C-CS

Configuring and Conceptual Blending

ABSTRACT

I begin with an story about my grandson, Michael to illustrate configuring. To tell the story, I make the scene into a typical situation. In configuring the situation, I draw upon two recollections of past experiences that have similar narrative structures. The resulting configuration is a blending of them more or less in terms of the process of conceptual blending. However, comparing conceptual blending and configuring is an instance of comparing apples and oranges. The comparison has more to do with their differences than their similarities. Conceptual blending is a process of conceptualization and configuring is a process of story telling. The later relates to the circumstance that our conceptions of ourselves are articulated in the form of life-stories. An important issue in configuring as a mode of understanding people is: what is learned about other persons? And, how reliable is the process of configuring?

Older persons cannot have many experiences younger persons typically have in their generation. Just as Young persons cannot have many experiences older persons typically have while they are young. ("Null Experiences")

In "Wilhelm Dilthey and Verstehen," I recounted an episode H. A. Hodges used to illustrate Dilthey's conception of Verstehen:

. . . I see a human figure in a downcast attitude, the face marked with tears ; these are the expressions of grief, and I cannot normally perceive them without feeling in myself a reverberation of the grief which they express. Though native to another mind than mine, and forming part of a mental history which is not mine, it none the less comes alive in me, or sets up an image or reproduction of itself (Nachbild) in my consciousness. Upon this foundation all my understanding of the other person is built. (1949, 14)

Although the onlooker in this episode may well be mistaken in his interpretation of the figure he sees, the process is nonetheless one that we employ to understand other persons. The reliability of the process depends, of course, on the expertise of the onlooker, a point I will take up in a later section of this essay. For now, I wish to describe a similar episode from my own experience for the purpose of analysis.

[The Michael Episode ] [The Scene as a Situation ] [Recalled Experience #1]
[Recalled Experience #2] [Blending Past Experiences] [Process of conceptual blending]
[Apples & Oranges] [Selves as Stories] [What Did I Learn?] [How Reliable is Configuring?]

the michael episode

A few weeks ago, I was playing catch with my grandson in a park to the extent that a 2 ½ year old can do so. We were at the edge of the park where a grassy incline ran up to a fence. Michael stood at the top in front of the fence. I threw a soccer ball up near him. He picked it up and rolled it back down the slope to me. I then tossed it back so that he could roll it down again.

To my left an older boy sat midway down the slope. He was wiping tears away from his eyes with his left hand and holding onto his knee with his right, an image of distress. When Michael noticed the sad boy, he disregarded the ball I threw to him and went over to the older boy. He bent down to look at the boy’s face and said something I could not hear, probably asking the boy what was wrong. The older boy answered him, saying, more or less I assume, that nothing was wrong.. Michael remained crouched over intently looking into the boy’s face with a sympathetic expression. After a few moments, realizing there was nothing he could do, Michael rose up and returned to our game.

I was very impressed by this episode. Later I realized that Michael’s state of mind was not only a null experience for me since I cannot experience what goes on in it, but also, that what Michael felt could neither be what I would have felt as his grandfather if I were him but also it could not be what I might have felt in similar circumstances when I was his age. The generation gap is an experience gap.

To bridge this gap, I have to configure the experience by acts of conceptual blending

the scene as a situation

The scene includes three people at the edge of a park near an embankment. I am at a distance and cannot hear what either my grandson or the older boy say to each other. I interpret the situation as one in which the older boy is distressed and my grandson is sympathetic. Though I cannot hear what they say, I imagine their conversation to be something like:

Michael: "what's wrong?"
Older boy: "nothing!"

Where does my "construction" of this scene as a "situation" come from?

recalled past experience #one

It is characteristic of persons to map their past experiences of typical situations onto new experiences to make sense of them. In the past I have often approached a person in distress and asked: what's wrong? It is not unusual, as a university professor for example, that I have seen students tearful and have asked them "what's wrong?"

So, it is not surprising that I would map my experience onto this situation. But to do so, means that I have taken Michael's perspective and have attributed the question to him. Where does the answer "nothing" come from?

recalled past experience # 2

It will come as no surprise that, taking the older boy's perspective, I have mapped onto him a part experience of mine when I have been asked, "what's wrong?"

The occasions when I have most often been asked what's wrong? have occurred at home when my wife, noticing my mood, asks the question. My response, typically, is "nothing." The response is made simply to avoid answering the question. And, it is this motive, that I attribute to the older boy when asked what's wrong? by a boy much younger.

What is striking in this simple example is that in order to interpret the scene as a recognizable situation, I have to assume both my grandson's and the older boy's perspective, mapping onto them my own experiences.

blending past experiences together

In order to make this scene into a recognizable situation, I blend my past experiences together by transposing myself in both boy's positions alternately. To do so, I comprehend the scene as if their inner lives were like mine. From Dilthey's view, "Guided by the other person 's expression, I live over 'again (nacherlebe) his experience in my own consciousness, and this is the essence of understanding. 'To reproduce is to re live' (Nachbilden ist eben ein Nacherleben)" (Hodges 1949, 14-15). I understand other persons (unlike myself) by configuring their situation, by turning what I witness into a configuration (a typical situation that is culturally recognizable).

This kind of understanding is part and parcel of our everyday lives, a circumstance describe in detail in Fauconnier and Turner's The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities, to which I now turn.

the process of conceptual blending

Fauconnier invented the concept of a "mental space" to refer to elements that are evoked in our memories and, so to speak, enter the working memory. They note that blending involves at least two mental spaces named "inputs" in their diagrams. In the Michael episode, the first input is an experience that my perception of the scene calls to mind because of its analogous structure:

The first input is the RECALLED PAST EXPERIENCE #1 which matches the pattern in the scene I am looking at. INPUT #2: RECALLED PAST EXP #2 is similar in pattern but the perspective is different. As Fauconnier and Turner note:

Matching and counterpart connections. In conceptual integration, there is partial matching between input spaces. ... Such counterpart connections are of many kinds: connections between frames and roles in frames, connections of identity or transformation or representation, analogical connections, metaphoric connections, and, more generally, "vital relations" mappings ... When matches are created between two spaces, we say that there is a cross-space mapping between them.

In order to construct the scene as a recognizable situation, I have to blend the two inputs together. This produces something quite different from my recalled experiences which Fauconnier and Turner call a "generic space."

At any moment in the construction of the network, the structure that inputs seem to share is captured in a generic space, which, in turn, maps onto each of the inputs. A given element in the generic space maps onto paired counterparts in the two input spaces.

It is not that I recall being both boys (which I could not have been), but that the experience in which I was the person who asked the question and the experience in which I was the person who answered the question are blended into a virtual experience which is not one that I have had. However, the blending produces an "emergent structure," a typical situation that makes sense to me and matches what I perceive—a sequence of events: an older boy sitting and crying, a younger boy going over to him and bending down to say something, then the older boy responding very briefly.

In blending, structure from two input mental spaces is projected to a new space, the blend. Generic spaces and blended spaces are related: Blends contain generic structure captured in the generic space but also contain more specific structure, and they can contain structure that is impossible for the inputs ... Not all elements and relations from the inputs are projected to the blend. ... Sometimes counterparts in the input spaces are fused in the blend

Blending my two memories results in the recognition of a typical situation (an emergent structure)

Emergent structure arises in the blend that is not copied there directly from any input. It is generated in three ways: through composition of projections from the inputs, through completion based on independently recruited frames and scenarios, and through elaboration ("running the blend"). ... Blending can compose elements from the input spaces to provide relations that do not exist in the separate inputs.

The evocation of a typical situation brings with it considerable background knowledge from our memory systems. For example, I attributed motives to both boys on the basis of my background knowledge of such situations. The emergent structure brings to mind that conventionally in relations between older and younger boys, it is expected that the younger boys will cry and the older boys will be more "manly." Thus, the motive for the older boy to reply "nothing."

We rarely realize the extent of background knowledge and structure that we bring into a blend unconsciously. Blends recruit great ranges of such background meaning. Pattern completion is the most basic kind of recruitment: We see some parts of a familiar frame of meaning, and much more of the frame is recruited silently but effectively to the blend.

We elaborate blends by treating them as simulations and running them imaginatively according to the principles that have been established for the blend.

This incident when I turned a scene into a configuration (a culturally typical narrative), matches the process I have been discussing—configuring.

apples and oranges

In this section, I do not intend to suggest a point by point match of the elements in the process. To begin with Fauconnier and Turner are considering a concept transfer and I am considering an experience transfer. Nonetheless the processes are similar.

CONCEPTUAL BLENDING	CONFIGURING
occasion of conceptual blending	ACTUAL EXPERIENCE / AUSSERE ERFAHRUNG (seeing "outer sensory experience)
Matching and counterpart connections among inputs	VIRTUAL EXPERIENCE / ERLEBNIS (lived experience initiated by recalling)
Generic space	RECOGNITION / AUSDRUK (reception of expression and recognition of the experience which it designates)
Blending*	FEELING / FÜLING ( immediate response of feeling as a consequence of identifying with the other person)
Emergent structure	EVOCATION OF A SCRIPT / NACHBILD (guided by the expression, past experiences are mapped onto it)
Composition	VISUALIZATION OF AN INTERACTION / NACHLEBE ( re-experiencing another's experience by imagining it as mine)
projecting	EXPERIENCE TRANSFER / SHICHHINEINVERSETZEN (transposing my imagined experience as if I were him)
running the blend	EMPATHY / EINFÜLING (projecting onto the other person and believing he is "possessed of an inner life essentially like my own.")

*Fauconnier and Turner note that "Blends contain generic structure captured in the generic space but also contain more specific structure, and they can contain structure that is impossible for the inputs." The parallel between blending and feeling hinges on the act of "identifying" with the figures in the scene. As the result of identifying, the generic structure become "more specific." Obviously this is not a perfect parallel.

My comparison of conceptual blending and configuring has the proverbial quality of comparing apples and oranges. In part, I am considering their work as if they were cognitive psychologists rather than cognitive linguists. Since cognitive linguists view expressions as the result of conceptualizations, their view of cognitive processes is from the point of view of discourse. In this sense, their work does parallel Dilthey's. The apples/oranges aspect of my comparison comes from the circumstance that, whereas they are concerned with the acquisition of new concepts, I am concerned with the acquisition of new narratives. The processes of conceptual blending and configuring are similar but their differences are more important. The previous section, is intended to prepare the grounds for considering their differences in the light of their similarities. Apples and oranges are both fruits but their differences are, so to speak, are more important.

My motive for pointing to conceptual blending as a similar process is, in several respects, a response to the Ohlsson/Moher paradox—if “the learner’s existing ideas” are “the learner’s only tools by which to acquire the new idea,” “how does anyone ever learn anything new?” As I mentioned in the previous essay, conceptual blending show exactly how one learns something "new." Both conceptual blending and configuring share the cognitive ability to LEARN. (I will return to the Michael episode to discuss what I "learned" that was "new.")

The principle differences between the two processes is that whereas configuring depends upon feeling identified with a figure in a narrative which leads to transposing one's perspective with him or her, conceptual blending does not require either element. Again this is not surprising given Fauconnier and Turner's orientation toward conceptualization.

In the context of inter-personal understanding, however, these elements are critical. Having a conception of a person is quite a different matter from understanding that person. Understanding persons, in Dilthey's sense of Verstehen, is not achieved with concepts. Feeling and identifying are central to the process.

selves as stories

In the previous essay, I argued that configuring a configuration parallels a process Clifford Geertz describes in "Religion as a Cultural System" chapter of his Interpretation of Cultures. (1973, 87-125.) I did not, however, stress the role of feeling in the process Geertz describes. Drawing upon his ethnography of Javanese culture but speaking in general terms, Geertz notes that religion involves the transposability of models of and models for culture, the former descriptive of past beliefs and the later expressive of future possibilities. According to Geertz, these two states are intermingled in religious practices. The image of a way of becoming (a model for cultivating it) is usually experienced as a plan for acting in a certain way because it is believed to be "realistic," that is, as a pattern which has already been successful in the culture (a model of it). The fact that a particular practice belongs to a successful individual provides a reason, a belief that this pattern will succeed.

In Geertz' account of Javanese religious practices, the move from a model of a specific cultural practice to a model for culture in general is induced by rituals that give flesh and blood to the idea which the model conveys. Liturgical dramas, to take an example familiar to persons in Western cultures, not only convey the idea of cultural behavior, they instill a feeling to motivate it. The Catholic mass, for instance, not only symbolizes Christ's death and resurrection and refers to the doctrine of redemption but its music, prayers, confession and communion service provide rituals that reinforce the beliefs in question. Initiation rituals not only symbolize changes in social status, they also provide rituals that incarnate those changes.

In everyday culture, ritual provides the feeling of a practice. The ritual says "here's what it feels like to do this." Rituals insinuate practices by generating emotions associated with the practices of an exemplary figure. So, whenever that action is required, the ritual can be practiced and the emotion which motivates it can surface again. Everyone has rituals to induce successful practices which range from wearing the same clothes to listening to a certain kind of music.
Thinking of American culture, sporting practices come to mind in this context. A young boy sees Michael Jordan win a basketball game in the last second. He experiences a set of emotions which belong to witnessing that experience. So, he practices looking like Jordan. This means that he invents particular rituals: he imagines himself in the last second of a game, leaping, and sticking out his tongue JUST LIKE MIKE. Imagining that he is Michael in a particular cultural zone provides an emotion which gets him to make an extra effort to make the basket. Doing this hundreds of times, he then learns HOW IT FEELS TO BEHAVE IN THIS SUCCESSFUL WAY.

Such visualization techniques have been with us for centuries, often as religious practices such as imitatio Christi. To be Christ-like entails feeling Chist-like. Religions cannot be reduced to theological concepts. The role that the life of Christ plays in learning how to be Christ-like is an indispensable condition of this possibility. This brings us to my emphasis on the life-story in "Configuring Configurations." I argued in that essay that

Storytelling is based on our ability to draw analogies between our experiences and those of others. It is the ability by which we are able to understand other human beings. Since we cannot get inside the minds of other people, to understand them we have to draw analogies between what they do and what we have done.

I will only add here an emphasis on the role of feeling in the process of configuring. To understand another person you have to transpose yourself into his or her position in their life-stories and feel what it like to be them. This happens to us when we identify with figures in films and feel the threats to them as if they were threats to us. At times, our feelings are so strong, we cry out or with tears.

What did I learn from michael's encounter with the older boy?

In the "Apples and Oranges" section above, I asked "What was "new" in the Michael episode--what did I learn?" but did not answer the question at that point in the essay. I now turn to that issue.

It would seem, from my delineation of the parallels between configuring and conceptual blending that I didn't learn anything new. Granted that the composition of the generic situation might be altered but it was constructed from my past experiences to make the present situation intelligible. So, it would seem that, if I "learned" anything it was negligible. This is, however, not the case.

In the phase of conceptual blending that Fauconnier and Turner call "running the blend" which I paralleled to EMPATHY / EINFÜLING (projecting onto the other person and believing he is "possessed of an inner life essentially like my own."), I felt both like Michael and like the older boy in as much as I had the sense that they possessed an inner life like my own. The significance of this projection comes from the aspect of blending that Fauconnier and Turner describe in the following terms: "Blending can compose elements from the input spaces to provide relations that do not exist in the separate inputs." The significant element that did not exist in my memory of my past experiences is that it was Michael who was sympathetic to the older boy in a way that I usually am sympathetic to persons in distress. I learned something about my grandson that I had not seen in him before.

The obvious objection to my contention is: how can I be sure that I learned anything at all about Michael? I didn't hear him say "What's wrong?" I imagined hearing him. This is certainly the case. So then how can I claim I learned something about Michael? I will give the short answer here and a longer one in the next section. What I learned is best described as a "clue to Michael's personality." I noticed, for the first time, what might be a trait of Michael's. I found something in his manner that I now can track or trace as I continue to observe him. As his grandfather, I am not in daily contact with Michael but I can say that I have taken another step in the process of learning who he is. What I learned was an heuristic that I can follow. What I learned was a "clue," which is an advance on reporting that "I don't have a clue."

how reliable an index of understanding people is configuring?

How reliable is configuring? Did I really learn about new about Michael or was that just a subjective projection of myself onto him?

There is a considerable difference in acquiring concepts and acquiring experience. It is possible to acquire a new concept from concepts one already knows. For example, if you are reading and encounter a term whose meaning you do not know, you can look it up in a dictionary and acquire its meaning from the definition provided which usually defines a concept with other concepts. For example, persons may not know the meaning of "matrix." Looking it up in WordNet, they obtain the definition: "an enclosure within which something originates or develops (from the Latin for womb)." The concepts in the definition are more common in usage than the concept being defined. Many concepts are acquired by being told what their names refer to in the world. By contrast, you cannot acquire an experience by being told about it. You can only acquire experience from repeated experiences.

The more experience you have in doing something, the more you understand what it involves. Michael Polanyi is best know for his conception of the tacit dimension of understanding. In The Tacit Dimension, he points to the circumstance that there are many instances of knowing how to do something which we cannot articulate.

We know a persons face and can recognize it among a thousand, indeed among a million. We usually cannot tell how we recognize a face we know. So most of this knowledge cannot be put into words. (4)

It is obvious that we recognize faces that we have seen numerous times. The more often we see a person, the more easy it is to recognize that person. Even though we cannot specify the details of our understanding of many experiences, it enables us to cope with situations that require it. This phenomenon is characteristic of acquiring skills and "arts." Polanyi argues a strong case for the relationship between repeated experiences and an increase in understanding them in his comments on "connoisseurship."

Connoisseurship, like skill, can be communicated only by example, not by precept. To become an expert wine-taster, to acquire a knowledge of innumerable different blends of tea or to be trained as a medical diagnostician, you must go through a long course of experience under the guidance of a master. Unless a doctor can recognize certain symptoms, e.g. the accentuation of the second sound of the pulmonary artery, there is no use in his reading the description of syndromes of which this symptom forms part. He must personally know that symptom and he can learn this only by repeatedly being given cases for auscultation in which the symptom is authoritatively known to be present, side by side with other cases in which it is authoritatively known to be absent, until he has fully realized the difference between them and can demonstrate his knowledge practically to the satisfaction of an expert.
Wherever connoisseurship is found operating within science or technology we may assume that it persists only because it has not been possible to replace it by a measurable grading. For a measurement has the advantage of greater objectivity, as shown by the fact that measurements give consistent results in the hands of different observers all over the world, while such objectivity is rarely achieved in the case of physiognomic appreciations. The large amount of time spent by students of chemistry, biology and medicine in their practical courses shows how greatly these sciences rely on the transmission of skills and connoisseurship from master to apprentice. It offers an impressive demonstration of the extent to which the art of knowing has remained unspecifiable at the very heart of science. (Personal Knowledge, 54-55)

Putting Polanyi's example of recognizing faces into the context of learning from repeated experiences, we can point to the fact that persons who have known each other for long periods of time, are usually very good at reading each other's facial gestures. Of course, it depends upon how motivated they are in learning to understand the other person as well as how observant they are. As Sherlock Holmes famously said to Watson, "You see but you do not observe."

Configuring is closer to an art of understanding than it is to a science of knowing. To borrow Polanyi's term, it is a form of connoisseurship.

jjs

Notes:

. [(I am not invoking Dilthey's distinction between understanding and knowing here. As I mentioned earlier, configuring is not a translation of Verstehen.)] ...