This is the knowledge that is shared and that is known to be shared.

This definition was taken from: Krauss & Fussell, 1990

“A fact is manifest to an individual at a given time if and only if he is capable at that time of representing it mentally and accepting its representation as true or probably true”

According to Sperber and Wilson, a fact or assumption is MANIFEST if it is perceptable or inferrable. I.e., not only what he is aware of but what s/he is capable of becoming aware of.

is regarded as an implicit premise in relevance theory. A Bridging Inference does not directly yield expected cognitive effects in its own right but contributes to relevance by providing access to the intended explicature, which in turn yields cognitive effects.

This definition was taken from: T. Matsui. Modeling and Using Context (Proceedings of the conference CONTEXT 2001, Dundee, UK, July), volume 2116 of Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, chapter Experimental Pragmatics: Towards Testing Relevance-Based Predictions about Anaphoric Bridging Inferences, pages 248–258. Springer, Berlin, 2001.

Explicatures are derived when an incomplete logical form, an assumption schema, is developed into a full proposition (the explicated meaning) through a number of cognitive processes, including disambiguation, saturation, loosening, but also, according to Ruiz de

Mendoza, metaphor and metonymy. In the case of metaphor, the authors argue that the number of potential explicatures correlates with the complexity of the metaphorical

mapping structure, ranging from one-correspondence to many-correspondence metaphors (Ruiz de Mendoza 1998), and that the principle of relevance guides the inferential process towards the contextually most relevant explicature.

T. Matsui. Modeling and Using Context (Proceedings of the conference CONTEXT 2001, Dundee, UK, July), volume 2116 of Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, chapter Experimental Pragmatics: Towards Testing Relevance-Based Predictions about Anaphoric Bridging Inferences, pages 248–258. Springer, Berlin, 2001.  [url]

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In this paper, the author explain a methodological procedure to verify some implicatures of the relevance theory. The author propose to use an important phenomena of communication that is defined in the context of the relevance theory. What follows from this theory is that: a) there is a natural tendency for the speaker to formulate an utterance so that the hearer has easy access to the intended cognitive effects to the utterance; b) there is the same natural tendency for the hearer to infer the intended cognitive effects of the utterance at the earliest point possible.

Subsequently, the author propose to test the comprehension latency of two types of utterance pair. The difference in processing time is reported to how highly accessible the implicature of each utterance is, which possibly facilitate explicature derivation and in turn the whole interpretation process.

The author compares the ability of the Relevance Theory to capture this natual processing of communication with Levinson’s Generalised Implicature Model, testing the two on a Stereotipical Bridging Implicature towards a non Stereotypical one. RT seems to be the most capable to describe human inference process.

1. keeping a strong link between strategy planning and action would be enhanced by an embodiment of the actions;

2. specific connections of urban phenomena/constraints (like the easy of access of a certain place) cannot be seen from an “aerial” view of the city but only from the physical experience of moving through the place;

3. actual data/events at physical locations can be used to trigger the game interaction with a resulting higher grade of realistic appeal.

Title: Supporting collaborative problem solving of complex dynamic systems by coupling the relevance of the reasoning context to the learner’s interaction.

META DESCRIPTION:

Summary: the aim of this paper is to show how a new approach of guiding system is possible for those tasks for which does not exist a clear resolution model. I advocate for a new approach called cognitive coupling, that, instead of suggesting clear solution strategy, has the only purpose of keeping the reasoning context structured, thus increasing the relevance of the learner interaction and their outcomes. This system should be embedded into an Agent, which aim is to detect the user’s actions in the system and visualising the co-referenced of these in regard to the user chosen solving strategy. This system will be tested in an simulation game, Monopoly like, where different users have to experience the Land price hedonic regression model. [make evident that is a position paper for discussing the idea setup]

Introduction_

-Complex dynamic systems and collaborative problem solving.

  +Lack of co-referenced actions;

  +Lack of procedural thinking;

-Current limitations of guiding systems and interactions regulations.

-cognitive coupling may be the third way.

  +distributed cognition theory

-Pragmatic relevance and keeping the actions-strategy co-referenced.

-Examples of co-referenced action-strategy

  +inferring from spatial context;

-A possible implementation

  +Multi-Agent simulations

-Experimental Setup

-Conclusions

H. R. Ekbia and A. G. Maguitman. Modeling and Using Context (Proceedings of the conference CONTEXT 2001, Dundee, UK, July), volume 2116 of Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, chapter Context and Relevance: A Pragmatic Approach, pages 156–169. Springer, Berlin, 2001. [url]

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This article propose a pragmatic approach to the issues of context and relevance, where some foundamental assumptions of formal logic are still maintained at the theoretical level. Here the authors, usign some conceptualisations of Dewey, show that context has two components: background, which is spatial and temporal; and selective interest, which conditions the subjective matter of thinking.

Thinking for Dewey is a process of inquiry in which a confused, obscure, or conflicting situation is transformed into a determined one. For the authors, this can be achieved formulating a precise set of inference rules for mapping between actions and plans. Interaction with the environment would involve to detect and recognize the context explicitly and to revise the plans according to some reasoning scheme.

Logic is biased in embracing the contextual dependences outlined by Dewey, becaused the adherence to explicit representations is not fully characteristic of human behaviour:

1. Context, often, is not explicitly identifiable;

2. There are no sharp boundaries among contexts;

3. The logical aspects of thinking cannot be isolated from material considerations;

4. Behavior and context are jointly recognisable.

The pragmatic tradition highlights the action-oriented (actions also equals reasoning behavior) nature of intelligence. At the heart of intelligence lies the ability to find out what is relevant in any given situation, and to act accordingly. Pragmatic relevance, has mainly to do with “selecting the search space” rather than with the process itself.

Papert on Technocentrism:

I coined the word technocentrism from Piaget’s use of the word egocentrism. This does not imply that children are selfish, but simply means that when a child thinks, all questions are referred to the self, to the ego. Technocentrism is the fallacy of referring all questions to the technology.  In the proceedings of conferences on technology and education, there are questions like: Will technology have this or that effect? Will using computers to teach mathematics increase children’s arithmetic skills? Or will it encourage children to be lazy about adding numbers because calculators can do it? Will using word processors make children become more creative writers? Or will it lead to a loss of handwriting skills? Will computers increase children’s creativity? Or will they lead to mechanical, rote methods of thinking? Will the computer increase interpersonal skills? Or will it lead to isolation of children from one another?

D. Wilson and D. Sperber. The Handbook of Pragmatics, chapter Relevance Theory, pages 607–632. Blackwell, Oxford, 2004. [url]

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This article present the basic theoretical assumption of the relevance theory, developed by Sperber and Wilson. The relevance theory is based on the inferential model, where a communicator provides evidences of her/his intention to convey a certain meaning, which is inferred by the audience on the basis of the evidences provided. The goal of the inferential pragmatics is to explain how the hearer infers the speaker’s meaning on the basis of the evidences provided.

The central claim of the relevance theory is that the expectations of relevance raised by an utterance are precise enough, and predictable enough, to guide the hearer towards the speacker’s meaning. The aim is to explain in cognitively realistic terms what these expectations of relevance amount to, and how they might contribute to an empirically plausible amount of comprehension.

The authors extend this theory not only on the utterance level, but they port it to all the rest of the cognitive phenomena, like thoughts, memories and conclusions of inferences. The search for relevance is a basic feature of human cognition, which communicators may exploit.

An input is relevant to an individual when it connects with background information he has available to yield conclusions that matter to her/him. An imput is relevant when its processing in a context of available assumptions yields a positive cognitive effect: i.e., a positive conclusion. A contextual implication is a conlcusion deductible from the input and the context together, but from neither input and context alone.

Relevance is a matter of degree. Other things being equal, the more worthwile conclusions achieved by processing an input, the more relevant it will be. Other things being equal, the greater the processing effort required, the less relevant the input will be. Thus relevance may be assessed in terms of cognitive effects and processing effort.

Relevance theory treats the identification of explicit content as equally inferential, and equally guided by the communicative principle of Relevence, as the recovery of implicatures.