Employing emotions to drive plot generation in a computer-based storyteller

Emotions are an integral part of the creative process; however, it is hard to find computer models of creativity where emotions play a fundamental role. This paper describes a computer model for plot generation based on emotions and tensions between characters. In particular, the document illustrates how emotions are employed to progress a story in a coherent way and generate novel situations, and how the dramatic tension of the story in progress can be employed to evaluate its interestingness. The model is implemented in a computer program named MEXICA [Pérez y Pérez, R., & Sharples, M. (2001). MEXICA: a computer model of a cognitive account of creative writing. Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, 13(2), 119–139]; this work concentrates on the role of emotions in plot generation. The main claim is that a story can be represented as a cluster or group of emotional links and tensions between characters that progresses over story-time; story-actions work as operators that modify such clusters. I present results showing how story generation is affected by various model parameters. This approach means the program is flexible, as it avoids using predefined story-structures or characters’ goals to drive story generation. Furthermore, evaluation of computer generated stories showed that MEXICA’s stories were most often selected as the best story. This suggests that the story-generation mechanisms within MEXICA are sufficiently rich to generate interesting and novel stories.     

Feeling my way into story space: Lessons for research from storyteller Duncan Williamson

The paper reflects on the author's own life history and the important place that storytelling as a folk tradition and artistic practice play within it. Winicott's concept of potential space is used to explore the possibilities that open up within the space that listener and teller share in the joint creation of the storytelling experience. The construction of this space is an emotional project to which both listener and teller contribute. The article goes on to examine the relevance of this experience for how both spatiality and relationality are conceptualized within research. Working from an underlying premise that knowledge creation is dialogic, the author examines the roles a researcher can play as both listener and teller within research.     

TV as storyteller: How exposure to television narratives impacts at‐risk preschoolers' story knowledge and narrative skills

Educational media serve as informal educators within the home by supplementing young children's development. Substantial evidence documents the contributions of educational television to preschoolers' acquisition of a variety of skills; however, television's natural capacity as storyteller and the role it plays in preschoolers' early literacy development has been largely overlooked. This study examined the effects of viewing different TV program types on 311 at‐risk preschoolers' story knowledge and narrative skills. Children were assigned to one of 4 viewing conditions (i.e. watching up to 40 episodes of a particular program type): no viewing; expository; embedded narrative; or traditional narrative. Story knowledge scores were higher for those viewing either narrative type. In contrast, viewing specific narrative types differentially affected the component skills of narrative competence. Story retelling and identification of explicit story events were higher after repeat viewing of embedded narratives while generating implicit story content was higher after repeat viewing of traditional narratives.     

The Red and The Real

It is often claimed that principles of individuation imply essential properties of the things individuated. For example, sets are individuated by their members, hence sets have their members essentially. But how does this inference work? First I discuss the form of such inferences, and conclude that the essentialist inference is not a purely formal matter: although there is a form which all principles of individuation have in common, it is not true that any statement of that form is a principle of individuation, and hence there is no valid inference based purely on that form. However, I argue that there is a viable version of the essentialist inference nonetheless. The resources for a proper reconstruction of this type of inference can be gathered from reflections upon the role principles of individuation play in the project of the ontologist: such principles turn out to carry a modal weight similar to that of definitions or conceptual truths. It follows that, no matter how austere the ontology, some portion of essentialist modality is inevitable.     

The Return Of The Religious

Recents discussions of expansion in the European Union and the possibility of envisioning a Muslim country in it has exacerbated the deep-seated anxiety about Islam among the liberal and extreme right in Europe. This paper suggests that there are recurring elements in the discourse of European cultural identity and one of these elements is the representation of Islam in its alterity to European identity and civilization. Questioning the thesis of a radical break with the Christian past, this paper questions whether the European cultural identity which is being formed today signifies a break with a religious form of identification. The liberal and extreme right opposes Turkish membership on the grounds that the differences between ‘European values’ and ‘European culture and lifestyle’ and Turkey's culture are what makes the latter essentially and fundamentally external to the essence of Europe. Tracing the remnants of Christian discourse in the contemporary fashioning of European identity, this paper discusses how Christianity, with its secularized versions, which are now displaced to culture and lifestyle, still holds a privileged position as a unifying theme in Europe. It suggests that one of the tests that awaits Europe is whether it will be capable of articulating a new but democratic identity for Europe, one that is responsive to the differences of the other or whether it wants to continue to be European by way of its old methods of exclusion.     

医学教育人文精神缺失的弊端及对策

人文精神本是医学学科的根本要旨之一,然而,目前医学教育中普遍存在着人文精神缺失的状况.从医学教育的宗旨、医学模式的转变、医学生的综合素质、医患关系方面剖析了人文精神缺失的弊端并提出了相应对策.     

The Units Of Selection And The Causal Structure Of The World

Genic selectionism holds that all selection can be understood as operating on particular genes. Critics (and conventional biological wisdom) insist that this misrepresents the actual causal structure of selective phenomena at higher levels of biological organization, but cannot convincingly defend this intuition. I argue that the real failing of genic selectionism is pragmatic – it prevents us from adopting the most efficient corpus of causal laws for predicting and intervening in the course of affairs – and I offer a Pragmatic account of causation itself which ultimately bears out the claim that genic selectionism misrepresents the causal structure of selective contexts.     

The Activities of The Scandinavian Societies

Freud's concept of the death instinct has given rise to many different interpretations which have often been contradictory. It is in fact already possible to discern two diametrically opposite meanings of this concept in Freud's work from 1920—Beyond the Pleasure Principle—in which he first introduced the concept of the death instinct. In this paper, it is argued that both these meanings are relevant in describing psychical life, although only one of these meanings actually qualifies for the concept “death instinct”. Beyond the Pleasure Principle was written in order to try to understand some everyday, as well as clinical phenomena which could not be explained by the so-called pleasure principle. Freud postulated something beyond the pleasure principle, which initially seemed to have to do with binding energy. I will preserve this idea and attempt to develop it within the context of a phenomenological analysis of time. The temporalization of the subject involves a very basic affirmation of existence, in that the subject experiences something constant, something that can be said to possess the quality of a gestalt. I propose that that which is beyond the pleasure principle—this binding of energy—should be understood as the opposite of the idea of a primordial death instinct striving towards death. In this case, that which is beyond the pleasure principle reflects an original affirmation of existence, which could be said to correspond to Freud's first meaning of the death instinct. The second meaning—for which the name “death instinct” seems to be applicable—concerns the discharge of energy, which from a temporal point of view shows itself as a tendency to dissolution. The concept of the death instinct in its various meanings is discussed in connection with phenomenological reflections on time, which is a different approach from Freud's attempt to ground the death instinct in biology.     

The neglected bulimic: The nonpurger

For nearly 10 years bulimia has been recognized officially as a distinct eating disorder, and yet in that time only minimal attention has focused on the nonpurging subtype. The present investigation compared 21 DSM-III-R diagnosed nonpurging bulimics with 22 non-eating-disordered controls on three standardized questionnaires and during a unique assessment task. In this procedure subjects imagined that they were the character in a series of slides and audiotaped flooding scenes. The content of the stimuli ranged from food and weight cues to issues hypothesized to play a role in the development or maintenance of bulimia (e.g., rejection or loss of control fears). A MANOVA conducted on the three questionnaires was highly significant, with the Beck Depression Inventory and the Restraint Scale being responsible for the elevated bulimic scores. A repeated-measures ANOVA performed on the self-report ratings during the exposure task also achieved significance, as the bulimics reported higher anxiety reactions than controls to each experimental stimulus. Significant skin conductance reactions were detected when a group of only the most psychophysiologically responsive bulimics and controls were compared. The importance of continued comprehensive evaluations with DSM-III-R nonpurging bulimics was emphasized.This research was supported by grants both from the University of New Mexico's Research Allocation Committee and the Biomedical Research Support Grant committee. Portions of this paper were presented at the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy annual conference, Boston, November 1987.     

The Logic of The Goldhagen Debate

Since Daniel J. Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaustattempts to show that the Holocaust is explicable and can be understood largely in terms of a single cause, “eliminationist anti-Semitism”, it is not surprising that the book has generated an international debate. What is surprising is the magnitude and emotional intensity of the debate. This article argues that the deepest flaws in it Hitler's Willing Executioners,as well as the chasm of disagreement between Goldhagen's detractors and defenders, have as much to do with reasoning and concepts as with matters of fact. It concludes that Goldhagen's central argument is stronger than many of his critics claim, but that the inadequacy of his cognitive interpretation of anti-Semitism and his unexamined psychological assumptions weaken his attempt to explain the Holocaust. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

骨折治疗方法与原则的最优化历程

多年来骨折治疗,新旧技术、新旧理论相互融合,相互碰撞,产生了新的理论和方法,使得临床疗效显著提高,现阶段理智的临床医生应该融汇各家之长,多方互补,对每一位骨折患者的治疗都应该按照最优化的原则进行。但是在医疗过程中总存在着如方法选择不当或者错误,过度治疗,医患信任危机,医疗伦理道德的丧失等情况,我们应该用矛盾分析的方法来思考这些问题。     

现代视域下传统和谐思想的价值转换

中华传统和谐思想丰富多彩,它是维护中华民族统一的重要法宝,是推动中华民族文化发展的思想源泉。但是,传统和谐思想中也存在着消极的东西,特别是以等级划分为特征的历史局限。继承传统和谐思想的合理内核,并对传统和谐思想进行现代价值转换,对建构社会主义和谐社会具有重要的理论和现实意义。     

The Extended Mind Rehabilitates The Metaphysical Hegel

The nonmetaphysical interpretation of Hegel's philosophy asserts that the metaphysical reading is not credible and so his philosophy must be rationally reconstructed so as to elide its metaphysical aspects. This article shows that the thesis of the extended mind approaches the metaphysical reading, thereby undermining denials of its credibility and providing the resources to articulate and defend the metaphysical reading of Hegel's philosophy. This fully rehabilitates the metaphysical Hegel. The article does not argue for the truth of the metaphysical Hegel's claims. Rather, it defends the correctness of reading his philosophy as metaphysical.