AN ANALYSIS OF CONNECTIONS

Are connections a Linguistic phenomenon - (connectors like ‘is used for’, ‘is made up of’, ‘is a part of’ etc. make connections)? But even thoughts are connected to each other. So does that mean that thoughts exist in the form of language? Mere triggering of a mental faculty like, say, memory is also a thought - you remember something from something. This (thought) isn’t Linguistic. Or is connectionism a sensory-perception-based phenomenon? Similar LOOKING, SOUNDING, TASTING, FEELING, SMELLING entities. Connectionism exists in what forms? Sensory perception-based - these are based on sensory faculties and memory. E.g. One spots the same color patch on two shirts. One sees the first shirt, the patch goes in memory, one then sees the second shirt, sees the patch on it and there is a match from memory.. Language - Commonsense - these are every-day life, worldly connections we experience. E.g. - Car and Petrol. Cloud and rain. These are “cognitive” in nature. We will come to this point soon. Scientific - these are the universal laws. E.g. - sides of a right angled triangle connected by the Pythagoras theorem. Force and Torque. They exist in real. Sensory connections - Sensory connections can primarily be of the commonality/similarity type. That is, there is commonality/similarity in the 2 connected entities. For example, you see 2 shirts with the same/common symbol on them. That’s the connection between the 2 shirts. This is entirely vision-based (and of course also memory based). But these can advance to more complex types involving language too (and thus involving the semantics of the entities involved) like say - In shirt1, a solid shape is surrounded by its similar-shaped border (say, circle) and in shirt2 there is a solid square surrounded by its square border. This is a linguistic connection - more advanced than mere sensorily-spotted direct/absolute commonalities. Language-based - Scientific connections - Is connection a purely cognitive phenomenon? That is, is it so that only the “thought of a car” and the “thought of petrol” are connected? And that there is no connection between car and petrol per se? Everything is not in the mind. For example, when we say F=ma, it is not so that the thought of a force is connected to the thought of mass and that of acceleration by this relation. This relation between the concepts exists in the real absolute world. Commonsense-based - The general commonsense connections in the everyday world (like Cloud-rain, bat-cricket) are cognitive. In cognitive connections the semantics of the entities (or their webs of meaning) IN THE MIND, are connected to each other, via a thought. (Yes, the exception to this is physical connections existing between entities and concepts in the real world). They are expressible in language. That is why, if two entities exist as parts of a meaningful sentence, then there has to be a/that connection between them. When someone says - car “runs on” petrol, the semantics of car-knowledge and the semantics of petrol-knowledge are intertwined. The web of meaning of car contains links like - ‘runs’ -- ‘engine works’ --- etc. And the web of meaning of petrol contains links like - ‘fuel’ -- ‘powers engines’ -- etc. The moment there is the same entity in the 2 webs, the 2 original entities get LOCKED in a connection. Here, ‘engine works’ and ‘powers engines’ are the same. Hence ‘car ‘ and ‘petrol’ get connected as the above - ‘car’ “runs on” ‘petrol’. The reason why a pen and a cloud are “not connected” is because their webs of meaning don't overlap anywhere, non-trivially, when stretched commonsensically. (This recent discussion motivates us to think that thoughts themselves are manipulations of sensory data, which can later be expressed in language). Experiencing connections - As far as experiencing connections between entities in reality goes, there are again the same 2 types - a) we can again either have sensory data of the literal/actual connection or b) have cognitive experience (knowledge) of the connection. Let's take the first case. Suppose two unequal masses are hung on the 2 sides of a simple pulley with a string, we can actually SEE that the motion of the lighter mass upwards is CONNECTED TO that of the heavier mass downwards. But in other cases like say - car and petrol, you can't SEE the exhaustion of the petrol literally leading to the motion of the car ahead. These connections are experienced cognitively since we just KNOW that the fuel indicator level on the dashboard screen decreasing as the car moves ahead, is the connection. There is no sensory perception of the connection per se, but cognitive connections of the indicators related to the entities. Another cognitive (non-sensory, but knowledge-based) connection in the same case could be ‘the petrol gun at the station being inserted into and taken out of the fuel tank’ and ‘the car zooming ahead after that’. The simplest crudest way to see what a connection (between, say, A and B) is, is that you “talk about” A and you “talk about” B; if these discourses contain something common which is non-trivial, then A and B are connected. (Hobbs - Coherence and Coreference). But why is ‘the same thing being spotted in the discourses about A and B’, special? One philosophical reason for it might be that the world is more different than the same. If I randomly pick up 2 things in the world, the chance of them being different is much more than they being the same. Similarity is rarer than difference. Hence we are attuned to light up when we see the same thing again, in the course of living in general. If the world was full of similar things with just a few exceptions, we would be discussing ‘DISCONNECTIONS’ here analogously rather than connections. There is another question - why do we say that A and B are connected when both of them are connected to the same thing (i.e. their discourses contain something matching)? The point is that the commonality in the discourses, say, X is such that X is representative of A (since it is a property of A) and X is representative of B (since it is a property of B). Hence X “has an A in it” (or an essence of A in it) and X “has a B in it” (or the essence of B in it). Hence the REPRESENTATIVES (what they stand for) of 2 things are the same. Hence those original things are “SIMILAR”/”CONNECTED” (what we call as). Every connection can be expressed in the form of some cause-effect relationship, both ways, between the entities. One of these two appeals more to commonsense. Examples - Pipe-liquids : a) Because of pipes, liquids flow in a channel. b) Because liquids have to flow, pipes are built. Bat-ball : a) Because the bat hits, the ball travels. b) because the ball hits, the bat makes a sound. Car-Petrol : a) Because of petrol, cars run. b) Because of cars, petrol is manufactured. Gandhi-freedom : a) because of Gandhi, India got freedom b) because India got freedom, Gandhi became famous This can be also seen as - Because of one property of A, a property of B is seen. And vice versa. This also obviously implies that change in some property of A brings about a change in a property of B, and vice versa. But the word ‘because’ in both the cases is key. This shows a two-way CAUSAL relationship between properties of the 2 connected entities. In the above examples, the first way appeals more to commonsense. The second seems like a less commonly thought-of and force-fitted connection. If there are entities belonging to the classes of A and B, most often, they are also analogously connected. For example, car (truck) - petrol (diesel). There is another way of looking at these connections. One of the 2 entities “completely submits itself as a whole” in the relation between the 2 entities. The other entity is partially involved. This is a bit subtle. Lets see the above examples - All of the liquid is inside a pipe. All of the pipe may not have the liquid. Ball as whole travels after being hit by a part of the bat. All of the petrol is inside the car. All of Gandhi was used for freedom. Freedom struggle contains many leaders like Gandhi. In the above sense, one of the 2 entities is a “part of” of the other. Connections can be classified on the basis of whether intraneous or extraneous knowledge is required to understand/spot the connection between the 2 entities. When I say that liquid and pipes are connected by the relation that “liquids flow through pipes”, I do not need to know anything outside this - liquid and pipe. This is a complete world in itself as far as the connection between the entities goes. But to understand the connection between bat and ball, I need to necessarily know cricket, which is extraneous to the world of just bat and ball as 2 entities. For understanding the connection between car and petrol, the world of just petrol and car i.e. intraneous knowledge, is sufficient. For Gandhi and freedom, there is more complete knowledge of the freedom movement/struggle that one knows which comes along to understand this relation. A better name could have been “open world” and “closed world” connections. Now we move onto a small yet effective theory about making connections in real-time and in live. Here is the one-liner essence of it : Whenever we come across anything, 2 ‘webs of meaning’ about it are activated in the mind. One of them is a web of specific knowledge - this pertains to the specifics of that particular specific entity we are observing. For example, suppose I see a police officer. The specific knowledge web of him will contain the specific details about that very police officer I am seeing. So it could include his badge, his cap, his physique, his facial expression etc. This web is activated if you are “looking closely” at something - making detailed observations. The other web of meaning is the web of commonsense general knowledge about police officers in general. This could include things like say - passing the Indian Police Service exam, their horrible current working conditions in police stations, most of them in India are corrupt etc. This web is more reflective in nature as compared to the earlier one. As we scan the scene around us, these 2 webs of different entities (the earlier ones of which stay in cache memory), are held in memory together - they stay alive for some time and fade with time to avoid jamming of signals (overcrowding). If there are common items in these activated webs, they happen to be the sources of connections we make amongst the different entities or parts of a scene. These could be remarks, comments, questions etc. about the scene. So constantly, while navigating reality, there are these webs switched on and off in “subconscious memory” of the entities having come across. For example, after reading the name of the young police officer on the badge, you might come up with a remark like - “oh, so people of so and so community (which is a part of the specific knowledge web of the name on the badge) have also started passing the Indian Police Service exam (which is a part of the web of general commonsense knowledge about the police officer) these days!” Lastly, here is an off-beat and subtle point. Everything in this world - entity or concept - has some “operational video” associated with it. Consider anything - say, a Professor. A Professor teaches a class. A rabbit digs burrows in the ground. A computer runs programs. A phone sends signals. A cake is made and eaten. There is nothing which just comes and goes in flash - yes, there are things which occur momentarily, (like say a moment of anxiety), but there are longer-term versions of these things also. A computer can display rapidly changing values of something and hence one might say that a given value appears just for half a second and is then gone forever. But note that the concept here is of the ‘display of something by a computer’ in general - and that has longer-term versions in other cases also. So there's this operational video associated with EVERYTHING in this world. If some other thing is seen in such a “video” of X, then that thing happens to be CONNECTED to X. As a Professor is teaching, he holds a chalk - so Professor-chalk is a connection. A cake is eaten and goes into the stomach - so cake-stomach is a connection. So on and so forth.