Conceptual blending

Conceptual Blending (aka Conceptual Integration) is a general theory of cognition.^[1] According to this theory, elements and vital relations from diverse scenarios are "blended" in a subconscious process known as Conceptual Blending, which is assumed to be ubiquitous to everyday thought and language. Insights obtained from these blends constitute the products of creative thinking, though conceptual blending theory is not itself a theory of creativity, inasmuch as it does not illuminate the issue of where the inputs to a blend actually come from. Blending theory does provide a rich terminology for describing the creative products of others, but has little to say on the inspiration that serves as the starting point for each blend.

The theory of Conceptual Blending was developed by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner. The development of this theory began in 1993 and a representative early formulation is found in their online article Conceptual Integration and Formal Expression. Mark Turner and Gilles Fauconnier cite Arthur Koestler´s 1964 book The Act of Creation as an early forerunner of conceptual blending: Koestler had identified a common pattern in creative achievements in the arts, sciences and humor that he had termed "bisociation of matrices" - a notion he described with many striking examples, but did not formalize in algorithmic terms.^[2] Conceptual Blending theory is also not formalized at the level of algorithmic detail, but its various optimality principles provide some guidance for those building computational models.

A newer version of blending theory, with somewhat different terminology, was presented in their book The Way We Think (ISBN 0-465-08786-8). Their theory is partially based on basic ideas advanced by George Lakoff in his 1987 book Women, Fire and Dangerous Things and in Lakoff's coauthored 1980 book with Mark Johnson Metaphors We Live By. It is also related to Cognitive architecture theories like Soar and ACT-R, and to frame-based theories of Marvin Minsky, Jaime Carbonell among others.

See also

Thinking portal

• Extension transference
• Mental space
• Cognitive psychology
• Cognitive Rhetoric
• Cognitive sciences
• Resources on Conceptual Blending
• Embodied philosophy
• Conceptual metaphor
• Analogy
• Philosophy of mind

Notes

1. ^ No single cognitive theory has yet been able to cover any significant fraction of the phenomena of human cognition, but some claim^{[citation needed]} that, as of late 2005, conceptual blending was rising in prominence among such theories. In his book "The Literary Mind" (Oxford University Press 1996), conceptual blending theorist Mark Turner states that "Conceptual blending is a fundamental instrument of the every day mind, used in our basic construal of all our realities, from the social to the scientific." (p. 93)
2. ^ Mark Turner, Gilles Fauconnier: The Way We Think. Conceptual Blending and the Mind's Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books 2002, p. 37

External links

• Blending and Conceptual Integration - Mark Turner
• Blending Website at University of Southern Denmark
• The Center for the Cognitive Science of Metaphor Online is a collection of numerous formative articles in the fields of conceptual metaphor and conceptual blending (aka conceptual integration).
• The differences between conceptual metaphor theory and conceptual blending are illustrated in this article on visual blends by Tim Rohrer
• Aparta Krystian. Conventional Models of Time and Their Extensions in Science Fiction A master's thesis exploring conceptual blending in time travel. Contains an introduction to the theory of conceptual blending, as well as an exploration of the differences between conceptual metaphor theory and conceptual blending theory.