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Cognitive catastrophes and their associated questions?


Now as the Ultimate Cognitive Strange Attractor (Part #4)

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Catastrophes? Questions can be compared to "cognitive catastrophes" through the existential disruption with which they are associated. As separately argued (Cognitive Feel for Cognitive Catastrophes: Question Conformality, 2006), a sense of the characteristics of such cognitive feel for discontinuity or disharmony may be obtained from personal recollection of the joy (or agony) occasioned by the following common WH-questions:

  • When: When will he/she telephone? When will we have a child? When will I have a relationship? -- When am I authentic / real / sincere? -- When is the discontinuity apparent?
  • Where: Where will I get a job? Where will I find shelter / food / help / security? Where can I get a drink / "fix"? -- Where am I at home? -- Where is the discontinuity apparent?
  • Which: Which object should I purchase? Which partner should I choose? Which job should I accept? Which restaurant / party / cafe should we go to? -- Which person am I ? -- Which approach mitigates the discontinuity?
  • How: How should I achieve my goal? How should I protect myself? How should I express myself? -- How am I? -- How can the discontinuity be handled and navigated?
  • What: What does it mean? What to do? What to say? What to believe? -- What am I? What are you? -- What is the discontinuity evoking the question?
  • Who: Who to contact? Who to trust? Who is coming? Who is going to leave? -- Who am I? Who are you? -- Who engendered the discontinuity evoking the question?
  • Why: Why am I doing this? Why did I do that? Why do I want this? Why did this happen to me? -- Why am I (alive)? -- Why is a discontinuity apparent?

The Who and What variants notably reflect the self-reflexive challenge to the objective certainty assumed in the typically external focus of Which and How. The latter readily assume Who and What to be knowns in any decision-making context -- ignoring (existential) uncertainties potentially addressed by Who and What.

Semiophysics: Understood as catastrophes, there is a case for exploring the sense in which they may correspond to the 7 so-called "elementary catastrophes" of catastrophe theory, as elaborated by René Thom (Structural Stability and Morphogenesis, 1972). The possibility was explored separately (Conformality of 7 WH-questions to 7 Elementary Catastrophes: an exploration of potential psychosocial implications, 2006) and gave rise to the following table.

Thom's later work highlighted the possibility of "semiophysics" as a general theory of intelligibility (Semiophysics: a sketch, 1990; Jean Petitot, La Semiophysic: del a physique qualitative aux sciences cognitives, 1994; Peeter Müürsepp, Semiophysics as a Theoretical Basis for Scientific Creativity, 1998; F.T. Arecchi, Complexity and emergence of meaning: toward a semiophysics, 2001)

WH-questions in relation to the "elementary catastrophes"of catastrophe theory
(adapted from René Thom, with addition of tentative cognitive correspondence to WH-questions)

Singularities
"catastrophes"

Organizing
centres

Physical examples
(substantives)

Dynamics

 

Archetypal morphologies

WH-questions

Destructive

Constructive

Question

Property

Fold

V=x3

 Edge, end; refraction of sunlight by raindrops to form a rainbow

Being

Ending

Beginning

 When
 Time

Cusp

V=x4

 Fault; geological fault; transitions from flight to fight, love to hate, and anxiety to calm in man and animals

Becoming

 

Capturing, Separating, Breaking

Engender, Uniting, Becoming

Where Location

Swallowtail

V=x5

 Slit, crack; behavior patterns in some human nervous disorders; structural stability and buckling

Agitate

Rejecting, Tearing, Splitting

Crossing, Knitting

Which
(Whether)		 Distinction

Butterfly

V=x6

 Pocket, shell; structural stability and buckling

Give

Sending, Scaling, Exfoliating

Receiving, Giving

How Dynamic

Hyperbolic umbilic

V=x3+y3

 Arch; collapse of bridges; development of sonar devices

Cresting wave

Collapsing, Breaking (wave), Breaking down

Covering

 What Typology, Taxonomy
Nomenclature

Elliptic umbilic

V=x3-3xy2

 Needle, hair; flow of fluids

Penetrate

Piercing

Filling, Annihilating

Who
Whom
Whose		 Identity, Nomenklatura,
Authenticity

Parabolic umbilic

V=x2y+y4

 Fountain, mushroom, mouth; atmospheric fronts; problems in the field of linguistics; elastic stability

Eject

Lancing, Pinching

Linking, Opening

 Why
Wherefore		 Reason,
Symbolism,
Auspiciousness
Value
Aesthetic

Variety of questions: Clearly both the number of "WH-questions" and their association with catastrophes could be challenged. The association does however suggest a means of clarifying the distinctions between the questions. The number cited seems to vary in the literature. The Wikipedia entryolley on the Five Ws, adds a single "H", but offers an extensive discussion (with valuable historical references) which could extend or limit the array. It could be argued that the distinctions are subject to the strictures of the much-cited paper of George Miller (The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: some limits on our capacity for processing information, Psychological Review, 1956). Identification of key questions could extend to criminal investigation and intelligence gathering.

Useful indications are offered by the following contrasts:

Arguments favouring 5 Ws (with an H) tend to conflate "what" and "which" from the array of 6 Ws (with an H).

Inappropriate variety? This argument, as with previous discussion, therefore focuses on 7 WH-questions with the potential implication that omission of any one of them may be indicative of a degree of questioning inadequacy in relation to the experience of "now". For example, any tendency to omit "which", notably by journalists, would be indicative of a failure to address a fundamental challenge of decision-makers confronted by a variety of options (elicited and distinguished by "what?").

The argument can be developed through considering how the consequence of intelligence gathering (of relevance to "now") may be variously distorted by omission of one (or more) of the WH-questions in the array. More problematic, what is the consequence of deliberately designing one (or more) questions "off the table", as variously explored separately (Lipoproblems: Developing a Strategy Omitting a Key Problem, 2009; Strategic Implications of 12 Unasked Questions in Response to Disaster, 2013; Systematic Gerrymandering of Declared Threats and Legality of Response, 2013).

The issue can be explored from a cybernetic perspective through the following question: what is the requisite variety of questions to sustain a meaningful sense of "now"? With respect to the viability of any whole. this could be framed as the variety required to avoid some form of "cognitive paraplegia".

The Teaching of Learning Center of the University of Nevada notes that: Research on the questions teachers ask shows that about 60 percent require only recall of facts, 20 percent require students to think, and 20 percent are procedural in nature (Question Types). In providing guidance for interviews, the Student Success Center of the Western Student Services of Canada distinguishes: behaviour-based questions, situational/hypothetical questions, skill-testing questions, problem-solving questions, case based interviews, traditional questions, and illegal questions (Types of Questions). A communications training website asks: Do You Ask a Variety of Questions or the Same Old Ones?. Irene Koshik explores how questioning may be essentially rhetorical, designed to make assertions rather than elicit new information ( WH-questions used as challenges, Discourse Studies).

Of particular interest is the possibility that there are other forms of WH-question considered significant in other languages and cultures -- beyond the set of seven noted above (L. L.-S. Cheng, On the Typology of WH-Questions, 1991; Gabriela Soare, A Cross-linguistic Typology of Question Formation and the Antisymmetry Hypothesis, Generative Grammar in Geneva, 2007). What is the consequence of neglecting them in discourse intended to be of global import? Unfortunately the extensive literature has a formal preoccupation and is only incidentally concerned, if at all, with any unusual experiential relevance of such questions.

Expressed otherwise, how might a much larger array of questioning modalities be "collapsed" into an array of a particular size (such as 7, plus or minus 2) -- or "expanded" to a larger array? What then is the consequence of the loss of the variety inherent in the larger array, or its associated loss of the focus provided by a smaller set? Such questions suggest that any array of WH-questions might be fruitfully and self-reflexively applied to its own elaboration. Can it be said that new varieties of question have been discovered, of a kind implying cognitive processes ignored in English -- questions with strategic implications in the moment?

Answers as assumptions: Another approach might be to consider how the condition of "now" could be framed by unasked questions, namely by answers implied or assumed, rendering questioning unnecessary and inappropriate. This has notably been considered in terms of Max Weber's vision of an "iron cage" of rationalization, and Michel Foucault's carceral archipelago. This too might have cultural implications. These are usefully suggested by languages which have relatively few words to distinguish those colours considered quite distinct otherwise -- through their names in other languages. What kinds of answers are considered unquestionable? Assumed answers -- to who, when, where, what, which, why and how -- then effectively provide a cognitive container rigidly defining aspects of "now". What ("iron") containers go unchallenged by questions, since "now" is then an effectively "frozen" category -- and possibly then of wider concern (Framing the Global Future by Ignoring Alternatives: unfreezing categories as a vital necessity, 2009)?

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