EMOTIONS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS - Modeling and Measuring The Affective Salience of The Mind

UNIVERSIT DEL SALENTO
Dottorato di ricerca in Scienze della mente e delle relazioni umane Teorie psicodinamiche dell'intersoggettivit Ciclo XXIV
EMOTIONS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS Modeling and Measuring the Affective Salience of the Mind
Candidato Marco Tont
Relatore Prof. Sergio Salvatore
A.A. 20112012
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 ConceptualAct 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 3.4.2 Results and discussion............................................................. 151
3.5 Study 3.................................................................................. 152

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

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

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
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
seems, the famous phrase by St. Augustne I know what tme is untl you ask me for a defniton about it, and then I cant 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 booksamazon.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
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
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 emotons functonal signifcance within a partcular social context.
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 (DAndrade, 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
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set),
reifcaton
(the
phenomenon
for
which
internal
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 multagent 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
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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
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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 Keffect 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 superordered 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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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 logicbased, 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 [...]
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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 Gdel'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
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town, he says that I'd like to think up and solve problems analogous to the one about the bridges of Knigsberg * 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 Andr 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 Knigsberg, 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.
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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
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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 nave 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.
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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 selfevident 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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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 logicbased 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 relatons 2. 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.
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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 Blancos 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 is the dreamwork proudly, (condensaton, an a-logical displacement, mechanism symbolic producing, transformaton, absence of negaton and tme). The principle of symmetry openly, almost 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
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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.
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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, antsymmetrical 3 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 objects 4 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.
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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: AB 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: BA 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
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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 causeeffect 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 cooccurrence 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).
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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 occurs 6. This idea is also supported in (Rayner, 1995) where is said: The implicaton in its 'ifthen' 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).
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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 greater 7. 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 f gures 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.
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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 everyones 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 aS and bS and cS, 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.
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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 AB (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
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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 know 8. 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 motherness. 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
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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 persons 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 Kafas book The castle (1926): Youre 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 youre as like as... He stopped, and then went on involuntarily, Youre 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 objects 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 .
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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 cant distnguish you. So I shall treat you as if you were one man and call you both Arthur, thats one of your names, yours, isnt it? he asked one of them. No, said the man, Im Jeremiah. It doesnt matter, said K. Ill 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 doesnt matter to me, only youre not to excuse yourselves by blaming each other, for me youre 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 youre 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
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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 difference 10. 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 logicwhich is manifested to a greater extent in the transferencethe 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.
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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 Hoffmansthals 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
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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 former 11. 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 knowledge 12), 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.
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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 Dedekinds 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! = 123...(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.
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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
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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 rules 15. 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
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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 mother 17 (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 process 18
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 Blancos 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
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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 FloydThe 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 Freuds terminology.
Figure 2.1 A photogram from "Pink FloydThe Wall" ( 1982 Turner Entertainment Co./Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc)
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.
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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
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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 objectselecton, 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 Blancos 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
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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 transmit 21. It is reasonable to think that knowledge, among the many others, could be part of all of these sets (see fgure 2.2).
Shameful things Knowledge
Nourishing things
Persecutory things
Figure 2.2 Afective categorial placement of "Knowledge" as a mental object.
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.
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Devaluing persons Teacher
Nourishing persons
Authoritarian persons
Figure 2.3 Afective categorial placement of "Teacher" as a mental object.
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 person 22. 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.
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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.
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A'
Figure 2.4 Graphical representation of the process of homogenization of any two objects in a set.
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.
Figure 2.5 Graphical representation of the process of generalization of an object A in the containing sets.
Another case is the displacement, which is a combinaton of homogenizaton and generalizaton, shown in fgure 2.6.
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Figure 2.6 Graphical representation of the process of displacement.
But clearly every element could belong to more than a bag of symmetry, as shown in fgure 2.7.
Figure 2.7 Belonging of an object A to more than one hierarchy classification, in terms of bags of symmetry.
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.
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FIgure 2.8 Belonging of the elements of a triad A R B to multiple hierarchies of sets.
In this f gure 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).
Figure 2.9 An example of the possible combinations of generalized objects and relation.
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
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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.
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Figure 2.10 An instance of relationship between objects: a father holding the daughter.
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).
Figure 2.11 Is it the same relationship existing between the dad and the daughter?
In this case the relaton and the two involved elements are somehow confictng, and a cognitve adjustment must be done in order to give
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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 things 25. 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.
Figure 2.12 A mysterious relationship.
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.
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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 devil 27. 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 sets 28. 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 mind28 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 Blancos 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 (pleasuredispleasure, excitementrelaxaton, intensifcatonde-intensifcaton). These are also the axis of the f rst 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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Blancos 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 interpreters 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 minds functoning that works (predominantly [...]) according to the symmetry principle. (p.125) Since emotons are consttutve of the most basic and generalized supersets, 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 mothers 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 womans 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: Couldnt 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 anyones 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 t me 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 aA, if AS then SA). When the emotons are added to the equaton it becomes clear that the object aA 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 goodness/pleasantness (or feld of experience in terms of unpleasantness), she/he is badness/
experiencing it in the same absolute way as she/he inhabits such a state of the mind in the f stages of her/his life (Salvatore & Freda, rst 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: aref(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 Keffect) from the ancient Greek term meaning beautful and good, is part of the Platos 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, ODoherty, 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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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 systems 1, 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).
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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 wellestablished 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 Holland 2 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.
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Create an empty populaton P' Repeat untl P' is full: Select two individuals from P based on some f tness 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
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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 number 3: Parent 1: 1234 5678 Sibling 1: 1234 4643 Parent 2: 9753 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.
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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 f nds 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:
A A1 A2
Figure 3.1 The hierarchies of set defining the nested type of an object A.
Every element in the set A is denoted with A', A'', A'''... (the elements made equal to A), for the set A 1 is denoted with A 1', A1'', A1'''... (the
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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''' 0 A2' 0 A2'' 0 A2'''... 0
1 0 1 0 0 0 (A equals itself and A'' displacement) A A' A'' A''' A1 ' A1''
A1''' 0 A1''' 0 A1'''
A2' 0 A2' 0 A2' 0
A2'' 0 A2'' 0 A2'' 0
A2'''... 0 A2'''... 0 A2'''... 0
1 1 1 1 0 0 (A equals the whole set homogenizaton) A A' A'' A''' A1 ' A1''
1 0 0 0 0 1 (A equals itself and A1'' displacement) A A' A'' A''' A1 ' A1''
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 (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 1 A1 0 A2 0 ... B 1 B1 1 B2 1 ... Type1 Type2 Type3 1 0 0
4 The coding is very nave and useful only for illustratve purposes.
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(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
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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).
ActorBrad A Pitt 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ActorActorOwner- OwnerGates 0 1 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 d Pers Pers Powerful Powerful Powerful PersonDevil 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 God 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 1
Christan Bill
Landlor Person on- on- Person- Person-Adam Bob Carl Boss 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 1
Rock Hudson Bale 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
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)
SymbolFruitB 1 1 1 1 Apple 0 1 1 0 FruitVegetable- Vegetable- Symbol- Symbol- Symbol- William Symbol0 0 1 0 Aubergine Newton Adam 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 Health 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 Tell 0 0 0 1 Computer 0 0 0 1 Banana Carrot 0 1 1 0
The table describing the possible relatons R has an even more complex structure:
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LefLefR 1 1 *1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 **1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ***1 LefLefActor Owner Person Person 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 1 Fruit 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0
Rightble 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 Symbol Hold 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 Owns Controls 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Powerful Right- Vegeta Right- Type- Type- Type1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 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,
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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
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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 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 memoryaware 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:identicalobject: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). dimension of an individual with the deep/unconscious dimension, in terms of emotonated objects, is
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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.
Figure 3.2 General structure of a classifier system. (From (Flake, 2000), p.367)
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
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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 f ltered 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 t me-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:identicalobject: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
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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) hardcoded 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).
Periodic
Complex
Fixed
Chaotc
Figure 3.3 Classification of systems, adapted from (Flake, 2000) p.244.
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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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 informatonaltering) 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.4546)
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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 wellestablished 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
Figure 3.4 The general structure of the ACT-R cognitive system.
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
(Taken from http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/about )
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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 ConceptualAct 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 triad 5 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).
Tr op hy
Hel met
R
Ri ng
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.
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2.2 ConceptualAct 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 individuals relaton to an environment at a given point in tme. A persons 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 reenact (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
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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 f aspect to consider is the developmental microdynamic of rst 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
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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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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.
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.
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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.
Figure 3.7 What kind of gaze is this?
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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)
Positive
Negative
Figure 3.8 Two possible afective general categorization of the gaze in figure 3.7.
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.
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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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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.
FIgure 4.1 "A consensual component model of emotion responding" (Mauss & Robinson, 2009)
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
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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, f ushing, 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; LauroGrotto, 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, t meless 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 4050s, 6070s, 8090s. 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.
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FIgure 4.2 The original FFMCT test.
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 f cor of correct classifcaton divided by the total number of stmuli:
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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 = P ( s s ' ) log 2
s , s'
P ( 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 s 1. 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 responses 2. 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 (= log 2 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 f corr value, the actual frequency of correct answers given by the subject. This is done using f corr 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 = log 2 S + f corr log 2 f corr +(1 f corr ) log 2
I max = log 2 S +log 2 f corr
(1 f corr ) S 1
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 :
= I I min I max I min
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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, 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 I max ( 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
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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 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 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 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
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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.
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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.283284, 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.
FIgure 4.3 The computer-based new implementation of the FFMCT.
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
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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.
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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 nave 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 subjects 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-ordered 5 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: goodbad, insignifcantsignifcant, irrelevantrelevant, not infuentalinfuental. 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: irrelevantrelevant and unpleasantpleasant. 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: irrelevantrelevant and unpleasantpleasant. 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.
FIgure 4.4 A screenshot of the EGO-ME test.
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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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 Pearsons 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 , 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 entropy 6), 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 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 value. The fgures 4.5b and c show the plots for two intermediate values of .
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Figure 4.5 Plots of four participants's ratings showing the increment in regularity of judgments as measured by . (a) Minimum value; (b-c) Intermediate values; (d) Maximum value.
Notce that the value of , being identcal to the explained variance of a PCA, by defniton can vary in the range 0.51 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 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: = d raw 1 d 1
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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 relevancypleasantness 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 Actve Beautful Good Weak Large Light Mobile Pleasant Fast
1 0.422 0.661 0.721 0.009 0.322 -0.013 0.363 0.853 -0.139
2 0.806 -0.032 0.202 -0.409 0.104 0.046 0.806 0.14 0.751
3 -0.051 0.416 -0.022 -0.447 0.386 0.86 0.039 -0.033 0.294
Table 4.1 Factors for semantic diferential "myself" (Varimax rotation).
IMMIGRANTS Actve Beautful Good Weak Large Light Mobile Pleasant Fast
1 -0.024 0.921 0.869 0.451 0.157 0.48 0.23 0.712 -0.156
2 0.828 0.036 0.18 -0.29 0.651 0.618 0.587 0.29 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 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 . The third study explores the relatonship between age and measured emotons, showing that the older partcipants exerted on average a signifcantly higher value of . 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 f fh 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 value (low emotonal thinking) will take more tme to respond, as opposed to the ones with a high 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 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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Figure 4.6 An example of the actual travelled distance for expressing one rating.
3.3.2 Results and discussion

The overall tme (the sum of all the single response tmes) is computed and correlated with the resultng value for all of the 71 subjects. The resultng value of the correlaton between overall tme and is r=-0.249 (p=0.018 < 0.05, one-tailed), confrming the expectaton that an increased (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 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 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 is r=0.240 (p=0.22 < 0.05,
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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 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 values), as opposed as when the emotons are less involved (lower 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 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 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 values.
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16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 0,40
Overall time [min]
0,50
0,60
0,70
0,80
0,90
1,00
1,10
Figure 4.6 Overall time of responding (Y) plotted against the value (X). Each dot represents a subject of the experiment. The red line represents the median value.
It is immediately apparent that the structure of the data series changes from the lef to the right hand of the median value of , represented by the red vertcal line. On the lef hand (lower 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, N low=36), no signifcant correlatons are present. For the values over the median (H high=35), i.e. those expressing high emotonal involvement, the results are: Correlaton between overall tme and : r=-0.434 (p=0.005 < 0.01, one-tailed). Correlaton between overall speed and : r=0.404 (p=0.003 < 0.01, one-tailed)
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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 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 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 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 t 3>t1 (sig. 0.06<0.05), being t 3 the tertle with the higher value. The three tertles averages (t 1=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 value. This result tends therefore to confrm the hypothesis that a general emotonal actvaton is refected in the 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 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 EGOME 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 .

The two groups are compared, for the average 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 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 computed from the EGO-ME test. The results of the correlatons between the absolute values of the factors and the EGO-ME value is in Table 4.3. Correl. with Abs(Factor 1) r=0.206* Myself p=0.042 one-tailed r=0.200* Immigrants p=0.047 one-tailed Abs(Factor 2) r=0.211* p=0.039 one-tailed r=0.273* p=0.011 one-tailed
Table 4.3
Abs(Factor 3) r=0.262* p=0.014 one-tailed n.a.
Coherently with the expectatons of this study, all the factors in absolute value correlated signifcantly with the 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 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 f homogenizing effects in the ancillary part of the nd 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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Myself fac1 Myself fac1 Myself fac2 Myself fac3 Pearson Correlation Sig. (1-tailed) Pearson Correlation Sig. (1-tailed) Pearson Correlation Sig. (1-tailed) Pearson Correlation Sig. (1-tailed) Pearson Correlation Sig. (1-tailed) Pearson Correlation Sig. (1-tailed) Pearson Correlation Sig. (1-tailed) Pearson Correlation Sig. (1-tailed) Pearson Correlation Sig. (1-tailed) Pearson Correlation Sig. (1-tailed) Pearson Correlation Sig. (1-tailed) Pearson Correlation Sig. (1-tailed) Pearson Correlation Sig. (1-tailed) Pearson Correlation Sig. (1-tailed) 0.035 0.422 0.017 0.461 0.394 0.010 0.416 0.006 0.216 0.106 0.224 0.098 0.002 0.495 -0.069 0.345 0.440 0.004 -0.037 0.415 0.201 0.120 0.056 0.374 1 1
Myself fac2
Myself fac3
Immigrants fac1 Immigrants fac2
Pleasantness (Pre)
Relevancy (pre)
1 0.244 0.076 -0.092 0.297 -0.144 0.201 -0.069 0.345 -0.113 0.256 0.210 0.110 -0.107 0.267 -0.142 0.204 -0.052 0.381 -0.177 0.151 0.031 0.430 -0.009 0.479 -0.206 0.114 -0.158 0.178 0.235 0.084 1 1 1 1 1
Low N=36
Immigrants fac1 Immigrants fac2 Pleasantness (Pre) Relevancy (pre) Myself fac1 Myself fac2 Myself fac3
1 -0.178 0.154 -0.113 0.258 0.261 0.065 -0.159 0.181 -0.137 0.216 0.373 0.014 0.272 0.057 0.347 0.021 -0.038 0.414 0.199 0.126 0.368 0.015 0.335 0.025 0.394 0.010 0.163 0.175 0.578 0.000 1 1 1 1 1
High N=35
Immigrants fac1 Immigrants fac2 Pleasantness (Pre) Relevancy (pre)
Table 4.4 Significant correlations (1-tailed) highlighted in gray.
As a frst overall evaluaton the difference between the groups composed by the low- and the high- subjects is straightorward. For the low- only one correlaton is present (between Myself_fac1 and Immigrants_fac1), while in the high- 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- 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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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 value. Such correlatons (excepted for one) are not present in the group with a lower 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 value cannot be detected because the semantc differentals are compiled afer the EGO-ME test. Therefore that single correlaton in the low- 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- 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- 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 is higher, and complementary that the responses are slower when 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 emotonmeasuring task. The study showed that for individual expressing a high arousal (in contrast to the individuals with a lower arousal) the measured index have a signifcantly different mean. In partcular the individuals experiencing a high arousal have a signifcantly higher emotonal index . 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 nonlinearity of the relatonship between the experienced emoton and the one measured through the index . 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 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 was high, and less extreme for lower values of . 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 the homogenizaton is detected through the correlatons between the diverse evaluatons gave by the subject. In partcular the homogenizaton for the high- 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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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 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 f study, these are all effects of the unconscious rst 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 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 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 was signifcantly higher. In the third study it has been shown that the age of the partcipants infuenced the average degree of . 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 logicalfoundatonal aspect requiring a more careful investgaton is the possible and alleged equivalence of tmeawareness, asymmetrizaton and causality (equivalence also in the
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negated fashion: tmeunawareness impedes asymmetry and causality; symmetry impedes tme-awareness and causality; causalityunawareness impedes tmeawareness and asymmetry). Another foundatonal aspect the defniton of which could open a further line of research is the classifcaton of objects in affectvelydefned 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 R 1 R2 and S are relatons, is it possible to conceive something like R 1 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 PleasantnessRelevancy 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 EGOME 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 (). 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 2 38 274 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 Italian P. Bersani R. Bindi R. Calderoli O. Diliberto G. Melandri L. Moratti European T. Blair G. Brown A. Merkel S. Royal N. Sarkozy M. Thatcher Extra-european M. Bachelet F. Castro H. Clinton M. Gandhi M. Gheddaf Lula Entertainers A. Angiolini M. Buy C. Desica G. Giannini T. Mammuccari E. S. Ricci A. Banderas G. Depardieu S. Marceau I. McKellen E. Thompson K. Winslet B. Afeck J. Aniston J. Foster A. Garcia M. Pfeiffer R. Redford Sportspersons S. Baldini A. Bargnani F. Pennetta F. Piccinini V. Vezzali F. Volandri F. Alonso V. Dedieu Y. Isinbayeva A. Mauresmo R. Nadal E. Zabel 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 stdev Alien -16.831 27.063 5.601 30.934 Ball 21.056 23.041 8.366 26.651 Bee -7.108 34.692 8.038 30.588 Carriage 15.789 22.013 6.484 25.612 Chandelier 15.667 25.572 3.714 28.536 Cigarettes -16.258 31.856 8.948 35.789 Circus 16.676 27.361 10.089 25.095 Clock 3.432 25.874 18.324 25.64 Fire 9.521 30.417 18.291 24.012 Flying saucer 6.469 24.15 10.986 26.556 Footprint -1.052 24.619 12.023 28.269 Fuel -11.775 20.532 4.38 28.966 Garden gnome 18.343 25.124 -1.606 29.928 Incubator -2.582 31.034 28.141 19.992 Judge -8.85 23.937 12.854 26.313 King 5.493 24.108 3.671 24.151 Knot 1.122 26.606 9.685 27.166 Lifebuoy 11.568 23.694 15.765 25.186 Lighter -7.122 25.637 -0.122 26.638 Man 15.671 21.349 7.812 25.803 Mantle -14.728 26.171 -6.718 28.872 Mask -7.324 30.27 6.864 28.257 Medicines -21.549 20.646 22.418 24.379 Mobile phone 10.258 24.011 17.723 23.871 Nails 16.178 22.98 6.319 26 Nose 2.798 22.64 0.066 24.47 Parachute 15.836 23.557 12.352 25.078 Pencil 18.376 21.178 12.972 26.356 Police 7.789 23.196 19.451 22.493 Scaffolding -12.028 27.466 6.268 28.222 Stain -3.601 28.324 -4.967 25.962 Tongue -18.131 27.731 -3.239 28.696 Tooth 1.563 29.025 7.723 25.844 Train 10.662 27.348 17.723 23.379 Umbrella -3.695 28.481 4.995 28.018 Uniform 14.3 23.782 5.117 27.307 Wall -8.272 24.407 4.77 26.948 Wheel 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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EMOTIONS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS - Modeling and Measuring The Affective Salience of The Mind

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UNIVERSIT DEL SALENTO

Candidato Marco Tont

Relatore Prof. Sergio Salvatore

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

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

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

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

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

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

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

Chapter 1 Formalites on Formal Systems

Chapter 1 Formalities on Formal Systems

1. Formal analysis of logical systems

1.1 The definition of the town

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

Chapter 1 Formalites on Formal Systems

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

1.2 Information in formal systems

Chapter 1 Formalites on Formal Systems

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

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

Chapter 1 Formalites on Formal Systems

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

Chapter 1 Formalites on Formal Systems

3. Conservation of information in formal systems

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

Chapter 2 The Logic of the Unconscious

Chapter 2 The Logic of the Unconscious

1. Logic, symmetry and rational thought

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

Chapter 2 The Logic of the Unconscious

1.1 Asymmetry and the unconscious functioning of the mind

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

Chapter 2 The Logic of the Unconscious

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

Chapter 2 The Logic of the Unconscious

1.2 Symmetrization, abductive relations and timelessness

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

Chapter 2 The Logic of the Unconscious

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

Chapter 2 The Logic of the Unconscious

2. Homogenization and generalization

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

Chapter 2 The Logic of the Unconscious

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

Chapter 2 The Logic of the Unconscious

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

Chapter 2 The Logic of the Unconscious

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

Chapter 2 The Logic of the Unconscious

2.1 Dynamic interplay of symmetrical and asymmetrical thinking

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

Chapter 2 The Logic of the Unconscious

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton

. It is possible to describe this

Chapter 2 The Logic of the Unconscious

Marco Tont Emotons and the Unconscious Doctoral dissertaton