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Linguistic concepts are self-generating choice architectures

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Nick Enfield suggests while concepts are indeed mental objects, they function as choice architectures in the dynamic flow of situated language usage.

Image courtesy of interviewee. May 12, 2024

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This video video is a transcript from a presentation discussing a study on linguistic concepts as forms of choice architecture, inspired by biological research on animal communication by Krebs and Dawkins. The speaker critiques the static view of meaning in language prevalent in linguistics and cognitive science, arguing for a more dynamic understanding that emphasizes communication as a means of influencing behavior rather than mere information transfer.

Key points include:

1. **Inspiration from Animal Communication**: Krebs and Dawkins' work suggests that animals manipulate others through behavioral signals, which can be applied to human language and communication.

2. **Static vs. Dynamic View of Meaning**: The traditional view sees linguistic meaning as a fixed connection between concepts and objects. In contrast, the speaker proposes that language actively shapes social interaction by guiding attention and eliciting responses.

3. **Concepts vs. Linguistic Concepts**: The speaker differentiates between general psychological concepts (which are private and individual) and linguistic concepts (which are public, labeled by language, and used for social coordination).

4. **Choice Architecture**: This video video idea is connected to how environments can be designed to influence decision-making, including both manipulative and helpful applications in marketing, policy-making, and everyday choices. The concept is discussed in the context of "nudge theory."

5. **Language as Strategic Design**: Language choices reflect strategic attempts to influence listeners, akin to how physical objects in the environment guide behavior. The speaker emphasizes the role of linguistic framing in shaping social interactions.

6. **Application Example**: The speaker cites a study where a mother refers to her son as "the birthday boy," framing the request for someone to pick him up in a way that emphasizes the importance of the occasion, thereby nudging the listener towards compliance.

In conclusion, the speaker calls for a reevaluation of how we understand linguistic concepts, viewing them as dynamic tools for social influence and interaction rather than static representations of thought. This video video perspective opens up new avenues for research on communication, social behavior, and the relationship between language and cognition.

Language:

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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The idea behind the study

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that I did on linguistic concepts as,

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as choice architectures, was really in inspired in a way

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by the Krebs and Dawkins work on animal communication.

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And so that's work that is known in biology.

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So this is a paper that was published in the first half

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of the 1980s, so it's some time ago.

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Um, and it's work that hasn't had very much uptake in

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linguistics in particular,

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but also to an extent in cognitive science.

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Um, and, I, I'll, I'll, I'll talk about what the study

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shows in a second, but the kind of context for it is

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that in, in linguistics

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and in a lot of cognitive science, the idea of

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meaning in language

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and of concepts in language is quite static.

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So it's this idea that you have

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some kind of image in your mind, some kind

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of conceptual schema, some kind of propositional content,

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and there's some kind of relation between that image

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or that schema or that content to things in the world.

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And, and, you know, we tend to talk about language

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as being referential

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and, you know, we connect images in the mind

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with things in the world.

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And that kind of static idea of what linguistic meaning is

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kind of goes quite sharply against what Krebs

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and Dawkins argue in their, in their article.

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So they, they're not writing about human language,

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they're writing about animal communication,

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and they, they have the following idea.

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So they, they're basically arguing that in

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animal life we're quite interested in manipulating

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other creatures for a range of different reasons.

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We might want to eat them, we might want to fight

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with them, chase them away.

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We might wanna mate with them.

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There's various things we want to do with other creatures.

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And one way to, to achieve those goals is to use force.

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You know, you can, catch another animal and kill it

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and eat it, you know, catch it by surprise.

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You're just, using pure force.

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And, and, and they point out well, that, you know,

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that's not communication, that's just force.

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Uh, but there's another way to get another animal to do

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what you want it to do.

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And that is, through using its muscle power, is that

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that's one way that they put it.

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So, communication is essentially putting some kind of

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structure in their environment which

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draws on their behavior.

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It exploits the, the kind of perception that they have.

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It exploits the way that they think, the things

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that they notice, so that they will

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take a certain action.

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That's that, that that's what you want.

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So, you know, simple examples would be, you know,

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signals that attract another

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Animal for one reason or another.

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So one of the examples they give is the, the Anglo fish

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that, instead of chasing

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after other fish that it wants to eat,

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it has this little light.

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And the little light, attracts the other animals.

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So what it's doing is it's influencing those other animals

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to act, and it's capitalizing on the muscle

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power of those other animals.

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So what that that means is that it, it, it,

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it frames communication not as a sort

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of an information transfer idea at all,

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but it's really about acting upon another

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entity or acting upon another agent

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or another individual, in order

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to influence their behavior.

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And, and that I found to be a very important insight

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and helped me a lot to think about, language

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and apply that to language be,

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because I've been quite interested

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for a long time in looking at language in

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social interaction.

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And, and thinking through that lens of the Krebs

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and Dawkins paper helped me to kind of see how

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the static view of language as kind of a concept relates

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to an object in the world, was failing to capture the fact

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that when you say something, really

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what you're doing is trying to elicit some kind of response.

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You're trying to direct the other

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person's attention in some way.

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You're trying to secure the, some kind of, you know,

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reaction that's, that's maybe in mu in your mutual interest

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or maybe in interest of the other person,

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or maybe in, in your interest.

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So that's, I guess, what really kind

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of made me start thinking about linguistic meaning in

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that way, was to think about signals

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as the way that, well, Krebs

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and Dorkins have a certain way of talking about it,

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which they use the term manipulation quite a lot.

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They, subsequent authors,

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Owings and Morton had this way of talking about it,

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which was that, you know,

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signals animal communication is about

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managing other individuals.

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Um, and what that means is that you are thinking not about

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concepts, but what you're thinking is,

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I've got a target individual who I'm trying to influence.

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I have some model of what they will notice,

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what they will respond to, what interests them,

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how they will interpret the, the world around them.

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And then I'm gonna manage them by

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deploying certain structures in the environment that will,

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you know, that will, that will exploit that in some sense.

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So in the cognitive science literature, there's a lot

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of work on concepts.

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Concepts are a big theme,

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in linguistics and philosophy.

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Uh, cognitive science more generally.

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Cognitive psychology concepts are a big thing.

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And oftentimes when you read about concepts

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and look at work on concepts,

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people are really, they're

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Labeling the concepts with words.

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So we might talk about, you know, the concept of bird

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or the concept of dog,

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and then we might talk about more narrow concepts like Robin

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or Chihuahua.

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Um, and a lot of research has been done on, on concepts

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of this kind and, and,

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and how we use concepts and what they're like.

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And of course, there are many different domains.

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We have conceptual content in perceptual fields like color

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and, emotions

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and all sorts of, all sorts

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of work's been done on concepts.

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Um, but the problem of a lot of that work is

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that it doesn't distinguish

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between concepts in a general sense

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and linguistic concepts specifically.

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And that's something that for a long time kind

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of made me a little bit uncomfortable,

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or it made it difficult for me to,

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to interpret a lot of what I was reading about.

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So an example would be the research on human emotions.

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Um, and, you know, there's, there's lots

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of research on human emotions, some of which is claiming

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that there are certain universal emotions.

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And these emotions that are proposed

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to be universal are labeled using English words like anger,

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angry and sad and so forth.

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Um, and there was always some tension with researchers

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between, well, well hang on a second.

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You're talking about a concept of a certain emotion.

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How come it happens to be labeled in English?

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And we've gone and looked at these other languages

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and, they don't really have a word

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that means the same thing as anger or sadness.

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Has that have other words that mean other things?

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So there's this kind of tension in the literature between

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a concept of a, the idea of a concept as some sort of

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psychological thing and,

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and a linguistic concept, which is something

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where you have a word for it, in, in a,

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in a particular language.

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And this is important because for, you know,

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you asked what's the difference between those two things.

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So let me, with that background, lemme try to clarify.

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So for me, a concept is

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some kind of psychological structure.

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It could be an image, it could be some kind

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of propositional content, that allows you

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to generalize about the world in some way.

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So it typically will categorize.

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So for example, if I have a, I might have a concept of,

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I dunno, danger or predators or something like that,

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or things that I can eat.

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Um, you know, so there are obviously diverse things in

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the world that I can eat.

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Um, and, in a way when, when I'm, I'm hungry

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and I see one, then I respond in a,

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in a similar kind of way.

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So I might propose that, you know, there's a concept

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of things that I can eat.

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I have that sort of part of my psychology,

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and it's internal to my brain and mind,

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and I use it as an individual agent to make decisions about

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what to do in, in, in the environment.

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So I see something to eat and I eat it.

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So there's something very individual

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and private about that notion of concept.

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Now if we then look at linguistic concepts,

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there's a really fundamental

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and quite obvious aspect of linguistic concepts,

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and that is that they have labels in particular languages.

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And that introduces this whole different level to a concept,

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which is that not only am I trying to create

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some kind of psychological structure that will help me

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to navigate the world as a, as an individual agent,

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when it comes to words, what happens is I'm trying

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to figure out what does this word mean?

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And it will, it may well be relate to some

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individual concept in my mind.

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But the crucial thing is that

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because it's labeled by word, then I,

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then it becomes a public concept.

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So, and not only do I have to have a concept of what

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that means, but I need to try to think, well, is my idea

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of what this word means the same as

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what this next person thinks it means,

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and the next person and the next person.

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So when we learn a language, what we're doing is

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constructing hypotheses about what these public labels

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should be kind of filled in by,

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whereas just a regular concept

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or sort of a, let's just say a non-linguistic concept.

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Um, when I develop a non-linguistic concept, the basis

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of that concept that, you know, how I sort

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of decide what's the right concept

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or not, is through some kind of individual experience.

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I make my decisions based on that concept.

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For example, I eat something or I don't eat something,

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and the consequences of that might force me

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to revise the concept.

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So I eat something that's bad for me,

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and next time I won't eat it.

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Uh, but with language, what's happening is

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that we're using those concepts not just

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for individual action, but for group coordination.

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Uh, so I ask you to pass me something, you pass it.

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What we've done is coordinated around,

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the concept on inside that word, whatever the word was.

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So for example, the word salt, and I say, pass me the salt.

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Um, the concept of salt then is built not out

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of my individual experience with salt,

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but our use of the label for that as a,

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as a coordination device in social interaction.

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So to me, what's crucial is that the very fact

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that certain concepts are labeled gives them an entirely

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different status as not as individual tools for thinking

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and decision making, but as group tools for coordination.

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So the concept of choice architecture is something

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that goes way back,

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although not necessarily using that term.

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So, the term choice architecture

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Is been used in

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relatively recent cognitive science in relation to

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what sometimes people call nudge theory.

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Uh, and prior to that,

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in related work on, the design of

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technologies and how we, use them.

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So let me kind of explain.

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Um, I mean, I think a good example is in the work

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by people like Donald Norman around technological design.

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And, you know, he has wonderful work on

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how a piece of technology is going to be designed so that

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it communicates with people, in terms of

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what they're going to, how they're going interact with

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that bit of, that bit of technology.

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So let's say,

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and in fact, I mean, it's very similar to this, the,

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the stuff I've already been talking about in terms

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of communication as manipulation.

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So let's just think about it.

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So, you know, if for example, you know, I have this,

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this, this, a certain kind

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of water bottle will have a top,

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will be structured in a certain way so that I, I will grasp

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for a reach for it and,

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and make a certain h shape in order to open that bottle.

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Um, and so the structure, the physical structure of the,

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of the artifact will determine what's the right way for me

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to use my body to interact with that bit of technology.

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And, and Donald Norman's most famous example

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of this is doors and door handles.

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So if you, if you just walk through a building,

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you'll find that there are many different kinds of doors.

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Some of them you reach out with your, you know, fingers,

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pointing down, and you've twist a sort of a, a lever.

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Others, you reach kind of forward

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and you turn a doorknob, others are flat like in a kitchen,

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and you just push the door open.

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So the design of the door communicates

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with you as a user, right?

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So basically you, you're, you're approaching this bit

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of physical, structure

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and it's somehow, in a sense it's telling you what to do.

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Um, and that's, that's the essence of

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what choice architecture is.

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And, and, and in nudge theory, this idea is kind of,

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exploited and,

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and used in terms of, you know, how can we apply that to,

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to manipulate

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or to the nudge people's behavior in a direction that we,

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that we want, that we want.

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So that might be, for example, in marketing,

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and we want people to buy our product.

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Um, you know, so an example would be in, you know, kind

14:35.685 --> 14:36.725
of apps and, and,

14:36.725 --> 14:38.405
and, you know, when you're using the internet

14:38.425 --> 14:42.085
and you're being asked to, make a choice,

14:42.195 --> 14:44.925
then very often one choice will be in big letters

14:45.065 --> 14:47.965
or the big, you know, green button over here.

14:47.965 --> 14:49.445
And another choice will be in, you know,

14:49.455 --> 14:50.885
small gray letters down here.

14:51.585 --> 14:54.645
And that's because obviously they want you to pick the,

14:55.105 --> 14:56.685
one of the options and not the other one.

14:56.785 --> 15:00.405
So these ways of manipulating

15:01.385 --> 15:05.365
the environment for signaling purposes are, are ways

15:05.365 --> 15:08.805
of biasing the environment for, for kind

15:08.805 --> 15:09.845
of choice architecture.

15:09.845 --> 15:13.205
And that's, that's, that, that's what I mean by that.

15:13.205 --> 15:15.765
And that seems in the, in the marketing context,

15:15.795 --> 15:17.285
that seems quite manipulative.

15:17.945 --> 15:20.965
Um, it's also used in a kind of policy context

15:21.185 --> 15:25.615
of people saying, well, let's apply those techniques to try

15:25.615 --> 15:26.735
to make people's lives better.

15:26.835 --> 15:29.095
So it might be, for example, to get people

15:29.235 --> 15:31.375
to eat more healthy foods.

15:31.755 --> 15:34.495
And, so the way in which,

15:34.575 --> 15:37.455
a cafeteria is physically designed,

15:37.675 --> 15:40.895
or a way in which a menu is laid out might kind

15:40.895 --> 15:43.535
of use these choice architecture, princip principles

15:43.535 --> 15:45.335
to nudge people,

15:45.485 --> 15:47.415
more often in one direction than another.

15:47.915 --> 15:50.375
Um, and, and I think part of the principle of this type

15:50.375 --> 15:54.455
of theory is that in the end, people have the same choices

15:54.565 --> 15:55.735
that they had at the beginning.

15:56.085 --> 15:58.375
Like they're always free to make a choice,

15:58.395 --> 15:59.775
but somehow they're being kind

15:59.775 --> 16:01.055
of nudged in one way or another.

16:01.955 --> 16:04.575
The insight behind that goes way, way back.

16:04.995 --> 16:09.795
So, you can go back to the gestalt theorists,

16:09.935 --> 16:11.195
you know, early 20th century,

16:11.335 --> 16:15.635
and they were very interested in how people, kind

16:15.635 --> 16:18.915
of apprehended some sort of scene in front

16:18.915 --> 16:20.195
of them in holistic terms.

16:20.975 --> 16:23.275
Um, so some of the early gestalt theorists had

16:23.975 --> 16:27.875
had quite a bit to say about this idea of saying that,

16:28.895 --> 16:31.835
you know, the, the, the world speaks to us, you know,

16:31.975 --> 16:34.315
chairs say, sit down here,

16:34.495 --> 16:37.235
and, you know, he'll say, climb up here.

16:37.935 --> 16:42.555
Um, and that is, you know, really it goes back to this idea

16:42.675 --> 16:44.555
of communication as manipulation,

16:44.555 --> 16:45.875
like Krebs and Dawkins said.

16:45.895 --> 16:48.395
Now, when someone, when someone designs a chair, I,

16:48.515 --> 16:49.795
I think they don't often think

16:50.105 --> 16:51.675
that they're communicating with people.

16:52.055 --> 16:53.595
That's not why you build a chair, right?

16:54.095 --> 16:56.155
Um, but in fact, you are.

16:56.375 --> 16:58.115
And I think a good designer

16:58.175 --> 17:01.555
and a good architect does need to, to, to think in that way.

17:02.655 --> 17:04.035
So that's choice architecture.

17:04.055 --> 17:07.755
And, what I've tried to do is to, to think, well,

17:09.865 --> 17:13.435
this can be applied in a useful way to, to language.

17:13.615 --> 17:16.315
Now, one of the things about language and,

17:17.215 --> 17:19.725
and conceptual structure is that it's,

17:19.755 --> 17:22.605
it's almost infinitely variable.

17:22.665 --> 17:25.775
So you can look at, you know, one scene,

17:26.435 --> 17:28.295
and you can describe it in any number

17:28.295 --> 17:29.375
of different ways, right?

17:29.435 --> 17:33.345
So I can say, you know,

17:33.635 --> 17:37.985
let's say I'm talking about, my dog, okay?

17:38.165 --> 17:42.465
Or I could say, you know, my pet, I could say my,

17:42.645 --> 17:47.385
my old pal, my best friend, you know, I could

17:49.355 --> 17:51.775
Use a lot of different words to describe that.

17:51.915 --> 17:52.935
One thing. And, and,

17:52.995 --> 17:56.095
and the point that I'm really trying to explore and, and,

17:56.155 --> 17:57.575
and, and make here is that

17:58.775 --> 18:02.975
choosing a particular description is selecting a linguistic

18:02.975 --> 18:06.455
concept in order to direct the attention

18:06.555 --> 18:08.335
of the listener a particular way.

18:08.355 --> 18:10.255
So there's no right answer to

18:10.255 --> 18:13.055
what I should call this creature, right?

18:13.205 --> 18:15.935
Okay. It's an animal, it's a mammal, it's a pet, it's a dog,

18:15.965 --> 18:18.495
it's a hound, it's, you know, endless things.

18:19.395 --> 18:22.055
The real question is, how am I trying to

18:22.765 --> 18:24.855
influence the listener in this moment?

18:25.235 --> 18:28.585
That's what chooses me to select from

18:28.585 --> 18:30.825
among the different possible linguistic concepts

18:30.825 --> 18:33.665
that I have, at my disposal.

18:33.885 --> 18:37.625
So the idea behind this way of thinking is to really

18:40.155 --> 18:43.955
put the description of language into a kind

18:43.955 --> 18:45.515
of strategic framework.

18:45.575 --> 18:49.515
So it's really not so much about linking an idea

18:49.575 --> 18:50.595
to something in the world,

18:50.695 --> 18:54.155
but it's more about directing the attention of other people,

18:55.145 --> 18:56.955
priming them, and framing things so

18:56.955 --> 18:59.755
that they will understand what I'm saying in a certain way,

18:59.775 --> 19:03.035
or they will react to what I'm saying, in a certain way.

19:03.095 --> 19:07.825
So, a nice example would be something like, well,

19:07.825 --> 19:09.745
in a study that, that a colleague of mine,

19:09.745 --> 19:14.385
Tanya Stivers did, of how people refer to other people,

19:15.285 --> 19:19.535
she analyzed an example where some,

19:20.275 --> 19:24.295
a woman was talking about her son,

19:24.515 --> 19:28.255
and she was asking, another person if they could go

19:28.255 --> 19:29.855
and pick him up in their car.

19:30.755 --> 19:33.295
So, you know, she has a certain purpose

19:33.395 --> 19:37.015
and she's trying to, influence this other person

19:37.155 --> 19:38.575
to do something in their interest.

19:38.575 --> 19:39.975
So it's very much a kind of Krebs

19:39.975 --> 19:42.615
and dawkins type of, you know, manipulative,

19:43.735 --> 19:45.215
communicative function.

19:46.035 --> 19:50.295
Um, so she doesn't say, could you go

19:50.295 --> 19:53.255
and pick up Johnny, or, or Can you go pick up my son?

19:53.835 --> 19:56.135
She says, can you go and pick up the birthday boy?

19:57.195 --> 20:00.255
Now it happens to be his birthday, so she's entitled to use

20:00.255 --> 20:02.295
that expression, the birthday boy.

20:02.875 --> 20:05.455
Um, but she didn't have to use that expression.

20:05.455 --> 20:08.215
And what's interesting in this, in this analysis, you know,

20:08.235 --> 20:10.735
the suggestion here is that, well,

20:10.835 --> 20:12.175
why would you use that term?

20:12.405 --> 20:14.535
Well, you would use that term when you're trying

20:14.555 --> 20:17.455
to foreground the idea that, you know,

20:17.765 --> 20:19.295
this person's birthday, their,

20:19.745 --> 20:21.975
which should be treating them,

20:22.115 --> 20:23.575
nicely, they're privileged.

20:23.575 --> 20:26.975
You know, there's a whole cultural kind of set of rights

20:26.975 --> 20:29.575
around being, being a kind of birthday boy.

20:29.575 --> 20:31.575
And one of them would be, well, it's his special day.

20:31.575 --> 20:33.295
Let's not make him walk or take the bus.

20:33.395 --> 20:34.815
You know, someone should go pick him up.

20:35.315 --> 20:39.495
So, that concept, you know, that linguistic concept,

20:39.675 --> 20:42.855
the birthday boy, we see their inaction being kind

20:42.855 --> 20:46.655
of deployed as a way to, to, to

20:46.705 --> 20:48.605
Frame the situation

20:48.605 --> 20:51.285
or the person in this case that we're talking about,

20:51.465 --> 20:54.005
as a way to bias the kind of response

20:54.005 --> 20:55.405
that you're gonna get from the other person.

20:55.545 --> 20:58.045
So in that sense, you know, the birthday boy's a piece

20:58.045 --> 20:59.085
of choice architecture,

20:59.145 --> 21:03.965
and it's going to, the address of course, is free to say,

21:03.985 --> 21:05.205
no, I'm not gonna pick them up.

21:05.285 --> 21:07.605
You know, my cars run outta fuel, or whatever reason.

21:08.265 --> 21:11.245
Uh, but it, the argument is that it makes it more likely,

21:11.585 --> 21:14.485
you know, it nudges them in the direction of thinking, well,

21:14.555 --> 21:16.205
yeah, I kind of have to go pick him up.

21:16.405 --> 21:17.525
'cause after all, it's his birthday.

21:18.235 --> 21:21.845
Well, the conclusion to this work, I suppose, is that

21:22.695 --> 21:26.565
linguistic concepts are really dynamic things,

21:26.665 --> 21:29.885
and they're really part of human action rather than

21:31.215 --> 21:32.585
primarily of human thought.

21:32.685 --> 21:36.835
So we've thought about concepts in terms of thought,

21:37.015 --> 21:41.035
in terms of kind of abstract ideas in pretty static terms.

21:42.255 --> 21:45.035
Now, some people are interested in how concepts are learned,

21:45.055 --> 21:46.715
and of course, that's not static.

21:46.715 --> 21:49.715
There's a whole process of development in which we come

21:49.715 --> 21:51.395
to acquire concepts,

21:51.415 --> 21:56.105
but there hasn't really been enough attention to how

21:56.745 --> 21:58.905
concepts have this very dynamic life,

21:58.905 --> 22:02.345
that we are deploying them for strategic purposes

22:02.365 --> 22:06.265
to influence others to use framing, in order

22:06.285 --> 22:07.545
to direct people's attention.

22:07.645 --> 22:10.585
And there's quite a lot of work outside of language science

22:10.585 --> 22:11.985
that shows that this is the case.

22:12.045 --> 22:14.025
So I've quoted a little bit

22:14.025 --> 22:17.185
of work from behavioral economics and related areas,

22:17.885 --> 22:20.985
and I think that, you know, the conclusion

22:21.085 --> 22:23.785
to this study really is to direct attention

22:23.925 --> 22:27.705
to a really interesting link, between

22:29.595 --> 22:32.335
the, the wonderful work that's been done for many years on

22:33.255 --> 22:37.155
what kind of information is encoded in the semantics

22:37.155 --> 22:40.915
of natural language, and connect that to the,

22:40.935 --> 22:44.295
the really interesting work that's been done on essentially

22:44.355 --> 22:45.855
how we manipulate people

22:45.955 --> 22:49.215
and how we ourselves are manipulated through,

22:49.395 --> 22:50.655
the structure of our environment,

22:50.655 --> 22:53.135
particularly the design structure of our environment.

22:53.915 --> 22:55.215
So it's interesting with language

22:55.215 --> 22:58.535
because language is designed in one sense,

22:58.555 --> 23:00.175
but not designed in another sense.

23:00.195 --> 23:02.535
So it's not designed in the sense that I did not

23:03.435 --> 23:04.975
invent the, the English language.

23:05.115 --> 23:06.215
I'm speaking English now,

23:06.715 --> 23:09.295
but I don't really have a choice about what these words are.

23:09.635 --> 23:12.255
Uh, you know, the words are given to me

23:12.355 --> 23:13.815
by the community conventions

23:13.815 --> 23:15.735
that have been developed over the time.

23:15.995 --> 23:18.775
But I do get to decide which words I say

23:18.775 --> 23:22.735
and when, so there's certainly my, the, the

23:23.245 --> 23:25.215
word choices I make, the utterances

23:25.215 --> 23:28.215
that I produce are very much of my design.

23:29.115 --> 23:32.675
And, so I think that that's where

23:33.315 --> 23:34.995
I wanna see this work kind of leading, is

23:34.995 --> 23:38.075
to really think about concepts and linguistic

23:38.095 --> 23:42.055
and linguistic concepts in particular as elements

23:42.155 --> 23:44.335
for strategic design of social action.

Linguistic Concepts as Choice Architectures

00:00:00 - The idea behind the study that I did on linguistic concepts as, as choice architectures, was really in inspired in a way by the Krebs and Dawkins work on animal communication. And so that's work that is known in biology. So this is a paper that was published in the first half of the 1980s, so it's some time ago. and it's work that hasn't had very much uptake in
00:00:33 - but also to an extent in cognitive science. and, I, I'll, I'll, I'll talk about what the study shows in a second, but the kind of context for it is that in, in linguistics and in a lot of cognitive science, the idea of meaning in language and of concepts in language is quite static. So it's this idea that you have some kind of image in your mind, some kind of conceptual schema, some kind of propositional content,
00:01:09 - or that schema or that content to things in the world. And, and, you know, we tend to talk about language as being referential and, you know, we connect images in the mind with things in the world. And that kind of static idea of what linguistic meaning is kind of goes quite sharply against what Krebs and Dawkins argue in their, in their article. So they, they're not writing about human language,
00:01:39 - and they, they have the following idea. So they, they're basically arguing that in animal life we're quite interested in manipulating other creatures for a range of different reasons. We might want to eat them, we might want to fight with them, chase them away. We might wanna mate with them. There's various things we want to do with other creatures. And one way to, to achieve those goals is to use force.
00:02:12 - and eat it, you know, catch it by surprise. You're just, using pure force. And, and, and they point out well, that, you know, that's not communication, that's just force. but there's another way to get another animal to do what you want it to do. And that is, through using its muscle power, is that that's one way that they put it. So, communication is essentially putting some kind of structure in their environment which
00:02:40 - It exploits the, the kind of perception that they have. It exploits the way that they think, the things that they notice, so that they will take a certain action. That's that, that that's what you want. So, you know, simple examples would be, you know, signals that attract another Animal for one reason or another. So one of the examples they give is the, the Anglo fish that, instead of chasing after other fish that it wants to eat,

Communication as Manipulation in Language and Interaction

00:03:11 - And the little light, attracts the other animals. So what it's doing is it's influencing those other animals to act, and it's capitalizing on the muscle power of those other animals. So what that that means is that it, it, it, it frames communication not as a sort of an information transfer idea at all, but it's really about acting upon another entity or acting upon another agent or another individual, in order
00:03:42 - And, and that I found to be a very important insight and helped me a lot to think about, language and apply that to language be, because I've been quite interested for a long time in looking at language in social interaction. And, and thinking through that lens of the Krebs and Dawkins paper helped me to kind of see how the static view of language as kind of a concept relates to an object in the world, was failing to capture the fact
00:04:14 - what you're doing is trying to elicit some kind of response. You're trying to direct the other person's attention in some way. You're trying to secure the, some kind of, you know, reaction that's, that's maybe in mu in your mutual interest or maybe in interest of the other person, or maybe in, in your interest. So that's, I guess, what really kind of made me start thinking about linguistic meaning in that way, was to think about signals as the way that, well, Krebs
00:04:45 - which they use the term manipulation quite a lot. They, subsequent authors, Owings and Morton had this way of talking about it, which was that, you know, signals animal communication is about managing other individuals. and what that means is that you are thinking not about concepts, but what you're thinking is, I've got a target individual who I'm trying to influence. I have some model of what they will notice,
00:05:19 - how they will interpret the, the world around them. And then I'm gonna manage them by deploying certain structures in the environment that will, you know, that will, that will exploit that in some sense. So in the cognitive science literature, there's a lot of work on concepts. Concepts are a big theme, in linguistics and philosophy. cognitive science more generally. Cognitive psychology concepts are a big thing.
00:05:50 - and look at work on concepts, people are really, they're Labeling the concepts with words. So we might talk about, you know, the concept of bird or the concept of dog, and then we might talk about more narrow concepts like Robin or Chihuahua. and a lot of research has been done on, on concepts of this kind and, and, and how we use concepts and what they're like. And of course, there are many different domains.

Distinguishing Concepts: Psychological vs. Linguistic

00:06:22 - and, emotions and all sorts of, all sorts of work's been done on concepts. but the problem of a lot of that work is that it doesn't distinguish between concepts in a general sense and linguistic concepts specifically. And that's something that for a long time kind of made me a little bit uncomfortable, or it made it difficult for me to, to interpret a lot of what I was reading about.
00:06:52 - and, you know, there's, there's lots of research on human emotions, some of which is claiming that there are certain universal emotions. And these emotions that are proposed to be universal are labeled using English words like anger, angry and sad and so forth. and there was always some tension with researchers between, well, well hang on a second. You're talking about a concept of a certain emotion.
00:07:23 - And we've gone and looked at these other languages and, they don't really have a word that means the same thing as anger or sadness. Has that have other words that mean other things? So there's this kind of tension in the literature between a concept of a, the idea of a concept as some sort of psychological thing and, and a linguistic concept, which is something where you have a word for it, in, in a, in a particular language.
00:07:54 - you asked what's the difference between those two things. So let me, with that background, lemme try to clarify. So for me, a concept is some kind of psychological structure. It could be an image, it could be some kind of propositional content, that allows you to generalize about the world in some way. So it typically will categorize. So for example, if I have a, I might have a concept of,
00:08:27 - or things that I can eat. you know, so there are obviously diverse things in the world that I can eat. and, in a way when, when I'm, I'm hungry and I see one, then I respond in a, in a similar kind of way. So I might propose that, you know, there's a concept of things that I can eat. I have that sort of part of my psychology, and it's internal to my brain and mind, and I use it as an individual agent to make decisions about
00:08:58 - So I see something to eat and I eat it. So there's something very individual and private about that notion of concept. Now if we then look at linguistic concepts, there's a really fundamental and quite obvious aspect of linguistic concepts, and that is that they have labels in particular languages. And that introduces this whole different level to a concept,

Understanding Linguistic Concepts and Their Implications

00:09:32 - some kind of psychological structure that will help me to navigate the world as a, as an individual agent, when it comes to words, what happens is I'm trying to figure out what does this word mean? And it will, it may well be relate to some individual concept in my mind. But the crucial thing is that because it's labeled by word, then I, then it becomes a public concept. So, and not only do I have to have a concept of what
00:10:05 - of what this word means the same as what this next person thinks it means, and the next person and the next person. So when we learn a language, what we're doing is constructing hypotheses about what these public labels should be kind of filled in by, whereas just a regular concept or sort of a, let's just say a non-linguistic concept. when I develop a non-linguistic concept, the basis
00:10:36 - of decide what's the right concept or not, is through some kind of individual experience. I make my decisions based on that concept. For example, I eat something or I don't eat something, and the consequences of that might force me to revise the concept. So I eat something that's bad for me, and next time I won't eat it. but with language, what's happening is that we're using those concepts not just for individual action, but for group coordination. so I ask you to pass me something, you pass it.
00:11:09 - the concept on inside that word, whatever the word was. So for example, the word salt, and I say, pass me the salt. the concept of salt then is built not out of my individual experience with salt, but our use of the label for that as a, as a coordination device in social interaction. So to me, what's crucial is that the very fact that certain concepts are labeled gives them an entirely different status as not as individual tools for thinking
00:11:42 - So the concept of choice architecture is something that goes way back, although not necessarily using that term. So, the term choice architecture Is been used in relatively recent cognitive science in relation to what sometimes people call nudge theory. and prior to that, in related work on, the design of
00:12:16 - So let me kind of explain. I mean, I think a good example is in the work by people like Donald Norman around technological design. And, you know, he has wonderful work on how a piece of technology is going to be designed so that it communicates with people, in terms of what they're going to, how they're going interact with that bit of, that bit of technology.

Influencing Behavior Through Choice Architecture

00:12:47 - and in fact, I mean, it's very similar to this, the, the stuff I've already been talking about in terms of communication as manipulation. So let's just think about it. So, you know, if for example, you know, I have this, this, this, a certain kind of water bottle will have a top, will be structured in a certain way so that I, I will grasp for a reach for it and, and make a certain h shape in order to open that bottle. and so the structure, the physical structure of the,
00:13:20 - to use my body to interact with that bit of technology. And, and Donald Norman's most famous example of this is doors and door handles. So if you, if you just walk through a building, you'll find that there are many different kinds of doors. Some of them you reach out with your, you know, fingers, pointing down, and you've twist a sort of a, a lever. Others, you reach kind of forward and you turn a doorknob, others are flat like in a kitchen,
00:13:49 - So the design of the door communicates with you as a user, right? So basically you, you're, you're approaching this bit of physical, structure and it's somehow, in a sense it's telling you what to do. and that's, that's the essence of what choice architecture is. And, and, and in nudge theory, this idea is kind of, exploited and, and used in terms of, you know, how can we apply that to,
00:14:21 - or to the nudge people's behavior in a direction that we, that we want, that we want. So that might be, for example, in marketing, and we want people to buy our product. you know, so an example would be in, you know, kind of apps and, and, and, you know, when you're using the internet and you're being asked to, make a choice, then very often one choice will be in big letters or the big, you know, green button over here. And another choice will be in, you know, small gray letters down here.
00:14:55 - one of the options and not the other one. So these ways of manipulating the environment for signaling purposes are, are ways of biasing the environment for, for kind of choice architecture. And that's, that's, that, that's what I mean by that. And that seems in the, in the marketing context, that seems quite manipulative. it's also used in a kind of policy context of people saying, well, let's apply those techniques to try
00:15:26 - So it might be, for example, to get people to eat more healthy foods. And, so the way in which, a cafeteria is physically designed, or a way in which a menu is laid out might kind of use these choice architecture, princip principles to nudge people, more often in one direction than another. and, and I think part of the principle of this type of theory is that in the end, people have the same choices that they had at the beginning.

Communication as Manipulation in Design and Language

00:15:58 - but somehow they're being kind of nudged in one way or another. The insight behind that goes way, way back. So, you can go back to the gestalt theorists, you know, early 20th century, and they were very interested in how people, kind of apprehended some sort of scene in front of them in holistic terms. so some of the early gestalt theorists had had quite a bit to say about this idea of saying that,
00:16:31 - chairs say, sit down here, and, you know, he'll say, climb up here. and that is, you know, really it goes back to this idea of communication as manipulation, like Krebs and Dawkins said. Now, when someone, when someone designs a chair, I, I think they don't often think that they're communicating with people. That's not why you build a chair, right? but in fact, you are. And I think a good designer and a good architect does need to, to, to think in that way.
00:17:04 - And, what I've tried to do is to, to think, well, this can be applied in a useful way to, to language. Now, one of the things about language and, and conceptual structure is that it's, it's almost infinitely variable. So you can look at, you know, one scene, and you can describe it in any number of different ways, right? So I can say, you know,
00:17:38 - Or I could say, you know, my pet, I could say my, my old pal, my best friend, you know, I could Use a lot of different words to describe that. One thing. And, and, and the point that I'm really trying to explore and, and, and, and make here is that choosing a particular description is selecting a linguistic concept in order to direct the attention
00:18:08 - So there's no right answer to what I should call this creature, right? Okay. It's an animal, it's a mammal, it's a pet, it's a dog, it's a hound, it's, you know, endless things. The real question is, how am I trying to influence the listener in this moment? That's what chooses me to select from among the different possible linguistic concepts that I have, at my disposal. So the idea behind this way of thinking is to really
00:18:43 - of strategic framework. So it's really not so much about linking an idea to something in the world, but it's more about directing the attention of other people, priming them, and framing things so that they will understand what I'm saying in a certain way, or they will react to what I'm saying, in a certain way. So, a nice example would be something like, well, in a study that, that a colleague of mine, Tanya Stivers did, of how people refer to other people,

Manipulating Communication Through Linguistic Choices

00:19:20 - a woman was talking about her son, and she was asking, another person if they could go and pick him up in their car. So, you know, she has a certain purpose and she's trying to, influence this other person to do something in their interest. So it's very much a kind of Krebs and dawkins type of, you know, manipulative, communicative function.
00:19:50 - and pick up Johnny, or, or Can you go pick up my son? She says, can you go and pick up the birthday boy? Now it happens to be his birthday, so she's entitled to use that expression, the birthday boy. but she didn't have to use that expression. And what's interesting in this, in this analysis, you know, the suggestion here is that, well, why would you use that term? Well, you would use that term when you're trying to foreground the idea that, you know,
00:20:19 - which should be treating them, nicely, they're privileged. You know, there's a whole cultural kind of set of rights around being, being a kind of birthday boy. And one of them would be, well, it's his special day. Let's not make him walk or take the bus. You know, someone should go pick him up. So, that concept, you know, that linguistic concept, the birthday boy, we see their inaction being kind of deployed as a way to, to, to Frame the situation
00:20:51 - as a way to bias the kind of response that you're gonna get from the other person. So in that sense, you know, the birthday boy's a piece of choice architecture, and it's going to, the address of course, is free to say, no, I'm not gonna pick them up. You know, my cars run outta fuel, or whatever reason. but it, the argument is that it makes it more likely, you know, it nudges them in the direction of thinking, well, yeah, I kind of have to go pick him up. 'cause after all, it's his birthday. Well, the conclusion to this work, I suppose, is that
00:21:26 - and they're really part of human action rather than primarily of human thought. So we've thought about concepts in terms of thought, in terms of kind of abstract ideas in pretty static terms. Now, some people are interested in how concepts are learned, and of course, that's not static. There's a whole process of development in which we come to acquire concepts, but there hasn't really been enough attention to how
00:21:58 - that we are deploying them for strategic purposes to influence others to use framing, in order to direct people's attention. And there's quite a lot of work outside of language science that shows that this is the case. So I've quoted a little bit of work from behavioral economics and related areas, and I think that, you know, the conclusion to this study really is to direct attention to a really interesting link, between

Language as a Tool for Social Manipulation

00:22:33 - what kind of information is encoded in the semantics of natural language, and connect that to the, the really interesting work that's been done on essentially how we manipulate people and how we ourselves are manipulated through, the structure of our environment, particularly the design structure of our environment. So it's interesting with language because language is designed in one sense, but not designed in another sense.
00:23:03 - invent the, the English language. I'm speaking English now, but I don't really have a choice about what these words are. you know, the words are given to me by the community conventions that have been developed over the time. But I do get to decide which words I say and when, so there's certainly my, the, the word choices I make, the utterances that I produce are very much of my design. And, so I think that that's where
00:23:42 - to really think about concepts and linguistic and linguistic concepts in particular as elements for strategic design of social action.

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