original

descripton the “unconscious” operaton is described as the operaton

that performs an estmaton of “costs and benefts” for the acceptaton of

a rule instead of another. As said, in Matte Blanco's view the unconscious

functoning operates completely blindly and ignores advantages and

disadvantages of its operatons.

Since this topic is not the main focus of this dissertaton, this very brief

discussion about cognitve architectures is intended to show some

examples about the how it is theoretcally possible to integrate the

psychodynamic principles, once modeled and implemented in operatve

terms, in other more developed theoretcal and technical systems.

2. Categorization and emotions

In Chapter 2 have been exposed the theories of Matte Blanco about how

the unconscious mind is structured in sets following an emotonal drive.

In this secton will be presented two theories of a more cognitvist origin

based on analogous concepts: the Emotonal Response Categorizaton

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theory (Niedenthal, Halberstadt, & Innes-Ker, 1999) and the Conceptual-

Act Model of emoton (Barrett, 2006a).

Emotonal Response Categorizaton theory (ERC) has as main tenet that

the individuals creates groups of objects and events basing them on the

evoked emotonal response. The objects and events contained in the

same category are, from an emotonal point of view, indistnguishable.

The Conceptual-Act Model (CAM) can be considered a constructvistc

model of emotons partly built on the previous theory. Its main point is

that there are not pre-defned emotons like “fear” or “sadness”, but that

such structured emotons are built partly bottom-up on the basis of core

affects (Russell, 2003; Russell & Barrett, 1999) (a neurophysiological state

characterized along the dimensions of valence – positve vs. negatve –

and arousal – high vs. low), and partly top-down, when a certain pattern

of core affect is classifed in a specifc category.

The connectons between Matte Blanco and ERC and ACM will be

presented and, on that basis, some consideraton about the process of

formaton of the bags of symmetry will be proposed.

2.1 Emotional response Categorization

The startng point of this theoretcal (and experimental) approach is in a

critc to the traditonal approach of categorizaton as a set of fxed and

logical rules to be employed to organize the experience of the world:

“conceptual coherence have guided the discovery of important principles

of categorizaton, they assume that concepts are rather fxed cognitve

enttes and that categories cohere by virtue of stable features that are

inherent to the objects and events that comprise them.” (p.337).

(Niedenthal et al., 1999) propose to side the other theories of

categorizaton with an emotonally enriched way of categorizing the

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reality based on the emoton that a specifc percepton or event evokes:

“[...] things that have evoked fear, for example, may be categorized

together and may be treated as the same kind of thing, even when they

are otherwise perceptually, functonally, and theoretcally diverse”

(p.338). In this quotaton an important point is made clear: the elements

belonging to the same emoton-based category are treated as being part

of a uniform set of indistnguishable elements. For example, such a

category “[...] might include Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, a rainy

day, the old man named Gilly Bowan who lives alone in the abandoned

farm house down the road, and one's state of mind during dinner in a

partcular restaurant in East Berlin in 1982. [...] It is a category of things

that have evoked sadness” (p.338). It is clear that this kind of

categorizaton is not meant to replace, but to side, the more logical style

of categorizaton we are experience of. The utlity of this extension is in

that it “allow[s] social perceivers to understand the meaning of an object

in light of their own personal learning histories and goals, and to imagine

the consequences of their reactons to the object, even if they have never

encountered it before” (p.338). For example, “a hermit crab can be

grouped in a category with snow crabs and lobsters, but to the boy who

cherishes it as his childhood pet, it may also be categorized with things

that evoke happiness, along with his skateboard and his Star Wars acton

fgures” (p.341). A fundamental statement connects this theory to the one

exposed in the frst chapter: “we propose that emotonal states increase

the use of all emotonal response categories, not just the one related to

the emoton that the perceiver is currently experiencing. When happy (for

example), the boy makes greater use than usual of the category of things

that have evoked happiness, but also of the categories of things that have

evoked sadness, things that have evoked anger, and so on” (p.341). This

statement afrms the dependency of the percepton of the world on the

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emotonal state of the perceiver, what in the terms used before is the

infuence of the context in the emotonal defniton of a percept.

Furthermore an object or event is not strictly ted to a unique emotonal

category, but could be part of more than one category: “If the same

stmulus evokes one strong emoton on one occasion, and another strong

emoton on another occasion, then those events may be represented as

exemplars of different emotonal response categories” (p.356). This is

coherent with the view of Matte Blanco of multple hierarchies of bags of

symmetry containing the same object.

The main experimental confrm of the described ideas relies in what the

authors call “the triad task”. In this method the partcipants are exposed

to three words (concepts), and asked to select which of two concepts was

more similar to the third “target” concept: “The triads were constructed

such that one of the concepts could be grouped with the target because

the two concepts were associated with a common emotonal response,

while the other concept could be grouped with the target because both

shared a nonemotonal taxonomic or associatve relaton” (p.342). An

example of such triad5 has for target concept “trophy”, which had to be

associated either with “helmet” or “wedding-ring”. Apart from the

experimental results (which supported the main tenets of the theory, and

were further proved in (Niedenthal & Dalle, 2001) ) this method of

investgaton can be interpreted in the light of the triple made by two

objects and the relaton tying them as described in the frst chapter. Recall

that a generic relaton aRb can be the combinaton of known and

unknown elements, where the unknown elements are “interpolated” by

means of generalizatons and through a gestaltc lookout. In this case the

5 It is an interestng fact that Matte Blanco used the term “triad” as well, quite similarly

to the meaning given here: “This seems to be the triad of something, something else

and a relation.” (p.324)

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element “a” is known (“Trophy”), the element “b” could be either “ring”

or “helmet”, and the relaton between them is unknown (but can be easily

be guessed). The choice of “ring” as an answer rather than “helmet” is

the result of an unconscious selecton of a relaton instead of another. The

selecton of one of two answers is then the probe of which relaton has

been actvated by the contextual and individual emotonal state.

Specifcally the more “emotonal” relaton is based on a higher

generalizaton (symmetrical) process (the contnuous line in fgure 3.5),

while the “non emotonal” one is the result of an associaton of elements

led by a more detailed (asymmetrical) positon (the dotted line in fgure

3.5).

105

Figure 3.5 — Two possible relation between a "fixed" object and two of possible connected

objects. The preferred relation is the result of the emotional state of the individual

considering them.

Trophy

Ring

R

Helmet


2.2 Conceptual–Act Model

A more radical and constructvistc approach is proposed in (Barrett,

2006a), startng from a paradox: “People believe that they know an

emoton when they see it, and as a consequence assume that emotons

are discrete events that can be recognized with some degree of accuracy,

but scientsts have yet to produce a set of clear and consistent criteria for

indicatng when an emoton is present and when it is not” (p.20). The

point here is that current research about emotons is hinged by the idea

that since we have emotons and that we can name them, emotons are

discrete objects that could be studied. That is, emotons are reifed, and

this reifcaton, in turn, infuence the studies about emotons: “This

frames an emoton paradox: Our everyday experiences of anger, sadness,

fear, and several other emotons are compelling, but they are scientfcally

elusive and defy clear defniton” (p.20). Just like in the previous account

of ERC, categorizaton is a central concept for the CAM: “[...] emotons are

not biologically given, but are constructed via the process of

categorizaton. Emotons exist, but only as experiences. Specifcally, the

experience of feeling an emoton, or the experience of seeing emoton in

another person, occurs when conceptual knowledge about emoton is

brought to bear during the act of categorizaton” (p.27). Categorizaton of

perceptons is not just a mere organizaton of reality, quite the contrary:

“Categorizing is fundamental cognitve actvity. A category is a class of

things that are treated as equivalent. […] Once conceptual knowledge is

brought to bear to categorize something as one kind of thing and not

another, the thing becomes meaningful” (p.27). The goal of the theory is

to ground an idea of emoton which is discrete (categorial) but not based

on a naturalistc view of emotons, i.e. not based on the common-sense

knowledge about anger, fear and so on. The soluton to this “paradox” lies

in the process of categorizaton of affect: “A categorizaton account

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suggests that this actvity is the result of (at least) two basic components

—affect and conceptual knowledge about emoton. [...] This soluton to

the emoton paradox correspondingly involves two propositons. First,

affect is a basic, biological substrate that is available to be categorized.

Second, the conceptual knowledge that is called forth to categorize affect

is tailored to the immediate situaton, is represented in sensorimotor

cortex, and is acquired from prior experience and supported by language”

(p.30).

This proposal relies on the concept of “core affect” (Russell, 2003; Russell

& Barrett, 1999), which is considered to be “a neurophysiological

barometer of the individual’s relaton to an environment at a given point

in tme. A person’s momentary core affect is multply determined and is

an accountng of how events and objects infuence his or her homeostatc

state” (p.31). The term “core” in “core affect” signifes “[...] that this form

of affectve responding forms the 'core' of experience. Core affect (i.e.,

the neurophysiological state) is available to consciousness and is

experienced as feeling good or bad (valence) and to a lesser extent as

actvated or deactvated (arousal)” (p.31). Furthermore, core affect “is

infuenced by a distributed computaton of value that derives from the

neural circuitry that performs evaluaton” (p.32). It is interestng here

the use of the term “distributed evaluaton”, which fts remarkably the

implementaton of the unconscious mind as presented in the frst part of

this chapter. The classifcaton in a classifer system is distributed by

defniton and the proposal to consider the weight of producton rules in

terms of the relatve emoton offers support to the hypothesis of the

interconnecton between this theoretcal approach and the technical

implementaton of the system based on Matte Blanco's principles.

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A support of the unconscious appraisal of stmuli is also recognized in the

fact that “[e]ven though the object is not yet named, or identfed as

belonging to a specifc category, its affectve value is computed [...]. As a

consequence, even identfying an object as familiar or not can produce an

inital evaluaton that can infuence (and be infuenced by) the additonal

processing as the object is specifcally categorized” (p.32).

Recalling the consideraton made in the frst chapter about the relevancy

of the context in the meaning-making process of the world, it is clear that

emotons are deeply sensitve on the context. The feeling of anger is

therefore much different depending on the context, and the behavioral

effects of the appraisal is adjusted accordingly: “[c]ore affect can be

categorized as anger on the highway (when a person might speed up, yell,

or shake a fst), in a boardroom (when a person might sit quietly), or on

the playground (where a child might make a scowling face, stomp, or

throw a toy). In each case, the situatonal context (both the physical and

the relatonal context) will, in part, determine what behaviors will be

performed, such that the context is an intrinsic element of any anger

episode” (p.33). As a consequence of this variability in the evaluaton of

core affect and of the responses, “[n]o single situated conceptualizaton

for anger need give a complete account of the category anger” (p.33).

How is it possible (due to the variability of “anger” situatons) to describe

an emoton? This is possible because the mind “records” the experience

of anger in relaton to the situaton which elicited that state: “[...] situated

conceptualizatons are perceptual symbols, or partal reenactments or

simulatons of the sensorimotor states that occurred with previous

instances of the category” (p.33). The simulator then re-enacts the

categories of anger which have been experienced before and previously

labelled (by the individual him/herself or by other individuals) as “anger”

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states. This offers a procedural algorithm of category building: “[...]

propertes that are pointed out by parents (or other speakers) or those

that are functonally relevant in everyday actvites will bind to core affect

to represent anger in that instance. As instances of anger accumulate, and

informaton is integrated across instances, a simulator for anger develops,

and conceptual knowledge about anger accrues. The resultng conceptual

system is a distributed collecton of modality-specifc memories captured

across all instances of a category” (p.34). SImulator therefore represent

the knowledge (discrete and verbalizable) of structured emotons, is like

the greatest common divisor of all the “anger” experience. Simulators re-

enact (to a lesser degree than the original) the common features of the

diverse experiences labelled under the name “anger”.

What connects then emotons and categories? What is the process of

defniton and constructon of emotonal categories? “Conceptual

informaton about emoton can be thought of as 'top-down' and core

affect 'bottom-up' constraints on the emerging experience of emoton.

Because both category knowledge (i.e., simulatons) and core affect share

a representatonal format (both can be characterized as sensorimotor

events), they could be seamlessly integrated during an act of categorizing

core affect. […] The result is an emotonal episode that people experience

more or less as a gestalt” (p.35).

The descripton of the two dynamics of categorizaton of the core affect

(bottom-up) and of re-enactng of the fundamental feature of an

emotonal category (top-down) in order to match them onto the current

affectve state of a person is structurally similar to the concepts

formulated by Matte Blanco and to the system described in the frst part

of this chapter.

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The transformaton from the concept of core affect pattern of actvaton

and the structure of intersectng hierarchical sets of generalizatons is

straightorward. Since an object in the unconscious mind can belong to

more than one set, the features of the object can be considered as the

defniton of the diverse sets containing it, concretzing the theoretcal

connecton between CAM and Matte Blanco conceptons. The hierarchical

constructon, when interpreted in the light of generalizaton and the other

mechanisms typical of the unconscious thinking, offers an even more

powerful basis for the modelizaton and the explanaton of the emotonal

life of the mind. While in the CAM the categories are “fat”, made of the

“simulators” of the bodily components of emoton (making somehow

difcult to explain how they are generalized in categories like “fear” or

“sadness”), the theory by Matte Blanco offers a grammar and a set of

rules that are logically able to describe and explain the micro-processes of

formaton and transformaton of the categories describing the emotons.

Furthermore the symbolic functoning that emerges from the relatonal

combinaton of the bags of symmetry elegantly shows how emotons can

be evoked not just by specifc objects or events, but on the symbolic

interpretaton of contextual cues based on the generalizaton of the

relaton as occurring in the unconscious. It can explain, for example, how

a feeling of fear is evoked and felt when a person is involved in a

symbolical persecutory relaton with another person, feeling that could

hardly explained if considering it in a mere perceptual or experiental

stance.

2.3 Emotional categories: building, use and maintenance

In order to be able to complete the proposed (even if partal)

implementaton of the dynamical system, it is necessary to defne in

which way the bags of symmetry (in terms of hierarchy of sets) are built

110


and modifed in everyday social interacton. This is necessary to avoid the

necessity to the manual hard-coding in the system of arbitrarily defned

hierarchies.

The frst aspect to consider is the developmental microdynamic of

formaton of emoton-based categories. In this regard neither Matte

Blanco nor ECT offer a specifc support. Anyway, following the ideas

expressed in CAM it is possible to present some speculatve hypotheses

about this process. These ideas must however be further elaborated in

order to adapt them to the concept of hierarchical sets that form the bags

of symmetry. From the CAM theory it is known that the fundamental

pattern of features is the core affect, which is mainly composed of the

valence (positve/negatve) and, to a lesser degree, the actvaton (Barrett,

2006b).

Let's take as example the development of categories that occur in a

newborn. Objects are categorized by a baby in very wide and general

categories based on the valence of his/her physical state, i.e. the totality

of the world is organized in very broad categories containing positve and

negatve things. How happens that such a broad category variates and

grows? For (Kruschke, 2005) “Categorizaton is sometmes defned merely

as dividing a set of items into subsets. Typically, however, such a division

is only of interest to the extent that novel items are inferred to be in one

subset or another” (p.184). Therefore subsets develop (asymmetrically) to

accommodate novel stmuli that are placed in the broader category, but

then are perceived to be slightly different from the other elements that

defned the category untl that moment. Clearly the kind of stmuli a baby

can perceive and categorize is of a very simple and direct type. The

affectve distncton of new (or newly perceived) stmuli pushes the

creaton of subsets of the inital general ones, and so on. Bags of

111


symmetry therefore develop, like a head of lettuce, growing from the

inside and creatng the differentatons typical of the asymmetrical

thinking. This is coherent with Matte Blanco's posit that even if equally

fundamental, the symmetrical functoning is more fundamental. This

hypothesis of category development can ideally be implemented in the

computatonal system proposed earlier, even if its coding and

formalizaton would require a refned tuning, in partcular for what

regards the appraisal of the feedback that molds the emotonal (and

ontological) knowledge of the world. This generatve microdynamic is

likely to be contnuously engaged over tme and to cause a slight (or

sometmes heavy) remodulaton of the mind's structure.

When an object is perceived and undergoes the process of categorizaton,

a complex process operates in order to materially recognize and

emotonally connote the percept. The distncton between object isolaton

and emotonal categorizaton can be thought as separate for simplicity,

but since categories are built under the pressure of emotonal valence it is

unreasonable to think that it is possible to categorize a percept

completely without emotonal involvement. A percepton is determined

on the basis of the very same gestaltc process of combinaton of relatons

and the other objects involved in the percepton, including the observer

him/herself (cf. chapter 2, paragraph 2.3).

A percepton have to fnd the positon it belongs to in the hierarchy of

sets, i.e. it is inserted in a set, which is a subset of another set and so on

tll the higher level, most general containing set. See a pictorial

representaton of the hierarchy in fgure 3.6.

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Afer its placement in the “correct” set, the percept is subjected to the

already described transformatons: generalizaton and homogenizaton. A

remarkable fact is that generalizaton does not operates only in an

“upward” directon, i.e. towards more general sets. A “downward

generalizaton” is also present because an object is always6 and

completely homogenized within the containing set, meaning that the

object is the same as the objects contained in the same set. But the set, in

general (since it is part of a developed structural categorizaton

fundamentally stable over tme), contains also some other subsets as

elements: the object therefore is made equal to those sets, and then with

the elements contained in it, and with the sub-sub sets contained in

them, and so on recursively. Consider for example in fgure 3.6 where an

object is classifed in the set pointed by the arrow. The object is identfed

also with the subsets of the set, making the object of the arrow identcal

to all the objects contained in the volume with the bold borders. This

process, furthermore, multplies exponentally with every step of

6 Matte Blanco himself supports the fact that in the unconscious mind there cannot be

individual objects, but just sets.

113

Figure 3.6 — Hierarchies of categories in the mind. A hypothetical object might be placed

at first in the category marked by the arrow. The classification of the object spreads not

only in the set, but also in the contained subsets.


generalizaton. The spreading of identfcaton of objects which are not

just more general, but also more specifc, can be easily implemented in

the classifer system described earlier, with the normal use of

transformaton functons. Not only that, but also from a theoretcal point

of view this exponental spreading of object identfcatons could be

considered as a quanttatve expression of the metaphorical infnity

described by Matte Blanco. It is like a sudden fash during which a percept

is made identcal to an incredibly vast array of other objects, every one of

them with its emotonal load. The grater the spreading of identfcatons,

the stronger the perceived emoton of the subject that could be

considered, roughly, as the sum of the emoton value of every involved

object.

The concepts being developed here are useful to illustrate more

technically, mainly from an intrapsychical perspectve, the infuence of the

context in the appraisal of an object. Let's consider an object as in fgure

3.7.

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Figure 3.7 — What kind of gaze is this?


Where is it going to be categorized? Is it perceived as positve or

negatve? As the attentve gaze of an interested person or as a surveilling

and judging eye7? (see fgure 3.8)

The answer is that, among many other factors, it depends on the

contextual connotaton performed by the individual. If the individual

perceived the stmulus in a positve mood is more likely that s/he will

interpret it positvely. The probability of selecton of one emotonal

connotaton against another is dependent on the current affectve

situaton but also on personality traits (a paranoid could feel an eye as

judging even when in a positve mood), the remaining elements of the

context (the beholder of the eye) and so on.

This formulaton of the contextual infuence makes clear a fundamental

point about the gestalt formaton in a complex system. Complex systems,

by defniton, are extremely sensitve to inital conditons, where slight

differences in a single value usually produce, afer some tme, large

differences in the system's behavior. Going back to the original

descripton, a small difference in the mood (e.g. positve vs. negatve,

7 Interestngly, to underline again the infuence of emotonality not just in the

categorizaton but also in the very process of segmentaton of reality, we should also

have asked whether the object of percepton is the eye or the gaze.

115

Figure 3.8 — Two possible afective general categorization of the gaze in figure 3.7.

Positive Negative


pushing towards a set or another) could cause, in the “long” run (which is

likely of few milliseconds), completely different gestalts. A small

unbalance creates a set of possible gestalts (of triplets of elements and

their relaton) which is potentally completely different than if the

imbalance was in a different directon.

In the previous chapter (paragraph 2.5), the noton of affectve semiosis

introduced the idea that the elicitaton of abstract generalized meanings

guides the interpretaton and segmentaton of the perceived reality.

Objects in the reality are therefore instantated in the mind on the basis

of their relatonal dimension (recall the process of anthropomorphizaton)

which involves the subject him/herself and the other objects. This

regulaton mechanism based on the general affectve structure actvated

in that partcular moment directs the process of interpretaton of the

other elements of reality. The act of a friend kissing your cheek is not

interpreted in the same way as if it were done by a complete stranger, for

example. The friendly source of the kiss modifes the meaning we give to

the perceived act. The general symbolic regulaton is shaped in a

fundamentally unconscious way, but acts and refects itself in the more

concrete aspects giving them the frame of reference and therefore their

emotonal (and also ontological) positon in the mind. A kiss given by a

friend is a nice act of afliaton, while if it is given by a stranger it could be

felt as an act of sexual assault. The frame of reference can be encoded as

well in the classifer system, by means of the classifers describing the

relatons. If a certain contextual situaton (e.g. a dinner with some friends)

actvates a set of relatonal functons encoded in the classifers by

increasing their emotonal contngent value, this set of general relatons

would be more likely to be employed in the process of relatonal

categorizaton of the perceived reality. In the example of the dinner with

friend, a kiss given by a stranger in a friendly situaton could be

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considered very different from the one given by a complete stranger in a

metro staton in a cold winter evening. Also in this case, the set of relaton

encoded in the classifer system offers potentally a way of describing and

simulatng the contextual affectve framing.

This variability can be implemented as already described: dividing the

weight parameter in the classifer system as the general amount of

emoton connected to a certain object plus a value derived from the

current emotonal state. In this way an object with a negatve innervaton

(a high negatve emotonal weight) would behave as an attractor, being

able to shif the mood of an individual in the negatve area because solely

of the percepton of an eye.

Also in this case, as in the CAM and the conceptualizaton of Matte

Blanco's theories (both the canonical and the complex system one), the

interplay between symmetrical and asymmetrical dynamic is a key point.

The result of this parallel, complex and tangled process is the gestalt that

“makes sense”, in the various levels, of the elements of percepton.

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118

Chapter 4 — The Measure of Emotons as Effect of the Unconscious Functoning

Chapter 4 — The Measure of Emotions as Effect

of the Unconscious Functioning

«One could then think that some day a sort of “thermometer

for measuring emoton” will be found»

(Matte Blanco, “The unconscious as infnite sets”, p. 252)

Far from having the overambitous idea of developing a “thermometer for

measuring emoton”, in this chapter are presented two instruments

conceived to capture operatvely the unconscious infuence in the

behavior of a person. The fundamental theoretcal hypothesis of this

dissertaton is that emotons are an essental component in the process of

percepton (and therefore evaluaton) of the world. Consequently, the

amount of emotons involved in such a task is expected to be refected in

the way of categorizing/expressing evaluatons of a subject. The specifc

phenomenon considered in the measure of the unconscious functoning

differs in the two studies: in the frst is the level of generalizaton of

groupings of stmuli, in the second the K-effect (i.e. the homogenizaton of

the evaluaton functons).

1. Other emotion measuring techniques

The problem of measuring emotons is a complex theoretcal and practcal

one. As shown earlier, there are at least four main approaches struggling

to give a theoretcal defniton of emoton, but the most common

theoretcal approach employed by the emoton measuring techniques is

the “appraisal” one.

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Broadly speaking, emoton measuring techniques are based on the idea of

emotonal response: “[...] an emotonal response begins with appraisal of

the personal signifcance of an event [...], which in turn gives rise to an

emotonal response involving subjectve experience, physiology, and

behaviour” as reported in the review by (Mauss & Robinson, 2009) from

which is also taken the scheme in fgure 4.1.

Emotons therefore are considered to be the bodily or experiental

reacton to an event, as in the Newtonian law of cause-effect. Techniques

such as self-report, vocal pitch or rate of speech measurement, facial

expressions, neurophysiological correlates as heart beatng rate or skin

conductance are widely employed in order to measure emotons. From

the theoretcal frame of this dissertaton, however, each one of them is

lacking of some fundamental aspects.

First of all, when talking about the “personal signifcance of an event” one

should frst defne what is an “event”. The salience of an “event” depends

deeply on the peculiarites of a person and on his/her interpretaton of

the “event”, to the extent that for someone the same “event” is not even

an “event”. When a famous singer or sportsperson dies, the sense of grief

in the populaton of his/her fans could be great, where instead for an

uninterested person could just feel generally sorry for the death of a

person without emotonal involvement. Is this an event to be considered

120

FIgure 4.1 — "A consensual component model of emotion responding" (Mauss & Robinson,

2009)


emoton-evoking for everyone? When showing a picture to a partcipant

intended to evoke some specifc emotonal reacton, the fact that it is an

“event” is implicit in the fact that the person have been shown an image,

an image that could have been ignored if seen, for example, in a

newspaper. The context therefore defnes also what is an event or a

stmulus.

Secondly, and more importantly: is it always true that emotons cause a

response? Strong emotons usually do, but life is not made of strong

emotons, but stll emotons are everywhere in everyday life. Walking

down the street, our attenton is caught by a shirt in a shop window,

making us desire to own it. Is this an emotonal fact? In the view of this

disserta ton, it certainly is. Does it provoke su fcient

bodily/neurological/behavioural reactons? Probably it does not. A similar

observaton is present in (Mergenthaler, 1996) where, about the analysis

of psychotherapeutc transcripts, he says that “[...] the observed

utterances or words are suitable to express emoton verbally but may not

coincide with physiological correlates such as sweatng, fushing, or

palpitaton” (p.1306).

Certainly emotons cannot be completely separated from physical

manifestaton, and the traditonal techniques of emoton measurement

had been proved to be reliable for many aspects. Physical reactons to

emotons can be present or not (or, more likely, be present under a

detectable threshold), therefore physical correlates of emotons cannot

be taken as being coincident with the emotonal functoning of the mind.

In other terms, the physical response could be considered as a sign of an

emoton, but the absence of (a detectable) response cannot be

considered as the absence of emotons.

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A different approach to considering emotons have been described in

Chapter 3, paragraph 2.1 and 2.2, in the terms of Emotonal Response

Categorizaton and Conceptual-Act Model. These models shifed the focus

from the appraisal of an external reality to the internal state of the

perceiver. In a series of experiments by (Niedenthal & Dalle, 2001;

Niedenthal et al., 1999) has been shown that persons in a generally

positve emotonated state preferred to couple a “target” word with

another word sharing an emotonal connecton with the frst, rather than

another sportng a semantc connecton. This is a way of measuring

emotons without assumptons about the relevancy of the stmulus, the

efcacy of the appraisal and the presence of a response.

In the rest of the chapter are presented two ways of measuring emotons

conceptually based on the unconscious functoning of the mind, which

seeks for the emotonal actvity not in the presumed emotonal responses

to an arbitrary stmulus, but in the infuence of emotonality in the way of

responding. If emotons are a component of thought, then it would be

possible to observe the trails of their presence and infuence, in the

diverse degrees, in the overall process of mind functoning.

2. A generalization-based measure: the FFMCT

The Famous Faces Multple Choice Test (Ciaramelli et al., 2006; Lauro-

Grotto, 2006), which will be described accurately since it has been the

basis of the experimental work at the center of the Author's doctoral

experience, is a test conceived originally to measure two different forms

of memory: episodic memory and semantc memory (Tulving, 1985,

2002). Episodic memory is characterized by the capability of maintaining a

unique temporally-dated events, while semantc memory involves a

general, tmeless knowledge that a person shares with others. This

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distncton can be described in terms of what is “remembered” vs. what is

“known”. The two modalites of recall tend to be complementary in which

when the episodic memory is unavailable (or not present) then the

semantc memory, which is made of a set of attributonal details and is

based on cues of percepton, would fll in the lack of data retrieval. In

subjects suffering from Alzheimer's disease (AD) the episodic memory is

compromised, then the employed strategy for the retrieval of informaton

relies more heavily on semantc memory. Since the two modes of recalling

have different ways of integratng the missing data, the errors made under

one strategy or the other are expected to present different patterns, and

thus to be quanttatvely recognized: “the distributon of errors incurred

in during retrieval can serve as an efcient indicator of the way

informaton is accessed” (Ciaramelli et al., 2006) (p.144).

The proposed test (FFMCT) is based on the classifcaton of picture of

famous faces. Since the original test was addressed to elderly people, the

chosen faces were selected among famous persons in the 40–50s, 60–70s,

80–90s. The stmuli were organized following two criteria: geographical

origin (Italian, Other European, American) and occupaton (Sportpersons,

Politcians, Actors and Singers), resultng in 9 overlapping categories. See

fgure 4.2 for an image of the original test.

123


Partcipants were asked to classify 54 pictures in the 9 categories, and

when the subject fails to recognize the picture, he or she is nevertheless

required to provide the most plausible classifcaton. The performance of

each subject can be represented in a 9x9 matrix Q(s, s') (the “confusion

matrix”) having in the rows (s) the correct category of each stmulus (e.g.,

Marilyn Monroe belongs to category “Actors and Singers/American”) and

in the columns (s') the category assigned by the subject. In each cell is the

number of faces originally belonging to the category represented in the

row which have been put in the corresponding column category.

Therefore every row's total is always 6, since there are 6 faces for each

category. A perfect performance is represented by a matrix completely

made of “0” except for the diagonal which is flled with “6”.

A frst index measuring the performance of a subject is therefore the

number of correct classifcatons (this is to say, the total of the values on

the diagonal), or more precisely, the frequency fcor of correct classifcaton

divided by the total number of stmuli:

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FIgure 4.2 — The original FFMCT test.


f cor=∑s= 1..9

Q (s , s)

54

This amount of correct answers could be roughly considered a measure of

the episodic memory employed in the task by a subject.

The second summary performance index is the value of mutual

informaton computed on the basis of Shannon's trans-entropy formula

(Shannon, 1948):

I=∑s , s'

P (s∣ s ' ) log2P (s∣ s ' )P (s)P (s ' )

Where P(s|s') is the conditonal probability that a face classifed in the

category s' originally belonged to the correct category s1. P(s) and P(s') are

the probability of categorizaton of a face respectvely in category s and in

category s'. For the reasons said earlier, P(s) equals to 1/9, since the

stmuli are equidistributed along the 9 categories. The probabilites are

computed as the actual frequencies of the given responses2. A complete

explanaton of the formulae and of the mathematcs used is not the

intenton of this brief presentaton (more details are present in the

original paper), but to give a vague but meaningful idea of its reason is

perhaps sufcient to note that the formula relates two set of

probabilites: P(s|s') and P(s)P(s'). As already said P(s|s') is the conditonal

probability that given s' (the answer) it originally belonged to category s

1 In Shannon's mathematcal model of transmission is faced the problem if a symbol

received trough a channel (a wire, for example) corresponded to the actually sent

symbol. The problem was how I, as a receiver, can trust the channel about the

correctness of the transmission, thus assuming that the symbol I received corresponds

to the one sent. This is the reason behind this somehow curios probability opposite to

the temporal order of the transmission.

2 This approximaton introduces a bias (the “limited sampling bias”) which in the original

artcles is analytcally corrected, but this technical aspect will be overlooked here in the

sake of clarity.

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(if s=s', this is the probability of a correct answer). This conditonal

probability is divided by the probability of an answer s' to belong to an

inital category s in the case of complete statistical independence. The

formula therefore gives an evaluaton of how much the actual distributon

of the answers is close to a casual equidistributon of answers. The closer

are the two distributons, the more the value of I tends to 0, with a

maximum value of 3.17 (= log2 9). The value I, since it comprises also the

correct answers, is a mixed summary measure of both ways of

classifcatons, namely the ones based on episodic and the ones based on

semantc memory.

In order to flter the contributon of correct answers, the value I is

adjusted on the basis of the fcorr value, the actual frequency of correct

answers given by the subject. This is done using fcorr as a parameter upon

which the answers could be statstcally distributed, on the basis of the

following analytcal estmatons of the maximum and minimum value of I

relatvely to the number of correct answers:

I min= log2S+ f corr log2 f corr+(1− f corr) log2(1− f corr)S− 1

I max= log2S+log2 f corr

Where S is the number of categories, which is 9. Using these boundaries it

is possible to evaluate, for a given value of f cor (which can be considered as

the answers based on episodic memory, i.e. the ones that the subject

“remembered” correctly), the fracton of answers based on the semantc

memory of the subject (i.e. the ones based on “knowledge”). In other

words it is possible to disentangle quanttatvely the two ways of recalling

memories. This fnal value is the “metric value” λ:

λ=I− I minImax− Imin

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For a subject, then, this is the value measuring how much quantitatively

the overall categorizaton was based on semantc memory rather than on

episodic memory.

As a side remark, and for what said earlier, episodic memory is

characterized by the capability of maintaining a unique temporally-dated

events, while semantc memory exerts a general, tmeless knowledge.

This difference is strikingly similar to the one made in Chapter 2

(Paragraph 2.2) where it is suggested that what differentates the

unconscious functoning from the asymmetrical conscious operaton is

exactly the tme-unawareness that can be attributed to the symmetrical

functoning. This analogy offers independent support to that statement

both from a theoretcal and empirical point of view.

Going back to the FFMCT, the probability of misclassifcaton can be

interpreted as being dependent on some underlying perceived “distance”

between the categories. The situaton where the value of I is close to I min

(that is, λ ≈ 0) can be conceived as being drawn from a space of extremely

high dimensionality in which every category is perceived as being at the

same distance from each other. In this case the subject responds as if not

perceiving any partcular similarity among the famous people represented

in the pictures, other than among those placed in the very same category,

and the classifcaton, when incorrect, has a random distributon. This is

the case in which the subject recognizes (using the episodic memory)

some of the faces, and those not recognized are classifed without

recurring to semantc memory.

When instead the value of I is close to Imax (λ ≈ 1) the subject can detect

similarites among some of the faces, and therefore the classifcaton

errors are more concentrated around the “innervaton” of semantc

memory and form a sort of super-category on its own which is

127


independent from the ones defned in the test. Such categories are

formed by the faces which are at a perceived distance less than some

critcal value under which all the stmuli are considered identcal, forming

therefore a cluster of homogeneous elements. On the other hand, the

distance between any two members of different clusters, being above the

critcal value of perceived distance, are considered as being different.

In other words, when λ ≈ 0, the relatonships entailed by the semantc

experience of the subject are irrelevant, and if a stmulus is misclassifed

the probability of assigning it to any of the wrong categories is the same.

For λ ≈ 1, instead, categories can be thought of as clustering into an

arbitrary but systematc semantc structure, while the partcular category

within each cluster is chosen at random.

The value of λ can also be interpreted in terms close to its defniton in

terms of the mathematcal theory of informaton, as the amount of latent

informaton contained in the set of the responses given by a subject. If,

apart from the correct responses, the patterns of answers do not convey

any informaton it is possible to conclude that those wrong responses

were not guided by any systematc underlying structure. On the other

hand, if the wrong answers show a pattern with regular organizaton, it

can be said that the misclassifed stmuli were placed in a sort of latent

structure that exerts its regularity in the organizaton of the answers. As is

described in (Ciaramelli et al., 2006):

The metric content index is therefore a measure of the amount

of structure embedded in the neural representatons that

inform subject choice: It is high when individual memory items

are classifed using semantc cues, which leads to a more

concentrated distributon of errors. It is low either when

performance is random (in which case performance measures

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are also low), or when episodic access to the identty of each

famous face is prevalent, semantc relatonships remain largely

unused, and errors, when made, tend to be more randomly

distributed. (p.146)

In a subsequent interpretaton of the FFMCT (Lauro-Grotto, 2007, 2008),

this instrument have been placed in correspondence with the theorizaton

by Matte Blanco of the unconscious functoning. Some glimpses of this

analogy have already been shown, but an important idea is the one that

sees the unconscious in terms of a topological semantc structure with

specifc features. If we imagine the experience of a life as encoded in a

network of representatons of facts, ideas, relatons and so on, it can

hypothesized that some specifc distance between the elements can be

defned. In this novel interpretaton of the FFMCT brought forward by

Lauro-Grotto (called “ultrametric”), the fabric of this network is modifed

in a way that, in certain circumstances, the distance between a group G of

otherwise distnct objects and a third object X is considered to be the

same for each of them. If we consider the distance as the probability of

going from X to each of the object in G, we should conclude that the

probability of going from X to any of the objects in G is the same, i.e. they

are structurally considered to be equivalent. To make an example, the

distance between Rome, Florence and Bologna is of some hundreds of

kilometers, and we can certainly state that Rome, Florence and Bologna

are different cites. Imagine, for a moment, that the only parameter of

interest in the choice of where to go is the distance, then the shorter

distance would defne the next city where to go. Distnguishing amongst

cites is meaningful if the traveller is, so to say, in Milan, which is just few

hundreds of kilometers away. But if the traveler is in Moscow, the

distance between Rome, Florence and Bologna would be completely

129


negligible and treated as to be completely equivalent from the ultrametric

point of view3. On the other hand, the group made of Rome, Florence and

Bologna would be completely different from the one comprising

Melbourne and Sydney, because the latter two cites have a distance over

the so called “ultrametric limit”. Nonetheless, from a Muscovite

perspectve, Melbourne and Sydney would be indistnguishable as well.

The proposal behind this interpretaton is that the unconscious

functoning of the mind alters the percepton of distances of otherwise

different objects of experience in a way that makes them, for the ones

under the ultrametric limit, indistnguishable each other, but distnct from

the objects belonging to other sets of “indistnguishable” objects. It is

necessary to be aware that the example of the cites could be a little

misleading: there is no need in the mind for the objects to be “far” in

order to be homogenized, as in a perspectve deformaton. In order for

this homogenizaton to occur it is enough for them to be over the

ultrametric limit, which is not necessarily a far one. A suggestve (but

technically wrong) way of describing such ultrametric topological spaces is

to describe them as “the mathematcal place where every triangle is

isosceles”4.

A concept similar to the one developed in the FFCMT about the

measurement of the unconscious actvity, can be tracked in (Matte

3 Anecdotally, this actually happened to the Author. During a brief stay in Paris with

some friends, a girl in a heavily loaded car asked us, with a strong Russian accent,

directons on how to reach “Liege”. The friend of ours living in Paris started giving her

the directons for the “Liege” metro staton, but the girls stopped him, and said: “No

no... Liege... the city!” (which of course is in Belgium and not in France, but from a

Russian perspectve the difference could have been negligible).

4 A recent study (Murtagh, 2012a, 2012b) employed the concepts of ultrametric space in

the analysis of textual data, in the light of Matte Blanco's concepton.

130


Blanco, 1975) which, furthermore, connects the unconscious functoning

with the emotonal dimension that is the central point of this dissertaton:

If we conceive the mental actvity as the (implicit or explicit)

formaton of various propositonal functons, classes and

relatons, then the smaller and less comprehensive the classes

are, the greater the number of classes and also the greater the

number of asymmetrical relatons delimitng the classes will be.

For each class is delimited by asymmetrical relatons. In

contrast, the larger and more comprehensive the classes are,

the smaller the number of classes and the smaller the number

of asymmetrical relatons will be. If we represent the mind by a

volume, for instance by a vertcal cylinder, then we would fnd

that the number of asymmetrical relatons, the density of the

population of asymmetrical relations, increases as we go up

towards the higher parts and decreases as we go down towards

the lower parts of the cylinder. The functon describing this

state of affairs would be a contnuous functon. (p.283, italics in

the original) […] An all-invading emoton of love wraps, so to

speak, the individual in an atmosphere of love. […] In other

words, love is treated as an extensive infnite set. The same

holds for all the other basic, all-invading emotons. To put in in

the terms employed above, the density of asymmetrical

relatons is low in such cases. (p.283–284, italics in the original)

Following the descripton by Matte Blanco, it is possible to describe the

operaton of measurement made in the FFMCT as the quantfcaton of

the level in which the mind of the subject slices the above mentoned

“cylinder”. The number of sets, and therefore their size, can be considered

as what is measured by the FFMCT.

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A new computerized version of the FFMCT have been developed (see

fgure 4.3 for a screenshot), and a long series of a variety of laboratory

experiments have been performed. The stmuli, since this new version

was addressed to persons of every age, were selected amongst famous

people belonging to the last decade.

3. A Kalokagathia-based measure: The EGO-ME test

Afer some encouraging results, we realized that the FFMCT suffered from

few drawbacks, frst of all its strong normatveness: There are precise

categories, cognitvely well defned and arbitrarily built. This makes it

difcult to be sure of the how the subject choose a category instead of

another, in fact the photos contain many cognitve cues that a person

could use to infer the right category (for example, a ft man, dressed not

very fashionably, with a simple haircut, which is not recognised as a politc

132

FIgure 4.3 — The computer-based new implementation of the FFMCT.


or an actor, is very likely to be a sportsman of some kind). Furthermore it

is not clear how the cultural competence of the subject can infuence the

executon of the task. For these reasons we started to develop a new

instrument stll based on Matte Blanco's concepts, but able to overcome

the problems listed above.

In this secton is proposed a method for the measurement of the

emotons conceived as thought-organizing elements, the EGO-ME test

(Emotonal Grouping of Objects as a Measure of Emotons).

Since emotons are substantal element of thought, we looked for a way

of analyzing data in a way based on, so to speak, the behavior of the

overall thinking actvity. This “behavioral” interpretaton of the

unconscious actvity is supported also in the following fragment by Matte

Blanco:

[…] the unconscious does not follow and does not worry, to use

an anthropomorphic expression, about its logic any more than

the digestve tract worries about the chemistry of the enzymes;

only lives it, just as an animal is impelled to eat, without

knowing the mechanisms underlying its appette. (p.100)

The “behavioral” refex which is considered in this proposal is the already

introduced K-effect, i.e. the tendency of the unconscious evaluatons to

homogenize the different features of the same object, resultng in a

similarity between the evaluatons of different aspects of the same object.

Concerning the specifc phenomena considered as the aspect of analysis,

several consideraton must be made:

1) it is specifc enough to be recognizable (observable), but also

general enough to be part of the general functoning.

133


2) it is measurable in terms of similarity of evaluatons

3) it is complex enough to capture to some degree the richness of the

unconscious functoning, but not too complex to the point of

making impossible to recognize the different underlying dynamics

4) It is simple enough to be revealed in a series of ratngs, but not

simple to the point to be naïve and unable to capture the richness

of the unconscious functoning

The K-effect satsfes all the fundamental requirements to be the basis of

an instrument measuring emoton, and furthermore is related to

evaluatonal dynamics, which are fundamentally implicated in the process

of expressing ratngs. This fact connects tghtly the ratngs and the way in

which they are perceived, i.e. with the emotonality involved in the

process of evaluaton of the stmuli.

The test is built on the basis of the following principles:

1) The stmuli:

1. Should be visual. Since what is being measured is the

symmetrical actvity, the segmentaton and the symmetrical

classifcaton of the stmulus, as made by the symmetrical

thinking, is a fundamental element in the process to be

measured.

2. Should depict statc objects or situatons in a state as neutral as

possible, and as less embedded context as possible. This

permits the subject to employ more freely his/her emotonal

state in the contextual defniton.

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3. Should be taken from a set of candidate stmuli on the basis of

an empirical preliminary experiment conceived to measure the

stmuli offering the greatest variability in the evaluatons.

2) The subject should be required to express his/her evaluatons:

1. On non-semantc scales. The subject’s unconscious should be

lef as free as possible to defne its own semantc categories in

the test.

2. On visual neutral scales. The use of numerical or verbal scales

or pictorial scales could evoke commonly used semantc

categories and interfere with the evaluaton.

3. On contnuos scales. Likert scales, for example, could suggest

the subject some form of predefned categorizaton, which is

exactly what must be avoided.

4. With no tme limits, to not to suggest the subject with a

possible performance-based test that could be interpreted as

persecutory.

5. The subject should be allowed to change his/her evaluatons,

again to avoid persecutory cues.

3) The numerical result of the test should be based on the analysis of

the collected data in their structure, chosen in the light of the

functoning of the symmetrical thinking.

The test presents a subject with a random-ordered5 series of 38 images of

common objects and asks the subject to rate every stmulus one at tme.

The process of selecton of the images followed these steps:

5 The shufing is accomplished using the Fisher-Yates-Knuth algorithm which guarantees

an equidistributon of the probabilites among the items.

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1) A group of 15 bachelor students have been asked to select

randomly 10 object each, looking randomly into a vocabulary. In this

inital stage the objects were described just by their names.

2) The list of names of objects have been organized in a spreadsheet,

alphabetcally sorted and the duplicates removed. Each name of

object was associated to a semantc differental about four

aspects: good–bad, insignifcant–signifcant, irrelevant–relevant,

not infuental–infuental. The students submitted the worksheet

to their acquaintances. The reason given to the subjects was that it

was required for a marketng-strategy research on the percepton

of the listed objects.

3) For each name of object the standard deviaton have been

computed over the four scales listed in the point (2), and then

added up in a single value representng the object's overall

variability. The 82 objects with the higher overall variability was

selected.

4) The students then searched the Internet for images representng

the selected names. The images were compared and selected on

the basis of their emotonal and semantc neutrality. A road

crossover with a trafc jam, for example, would hardly be

considered “pleasant” at any rate, and this would introduce a bias

in the ratngs. On the other hand an empty road crossover could

be felt quite differently depending on the experience and the

current emotonal state of the subject. One person, for example,

could feel it as “a beautfully free road” and another as an “ugly

asphalt desert”. This criterion was employed to enhance the

variability in the resultng ratngs.

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5) The resultng images have been used in a frst preliminary version

of the test (called ACUO) that involved 107 subjects. The

partcipants were asked to rate the images on two contnuous

scales: irrelevant–relevant and unpleasant–pleasant. The

numerical value of the ratngs ranged from -50 (irrelevant and

unpleasant) to +50 (relevant and pleasant) thus forming a de facto

contnuous scale. This has been done in order to enhance the

freedom, and hence the variability, of the responses.

6) For each of the images it has been computed the standard

deviaton of each series of the two ratngs (relevancy and

pleasantness). The images showing a standard deviaton of at least

the 30% in respect to the maximum value for both of the ratng

scales were selected. This resulted in the fnal set of 38 images

The test asks the subject to rate one image at tme on two contnuos

scales: irrelevant–relevant and unpleasant–pleasant. The two scales have

been chosen in order to avoid any commonsensical semantc

interpretaton. See Figure 4.4 for an example screenshot of the test. The

rest of the screen is completely white.

The system waits for the subject to press the “Confrm” button to pass to

the following image. The subject is allowed to change his/her ratng untl

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FIgure 4.4 — A screenshot of the EGO-ME test.


pressing the confrm button. The test does not allow to go backward to

change the ratng of the previous images.

Together with the data about the ratngs, the computer system allowed

the recording of some behavioral data: the milliseconds from the

appearing of the image to the confrm and the number of ratng changes

for each image. The specifc order of the images is recorded as well.

3.1 The numerical measure of the emotion

What the instrument is intended to measure is the phenomenon for

which a subject tends to make uniform the evaluatons given about the

same object. The main data collected in the test are the two series of

ratngs a partcipant expressed about every object, about relevancy and

pleasantness. What is sought is an index able to measure the covariaton

of the ratngs. The correlaton index could be a good candidate, but its

bound to the limit of being employable only to two series of data.

The specifc statstcal index proposed here is based on the principal

component analysis (PCA) of the two series of ratngs. The effect of the

PCA is to reduce the dimensionality of the data in a way that minimizes

the data loss. The explained variance is a measure of the data loss: the

lower is the explained variance the higher is the data loss in the process

of dimension reducton. If applied to data normally distributed, the

explained variance is the squared Pearson’s index r. Since no assumptons

are made about the distributon of the data, the explained variance of the

frst (and only) factor of the PCA seems to be a measure able to capture

the specifc aspect under analysis. The explained variance (called ε, for

emotion, from now on) therefore will be taken as the measure of the

emoton involved, in the terms of a non-semantc component of thought,

in the evaluaton of the stmuli. The reason for preferring this measure to

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other non-parametric measures of associaton, like Spearman's rank

correlaton coefcient, are twofold. A practcal reason is that the PCA

procedure is able to (and actually have been conceived for) higher

dimensionality data. In this set of experiments the subjects have been

asked for ratngs over two axes, but in principle it is possible to submit to

the partcipants more than two aspects to be evaluated. In this case the

PCA is able to detect the most probable underlying variable regulatng all

of the judgments, and offers a measure of this probability — i.e. its value

of explained variance. Secondary, the PCA way of determining the

underlying hidden variable is theoretcally closer to the focal point of the

EGO-ME instrument. In fact, the supportng idea is that judgements about

diverse aspects of a same object tend to be regulated (on the basis of the

involved emotons) by a unique generalized and super-ordered

unconscious evaluaton spreading over the other specifc aspects.

Therefore the explained variance is not just more scalable to a higher

number of dimensions than correlaton, but it is also more conforming to

the conceptual structure of the EGO-ME proposal.

An interestng interpretaton of this index is the one for which this

measures the informatonal richness of the cloud of data. If the data

contained a high amount of informaton (high entropy6), the operaton of

dimension reducton would cause a substantal lost of informaton. If, on

the other hand, the informaton was concentrated along one directon

(i.e. when the ratngs tended to be more uniform, a low-entropy

situaton) the informatonal loss due to dimensional reducton is less. This

means that the informaton the subject employed in the responding was

6 It is important to remark that “entropy” and “transentropy”, the measure employed in

the FFMCT, are different concepts even if based on the same theoretcal stance.

Furthermore, being them applied on data of different nature, the homogenizaton of

the interpretatons is not a correct operaton.

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less, since the ratngs were given not on the basis of independent

evaluatons of the different aspects, but on the assimilaton of the

evaluatng functons. This assimilaton is the product of the

homogenizaton of the evaluatve functons exerted by the unconscious.

In other words, for high values of explained variance, the subject regularly

employed only one piece of (mental) process to express both of the

ratngs. As explained in chapter 2, the homogenizaton process alters the

amount of informaton in the system. Partcularly, homogenizing causes

the identfcaton of an object with every other object in the same set,

causing a loss of its specifcity. In this sense, a diminished amount of

informaton as occurs when the explained variance is high is the refex of

the operaton of informaton-reducton operated by the unconscious

processes.

As a frst quanttatve overview of the ε index, some of the data plots from

the subjects are presented in fgure 4.5a-d. In the four graphics are

presented the ratngs given by four subjects. In fgures 4.5a and d are the

plots for the two subjects sportng respectvely the lower and the higher ε

value. The fgures 4.5b and c show the plots for two intermediate values

of ε.

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Notce that the value of ε, being identcal to the explained variance of a

PCA, by defniton can vary in the range 0.5–1 for two-dimensional data.

In general the minimum amount of explained variance of the frst factor is

1/d, where d is the number of the dimensions, and the maximum is

always 1. Although in this set of studies the raw value of ε have been

employed (since the used statstcs are scale-invariant), the value can be

normalized in the range [0, 1] for a general dimension d (i.e. d different

evaluatve axes) with the following formula:

ε=dεraw− 1d− 1

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Figure 4.5 — Plots of four participants's ratings showing the increment in regularity of

judgments as measured by ε. (a) Minimum ε value; (b-c) Intermediate ε values; (d)

Maximum ε value.

a b

c d


3.2 General experimental method and setting

The proposed method undergone an inital statstcal validaton, to test

both the internal validity (in respect to the psychodynamic model based

on Matte Blanco) and the external validity (behavioral and cognitve).

In order to do so the test have been surrounded by a number of ancillary

data-collecton tests to be employed in the statstcal verifcaton stage.

In the details, the whole experiment was built as follows:

1) A brief introducton explaining the subject that the experiment

was about “the study of certain characteristcs of the evaluaton

processes”.

2) An operatve instructon of the functoning of the test. The subject

is informed that every ratng on the two axes is equally acceptable

and there are no “right answers”. The subject is also informed that

s/he is allowed to change the ratng before pressing the button

“contnue”.

3) The subject is presented with a preliminary test made for

familiarizaton with the procedure. The images shown during this

phase are completely neutral, black and white, geometric shapes:

a line, a square and a sphere, always in this order. The subject is

asked to express his/her ratngs on these objects on the same

relevancy–pleasantness scale.

4) The EGO-ME test is presented to the subject.

5) A brief instructon page explaining the use of the forthcoming

semantc differentals.

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6) Standard semantc differentals about “myself”, “this situaton”,

“the place where I live”, “the immigrants”, “the future”, “the

italians”.

7) Personal informaton as age, sex, profession, educaton.

3.2.1 Sample and experimental setting

The experiment involved 71 subjects (24M/47F), average age 35.28 (stdev

14.17). 9 of them had university degree and 62 high school degree. 1 was

unoccupied, 7 were managers, 21 were employees, 1 was an

entrepreneur, 6 were professionals, 1 soldier, 1 belonging to service

industry and 33 students.

The experiment was held in separate rooms in private, university and

public ofces. The partcipant were either alone or unable to see each

other. The coordinator of the experiment was not present during the

completon or as out of sight as possible, depending on the specifc

situaton of the place. In partcular he was not in eye contact with the

partcipants (nor watching the monitor) during the test in any case.

3.2.2 Interpretation of the semantic diferentials

Among the 8 objects of the semantc differental present in the

experiment, the two more likely to be infuenced by the emotons are the

ones about “myself” and “immigrants”7, therefore the forthcoming

studies will be based only on them.

The extracted factors (principal component analysis with varimax

rotaton) from the partcipant's responses for “myself” and “the

immigrants” are respectvely in table 4.1 and 4.2 .

7 “Me stesso” and “immigrat” in the original Italian version.

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MYSELF 1 2 3Actve 0.422 0.806 -0.051Beautful 0.661 -0.032 0.416Good 0.721 0.202 -0.022Weak 0.009 -0.409 -0.447Large 0.322 0.104 0.386Light -0.013 0.046 0.86Mobile 0.363 0.806 0.039Pleasant 0.853 0.14 -0.033Fast -0.139 0.751 0.294

Table 4.1 — Factors for semantic diferential "myself" (Varimax rotation).

IMMIGRANTS 1 2Actve -0.024 0.828Beautful 0.921 0.036Good 0.869 0.18Weak 0.451 -0.29Large 0.157 0.651Light 0.48 0.618Mobile 0.23 0.587Pleasant 0.712 0.29Fast -0.156 0.764

Table 4.2 — Factors for semantic diferential "the immigrants" (Varimax rotation).

According to (Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957) the factors can be

interpreted along the affectve meaning described by the terms

“Evaluaton”, “Potency” and “Actvity”. Observing table 4.1, the factors can

be interpreted as “Evaluaton” (frst factor), “Actvity” (second factor) and

“Potency” (third factor). From table 4.2 the two factors about “the

immigrants”, can be assessed as “Evaluaton” (frst factor) and “Potency”

and “Actvity” together for the second factor.

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3.2.3 Studies overview

The following 5 studies faced the problem of inital validaton of the

method proposed in the EGO-ME test. The followed approach is based on

three different and complementary approaches. The frst study relies on

behavioural data and is intended to show that the velocity of evaluatons

is connected with the ε index of emoton, i.e. the emotonally-based

evaluatons make the subject to respond more quickly. The second study

shows that a general state of actvaton in the partcipants resulted in a

signifcantly higher average value of ε. The third study explores the

relatonship between age and measured emotons, showing that the

“older” partcipants exerted on average a signifcantly higher value of ε.

Entering in the specifc content of this dissertaton, in the fourth study

was explored the extremizaton of judgements that is considered to be

the refex of the emotonal unconscious functoning. The ffh study

investgates the homogenizaton of judgments considered as a

consequence of unconscious-driven evaluatons.

Each of the following studies have been conducted considering all of the

71 subjects who partcipated to the experiment.

3.3 Study 1

For what said in Chapter 2, the emotonally driven evaluatons made by

the unconscious are faster than the ones made through the ratonal

elaboraton driven by semantcal components of the stmulus.

It is expected that the subjects sportng a low ε value (low emotonal

thinking) will take more tme to respond, as opposed to the ones with a

high ε value (high emotonal thinking) which are expected to evaluate

more rapidly the stmuli. Furthermore it is expected that the emotonal

evaluaton of the stmuli, being fast and immediate, would induce a

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behavior exertng a lower variaton in the tme needed for the ratngs. In

other words, it is expected that an emoton-based ratng would be more

straightorward, and that this straightorwardness would be found in the

behavioral observatons regarding the tmings.

In this study what is expected to be found is that the tme needed to

complete the EGO-ME test will be shorter for those subjects whose ε

value is higher. Furthermore a higher regularity in the tme needed in the

answering is expected, as a consequence of the evaluaton made

following an emotonal modality. The results must not be dependent on

the specifc implementaton of the test.

3.3.1 Method

This study is based on the tme needed by the subjects to respond to the

stmuli. The tme is recorded in milliseconds and spans from the showing

of the stmulus to the clicking of the confrm button, thus it excludes the

intersttal technical delays.

In order to verify that the effect of tme in the answering was not the

effect of the specifc confguraton of the test (i.e. answers closer to the

middle and to the “confrm” button require less tme to be clicked and

confrmed) an index of speed has been defned on the basis of the

presumed trajectory the subject had followed. This trajectory is the

triangle having as vertexes the two ratngs and the center of the “confrm”

button (see fgure 4.6) and represents the shortest path to complete

every step of the test. Upon start the pointer is positoned on the button

(since the subject had had to click “confrm” in the previous step), then it

is moved on the frst ratng, on the second ratng (the order is not

signifcant since the two triangles have the same perimeter) and then

back on the button.

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3.3.2 Results and discussion

The overall tme (the sum of all the single response tmes) is computed

and correlated with the resultng ε value for all of the 71 subjects. The

resultng value of the correlaton between overall tme and ε is r=-0.249

(p=0.018 < 0.05, one-tailed), confrming the expectaton that an increased

ε (thus a higher emotonality in the ratng) would permit the user to

respond more quickly, since the ratng is expressed mainly on an

emotonal and unconscious evaluaton.

The standard deviaton have been computed on all the tmings of a single

subject in order to measure the variaton in the evaluaton modality. The

standard deviaton has been then correlated with the ε to observe their

relatonship. The correlaton between the stdev of the single tmings

(taken as an overall index of behavioral variability of one subject) and the

ε is r=-0.230 (p=0.027 < 0.05, one-tailed).

To prove that these results are not the expression of the mere gestural

aspect of the test, the speed of overall executon have been computed as

the sum of the (minimal) triangular distances covered by the subject to

express every ratng divided by the overall tme (as defned before). The

correlaton between the overall speed and the ε is r=0.240 (p=0.22 < 0.05,

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Figure 4.6 — An example of the actual travelled

distance for expressing one rating.


one-tailed), which is remarkably similar (in absolute value) to the one

obtained using only the tmes. Notce that in this case the positve value

of the correlaton is coherent with the expectatons because it means that

the speed increases and deceases with the increasing and decreasing of

the ε values.

The results show that it is required less tme in the responding when the

emotons are more involved in the process of evaluaton (higher ε values),

as opposed as when the emotons are less involved (lower ε values), case

that requires more tme. Furthermore the tme needed to express the

ratngs is less prone to variatons, as was expected as a consequence of

the rapidity of emoton-driven evaluatons. This result does not depend

on the specifc structure of the test itself, since both the overall speed and

the averaged speeds also correlates positvely with the tme.

3.3.3 A further data-driven result

It could be argued about the functonal relatonship existng between ε

and the emotons. Correlaton is able to detect the existence of such a

relatonship, but it could be investgated in more detail. It is possible that

the effects of emoton are not linearly proportonal to the measured or

the actual emoton. Likely the effect of emotons are like an avalanche, in

which over a certain threshold the effects of the emoton increase with a

more-than-linear power. This have been also discussed in Chapter 3 about

the “infnite” power of emotons.

This point can be investgated through the graphical plot of the tmings

data, relatng them to the expressed ε value. See graphics in fgure 4.6 for

plots of the standard deviaton and overall tme, respectvely. The red line

represents the median of the ε values.

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It is immediately apparent that the structure of the data series changes

from the lef to the right hand of the median value of ε, represented by

the red vertcal line. On the lef hand (lower ε values, meaning lower

emoton) it is more like a “cloud” of points, while on the right hand, the

high-emoton side of the median, linear shape emerges from the points

on both the data series.

Repeatng the same analysis as before, but dividing the dataset on the

basis of the median, show a stronger result. For the values below the

median (low emoton, Nlow=36), no signifcant correlatons are present.

For the values over the median (Hhigh=35), i.e. those expressing high

emotonal involvement, the results are:

• Correlaton between overall tme and ε:

◦ r=-0.434 (p=0.005 < 0.01, one-tailed).

• Correlaton between overall speed and ε:

◦ r=0.404 (p=0.003 < 0.01, one-tailed)

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Figure 4.6 — Overall time of responding (Y) plotted against the ε value (X). Each dot

represents a subject of the experiment. The red line represents the median value.

0,40 0,50 0,60 0,70 0,80 0,90 1,00 1,100

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

ε

Ove

rall

time

[min

]


These results confrm the visual exploraton of the plots and suggest a

promising interpretaton of the data, that will likely be pursued in future

works.

3.4 Study 2

Similarly to the hypothesis described in (Niedenthal et al., 1999) , this

study investgates the infuence of the mood on the responses given to

the test. In the experiments they have found that a high arousal

(contngent or induced) causes the subjects to create emoton-based

groups of stmuli, i.e. the emotonality expressed in the test is connected

to the emotonal situaton of the subjects. In this study is sought a similar

experimental result, even if on a different theoretcal basis. Under the

perspectve expressed in this dissertaton, the phenomenon that a general

emotonal state is infuental in terms of K-effect, i.e. an individual in a

more emotonally laden situaton tends to use the same homogenized

criteria to evaluate different aspects of the same object. Therefore

subjects expressing a higher arousal (emotonal intensity) would be more

prone to experience the images in a homogenized way, and to rate them

accordingly to that homogenized criteria.

In this study is expected to fnd evidences that the emotonal situaton as

expressed by the subjects will be connected with the emoton index ε

computed in the EGO-ME test.

3.4.1 Method

In order to estmate the emotonal state of a subject it has been used the

preliminary test (see point 3 in the “General method” paragraph). Since

the images are extremely neutral and the instructons greatly devaluate

the preliminary test, it is possible to consider the ratngs given in that test

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as the expression of the general emotonal state. In partcular the ratngs

expressed on the Pleasantness axis will be considered to be connected

with the emotonal state of the individual. Since the method under

investgaton considers the emotons fundamentally in terms of

component of thought and not in their valence (i.e. positve vs. negatve

emotons), the ratngs expressed in the preliminary test about the

Pleasantness scale are taken in their absolute value. This is necessary to

eliminate the valence dimension of the ratng (positve vs. negatve) and

keep just the arousal, i.e. the extremeness of the values.

Since ε is the measure of the emoton involved in the task, the statstcal

approach is to divide in quantles the preliminary arousal and confront the

diverse populatons of subjects on the basis of the mean ε computed with

the test.


A one-way ANOVA test have been run in order to confront these aspects.

Dividing the preliminary arousal on the basis of the median, though, did

not bring any signifcant difference: F(1, 69)=1.463 (p=0.231 > 0.05).

In line with the previous data-driven result it is possible to assume that

the relaton binding the two expression of emoton has a non-linear

shape. In partcular it is possible that, in this specifc form of evaluatng

emoton, a strong impact is required for the general actvaton (as

expressed in the preliminary test) to infuence the evaluatons.

Consequently, that only the subjects showing a higher degree of

actvaton will show an emotonally laden evaluatonal behavior. On the

basis of this hypothesis, the same test have been performed, but this tme

based on tertles. The resultant ANOVA (backed by a non-signifcant

Levene's test (sig. 0.191>0.05) allowing to assume the homogeneity of

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variance in the data) found a signifcant difference in the three groups:

F(2, 68)=4.192 P=0.019 < 0.05. A Dunnett post-hoc analysis showed that

t3>t2 (sig. 0.034<0.05) and that t3>t1 (sig. 0.06<0.05), being t3 the tertle

with the higher ε value. The three tertles averages (t1=0.664, t2=0.641,

t3=0.740) confrm that the third part of the subjects expressing the higher

emotonal arousal by way of preliminary Pleasantness ratngs shown a

signifcantly higher average ε value.

This result tends therefore to confrm the hypothesis that a general

emotonal actvaton is refected in the ε value derived from the EGO-ME

test. Furthermore it shows that the phenomenon of non-linearity in the

expression of emotons (each way of expressing them being possibly in

different quanttatve relatonships with the actually involved emotons) is

not only present, but also having a more complex proportonality pattern.

3.5 Study 3

The intenton of this study is to replicate the results obtained by (Castelli

& Lanza, 2011) about emotonality and age. While the experiment

performed in the cited study confronts young adults with elderly persons

(76-91 years old), a similar result could be obtained in the context of the

data available in this dataset. The original experiment's paper cites

anecdotally the famous philosopher and politcal scientst Norberto

Bobbio, that refectng on his last years of life, realised that ‘‘the world of

an old person is a world in which feelings are much more relevant than

concepts’’. This could be partally true also for people not so much old. In

order to verify this the subjects are divided in two groups on the basis of

the age and the relatve ε value confronted. The hypothesis is consistent

with the theoretcal view by Matte Blanco, for the fact that during the

living of a whole life the objects and the experiences to which we are

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subjected are an enormous number. In order to deal with this huge

amount of data it is necessary to group them in constantly growing sets.

The homogeneity, and therefore the emotonality, is for this reason likely

to increase with the age. Borrowing a fragment from (Lauro-Grotto,

2008):

The mind, I might propose, having less space at its disposal in

order to note down its knowledge, say, about dogs and cats,

resorts to keeping a common image for the two concepts and

gets rid of all the distnctve features that would keep the two

concepts apart. A new “dog-cat” super-class is thus created,

and in this class all the individual attributes are either shared or

get lost.

In this study is expected that the average emoton measured by the EGO-

ME test would be signifcantly higher for the “older” subjects in respect to

the average emotonality expressed by the “younger” subjects.

3.5.1 Method

Subjects are divided in two groups on the basis of their median age (30

years), to form the group of the “younger” (N=36, average=22.56,

stdev=9.85), and the group of the “older” (N=35, average=48.37,

stdev=7.7) in order to be compared in respect to their mean ε.


The two groups are compared, for the average ε value, in a one-way

ANOVA (Levene test = 0.123 > 0.05), which resulted in F(1, 69)=4.98,

p=0.029 < 0.05. The averages ε for the two groups is 0.648 for the

“younger” and 0.713 for the “older”. This confrms that the directon of

the detected signifcant difference is towards a higher emotonality for

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the older subjects, as expected and accordingly with another study

reaching a similar conclusion.

3.6 Study 4

Emotons are a characteristc of unconscious thinking, in partcular are a

clear expression and component of the absolutzing tendency of the

symmetrical thinking. From this startng point it is natural to think that a

higher emoton would cause more extreme judgements. A hypothesis not

just consequental to the theoretcal frame, but also lived everyday.

In order to verify this fact it has been looked at the post-test semantc

differentals (point 6 in the “General Method” paragraph). What is

considered to be a refex of the unconscious thinking is the extremizaton

of judgements, therefore the data used in this study is based on the

semantc differentals submitted to the subject.

In this study it is expected to fnd a consistency between the emotons

involved in the ratngs of the EGO-ME test and the extremeness of the

judgments.

3.6.1 Method

This study focuses on these the two semantc differentals “myself” and

“the immigrants”. The valence of the emoton, like in the previous studies,

is not considered, therefore the judgements of the subjects have to be

modifed in order to ignore the specifc valence of the answers. Since

what is implicated in the extremizaton is the emotonal judgement, the

semantc differental undergone the factor analysis in order to retrieve the

underlying evaluaton made by the subject. The extremeness of the

resultng factors is computed taking them in absolute value.

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The factor analysis performed (principal component analysis using

Varimax rotaton) on the two semantc differentals about “myself” and

“the immigrants” produced three factors for the former and two factors

from the latter. The values have been transposed in absolute value and

correlated with the ε computed from the EGO-ME test. The results of the

correlatons between the absolute values of the factors and the EGO-ME ε

value is in Table 4.3.

Correl. with ε Abs(Factor 1) Abs(Factor 2) Abs(Factor 3)

“Myself”

r=0.206*

p=0.042

one-tailed

r=0.211*

p=0.039

one-tailed

r=0.262*

p=0.014

one-tailed

“Immigrants”

r=0.200*

p=0.047

one-tailed

r=0.273*

p=0.011

one-tailed

n.a.

Table 4.3

Coherently with the expectatons of this study, all the factors in absolute

value correlated signifcantly with the ε value representng the amount of

emoton. Taken singularly the signifcance levels are not always very high,

but the overall positveness of the result is supported by the fact that

every correlaton is signifcant, as predicted by the model.

3.7 Study 5

This study focuses on the fundamental mechanism of the symmetrical

thinking, the homogenizaton of the mental objects of an individual,

mental objects that can be, as said before, both concrete and abstract,

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including in the abstract objects the evaluaton and the judgment criteria

which are on their turn applied to the same objects. Under the hypothesis

that the general emotonal state infuences every operaton performed, in

this study it is looked for similarity in the answering to the diverse

ancillary parts of the test, when the infuence of the emotonality ε was,

alternatvely, high and low. The expected result of this study is that the

subjects having, at the tme of the experiment, a stronger emotonal

involvement (which is to say for those having a more intense symmetrical

actvity) to fnd homogenizing effects in the ancillary part of the

experiment (i.e. preliminary test and semantc differentals). Since

homogenizaton is a pervasive element of the mental functoning it is

expected for traces of this effect to be found not just within the semantc

differental task or the preliminary test, but also between them.

3.7.1 Method

The analysis are performed correlatng the diverse indexes employed so

far. In partcular have been tested the 3 factors of the “myself” semantc

differental and the 2 factors of the “immigrants”. Furthermore are part of

the analysis also the values of Relevancy and Pleasantness derived from

the preliminary test.


In Table 4.4 are summarized the results of this study.

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As a frst overall evaluaton the difference between the groups composed

by the low-ε and the high-ε subjects is straightorward. For the low-ε only

one correlaton is present (between Myself_fac1 and Immigrants_fac1),

while in the high-ε group are present several signifcant correlatons:

• Intra-task correlatons (semantc differental)

◦ The factors from Myself and Immigrants correlates in 3 cases

on 6 possible (including the previously one belonging to the

low-ε group).

◦ It is not surprising that no self-correlatons between the factors

of the same semantc differental are present. This is a

consequence of the factorizaton, an operaton conceived to

extract independent factors from data. The lack of correlatons

within the same semantc differental is a consequence thereof.

• Intra-task correlatons (preliminary test)

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Table 4.4 — Significant correlations (1-tailed) highlighted in gray.

Myself fac1 Myself fac2 Myself fac3 Immigrants fac1 Immigrants fac2 Relevancy (pre)

Myself fac1Pearson Correlation 1

Sig. (1-tailed)

Myself fac2Pearson Correlation 0.002 1

Sig. (1-tailed) 0.495

Myself fac3Pearson Correlation -0.069 0.244 1

Sig. (1-tailed) 0.345 0.076

Immigrants fac1Pearson Correlation 0.440 -0.092 0.210 1

Sig. (1-tailed) 0.004 0.297 0.110

Immigrants fac2Pearson Correlation -0.037 -0.144 -0.107 -0.177 1

Sig. (1-tailed) 0.415 0.201 0.267 0.151

Pleasantness (Pre)Pearson Correlation 0.201 -0.069 -0.142 0.031 -0.206 1

Sig. (1-tailed) 0.120 0.345 0.204 0.430 0.114

Relevancy (pre)Pearson Correlation 0.056 -0.113 -0.052 -0.009 -0.158 0.235 1

Sig. (1-tailed) 0.374 0.256 0.381 0.479 0.178 0.084

Myself fac1Pearson Correlation 1

Sig. (1-tailed)

Myself fac2Pearson Correlation 0.035 1

Sig. (1-tailed) 0.422

Myself fac3Pearson Correlation 0.017 -0.178 1

Sig. (1-tailed) 0.461 0.154

Immigrants fac1Pearson Correlation 0.394 -0.113 0.373 1

Sig. (1-tailed) 0.010 0.258 0.014

Immigrants fac2Pearson Correlation 0.416 0.261 0.272 0.199 1

Sig. (1-tailed) 0.006 0.065 0.057 0.126

Pleasantness (Pre)Pearson Correlation 0.216 -0.159 0.347 0.368 0.394 1

Sig. (1-tailed) 0.106 0.181 0.021 0.015 0.010

Relevancy (pre)Pearson Correlation 0.224 -0.137 -0.038 0.335 0.163 0.578 1

Sig. (1-tailed) 0.098 0.216 0.414 0.025 0.175 0.000

Pleasantness (Pre)

Low εN=36

High εN=35


◦ The Pleasantness and Relevancy expressed in the preliminary

test correlates to an extremely high level.

• Inter-task correlatons (preliminary test and semantc differentals)

◦ Pleasantness correlates signifcantly with one factor of

“myself” and both of the factors of “immigrants”.

◦ Relevancy correlates with one factor of “immigrants”.

These results show as expected that the homogenizaton mechanism

(detected in its traces through the correlatons) is more actve in the

subjects belonging to the group with a higher ε value. Such correlatons

(excepted for one) are not present in the group with a lower ε value.

Few additonal consideratons emerging from the data worth being made.

In the frst place, as it seems, a connecton strong enough exist between

an aspect of the judgment about “myself” and “immigrants”. As it seems

the emotonality involved in the two evaluatons is strong enough to be

self-supportng, without the need for a context-induced emotonality. The

explicaton of this result could be connected with the Matte Blanco's

concept of symmetrizaton as the inclusion of all the elements of a set in

only one element: “myself” and “immigrants” seems arguments

emotonal enough to trigger autonomously this phenomenon. The effect

on the ε value cannot be detected because the semantc differentals are

compiled afer the EGO-ME test. Therefore that single correlaton in the

low-ε group seems to be a confrm of the general phenomenon and of the

specifc approach followed, rather than a tolerable chance-like correlaton

emerging in the wrong place.

Another corollary result is worth mentoning. In the high-ε group

Pleasantness and Relevancy correlates to an extremely signifcant degree

(the actual fgure is p=0.00014), but the Pleasantness correlates much

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more ofen then the Relevancy. This suggests the presence of a structural

connecton between the Pleasantness that invests the test and the image

of the immigrants and of one aspect of the subject him/herself. This result

in partcular seems to be a rather evident effect of reifcaton.

The last observaton is that the high-ε conditon seems to affect more

intensely the evaluaton about Pleasantness rather than Relevancy. It is

quite evident that Pleasure is a more affectve-laden evaluaton than

Relevancy, and the presence of this fact in the results seems, again, more

likely to be a confrm rather than a contradicton. This fact is also a result

of (Osgood et al., 1957) which the frst factor of semantc differentals

(see also paragraph 3.2.2 in this chapter) is prevalently the one related to

the evaluatve dimension, which is fundamentally the valence being

composed by the adjectves “beautful”, “good” and “pleasant”.

3.8 General conclusions on the EGO-ME results

In this chapter have been presented the EGO-ME instrument, a test

conceived in a psychodynamic theoretcal frame in order to measure the

amount of unconscious actvity and, consequently, of the emotons

involved in the process of thought of the subjects. Emotons from this

point of view are a fundamental component of the non-semantcally

mediated thought and are involved primarily in the appraising of a

situaton. The test is based on the structure of the ratngs given by the

subjects about neutral images of everyday objects. The neutrality of the

stmuli permitted to the subject to employ his/her personal emotonal

state and unconscious structure in the evaluaton over two non semantc

scales.

The series of studies conceived to test the validity of the EGO-ME

instrument are based on data allowing for three different theoretcal

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interpretatons: behavioral, cognitve and psychodynamic. Study 1 offered

a behavioral analysis of the instrument in terms of rapidity of the

answers, showing that subjects respond more quickly when the measured

emoton index ε is higher, and complementary that the responses are

slower when ε has a lower value. The same study suggest that the

relatonship existng between the actual emotonal state and the

measured value is not a linear one, but seemingly the emotons must be

in a high degree in order to be measured with the EGO-ME instrument.

In Study 2 is replicated a result from the cognitve feld by (Niedenthal &

Dalle, 2001) about the direct infuence of the arousal in the emoton-

measuring task. The study showed that for individual expressing a high

arousal (in contrast to the individuals with a lower arousal) the measured

index ε have a signifcantly different mean. In partcular the individuals

experiencing a high arousal have a signifcantly higher emotonal index ε.

This effect is present only for the subjects expressing a very high arousal

(the one third of the subjects with the higher arousal), seemingly

confrming the preceding corollary result of Study 1 about the non-

linearity of the relatonship between the experienced emoton and the

one measured through the index ε.

Study 3 shown that, as done by (Castelli & Lanza, 2011), the average

emoton is signifcantly higher for the older individuals partcipatng to the

test in contrast to the younger partcipants. This study offered also a

psychodynamic interpretaton of the phenomenon.

These three studies offered a validaton of the instrument from an

external point of view, in that they compared the index ε with the results

of researches belonging to a feld different from the psychodynamic one.

In partcular the following studies looked for phenomena connected with

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the unconscious functoning of the mind as defned in Chapter 2 in terms

of Matte Blanco's principle of symmetry.

Study 4 is based on the phenomenon of absolutzaton of the unconscious

judgements of the stmuli. In this study have been found that the

(factorized) responses given to the semantc differentals that followed

the EGO-ME test were more extreme when the subject's emoton index ε

was high, and less extreme for lower values of ε. The study shown, as

expected, that the judgements of individuals with a high emotonal

intensity were more extreme.

Study 5 looked for the phenomenon of homogenizaton in the diverse

collateral tasks of the test. For the subjects in the group showing a higher

emotonal value ε the homogenizaton is detected through the

correlatons between the diverse evaluatons gave by the subject. In

partcular the homogenizaton for the high-ε subjects is present within

the same task (semantc differentals and preliminary test), as well as

between the tasks (in partcular the pleasantness is homogenized with

factors from the “myself” and the “immigrants” semantc differentals.

Taken together these result offer a varied and interdisciplinary inital

support to the main hypothesis at the basis of the EGO-ME test.

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162

Chapter 5 — Conclusions and Future Work


This dissertaton presented three studies revolving around the concept of

emoton. The topic has been analyzed from the point of view of logical

formal systems, which offered the structure for a proposal of

implementaton (in the second study) of a computatonal complex

dynamical system able, in principle, to work and simulate the functoning

of the mind as described in the frst part. The third study proposes a

technique of emoton measurement based on the formal structures

exposed in the frst part.

1. Overall considerations

The general framework of the presented studies was the psychodynamic

theory of the mind as conceived and formalized by Ignacio Matte Blanco

(Matte Blanco, 1975). The construct of emoton have been defned in this

framework as the product of the unconscious in the process of

determining the salience of the objects of percepton. From this

perspectve, as opposite to the commonsensical idea of emoton,

emotons are a fundamental consttuent of reality percepton, and

therefore of the overall functoning of the mind. Emotons are the

component of thought driving an individual's segmentaton of the world,

and an evaluaton of the salience of these segments. Our internal world is

made of these “chunks” of emoton-based perceptons, and operates

incessantly on their basis.

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This process is described in the formal stance developed by Matte Blanco,

which holds that the characteristcs of the unconscious derive from two

principles: 1) The principle of Symmetry, statng that the unconscious

treats the converse of any relaton as being identcal to the relaton itself;

that is, it deals with relatonships as symmetrical enttes even if they are

not. 2) The principle of Generalization: unconscious logic does not

consider individuals as such, rather it deals with them only as members of

classes, and of classes of classes. Since the classes, for the symmetrical

logic, are sets of homogeneous and indistnguishable objects, those

classes are organized in a hierarchical structure called “Bag of symmetry”.

The Freudian qualites of the unconscious result from the principle of

Symmetry, or from both principles operatng together. Thus, atemporality

derives from symmetry, which precludes order in a temporal series, and

displacement treats two individuals as members of the same class.

Emotons enters in this process for being the fundamental characteristc

of the objects and the relaton involved in this process. A relaton

between two objects (written as a R b) can be perceived as a relaton of

“father-ness”, percepton which evokes all the emotons connected, in the

person's experience, with the homogenized set of the objects entailed by

the same relatonship. The act of categorizing an object in a set therefore

is driven by the emotons evoked, and in turn evokes all the other

connected emotons. In this sense emotons are a fundamental and

building force for cogniton, and not just an attributon of affectve

aspects or a physical response.

Matte Blanco's theorizaton allows for a logically sound descripton of the

unconscious process. His concepts and principles have ben discussed from

the standpoint of formal system theory, and showed as having the

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potental of becoming a sound and solid basis for the constructon of a

formal system of rules operatng on these principles. In the second

chapter the concepts by Matte Blanco have been described using a

graphical formalism which allowed for a clearer and univocal defniton of

the theorized mental functoning. Using a mathematcal term, the second

chapter could be defned “foundatonal”, meaning that it looked for the

needed minimal set of theoretcal components allowing for the complete

functoning of the theory.

The second part (third chapter) regards the relatonship between

cogniton and the emotons and is based on the previously described

formalizaton of the conscious/unconscious interplay in the overall mental

functoning. In this second study is proposed a computatonal complex

dynamic model of mental functoning based on two well-known general

algorithmic optmizaton techniques: genetc algorithms and classifer

systems. The principles exposed in the frst part are translated into

computatonal operatve enttes. The operaton of detectng the relevant

relatons between the objects of percepton is then translated in a

problem of computatonal optmizaton. This translaton was possible on

the basis of an appropriate coding of the underlying structures of

conscious/unconscious processes in formalized fragments of data which

are able to describe objects (as well as relatons) with their possible

generalizatons. When applied to this kind of data the two algorithms are

expected to be converge to a reduced set of possible objects and

relatons. In other terms, through these systems is possible to implement

the specifc form of mental functoning that seeks for the possible objects

and relatons in the course of percepton.

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The implementaton of classifer systems, which can be considered as an

extension of genetc algorithms, allows for the specifcaton of the

emotonal attributon of the specifc objects and relatons. In this regard

the classifer systems are a powerful instrument able to model in a

computatonal perspectve the functoning of the mind incorporatng the

emotonal informatons built over tme in the experience of the system.

Another interestng advantage of this algorithm is that it allows for the

expression of the rules not just in a syntactcal, but also (to some extent)

in a semantcal way. This feature could allow for an insightul simulaton

of the mental functoning based on semantcal transformatons of objects

and relaton in different objects and relaton belonging to the same bags

of symmetry.

These systems are not claimed to be able to work on their own, rather

this proposal is meant to be considered as a “psychodynamic emotonal

unconscious” block to be incorporated in other systems in order to extend

them with this peculiar modality of the unconscious functoning.

In order to be plausible, such proposal should not be implemented using

external knowledge to be “injected” into the system from the outside.

Rather the system needs the ability to start from a minimal set of rules

and increase and modify them in order to accumulate experience and

knowledge in a non-normatve way. This specifc microgenetc process is

quite complex and difcult to imagine and defne. As a contributon to the

future studies that will face this problem, two studies from the cognitve

realm have been presented: the Emotonal Response Categorizaton

theory (Niedenthal & Dalle, 2001; Niedenthal et al., 1999) and the

Concept-Act Model (Barrett, 2006a). The two studies propose two

conceptons of emotonal functoning which can be employed as a basis

for a theoretcal proposal of how emotons are able to shape and direct

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the experience of the world. These studies offer also, for their similar

structure, an interdisciplinary support to the conceptualizaton made by

Matte Blanco.

The third study (exposed in chapter 4) is based on the conceptualizaton

exposed in the frst part of this dissertaton. The EGO-ME test (Emotonal

Grouping of Object for the Measurement of Emoton) is conceived to

measure the amount of emoton involved in the process of evaluaton of a

sequence of stmuli. The emotonality exerted by the partcipant in the

task is conceived to be expressed by the tendency to make homogeneous

ratngs, for the same object, on two different axes: relevancy and

pleasantness. This phenomenon has been called the K-effect, for the

resemblance with the ancient Greek term for “beautful and good”. The

idea behind this is that the object of evaluaton in the partcipant's mind

could be perceived as an emotonal congregate where all the judgments

(even if about different aspects) are the effect of the same emotonal

constructon. When the partcipant is in a more emotonally actvated

state, the subject is believed to regularly evaluate the objects following

the same homogeneous emotonal representaton of the object. At the

opposite, when a subject relies less prominently on emotonal

evaluatons, the results of the evaluatons are expected to be scattered

and not homogeneous. The index used as a measure of this phenomenon

(called ε for emotion) is the explained variance of the frst factor of a

Principal Component Analysis. This value measures how much the

expressed ratngs are the effect of a single “hidden” emotonal evaluaton.

The higher the explained variance of the PCA of the two variables, the

more powerful is a single variable (the alleged effect oh the

homogenizaton process) in the explaining the results.

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The EGO-ME test received an inital validaton both internal and external.

Internal validaton was based on the same psychodynamic framework and

looked for the phenomena of homogenizaton and extremizaton in the

experimental tasks surrounding the proper EGO-ME test. Since, for what

stated in the frst study, these are all effects of the unconscious

functoning (with an intensity dependant from the specifc situatonal and

contngent individual's state), we expected to fnd the same effect both in

the proper test and in the other evaluatve tasks. The results of two other

studies (studies 4 and 5) confrmed these expectatons for each of the

phenomena under consideraton.

External validatons were based on behavioral data and cognitve

approaches. Unconscious evaluatons (also as the result of the reducton

of the informaton caused by the K-effect) are expected to occur more

rapidly. In Study 1 this fact has been tested on the basis of the tme

needed for the operaton of ratng. As expected, the degree of

emotonality ε was found to correlate negatvely with the tme needed to

express the ratngs.

Two more studies (number 2 and 3), replicated the results obtained in

two cognitve studies, respectvely (Niedenthal & Dalle, 2001) and

(Castelli & Lanza, 2011). In Study 2 the hypothesis was that the arousal

expressed by the partcipants in a preliminary part of the experiment

produced an increment in the ε value. The arousal have been measured

on the basis of the average pleasantness taken in absolute value in a

preliminary test. For the 1/3 of the subjects showing a high arousal, the

value of ε was signifcantly higher.

In the third study it has been shown that the age of the partcipants

infuenced the average degree of ε. This result is based on a more

structural and less contngent aspect of the mind. When the age grows,

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the many informaton accumulated during life need to fnd a collocaton

in an already formed structure. As a consequence, the details tend to be

more blurred and assimilated to other elements of the experience. This

fact refects in the average amount of homogenizaton measured by the

EGO-ME instrument.

2. Future lines of development

Due to the complexity, deepness and broadness of the treated topics, a

number of details have been omitted and postponed to the future

developments of the three branches of this work. Some of the open

questons, as well as the foreseeable future lines of research, are

presented in this secton.

One element of the logic and foundatonal part of this dissertaton is the

proposed idea that the ability to distnguish events and objects placed in

tme could be the distnctve operaton of the conscious (and the lack

thereof for the unconscious) causing the asymmetrical distncton. This

hypothesis is also backed by the studies of (Tulving, 1985,

2002) presented in the fourth chapter in the FFMCT secton. From a

foundatonal perspectve on future work, it could be argued whether

tme-awareness is just allowing the constructon of asymmetrical

relatons, or causes them in terms of asymmetrizaton of a symmetrical

tmeless relaton. Asymmetrical relatons (especially for causal relatons)

could be the result of tme-awareness applied to symmetrical relatons,

that is: asymmetry could be symmetry with tme displacement. These

concepts are clearer when applied to causal relaton of events as opposed

to the mere co-occurrence. One logical–foundatonal aspect requiring a

more careful investgaton is the possible and alleged equivalence of tme-

awareness, asymmetrizaton and causality (equivalence also in the

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negated fashion: tme–unawareness impedes asymmetry and causality;

symmetry impedes tme-awareness and causality; causality–unawareness

impedes tme–awareness and asymmetry).

Another foundatonal aspect the defniton of which could open a further

line of research is the classifcaton of objects in affectvely–defned

hierarchies (called bags of symmetry). The focus of this fact is that the

diverse hierarchies to which an object belongs to can be considered as the

type of an object. The operaton of matching objects with relatons then

can be considered an operaton of type inference typical of logical

systems. This idea could offer another way of formalizing Matte Blanco's

ideas in a different formal structure.

The work presented in this dissertaton, being based on Matte Blanco's

work, inherited all the relatve hypotheses. In partcular they have been

considered as given the concepts of “object”, “relaton”, and “set”. In a

foundatonal line, it would be necessary to perform an operaton of

formal defniton of these enttes which should not be strictly based on

the corresponding algebraical concepts. More importantly, it should be

defned the microgenetc process of formaton of objects (in terms of

affectve segmentaton of the world), of object recogniton (of already

known objects), and of the attributon of salience of the objects. The

same holds for the relatons connectng two objects. In partcular, even if

taking the construct of relaton as given, it should be further investgated

if a relaton should be considered as a “frst-order object”, using a term

belonging to the logic's jargon. First-order objects are those that can be

used as an argument of a functon or of a propositon, which in this

context means investgatng whether a relaton can partcipate as an

element in another relaton. For example, if R1 R2 and S are relatons, is it

possible to conceive something like R1 S R2 ? Matte Blanco does not give

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explicit support to this possibility, but this is implicitly entailed when

considering the relaton of generalizaton, for example “holds” generalizes

in “owns”, which is a relaton between two relatons. Another queston

arising about this point is whether a “relaton of relatons” are an ordinary

or a special kind of relaton. Or possibly these higher-order relatons can

just occur between triads, like in “'Steve Jobs holds the Apple' recalls

'Steve Jobs owns Apple'”. This kind of hypergeneralized relatons

(admitting that they are different from the more common ones) could be

the best way of encoding and making operatve the contextual infuence

on the perceptons.

Another aspect which have been repeatedly evoked is the process of

“type inference”, typical of logical systems, that could fnd a fruitul and

deep use in this research.

The proposed computatonal implementaton requires quite an amount of

development in order to complete the sketched proposal. The most

prominent of all being the need of defniton of the system in the

ontogenetc perspectve. How new relatons and objects develop? How

works in the partcular implementaton the symmetrizaton of relatons?

How is it possible that a contngent emotonal attributon becomes a

structural one? In some cases, the open questons of the foundatonal

logical secton have consequences also in this part, for example it is worth

wondering whether the described rules of the classifer system for the

relatons are able to express the “relatons between relatons”, and

exactly in what terms.

The proposed implementaton took for granted the conceptualizaton of

Matte Blanco about sets and elements. In partcular, sets of elements

have been considered as being defned by the contained elements (i.e.

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extensionally), but it could be wondered if set themselves can be coded

and employed in the operatons of the classifer system. Being those sets

fundamentally emoton-based, some insights about this process can be

found in the Conceptual-Act Model and the Emotonal response

Categorizaton. This development would be of the utmost interest since it

could lead to a computatonal (as well as theoretcal) defniton of the

process of formaton of concepts and, in the last analysis, of semantcs.

An important aspect of the computatonal implementaton is the

interacton with the external world. Affectve visual object recogniton, for

example, would be an interestng extension to the proposed work. In

general, this queston of the interacton with the external world would be

(in principle) greatly simplifed if the proposed system could be adapted in

a way to be employed in different and already developed cognitve

architectures. The effect of implementng a psychodynamic unconscious

could be not just appealing from a conceptual stance, but it could also

evoke fantasies like the “emotonal chip” inserted into the neck of Data,

the android from “Star Trek”.

The future perspectves on the experimental part are twofold. Primarily,

the instrument in itself could undergo a number of variants. To list some,

it could be re-designed to employ different ratng scales from the

Pleasantness–Relevancy used so far. Thanks to the specifc statstcal tool

(principal component analysis) the number of ratng scales can even be

increased to more than the two original scales. The meaning of the

explained variance would remain the same as before, therefore the EGO-

ME test shows to be an extremely versatle tool able to be modifed in

many aspects without modifying its fundamental conceptual structure.

Other conceivable variatons regard the set of pictures employed as

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stmuli, that could certainly be revised or even adapted to test the

sensitvity of a subject to specifc thematc items proposed as stmuli. In

principle it could be possible to mix two or more subsets of images to be

later analyzed as separated in order to defne sub-scales (once

theoretcally and empirically defned) of emotonality.

For the possible analyses, it is possible to take as object of the analysis

not the single subject (with his/her series of ratngs to different objects),

but the objects instead, which will be studied on the basis of the ratngs

of every subject through the very same process of PCA. It could be found

that some objects are typically evaluated on an emotonal basis, i.e. the

set of answers given to the same object by all the different raters could

show a regular shape as in fgure 4.5d. This measure would tell which

objects are more prone to be evaluated on an emotonal basis and could

offer a way of refning the set of stmuli to be used in the test.

In a different perspectve, once the EGO-ME instrument is fully validated,

it can be conceived to reverse the hypothesis with the thesis. If it is

assumed that the emotonal process pushes the partcipants to

homogenize the way in which people express evaluaton of a series of

objects, then it could be interestng to look for the subgroup of objects a

single person evaluates under the K-effect. In other words, the series of

ratngs of a single subject can be fltered in order to select the subgroup

of the stmuli that maximizes the value of the explained variance (ε). This

subgroup of items could represent a profle of the subject in terms of the

sensitvity to certain items, then the EGO-ME approach could become an

instrument for evaluatng more structural aspects of the subject, in terms

of the items more prone of being evaluated under an emotonal drive.

From a computatonal point of view this is the kind of problems known to

be NP-hard, which is the set of problems requiring an exponental amount

173


of calculi. For example, the number of the possible subgroups (what

mathematcally is called the “power set”, denoted with P ) of the original

38 items is 238 ≈ 274 billions. It is impossible to compute such a large

number of tests in order to fnd the one with the best result. Fortunately,

a number of optmizaton methods can be employed to obtain an

approximate soluton to this problem. Among them (a fact that explains

the relevancy of the last few lines of text) is the one employing genetc

algorithms (see chapter 3).

As for the external point of view, the EGO-ME could be confronted with

the other “traditonal” instruments of emoton measurement, even if the

background assumptons are radically different. Yet, under some carefully

defned constraints, it is likely to fnd some degree of congruence with

specifc aspects of the physical, behavioural or experiental emoton

measurements. More interestngly, it could be explored the convergence

between the EGO-ME and other instruments (1) measuring the emotons

in an implicit way, i.e. observing the effect that emotonality is expected

to cause in the persons (Niedenthal & Dalle, 2001; Niedenthal et al.,

1999), and (2) measuring traits of the unconscious functoning of the

mind, like for example the Therapeutc Cycle Model (Mergenthaler,

1996) and the Referental Actvity (Bucci & Miller, 1993; Mergenthaler &

Bucci, 1999). This last point could be difcult to implement since the TCM

and RA measures are computed on the basis of textual analysis, but a

possible approach could be the one connectng the speaking rate with the

procedure of the TCM, as presented in (Tont, 2006, 2007).

174


3. Conclusion

Taken together, the three pillars of this dissertaton (logic, computaton

and measurement) offer a faceted and yet coherent investgaton of the

mechanisms underlying the unconscious processes occurring in the mind,

s well as of their strict connecton with emotons. The general formalistc,

computatonal and psychometric approach is the result of the Author's

background as a computer scientst as well as his strong inclinaton for

interdisciplinary and inter-theoretcal interests.

The formal constructon grounding the whole dissertaton (based on

Matte Blanco's concepts) offered a way for defning, with a potentally

high degree of precision, the precise characteristcs of emotons in their

involvement in the overall mental functoning. The proposed

implementaton of (a part of) a cognitve architecture has the potental of

becoming an instrument able to develop a simulaton engine for the

unconscious and emotonal functoning of the mind.

The measurement technique developed here, the EGO-ME test, have

been submitted to an inital experimental validaton, resulted to be

positve in six studies of different psychological realms.

Much work is yet to be done in each of the three feld of investgaton, but

the successful psychometric part contribute to the grounding of the entre

endeavour and is encouraging about the possibility of successful future

studies.

175


Appendix A — List of Stimuli

1. S timuli of the FFMCT computer-based

implementation

Politcs Entertainers Sportspersons

Italian P. Bersani

R. Bindi

R. Calderoli

O. Diliberto

G. Melandri

L. Moratti

A. Angiolini

M. Buy

C. Desica

G. Giannini

T. Mammuccari

E. S. Ricci

S. Baldini

A. Bargnani

F. Pennetta

F. Piccinini

V. Vezzali

F. Volandri

European T. Blair

G. Brown

A. Merkel

S. Royal

N. Sarkozy

M. Thatcher

A. Banderas

G. Depardieu

S. Marceau

I. McKellen

E. Thompson

K. Winslet

F. Alonso

V. Dedieu

Y. Isinbayeva

A. Mauresmo

R. Nadal

E. Zabel

Extra-european M. Bachelet

F. Castro

H. Clinton

M. Gandhi

M. Gheddaf

Lula

B. Afeck

J. Aniston

J. Foster

A. Garcia

M. Pfeiffer

R. Redford

J. Cheek

G. Dulko

N. Hayden

S. Kuznetsova

D. Nalbandian

S. Prammanasudh

176

Appendix A — List of Stmuli

2. Stimuli employed in the EGO-ME experiments

Alien

Ball

Bee

Carriage

Chandelier

Cigarettes

Circus

Clock

Fire

Flying saucer

Footprint

Fuel

Garden gnome

Incubator

Judge

King

Knot

Lifebuoy

Lighter

Man

Mantle

Mask

Medicines

Mobile phone

Nails

Nose

Parachute

Pencil

Police

Scaffolding

Stain

Tongue

Tooth

Train

Umbrella

Uniform

Wall

Wheel

177


Appendix B — Descriptive Results of the EGO-ME

Experiment

1. Pleasantness

Lower on average: medicines (-22.55)

Higher on average: ball (21.06)

Less displeasing: pencil (-37.33) (higher minima)

Less pleasing: petrol (34) (lower maxima)

Standard Deviaton: petrol (20.68) – bee (34.94)

Found pleasant by most: nails (63/71)

Found unpleasant by most: mantle & medicines (61/71)

2. Relevancy

Lower on average: mantle (-6.72)

Higher on average: incubator (28.14)

Less irrelevant: incubator (-38.33)

Less relevant: umbrella (47.33)

Standard deviaton: incubator (20.13) – cigarettes (36.04)

Found relevant by most: incubator (65/71)

Found irrelevant by most: mantle (49/71)

178

Appendix B — Descriptve Results of the EGO-ME Experiment

3. Overall object evaluations

Object Pleasantness avg Pleasantness stdev Relevancy avg Relevancy stdevAlien -16.831 27.063 5.601 30.934Ball 21.056 23.041 8.366 26.651Bee -7.108 34.692 8.038 30.588Carriage 15.789 22.013 6.484 25.612Chandelier 15.667 25.572 3.714 28.536Cigarettes -16.258 31.856 8.948 35.789Circus 16.676 27.361 10.089 25.095Clock 3.432 25.874 18.324 25.64Fire 9.521 30.417 18.291 24.012Flying saucer 6.469 24.15 10.986 26.556Footprint -1.052 24.619 12.023 28.269Fuel -11.775 20.532 4.38 28.966Garden gnome 18.343 25.124 -1.606 29.928Incubator -2.582 31.034 28.141 19.992Judge -8.85 23.937 12.854 26.313King 5.493 24.108 3.671 24.151Knot 1.122 26.606 9.685 27.166Lifebuoy 11.568 23.694 15.765 25.186Lighter -7.122 25.637 -0.122 26.638Man 15.671 21.349 7.812 25.803Mantle -14.728 26.171 -6.718 28.872Mask -7.324 30.27 6.864 28.257Medicines -21.549 20.646 22.418 24.379Mobile phone 10.258 24.011 17.723 23.871Nails 16.178 22.98 6.319 26Nose 2.798 22.64 0.066 24.47Parachute 15.836 23.557 12.352 25.078Pencil 18.376 21.178 12.972 26.356Police 7.789 23.196 19.451 22.493Scaffolding -12.028 27.466 6.268 28.222Stain -3.601 28.324 -4.967 25.962Tongue -18.131 27.731 -3.239 28.696Tooth 1.563 29.025 7.723 25.844Train 10.662 27.348 17.723 23.379Umbrella -3.695 28.481 4.995 28.018Uniform 14.3 23.782 5.117 27.307Wall -8.272 24.407 4.77 26.948Wheel 15.732 21.32 5.235 26.212

Values based on 71 partcipants. The range of the answers was [-50, +50].

179


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Documents

EMOTIONS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS — Modeling and Measuring the Affective Salience of the Mind