Abstract
The term awareness has become one of the core concepts in human (computer-) interaction. By awareness we usually try to describe a human’s capability of perception and the cognitive effort related to an apperception task as well as similar abilities of a computer system to act sensitively with respect to context. But what does it mean to be aware in or of some context? Are not all things assembled in a system affected by being in that system—being aware of it or not? What does it take to be aware and what are the consequences of being not aware? This article discusses recent paradigms of computer science in the context of philosophy of mind, psychology of perception and sociology to shed light on awareness, context, perception and affection. The conclusion that is drawn is that any observation is inherently predetermined by our model of the world: the meaning of data we collect is determined by the model assumptions under which the observer is running.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Explore related subjects
Discover the latest articles and news from researchers in related subjects, suggested using machine learning.Notes
Compared to a kid’s three wheeler, a modern racing bike bicycle appears to be a very efficient method for locomotion. But first, a bike requires the rider to balance and second, removing one wheel from the rear axle of a three-wheeler does not make a racing bicycle from it.
Speaking of affective behaviour already, it is worth pointing out that such “basic emotions” as sadness or disgust are not at all “basic”. What is felt as being sad, is an event, like, e.g. a loss, and its interpretation and evaluation with respect to a self’s self-understanding; see Sects. 3.2 and 4.
Personal communication with the German Air Traffic Management Organisation. See also ATM and HCI related research in organisational psychology at the University of Dortmund. Hudlicka and McNeese (2002) describe a similar domain (air fighter pilots) and assessment of affective and belief states for adaptive interfaces.
Heidegger’s often cited “Sein und Zeit” is an important contribution, but one must be aware of the fact that most important ideas are well hidden behind Heidegger’s individual terminology. On the other hand, a new terminology is required to describe his concepts in an unbiased way—which is another major contribution made by Heidegger. Recent results of neurophysiological experiments support Metzinger’s (and, partially, also Heidegger’s ideas)—and they can be explained in a very clear terminology.
It would require a much deeper investigation of Aristotle’s philosophy to be able to point out to the many parallels in his and Heidegger’s work. Aristotle defined philosophy to be “the science of the essence of things” while Plato defined it to be “the science of the ideas of things”—which makes Aristotle the first empirist.
Here, the word “awareness” and its meaning reveal the limitations of human awareness: Awareness, i.e. perception and its coming to consciousness, requires embodiment of the event and the self. But a “true” awareness is not limited to matter, but also covers the not-embodied concepts behind embodied entities: in Aristotelian terminology, their essence or even essence itself. However, there is an Aristotelian example of such seemingly paradox experiences: We have discovered that things come into existence by kinesis which puts substance and form into energia (reality). There are, according to Aristotle, four different prerequisites for some thing to come to life: The physical, material cause (causa materialis), the form (causa formalis), the cause which starts the process of kinesis (causa efficiens) and finally, the teleologic cause (causa finalis). It includes the telos of (human) life and is pure theoria: it has no matter, no end, is action without acting, is movement (kinesis) without moving.
Merlin is embodied by the visualisation of an artificial animated character on the computer screen which is perceivable as some event in space and time. He is not embodied as a tangible object on the level of matter.
The problems of learning models of affective behaviour is described in André and Müller (2003).
This is the argument that is usually referred to in the literature; but in defence of James and Lange I guess it is worth a second thought whether self-perception could be taken as an internal stimulus—an idea that would open a new thread in the discussion about embodiment, too.
We use the term “atomic” as introduced by Leucippus to refer to indivisible elements from which molecular things and materials (together with void) are made in order to avoid the much discussed term of “basic emotions”.
Here, “where” means “when” in the context of affective processes and “who” in the context of the decision authority (cognitive or pre-cognitive?).
Note the problem behind the notion of “consequence”: It requires a causal model and the ability to perceive effects as such as well as to anticipate them—An exhaustive summarisation of appraisal theories is beyond the scope of this paper. We chose the OCC model as one prominent representative of appraisal theories for it is rather popular in affective human–computer interaction.
This means, that when being attacked we feel in danger only when the evaluation criteria of potential harm has come to be evaluated—even if there are many other criteria to be evaluated first.
Originally, also called “appraisal”.
Visibility is not limited to eye-sight; an object can become “visible” acoustically, too.—However, a thing becomes visible not only by the thing’s contribution (i.e. being visible through embodiment) but also by the human’s ability of observing it (which includes the physical and mental abilities).
See also Norman (2004).
German bottle caps cannot be unscrewed but require a special bottle opener (or a solid object with a hard edge that can be used as a lever).
Instead, it is the red button again.
A few years ago, BMW’s “i-Drive” (a joystick–like input device) caused many discussions as it replaced a huge number of buttons but required too much attention from the driver. Many drivers were completely distracted when navigating through several menus rather then focusing their attention on the traffic.
References
André E, Müller ME (2003) Learning affective behavior. In: Stephanidis C (ed) Universal access in human–computer interaction. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, pp 512–516
Beck AT (1967) Depression: causes and treatment. PhD thesis, University of Philadelphia, Philadelphia
Carroll MK (2003) A comparison of various genetic and non-genetic algorithms for aiding the design of an artificial neural network that learns the wisconsin card sorting test. Master’s thesis, Pace University
Chen G, Kotz D (2000) A survey of context-aware mobile computing research. Technical Report TR2000-381, Dartmouth College, Department of Computer Science
Cowie R, Douglas-Cowie E, Tsapatsoulis N, Votsis G, Kollias S, Fellenz W, Taylor JG (2001) Emotion recognition in human–computer interaction. IEEE Signal Processing Magazine
Cox T (1978) Stress. Macmillan, New York
Dehaene S, Changeux JP (1991) The wisconsin card sorting test: Theoretical analysis and modeling in a neural network. Cereb Cortex 1(1):62–79
Dey AK, Abowd GD, Salber D (2001) A conceptual framework and a toolkit for supporting the rapid prototyping of context-aware applications. Hum Comput Interact 16(2–4):97–166
Dix AJ, Finlay JE, Abowd GD, Beale R (1997) Human–computer interaction, 2nd edn. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs
Dourish P (2001a) Seeking a foundation for context-aware computing. Hum Comput Interact 16(2–4):229–241
Dourish P (2001b) Where the action is: the foundations of embodied interaction. MIT Press, Cambridge
Ekman P (1999) Handbook of cognition and emotion, chapter Basic emotions. Wiley, London
Gehlen A (1940) Der Mensch—Seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt. Junker und Dünnhaupt
Green MF, Satz P, Ganzell S, Vaclav JF (1992) Wisconsin card sorting test performance in schizophrenia: remediation of a stubborn deficit. Am J Psychiatr
Habermas J (1987) The theory of communicative action. Beacon
Haggard P, Libet B (2001) Conscious intention and brain activity. J Conscious Studies 8(11):47–63
Heidegger M (1993) Sein und Zeit. Niemeyer
Hudlicka E, McNeese MD (2002) Assessment of user affective and belief states for interface adaptation: application to an air force pilot task. User Model User-Adapt Interact
Karvonen K (2000) The beauty of simplicity. In: Proceedings of ACM conference on universal usability
Krug S (2000) Don’t make me think. New Riders, USA
Lazarus RS, Folkman S (1984) Stress, appraisal and coping. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York
Libet B, Wright EW, Gleason CA, Pearl DK (1983) Time of conscoius intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness potential): the unconscious initiation of a freely voluntary act. Brain 102:623–642
Metzinger T (2003) Being no one. MIT Press, Cambridge
Müller ME (2004) Can user models be learned at all? Knowl Eng Rev 19(1):61–88
Müller ME (2005) Adaptable and adaptive hypermedia systems, chapter Learning adaptive behavior. IRM Press/Idea Group, pp 104–124
Müller ME (2006) Why some emotional states are easier to be recognised than others: a thorough data analysis and a very accurate rough set classifier. In: IEEE international conference on systems, man, and cybernetics
Niedenthal PM, Halberstadt JH (2000) Feeling and thinking, chapter Grounding categories in emotional response. Cambridge University Press, London
Nielsen J (2000) Designing web usability. New Riders, USA
Norman DA (1988a) The design of everyday things. Basic Books, New York
Norman DA (1998b) The invisible computer. MIT Press, Cambridge
Norman DA (2004) Emotional design. Basic Books, New York
Ortony A, Turner TJ (1990) What’s basic about basic emotions? Psychol Rev 97(3):315–331
Ortony A, Clore GL, Collins A (1988) The cognitive structure of emotions. Cambridge University Press, London
Paiva A (ed) (2000) Affective interactions. Number 1814 in LNAI. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York
Plutchik R (1980) Emotion: theory, research, and experience, vol 1. Theories of emotion, chapter. A general psychoevolutionary theory of emotion. Academic, London
Scherer KR (1999) Handbook of cognition and emotion, chapter. Appraisal theory. Wiley, London
Schmidt A, Beigl M, Gellersen HW (1999) There is more to context than location. Comput Graph 23(6):893–901
Schneeberger J (2005) Interview: Michael M. Richter. KI, 2:60–62
Simmel G (1890) Über sociale Differenzierung. Gutenberg Online
Smith B (1990) Speech Acts, Meaning and Intentions, chapter. Towards a history of speech act theory. de Gruyter, Berlin
Smith CA, Mendes WB (2000) Feeling and thinking, Chapter Consequences require antecedents: toward a process model of emotion elicitation. Cambridge University Press, London
Wells A, Matthews G (1999) Attention and emotion—a clinical perspective. Psychology Press, Oxfordshire
Whissell C (1989) Emotion: theory research and experience, vol 4. The Measurement of emotions, Chapter. The dictionary of affect in language. Academic, London
Wiedl K, Wienöbst J, Schöttke H, Kauffeldt S (1999) Differentielle Aspekte kognitiver Remediation bei schizophren Erkrankten auf der Grundlage des Wisconsin Card Sorting Test. Klinische Psychologie 28(3):214–219
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Müller, M.E. Being aware: where we think the action is. Cogn Tech Work 9, 109–126 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-006-0047-7
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-006-0047-7