Multiple Representations
Not only must conceptual skeletons exist on different levels of abstraction;
also, they must exist along different conceptual dimensions. Let us take the
following sentence as an example:
"The Vice President is the spare tire
on the automobile of government."How do we understand what it means (leaving aside its humor, which is of
course a vital aspect)? If you were told, "See our government as an au-
tomobile" without any prior motivation, you might come up with any
number of correspondences: steering wheel = president, etc.. What are
checks and balances? What are seat belts? Because the two things being
mapped are so different, it is almost inevitable that the mapping will
involve functional aspects. Therefore, you retrieve from your store of con-
ceptual skeletons representing parts of automobiles, only those having to
do with function, rather than, say, shape. Furthermore, it makes sense to
work at a pretty high level of abstraction, where "function" isn't taken in
too narrow a context. Thus, of the two following definitions of the function
of a spare tire: (1) "replacement for a flat tire", and (2) "replacement for a
certain disabled part of a car", certainly the latter would be preferable, in
this case. This comes simply from the fact that an auto and a government
are so different that they have to be mapped at a high level of abstraction.
Now when the particular sentence is examined, the mapping gets
forced in one respect-but it is not an awkward way, by any means. In fact,
you already have a conceptual skeleton for the Vice President, among
many others, which says, "replacement for a certain disabled part of gov-
ernment". Therefore the forced mapping works comfortably. But suppose,
for the sake of contrast, that you had retrieved another conceptual skeleton
for "spare tire"-say, one describing its physical aspects. Among other
things, it might say that a spare tire is "round and inflated". Clearly, this is
not the right way to go. (Or is it? As a friend of mine pointed out, some Vice
Presidents are rather portly, and most are quite inflated!)
Ports of Access
One of the major characteristics of each idiosyncratic style of thought is
how new experiences get classified and stuffed into memory, for that
defines the "handles" by which they will later be retrievable. And for
events, objects, ideas, and so on-for everything that can be thought
about-there is a wide variety of "handles". I am struck by this each time I
reach down to turn on my car radio, and find, to my dismay, that it is
already on! What has happened is that two independent representations
are being used for the radio. One is "music producer", the other is "bore-
dom reliever". I am aware that the music is on, but I am bored anyway, and
before the two realizations have a chance to interact, my reflex to reach(^670) ArtifiCial Intelligence: Prospects