In class today, we discussed a number of interesting things. Some of the main ideas were: 

1. Sigularization, the difference between 'a' and 'the'
2. Shared Intention, someone has a goal of shared attention
3. Attention, what should the rules and contraints be for robotic attending
4. Motivation, why should the robot want to attend on thing over another

I will start with the singularization because it is the freshest in mind. We discussed attaching some narrative to an element of the world. First it is conceived of as the category of thing, the general thing, but once a story is attributed to it, it gains some emotional weight. We gave examples of some text seeming obscure until one realizes it is a Borges, or some painting seeming childish until we know it is a Picasso, and this is in all domains. The prior knowledge or narrative associated with elements in the world affect conceptualization of that object. This goes with linguistics as well as perceptual input. My addition to this is that this is two directional narrative quality, namely it can be something that has happened and is recalled, or it can be a potential, something to happen in the future, some affordance the entity offers. Either way, this produces some significance to the item. The distinction between 'a' and 'the' in this situation confused me at first. Because, as I understand Dr. Brandt's determiner theory, 'a' is a general category and directs attention to, and 'the' is a specific instance and directs attentions from. So, 'the' is making the singularization and making something special, so why is it that we say, 'Oh, this is a Picasso, now I understand.' And then the solution became clear to me, it is because we are unsingularizing this piece by bringing it to the general level, the categorical level, which already has some narrative telling us that anything this guy paints is 'good.' Or rather, we are switching categorical levels, because upon seeing it, it was first in the category of painting, then abstract, then...bad abstract. More and more singular, until...wait the title says picaso. Now, it attaches to the picasso category which has motivation and historical significance for the pieces selection here. We can now see the intention behind the actions. They are not just unskilled cubes of paint, but there is a whole theory and furthermore a whole artistic movement contained within the intention of these lines, and this is worth admiration.

After more contemplation, I have more thoughts on the 'a' and 'the' distinction. I thought I had it clear which meant what, but then I couldn't help but think I may have the 'to' and 'from' in reverse, but then I started thinking maybe it would be easier to think about it in terms of more or less fine grained. A less fine grained, it is categorical, contains broad information abou this thing built up from many situations. It is highly multi-modal becuase of these situations carried with it different sensory experiences. 'The' is more fine grained, it seems to be once instance, one simulation of a category. (Or a simulation of a simulator from Barsalou's theory). Furthermore, this and that are even more fine grained. You can have 'a' bike, it is 'a' prototypical bike, 'the' bike in the other room, a more fine grained bike, or 'this' bike within our view.

Ideal and real goal state representations: The ideal state is what one would like to achive, the goal state, and the real is the physical outcome at the current step towards achieving that goal. We noted that a time line must be held in view with the ideal at the end of it, and the real must change at each step of the way. If the representation of hte real is currently not lining up with the ideal, we must change the action routine in order to assure achieving the goal state.

We also discussed shared intention. With the example of a bike being pointed at to signfify a certain unwanted person's preson at an establishment. As a result of the pointing and discovery, the place is avoided. This pointing is loaded with a prior narrative and there is an intention behind the point, thus this action has been termed shared intention as opposed to shared attention. This is relating to the narrative history and the special significance given to some object in the world. This bike is being made specific, first off through singling it out by pointing, and next triggering the emotional memory of why this bike is worth pointing at in this particular situation. The pointer must also know that the pointee has the same information as he does so the pointee will fully understand the full intention of the point. The point seems to change the mode of the pointees attention, letting him know ' this is no longer truth-value mode of perception, do not look at the bike for face value, search deeper' as a result of this the pointee would then mentally simulate the past and future, searching for applicable narrative scenario's. Is it that my colleague wishes to steal this bike and skip town? No, that is not plausible we are going to study. Is it something in the past, is it the owner of this bike, etc... The past and future is simulation and the different narrative acts that may be relevant are considered in this intentional way, until the correct story is aligned and the two participants have the same conceptualization of the bike, and also some emotional evaluation of the bike based on this association. As a result, the action routine is changed. The ideal goal of reaching the library has been irreperably damaged, so instead, the two will choose an alternate action that will yield a similar goal state, maybe going to the cafe to read instead, avoiding the mess with the unwanted companion.

More on attention later, but the basic gist was to let the machine randomly pick which object to gaze at, but have a higher order fucntion deciding which object to concentrate on for an extended period of time, which object to conduct a fine grained analysis. We discussed the possibility of having the objects light up and when the agent gazed at them he charged, but they gradually got dimmer, providing less charge. There would be a meter with three states, alarm, ok, and good.