Concepts at the Interface

Concepts at the Interface
Author: Nicholas Shea
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2024-08-09
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 019889368X

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Research on concepts has concentrated on how people apply concepts when presented with a stimulus. Equally important, however, is the use of concepts offline, while planning what to do or thinking about what is the case. There is strong evidence that inferences driven by conceptual thought draw heavily on special-purpose resources--sensory, motoric, affective, and evaluative. At the same time, concepts afford general-purpose recombination and support content-general reasoning processes, which have long been the focus of philosophers. There is a growing consensus that a theory of concepts must encompass both kinds of processes. Nicholas Shea shows how concepts can act as an interface between content-general reasoning and special-purpose systems. Concept-driven thinking can take advantage of the complementary costs and benefits of each. This book sets out an empirically-based account of the different ways in which thinking with concepts leads us to new conclusions and underpins planning and decision-making. It also outlines three useful implications of this account. First, it allows us to reconstruct the commonplace idea that thinking draws on the meaning of a concept. Second, it offers insight into how human cognition avoids the frame problem and the complementary, less discussed, 'if-then problem' for dispositions acquired from experience. Third, it shows that metacognition can apply to concepts and concept-driven thinking in various ways. The framework developed in the book elucidates what makes concept-driven thinking an especially powerful cognitive resource.

Concepts at the Interface

Concepts at the Interface
Author: Nicholas Shea
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2024-08-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0198893671

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Research on concepts has concentrated on how people apply concepts when presented with a stimulus. Equally important, however, is the use of concepts offline, while planning what to do or thinking about what is the case. There is strong evidence that inferences driven by conceptual thought draw heavily on special-purpose resources--sensory, motoric, affective, and evaluative. At the same time, concepts afford general-purpose recombination and support content-general reasoning processes, which have long been the focus of philosophers. There is a growing consensus that a theory of concepts must encompass both kinds of processes. Nicholas Shea shows how concepts can act as an interface between content-general reasoning and special-purpose systems. Concept-driven thinking can take advantage of the complementary costs and benefits of each. This book sets out an empirically-based account of the different ways in which thinking with concepts leads us to new conclusions and underpins planning and decision-making. It also outlines three useful implications of this account. First, it allows us to reconstruct the commonplace idea that thinking draws on the meaning of a concept. Second, it offers insight into how human cognition avoids the frame problem and the complementary, less discussed, 'if-then problem' for dispositions acquired from experience. Third, it shows that metacognition can apply to concepts and concept-driven thinking in various ways. The framework developed in the book elucidates what makes concept-driven thinking an especially powerful cognitive resource.

Concepts, Syntax, and Their Interface

Concepts, Syntax, and Their Interface
Author: Tanya Reinhart
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2016-03-18
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0262034131

A systematic exposition of Reinhart's Theta System, with extensive annotations and essays that capture subsequent developments.

Human Machine Interface

Human Machine Interface
Author: Samuel Guccione
Publisher: Industrial Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9780831135829

This groundbreaking text/lab manual introduces significant concepts in the fields of Human Machine Interface (HMI) and Programmable Logic Controllers. Hands-on, step-by-step activities provide experiences in creating various process-control applications with HMI devices and software--programming that enables an HMI system operator to interface and interact directly with the system. This book is ideal for introducing high school and college students, plus those in the professional fields of process control and automation, to the capabilities and potential of HMI. Features Introduces students and those in industry to the capabilities of Human Machine Interface. The text and activities, while ranging from basic to more advanced, assume no prior experience working with HMI devices and software. Readers experiment with programming that enables an HMI system operator to interface and interact directly with the system The many hands-on lab activities provide experience in creating and working with the type of process control applications that are used extensively in manufacturing. Includes key information on connecting HMI to Programmable Logic Controllers. Focuses primarily on Allen Bradley devices and Rockwell software, but concepts covered are that are applicable to various systems.

Language and Communication

Language and Communication
Author: Agnes Kukulska-Hulme
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 178
Release: 1999-04-01
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0198026803

Computer interfaces and documentation are notoriously difficult for any user, regardless of his or her level of experience. Advances in technology are not making applications more friendly. Introducing concepts from linguistics and language teaching, Language and Communication proposes a new approach to computer interface design. The book explains for the first time why the much hyped user-friendly interface is treated with such derision by the user community. The author argues that software and hardware designers should consider such fundamental language concepts as meaning, context, function, variety, and equivalence. She goes on to show how imagining an interface as a new language can be an invaluable design exercise, calling into question deeply held beliefs and assumptions about what users will or will not understand. Written for a wide range of computer scientists and professionals, and presuming no prior knowledge of language-related terminology, this volume is a key step in the on-going information revolution.

Designing the Moment

Designing the Moment
Author: Robert Hoekman Jr.
Publisher: Peachpit Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2010-04-09
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0132104067

The trick to great design is knowing how to think through each decision so that users don't have to. In Designing the Moment: Web Interface Design Concepts in Action, Robert Hoekman, Jr., author of Designing the Obvious, presents over 30 stories that illustrate how to put good design principles to work on real-world web application interfaces to make them obvious and compelling. From the first impression to the last, Hoekman takes a think out loud approach to interface design to show us how to look critically at design decisions to ensure that human beings, the kind that make mistakes and do things we don't expect, can walk away from our software feeling productive, respected, and smart.

Search-User Interface Design

Search-User Interface Design
Author: Max Wilson
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 125
Release: 2022-05-31
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3031022777

Search User Interfaces (SUIs) represent the gateway between people who have a task to complete, and the repositories of information and data stored around the world. Not surprisingly, therefore, there are many communities who have a vested interest in the way SUIs are designed. There are people who study how humans search for information, and people who study how humans use computers. There are people who study good user interface design, and people who design aesthetically pleasing user interfaces. There are also people who curate and manage valuable information resources, and people who design effective algorithms to retrieve results from them. While it would be easy for one community to reject another for their limited ability to design a good SUI, the truth is that they all can, and they all have made valuable contributions. Fundamentally, therefore, we must accept that designing a great SUI means leveraging the knowledge and skills from all of these communities. The aim of this book is to at least acknowledge, if not integrate, all of these perspectives to bring the reader into a multidisciplinary mindset for how we should think about SUI design. Further, this book aims to provide the reader with a framework for thinking about how different innovations each contribute to the overall design of a SUI. With this framework and a multidisciplinary perspective in hand, the book then continues by reviewing: early, successful, established, and experimental concepts for SUI design. The book then concludes by discussing how we can analyse and evaluate the on-going developments in SUI design, as this multidisciplinary area of research moves forwards. Finally, in reviewing these many SUIs and SUI features, the book finishes by extracting a series of 20 SUI design recommendations that are listed in the conclusions. Table of Contents: Introduction / Searcher-Computer Interaction / Early Search User Interfaces / Modern Search User Interfaces / Experimental Search User Interfaces / Evaluating Search User Interfaces / Conclusions

The Humane Interface

The Humane Interface
Author: Jef Raskin
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2000
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 9780201379372

Cognetics and the locus of attention - Meanings, modes, monotony, and myths - Quantification - Unification - Navigation and other aspects of humane interfaces - Interface issues outside the user interface.

The Interface Envelope

The Interface Envelope
Author: James Ash
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 179
Release: 2015-02-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 162356557X

In The Interface Envelope, James Ash develops a series of concepts to understand how digital interfaces work to shape the spatial and temporal perception of players. Drawing upon examples from videogame design and work from post-phenomenology, speculative realism, new materialism and media theory, Ash argues that interfaces create envelopes, or localised foldings of space time, around which bodily and perceptual capacities are organised for the explicit production of economic profit. Modifying and developing Bernard Stiegler's account of psychopower and Warren Neidich's account of neuropower, Ash argues the aim of interface designers and publishers is the production of envelope power. Envelope power refers to the ways that interfaces in games are designed to increase users perceptual and habitual capacities to sense difference. Examining a range of examples from specific videogames, Ash identities a series of logics that are key to producing envelope power and shows how these logics have intensified over the last thirty years. In turn, Ash suggests that the logics of interface envelopes in videogames are spreading to other types of interface. In doing so life becomes enveloped as the environments people inhabit becoming increasingly loaded with digital interfaces. Rather than simply negative, Ash develops a series of responses to the potential problematics of interface envelopes and envelope power and emphasizes their pharmacological nature.

Instruments and Related Concepts at the Syntax-Semantics Interface

Instruments and Related Concepts at the Syntax-Semantics Interface
Author: Koen Van Hooste
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2018-04-30
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3110720361

Instruments constitute a classic member of the thematic role inventory, yet they are usually analyzed only peripherally, taking a back seat to the more studied members such as Agent and Patient. This dissertation investigates the semantic reality behind the label instrument from the functionalist perspective of Role & Reference Grammar. Starting from a theoretical investigation of what instrumentality truly means when contrasted with related concepts like comitatives, this book explores the morphosyntactic realization of instruments across a wide range of typologically diverse languages. Apart from the standard occurrences of instruments that come to mind from languages such as Latin, German or English, this book delves into several less common constructions that feature the instrument relation. Such constructions include, amongst others, passives with instruments and particularly the Instrument-Subject Alternation, a construction where the instrument seemingly appears as the subject of the sentence. This construction displays variation along three dimensions: 1) The instrument can vary from a very simple tool to a complicated machine, 2) the predicate can vary substantially and 3) languages differ widely with respect to the construction's acceptability. This makes for a complex playing field where the animacy of the instrument but also the aktionsart class of the predicate play a major role. The last section of this book deals with linking the semantics of instruments and related concepts to their morphosyntactic realizations, including the various encoding strategies that are available in any given language. This book also features a concise introduction to Role & Reference Grammar. Dissertations in Language and Cognition: This series explores issues of mental representation, linguistic structure and representation, and their interplay. The research presented in this series is grounded in the idea explored in the Collaborative Research Center 'The structure of representations in language, cognition and science' (SFB 991) that there is a universal format for the representation of linguistic and cognitive concepts.