Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies

511 Pages·1996·42.4 MB·English

by  Douglas Hofstadter

Fluid Concepts
&
Creative Analogies
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Copyright © 1995byBasicBooks, AMemberof thePerseusBooksGroup
Composition byAcme Art, Inc.
Allrights reserved. Printed in the United States ofAmerica. No part of this book may
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hofstadter, Douglas R, 1945-
Fluid concepts and creative analogies: computer models of the fundamental
mechanisms of thought / byDouglas Hofstadter and the Fluid Analogies
Research Group.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN0-465-05154-5 (cloth)
ISBN0-465-02475-0 (paper)
1.Cognitive science. 2.Analogy-Computer simulation. 3.Artificial
intelligence. I. Fluid Analogies Research Group. II. Title.
BF311.H617 1994
153.4-dc20 93-44294
CIP
99 RRD 98765
ToD. andM.
~------~
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ui
Prologue: The lVhy, the lVhen, the lVhere, and the lVho of This Book . 1
Chapter 1. To Seek Whence Cometh a Sequence . . . . . . . . . . . 13
(Douglas Hofstadter)
Preface 2: The Unconscious Juggling of Mental Objects 87
Chapter 2. The Architecture ofJumbo . . . . . . 97
(Douglas Hofstadter)
Preface 3: Arithmetical Play and Nondeterminism . . . . . 127
Chapter 3. Numbo: A Study in Cognition and Recognition 131
(Daniel Defays)
Preface 4: The Ineradicable Eliza Effect and Its Dangers . . 155
Chapter 4. High-level Perception, Representation, and Analogy:
A Critique of Artificial-intelligence Methodology . . . 169
(David Chalmers, Robert French, and Douglas Hofstadter)
Preface 5: Conceptual Halos and Slippability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
ChapterS. The Copycat Project: A Model of Mental Fluidity
and Analogy-making . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
(Douglas Hofstadter and Melanie Mitchell)
Preface 6: Two Early AI Approaches toAnalogy . 269
Chapter 6. Perspectives on Copycat: Comparisons with Recent Work 275
(Melanie Mitchell and Douglas Hofstadter)
Preface 7: Retrieval of Old and Invention of New Analogies 301
Chapter 7. Prolegomena to Any Future Metacat . . . . . . 307
(Douglas Hofstadter)
Preface 8: Analogy-making in a Coffeehouse . 319
Chapter 8. Tabletop, BattleDp, Db-Platte, Potelbat, Belpatto, Platobet 323
(Douglas Hofstadter and Robert French)
Preface 9: The Knotty Problem ofEvaluating Research in AI
and Cognitive Science. . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
Chapter 9. The Emergent Personality of Tabletop,
a Perception-based Model ofAnalogy-making 377
(Douglas Hofstadter and Robert French)
Preface 10: The Intoxicating World ofAlphabets and Their Styles . . . . . . . 401
Chapter 10. Letter Spirit: Esthetic Perception and Creative Play
in the Rich Microcosm of the Roman Alphabet 407
(Douglas Hofstadter and Gary McGraw)
Epilogue: On Computers, Creativity, Credit,
Brain Mechanisms, and the Turing Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . 467
References . 493
Index ... 502
List of illustrations
Front cover: Progression offivegridfonts, from "a"through "rn",
Back cover: Progression of the same fivegridfonts, from "n" through "z",
Prologue:
P-l: Schematic representation of the flickering-clusters model of the
structure ofwater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Chapter 1:
1-1: Temporal flowof ideas in the discovery of a mathematical pattern .41
1-2: Schematic representation of a "mountain chain" sequence .... .57
Preface 2:
11-0: Hierarchical glomming ofletters that occurs in reading aword .... 94
Chapter 2:
II-I: An example ofthe]umble game 98
Chapter 3:
III-I: An extract from Numbo's Pnet 136
III-2: Apossible configuration of Numbo's cytoplasm 140
III-3: Trace of a run of Numbo . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
III-4: Numbo's Pnet at an early stage in a typical run. 146
III-5: Numbo's cytoplasm at an intermediate stage of the same run. 147
III-6: Comparative protocols of a human and Numbo, tackling the
same challenge 152
Chapter 4:
IV-I: Predicate-calculus representations of twosituations 183
Chapter 5:
V-I: Bar graph of Copycat's behavior on the problem
"abc => abd; ijk => ?" . ........... 236
V-2: Bar graph of Copycat's behavior on the problem
"aabc => aabd; ijkk => ?" . ... 238
V-3: Bar graph of Copycat's behavior on the problem
"abc=> abd; kji => ?" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... 239
V-4: Bar graph of Copycat's behavior on the problem
"abc=>abd;mnjjj=>?" . ........... 241
vn
V-5: Bar graph of Copycat's behavior on the problem
"abc ~ abd; rssttt ~?" 243
V-6: Bar graph of Copycat's behavior on the problem
"abc ~ abd; xyz~?" 245
V-7: Bar graph of Copycat's behavior on the problem
"rst ~ rsu;xyz~?" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ........... 247
V-8: Screen dumps of Copycat solving the problem
"abc~ abd; mrrjjj~?" 251-255
Chapter 6:
Vl-l: Pictorial representations of tworeal-world situations ..... 276
Vl-2: Predicate-calculus representations of the same twosituations. 277
Vl-3: Acomplicating factor that might be added to Figure Vl-2 .. 281
Preface 8:
VlII-O: A"translation" into the Tabletop domain of a real-world analogy .. 320
ChapterS:
VlII-l: Henry and Elizasitting across a table from each other. 322
VlII-2: Asimple Tabletop analogy problem. . . . . . . . . 324
VlII-3: Amore complex Tabletop analogy problem . . . . 324
VlII-4: Acartoon based on the idea of Ob-Platte analogies 335
VlII-5: Afamous puzzle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
VlII-6: Working towards rendering the "East St.Louis of Illinois"
Ob-Platte problem in the Tabletop domain . . . . . . . . 353
VlII-7: Getting closer to the "EastSt. Louis of Illinois" problem . 353
VlII-8: Gettingjust a bit closer to the "East St.Louis of Illinois" problem 354
VlII-9: A"blockage" scenario in the Tabletop domain . . . . . . . 355
VlII-I0: Human perception of groups inside groups inside groups 357
Chapter 9:
IX-I: Sixmembers of the "Surround" familyof analogy problems .394-5
IX-2: Sixmembers of the "Blockage" family of analogy problems .396-7
IX-3: Sixmembers of the "Buridan" family of analogy problems .398-9
Preface 10:
x-o.
"Normalcy": a gridfont that playswith styleon avery
cerebral level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
uui
Chapter 10:
X-I: Transformation rules and sample output from
the DAFFODILprogram 410
X-2: Study#1 in lowercase ~'a": a sampler revealing the abstractness
of the concept. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 413
X-3: Twodifferent breakdowns ofa letterform into roles . . . . . . . 415
X-4: The Letter/Spirit matrix, with "letter" represented bycolumns
and "spirit" represented byrows. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 418
X-5: The Letter Spirit grid, with three sample gridletters . . . . 421
X-6: Ten human-designed gridfonts suggesting the richness of
the domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422
X-7: Study#2 in lowercase "a": showing how the constraints of the grid
enhance the tendency to playat the fringes ofletter categories. 424
X-8: Three gridletters that are semantically distant but
syntacticallyclose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425
X-9: Four human-designed gridfonts illustrating various mechanisms
for the propagation ofstyle 428
X-I0: The creative pathwaysleading to Benzene "a"and Benzene "x" 430
X-ll: Steps in the perception of a gridletter. . . . . . . . . . . . . 440
X-12: Role-regrouping within the Platonic concept "t'', with some
gridletters that are thereby made accessible 445
X-13: Perceiving various potential stylisticattributes in a particular letter. 450
X-14: AtypicalLetter Spirit analogy puzzle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 451
X-15: Twopossible solutions to the preceding puzzle 452
X-16: How essentially the same puzzle washandled bythe designer
ofFrizQuadrata. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 453
X-17: Apossible seed letter "f"featuring averystriking norm-violation. 455
X-18: One far-out idea for realizing the concept "t" in the same style . 455
X-19: Tworefinements of the preceding shape . . . . . . . . . . . . . 455
X-20: Fourteen letters fed to the GridFont network to suggest the full
human-designed stylecalled "Hunt Four" 461
X-21: The remaining letters ofHunt Four asdesigned bythe font's human
inventor, and asproduced bythe GridFont network. 462
X-22: The first half ofHermann Zapf's typeface Optima 464
Epilogue:
E-1: "Adamand Eve",a drawing byHarold Cohen's program Aaron. 469
E-2: Twowaysto prove that an isoscelestriangle has equal base angles:
the standard wayand Pappus' trickyway . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 479
ix
Acknowledgments
Prior Sources for Chapters
Chapter 2 ("The Architecture ofJumbo" by D. Hofstadter) appeared in a highly condensed
version in 1983, under the same title, on pages 161-170 of the Proceedings oftheInternational
Machine Learning Workshop, edited byR.Michalski,]. Carbonell, and T. Mitchell, published
by the University of Illinois Press (Urbana, Illinois). Essentially the whole of Chapter 2
also appeared in 1985, in an Italian translation, under the title "L'architettura del
'[umbo'", on pages 298-333 of La Sfida della Complessita, edited byG.Bocci and M.Ceruti,
published byFeltrinelli (Milan).
Chapter 3 ("Numbo: A Study in Cognition and Recognition" by D. Defays) originally
appeared in 1990, under the same title, on pages 217-243 of TheJoumalfor theIntegrated
Study ofArtificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, and Applied Epistem?logy, vol. 7, no. 2.
Chapter 4 ("High-level Perception, Representation, and Analogy: A Critique of
Artificial-intelligence Methodology" by D. Chalmers, R. French, and D. Hofstadter)
appeared in a slightly longer version in 1992, under the same title, on pages 185-211 of
TheJournal ofExperimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, vol. 4, no. 3.
Chapters 5 and 6 ("The Copycat Project: A Model of Mental Fluidity and Analogy-making"
and "Perspectives on Copycat: Comparisons with Recent Work" byD. Hofstadter and M.
Mitchell) originally appeared together in 1993 as a single article, bearing the same title
as Chapter 5, on pages 31-112 of Advances in Connectionist and Neural Computation Theory,
Vol. 2: Analogical Connections, edited by K. Holyoak and]. Barnden, published byAblex
Corporation (Norwood, NewJersey). Reprinted with permission from Ablex Publishing
Corporation.
Chapter 7 ("Prolegomena to Any Future Metacat" by D. Hofstadter) originally appeared in
1993 asthe Afterword (pages 235-244) to M.Mitchell's book Analogy-Making asPerception,
published by MIT Press (Cambridge, Massachusetts).
Parts of Chapter 8 ("Tabletop, BattleOp, Ob-Platte, Potelbat, Belpatto, Platobet" by
D. Hofstadter and R. French) appeared in 1992, in a somewhat different and quite
condensed form, in Chapter 3 of Tabletop: An Emergent, Stochastic Computer Model of
Analogy-making, French's Ph.D. dissertation in Computer Science and Engineering at the
University of Michigan.
The final sixsections of the Epilogue ("On Computers, Creativity, Credit, Brain Mechanisms,
and the Turing Test" by D. Hofstadter) appeared in 1993, in somewhat different form,
aspart ofthe article "Analogy-making, Fluid Concepts, and Brain Mechanisms", published
in Essays in Honour ofAlan Turing, Vol.2: Connectionism, Concepts, and FolkPsychology, edited
byP.Millican and A.Clark, and published byOxford University Press (Oxford, England).
Figure Credits
Jumble cartoon, p. 98, reprinted by permission: Tribune Media Services.
Cartoon byDana Fradon, p. 335, © 1992 The New Yorker Magazine, Inc.
"Adam and Eve", p. 469, reprinted by permission: W. H. Freeman.