Consciousness, Freedom and Language

1. Consciousness, Freedom and Language Leopold in Waiting The research has been supported in part by the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research for the years 2006-2007 (No: 18520389) by The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science

2. Purposes • Description of Game-Theoretic Approach to Consciousness • Ontological homology, by which I mean that we may witness a horde of structural parallelisms among the three processes and/or entities

3. Consciousness, Freedom and Language • Our minds are a hierarchy of sets of processing gadgets, which are essentially identifiable and finite. • Thus, consciousness is a mental process that is brought about by some activation of a specifiable portions of the hierarchy. • Freedom is also defined by the range of behaviors of mental gadgets that are specifiable and finite. Hence, freedom is restricted in nature, and in the same vein, freedom evolves if the number of mental processing gadgets increases or if the constitution of the hierarchy is changed somehow. • Language is a system or a hierarchy of gadgets that defines the set of grammatical outputs. • Crucially the outputs of the system of the mind is a felicitous output from the system. And the felicitous output is identified and evaluated by game-theoretic pay-off relations. • Only due to the shortness of the time for presentation I will delineate the linguistic systems of the phonology of Japanese and of the construal of multi-clausal relations.

4. Assumptions • The theoretical model of mind internalizes hierarchically organized computational gadgets that give more than one mental strategy • The outputs of the system are states of equilibria among the computational strategies • The processes of consciousness, freedom and language are games among these gadgets

5. Structure of the Presentation • Definition of the Game-Theoretic Approach to Phonology: Strategies, Society of Mind, Pay-Off Matrices • Game-Theoretic Reinterpretation of High Vowel Devoicing in Japanese • Game-Theoretic Reinterpretation of Narrative When Clauses • Game-Theoretic Interpretation of Human Behavior (?)

6. Relevant Data • devoicing of vowels in [] “low” [] “east” (*[])[g], [] • Independent when clauses#I read the book. When I was ill.I was washing the dishes. When in came the cat. • Playing … with Blocks

7. Research Scheme • Society of Mind (Cf. Minsky 1988)The theoretical model of consciousness internalizes hierarchically organized computational gadgets that give more than one strategy. The outputs of the system are states of equilibria among the strategies, or computational gadgets.

8. Assumptions on Computational Gadgets • Mental states emerge out of the interactions of strategies of computational gadgets. • Computational gadgets are composed of smaller agents (gadgets) that cannot plan strategies. • Strategies of a computational gadget are selected and applied so as to reach equilibria with those of other gadgets.

9. Major Elements of the Society of Mind • Several identifiable sets of processing gadgets in what is called S-Society • K-Society (from K(nowledge) line)In the lexicon, restrictions on underlying representations are applied to derived representations (Cf. Kiparsky (1982, 1985))

10. S- and K-Societies of Mind • Overall Architecture of the Society of Phonological Mind Cognitive Effect S-Society K-Society (Spreading of Features) (Structure Preservation)

11. S- and K-Societies (2) • (the original idea comes from Marvin Minsky) • S-Society: society of original agents • K-Society: society of agents that memorize any cognitively significant information • S-Society maps out a set of strategies of the PPGs and the set is sent to the K-Society to seek verification of the correspondence with underlying (lexical) representations.

12. Principles of Pay-Off Calculation • Pay-Off for gadgets • Anchoring on the temporal elements in feature-geometric representations in the sense of Sagey (1986) • Application of Unmarked Strategies: [+1] • Non-Application of (Un-)marked Strategies: [Ø] • Application of Marked Strategies: [–1] • Gadgets of Higher Order: [+/–2 or more]

13. The Notion of Equilibria among Articulatory Gadgets The notion “states of equilibria among articulatory gadgets” is directly captured by the total sum of the values that these gadgets achieved. The higher the total sum in the society, the larger the value of the felicity of the linked gadgets.

14. Symbols • ☺ (Smile Sign) the combined strategies that are felicitous, where we find the equilibria • ¶ (Paragraph Sign) the designated strategies actually executed

15. High Vowel Devoicing in Japanese • Standard Japanese[] “low” [] (*[]) • A Variety of Tohoku Dialect in Japanese[] “low” [] “east” (*[]) • Devoicing of high vowelsIn the environment “[–voiced]___[–voiced]” (cf. Vance (1987))

16. Payoff Matrix for *[] in Standard Japanese

17. Payoff Matrix for [] in Tohoku Dialect

18. Canonical and Narrative When Clauses • Relevant Data a. I read the book when I was ill in hospital. (CWC) b. Jane was doing the dishes when in came the dog. (NWC) • c. #I read the book. When I was ill in hospital. d. Jane was doing the dishes. When in came the dog.

19. A Game-Theoretic Assumption • We assume that the sequentiality of NWCs is an iconic idiosyncrasy of the English conjunction when. In Game-Theoretic terms, a higher payoff is assigned to the combination of the strategies of the Grammatical Processing Gadgets that provide the semantic and syntactic linking of clauses where sentences with past progressives precede those that describe accomplishments.

20. An Observation on Two-Sentence Discourses Crucially, at the discourse level, change of the order of simple-past and past-progressive sentences does not incur any drastic change in the description of the situation and the course of events: a. Jane was patrolling the neighborhood. She noticed a car parked in an alley. b. Jane noticed a car parked in an alley. She was patrolling the neighborhood. ter Meulen (2000:152)

21. Short Discourses with Two Consecutive Simple Past Forms a. Jane turned the corner. She noticed a car parked in an alley. b. Jane noticed a car parked in an alley. She turned the corner.The development of the events depicted in (a) is reversed in the discourse in (b).

22. Assumptions on the Representation of Aspectuality • Alignment of Temporal Elements in Five Event Types (from Jackendoff (1987:398-399)) • a. Point Event: The light flashed. [P] • b. Achievement: Bill arrived. [R P] • c. Inceptive Event: Bill left. [P R] • d. Processes: Bill ran around. [R] • e. Progressive Forms: Bill was running around. [R P R] We interpret the stipulations on the alignment of temporal elements above to be strategies given by GPGs that generate conceptual structures.

23. Grammatical Processing Gadget (Narrative) R → R P R, where the P stands for the (end-) point of the relevant event Jane was patrolling the neighborhood > RPR She noticed a car parked in an alley > P The temporal elements are appropriately anchored on the template [RPR]

24. Payoff Matrix for Progressives with Point Events (Jane was patrolling the neighborhood. She noticed a car parked in an alley)

25. Payoff Matrix for Jane was patrolling the neighborhood when Bill ran around

26. Conclusive Remarks The framework of phonology laid out in this presentation assumes a set of phonological processing gadgets, whose operations are stipulated individually. In our framework the number of outputs from phonology is in principle specifiable: the whole set of possible outputs CAN be evaluated, and the whole theoretical system is verifiable. The possibility of computational implementation is guaranteed by the stipulation to the effect that the phonological processing gadgets (PPGs) can only be either ON or OFF. As for the possibilities of our hypothesis in other fields of inquiry, I may refer to my paper (2007), which tries to apply the reanalysis to the syntax-semantics interface of natural language.

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