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Form in Thought: How Experience is Comprehended

Based on a presentation in the Architecture and Philosophy Program, Royal Melbourne
Institute of Technology, November 2009 Revised July 3, 2012
Charles Burnette, PHD, FAIA
charlesburnette@comcast.net
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These images (produced by my undergraduate industrial design students fifteen years
ago) are presented to tease your eyes and mind. What did you think when you looked at
each of them? There is no single correct answer. You determine the meaning of what you
see and how you feel about it emotionally and aesthetically.
Now please imagine a painting by Gerhard Richter. If you have no knowledge of his
work you will be unable to do so. If you have that knowledge you will probably think of
an image you have seen, the way pigments are shaped, colored and distributed across the
canvas and the overall mood they jointly convey. But, Richter has expressed his art in
many different forms. It remains unlikely that you will recall the same mode of
expression that someone else does. Interpretation of an image depends on prior
experience and knowledge but shared understanding of imagery depends on recalling a
common experience of image or style.
From a verbal point of view a dead shark in a glass case filled with water, is easily
visualized just from the words in quotation because we know what a shark and an
aquarium look like. But a question such as how long will the water remain clear or
thoughts on life and death stimulated by the dead fish are not so easily anticipated. Once
stimulated or aroused, interpretation of a perceived form connects to and depends on the
knowledge you find relevant to it.
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Consider the architecture of Federation Square in Melbourne, Australia, pictured above.
The tessellated surface of the building caused me to recall cracks in dry ground; the
colors reminded me of those I had seen in a satellite image of Australia. The overall form
reminded me of the hardened shell of a marsupial, and the paving around it recalled a
parched landscape and Australias vast outdoor spaces. The deep openings in the surface
of the building suggested shelter from harsh sunlight, while the atrium inside celebrated
the filtered light and life of a rain forest. For me this network of visual and verbal
associations and experiences formed a coherent and memorable architectural expression
of the country stimulated by the form of the architecture. I had created meaning from its
forms whether the architects intended me to or not. All of us respond to forms in our
environments through the feelings and associations they invoke in us as we call on our
imagination, memories, and language to interpret them.
Words have proven useful when explaining the unitary and dynamically changing forms
that we see and imagine. In the examples above, form was discussed as features of an
object or environment. Historically, it has also been described in terms of its perception,
composition, and aesthetic appreciation as well as its mediation, production,
appropriateness, and utility. Psychologists have focused on the perception of form; art
critics and linguists on the affect, meaning and organization of its expression;
programmers and artists on its mediation, synthesis, and presentation; craftsmen and
engineers on its production and functionality; dancers and athletes on postural form and
movement; writers and their critics on its narrative effect, and designers of material
objects on the aesthetic appeal and functionality of a form for an intended use. However,
Form in thought occurs as "mental images" that manifest the focal state of mind of the
thinker and its meaning to them. (The term mental image refers to a coherent
organization of neurons that is recognized, interpreted, or expressed through cognition.)
This internal imagery may be expressed externally through any language or medium open
to human interpretation. A theory of sufficient scope and usefulness is needed to capture
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the richness of how form occurs in thought. The theory that follows will attempt to
deepen understandings of how the mind perceives, references, organizes, synthesizes,
expresses, interprets, evaluates and recalls form in thought. This conceptual specification
attempts to formulate how form in thought is generated, structured and applied. It is an
effort to conceptualize Formative Thought, the focal mode of thought in A Theory of
Design Thinking
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. It is presented as an exploratory theory based on design thinking and
doing, not a scientific disclosure of what actually occurs in the mind. The hope is that it
will encourage others to seek a better understanding of how form in thought occurs.
A THEORY OF FORMATIVE THOUGHT
Form in thought results in part from a matrix of shifting patterns, consolidating and
compressing meaning in fractions of a second
Ian McEwan
Aided by brain scans, genetic decoding, and molecular experiments neuroscience is
rapidly expanding knowledge of how thought occurs. We now know that pictorial form
does not pass directly from the external world into the brain. What we experience as a
perceived form is not an objective property of what is seen. Nor does it constitute fully
reliable evidence of what exists. Consequently, the focus of a modern theory of form
should be on form in thought rather than form as an attribute of objects. An
appropriate theory should specify how a unitary, affective, and meaningful mental image
occurs and is interpreted, acted on, or communicated. To be useful it should promote
understanding of how mental images arise in thought, and are expressed, transformed,
and tailored to circumstances, media, and other people. It should foster consideration of
how people interpret, express and communicate what they think and how the
composition, synthesis, and blending of information from different sources occurs.
Explicit parsing of imagery to match or influence a persons communication or behavior
occurs in advertising but is only now becoming of general interest .
Every interpretation, expression, or action is constructed in the mind of an individual
thinker, often through interaction with others. Actual formulations depend on
circumstances experienced at the time, the state of mind of the thinker, their prior
experience and knowledge. Purposeful tasks focus attention, select content from relevant
sources, shape imagery, and guide action. Form in thought is also shaped through recall
of intentions, preferences, and reactions in similar contexts or situations.

Synthesis and compression into unitary form is a primary function of Formative Thought.
Filtering occurs automatically through comparative differentiation between neural
networks when an emotionally salient network or its components becomes dominant and
incompatible subnets or components are weakened or ignored. Adaptation results when
similar networks have comparable strength and the salience of elements and relations
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within them determine the outcome. Blending occurs when salient networks representing
complimentary concepts merge, diminishing irrelevant content (metaphors, analogies,
etc.) Senses, memories, and thoughts provide input that contribute to resolution of the
mental image that manifests them in the mind of the thinker.
Form in thought is a synthesis of the thinkers emotions, perceptions, thoughts, and the
events in which they are engaged. The meaningful holistic images that result are
interpreted or expressed as thoughts, plans, artifacts, or messages understood by the
thinker and capable of being communicated to others. Incoming information is
interpreted by attempting to find similar patterns in memory that suggest what the
perceiver can expect to experience in a situation. This sometimes leads us to see what
we expect to see or deny the existence of what we do see. Understanding a persons
immediate and prior experience is crucial to understanding how they may interpret new
situations. Designers cannot assume a match between their understanding of a
communication and that of another person who receives it.
Formative Thought
Formative Thought, as thought concerning form is called in this theory, is conceived as
the functioning of a single broadly capable mental agency implementing a mode of
thought through which form is interpreted, resolved, and expressed. This mode of thought
is the agency through which interaction, and communication are anticipated, resolved,
and implemented, and through which media of all kinds are interpreted and employed. It
enables a thought to be objectified, expressed, and comprehended and provides the
primary mental bridge between people, their environments, and other people. Although
embracing mental activity ranging from phenomenal input to social communication, its
primary function is to resolve, express, and interpret imagery meaningful to the thinker
and useful to them. It synthesizes incoming information from the brain, body and
environment to create mental images with affective meaning and utility to the thinker
regarding their focus of thought. Formative Thought compiles, blends, and synthesizes
images, feelings, and the meanings they convey. All other modes of purposeful thought
identified in the Theory of Design Thinking contribute to meaningful expressions
produced through Formative thought.
Formative thought is the focus of all purposeful thought because other modes of thought
need ways to express themselves and collaborate to express a more complex thought.
Incoming information is first interpreted through the thinkers existing knowledge. Is it
similar to prior experiences? Is there relevant information in memory that can be recalled
and applied? Can the focal situation be interpreted or expressed in terms the thinker
already understands? When anomalies result from inability of the thinkers existing
knowledge to respond to situated information, an intention to resolve form in thought
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becomes the subject and imagination is engaged. Each mind generates and interprets its
own mental imagery under the influence of experience and prior knowledge.
Subordinate modes apply formative thought to interpret and express the kind of
information for which they are specialized. These processes provide structured content
that is interpreted, synthesized and expressed to give meaningful form to the primary
intention of a purposeful thought. These subordinate modes are:
The Intentional Sub Mode of Formative Thought which sets formative goals and
manages subordinate thought to guide the purposeful creation of form in thought. Goals,
priorities, and commitments are intentional forms of thought.
The Referential Sub Mode of Formative Thought which indexes elements and features
that provide content to a cognitive form. Words and symbols are referential forms that
play an essential semantic role in declarative expression and structured analysis.
The Relational Sub Mode of Formative Thought which constructs, restructures, and
analyses relationships between Referential elements and features under constraint of
intentional thought and the focal situation. Sentence structures (syntax), organization
charts, and network diagrams express relational forms.
The Formative mode of Formative Thought which applies situational, intentional and
relational constraints as it applies existing knowledge to interpret incoming information.
It synthesizes and compresses information from the brain, body and environment to
express a plan of action, its projected outcome and meanings in mediums appropriate to
the intentional goal, and focal situation. Images, messages, artifacts, and plans are forms
produced through the formative Mode.
The Procedural Sub Mode of Formative thought which produces a formal outcome by
interpreting, expressing, and acting out plans and predicted outcomes synthesized by the
Formative mode of Formative thought. Scripts, methods, and behaviors are procedural
forms.
The Evaluative Sub Mode of Formative Thought which assesses the products of
Formative processing against the thinkers intentional criteria and its probable affective
meaning to audiences. This assessment tests compliance with intentional criteria and
situated circumstances, verifies conceptual resolution, and predicts the likely level of
epistemic comprehension. Measurements, judgments, and valuations are evaluative
forms.
The Reflective Sub Mode of Formative Thought which assimilates formative products
and their affective meanings into existing knowledge. Evaluative outcomes that reinforce
prior experiences become more salient in working memory and more durable in long-
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term memory. These forms also become more readily recalled through the repetitive use
of appropriate cues. Preferences, histories and stories are reflective forms. Expressions
that dont satisfy intentional criteria propagate further Reflective thought to reformulate
the Formative expression being evaluated.
Goal seeking, objectification, organization, imagination, integration, evaluation and
reflection are key processes in Formative thought as they are in all modes of purposeful
thought. Without goal seeking there would be no focus. Without objectification there
would be no identification, or comparability. Without organization thoughts could not be
manipulated or analyzed. Without imagination there would be no intentional
manipulation or transformation of formative expression. Without integration there would
be no synthesis, compression, or blending of meaning or affect. Without evaluation there
would be no improvement in what is expressed or understood. Without reflection there
would be no application of knowledge. There would be no expression of a focal situation,
its meaning, emotional tone, and feeling without such capabilities.
The Affective Component of Mental Imagery
In this theory a cognitive form at any level always has emotional meaning and salience.
Emotional responses to situations and prior feelings associated with relevant memories
are synthesized and blended to give affective meaning to the mental image that manifests
a focal state of mind. The level of emotional salience is presumed to weight this blending.
Affective meanings associated with subordinate expressions are integrated into higher
order expressions. The expression of Formative thought that results is understood to have
an emotional tone between extremes of pleasure and displeasure.
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The thinker
comprehends the affective meaning of the mental image and carries its emotional tone
forward in subsequent thought about the situation.
Feelings about and understandings of mental images arise through reflection, or through
construction, deconstruction, or analysis of imagistic information. Feelings, meanings,
and information are mediated through mental representations at a human scale
understood through the thinkers own experience, knowledge and circumstances. This
happens whether the mental image represents a perception, imagined image, proposal,
plan-of-action, design, or message. Perceptual, conceptual, and behavioral information is
integrated, blended, synthesized, and compressed to interpret or express the thinker's state
of mind.
Distinguishing Percept and Mental Imagery
Perception is understood as the process of becoming aware of information from the
senses, a percept resulting from such an event, or an interpretive reference such as his
perception of pain. Formative thought is broader than perception in that it concerns any
mental image however generated or interpreted.
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Sensory information is established in the mind almost instantaneously during phenomenal
experience at a particular time and place. The environmental source of such a percept
establishes its place in space and time and its identity in cognition. A thinker focuses their
senses on something in an environment during such an event but cannot create the
information they attend. Conversely, the thinker, not their environment, controls what
they attend and how they interpret sensed information.
Percepts are both the results of perception and mental constructs that arise from it. One
can anticipate the effect of acting on sensory input as it is experienced. (To avoid
crashing the car or falling off the bike, for example.) Much of this interpretation is
through subconscious recognition of knowledge gained through prior experience or
training. Although thought of as perception, the mental images that result are the products
of reflective interpretation. The thinker determines the content of their imagination and
the meaning of the mental images that result. Images may take their form from the senses
involved or from linguistic devices generalized from prior experience.
The affect and meaning generated through perception depends on how previously
acquired feelings and knowledge relevant to the perceived situation are recalled and
applied. This renders perception and its interpretation, transformation, and expression
into acts of imagination. Although perceptual information from prior experience may be
recalled and interpreted during imagination, its spatial, temporal and experiential context
is not necessarily contingent to the situation considered, or necessarily recalled during
generation of a mental image. Dreams are so evanescent and hard to remember because
they are the products of imagination not tethered in space or time. If they are to be
communicated or more fully considered products of imagination must be apprehended
through drawings, words, and other forms of expression
A mental image is understood as a meaningful mental expression derived from the
association or blending of objects of cognition. In this conception,"mental image" refers
to the form generated by the interpretation of objects of cognition as they are thought
about and become meaningful, satisfying and useful. These images vary as the mind
explores alternative or subordinate interpretations of information related to a focal subject
or situation. Mental images of partial or complete thoughts may have different duration
without losing focus on what the thought is about or what its components mean in that
context. Subordinate interpretations contribute to the expression and understanding of the
whole. Such thinking is essential to problem solving, design, art or any other purposeful
activity where the outcome is not known or is known but not understood.
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The Referential Identity of Mental Images
Whether resulting from perception or pure imagination, a mental image is always
identifiable in cognition as a manifestation of the neural networks that embody it.
Identifiable in whole or in part through their networks or subnets, mental images are
referential objects that can be referred to, recalled, reorganized, selectively interpreted,
imaginatively adapted, expressed, and remembered. Whether a network arises from
interpreting sensory information, compiling information relevant to some salient focus, or
from blending and synthesis, a coherent network defines a mental image, provides a
frame of reference and structure for its information, and facilitates its interpretation,
transformation, and expression. The primary network and subnets of a mental image are
unified objects of thought apprehend at the human scale as words, sentence structures,
visual shapes, etc interpreted, and applied during thought.. Mental images are holistic and
unitary only in the sense that the network of neurons by which they are embodied in the
brain has referential objectivity. Coherent networks give mental images their identity,
meaning, and emotional tone.
Complex neural structures can be manipulated through the networks they reference.
Network structures of any complexity are strengthened or weakened as the emotional
salience of constituent elements are selectively amplified through attention, activity, or
contingent affect. Mental images are compiled, blended, synthesized, and enter
awareness, or become ignored as identifiable neural nets and subnets are strengthened or
weakened. Salience also prioritizes subnets and their components to order and execute
processes. Identifiable nodes (elements) links (relations) and actions in the network of a
mental image can be selected and manipulated to construct or deconstruct it. The role and
meaning of the elements and relations that define an image are reinterpreted and
transformed when subordinate networks are selectively activated, inhibited, interpreted,
reorganized, or expressed. Something previously experienced or synthesized can be
recalled to help resolve focal information. The identifiability and adapability of content in
a mental image is critical to intentional thought and the recall, interpretation,
manipulation, transformation and expression of experience.
Whether the result of perception, imagination, or adaptive recall the neural structure of a
mental image relates to a focal situation that is the focus of the immediate experience and
manifests the state of mind of the thinker. Because the mental image expressing the
moment must resolve information of varying strength coming in from the body, brain,
and environment, elements, relationships, and operational potentials must be recognizable
and identifiable as objects of thought to enable the image to be constructed, synthesized,
analyzed or valued. These objects of thought are subject to intention, preference, or
idiosyncratic processes during recall or application.
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The Organization of Formative Thought
Form in thought is embodied in the brain through neural networks and bindings
between them. A thinker may become consciously aware of a mental image or it may not
rise to the level of consciousness. Although a coherent form may appear in whole or
part in the minds eye it is the synthesis of information in related neural nets that is being
experienced. Only certain networks are salient at the moment a coherent form is "re-
cognized", interpreted, or expressed. Emotional tone, meaning, sense data, and
information content in the salient neural structure are expressed through a unitary mental
image.
The theory proposed here suggests that Formative thought applies two schematic
cognitive structures familiar to psychologists and psycholinguists; the center-periphery
and container schema. These schemata are conceptual organizations that represent
complex neural networks. They characterize the kinds of organizations needed to make
form coherent, variable, and referentially objective in thought.
The Center-Periphery Schema models the connections of relevant neural networks to a
focal center. The center represents the focal situation and mental entities around it afford
variable definition.
This schema is conceived as the primary organizational structure underlying all
intentional thought. It represents the organization of information relevant to a focal
situation. The salience of interacting neural networks determines which information is
relevant to an intention and prioritizes which links within a network are to be addressed.
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The Container Schema represents the binding structure through which a unitary mental
image is created by focusing, blending, and compressing the affective meaning of
information within the boundary. This boundary is permeable and non-geometric.
Operating on content organized by the center-periphery schema the container schema
limits the information interpreted, synthesized, compressed, and expressed to give
holistic form and referential objectivity to a mental image. Information inside this focal
boundary is determined by emotional salience. Elements lacking sufficient salience
remain outside the boundary but linked to information within according to their relative
salience. These links support or suppress other possible interpretations and expressions
and help to define focal information in the container. Links inside the boundary allow
conceptual manipulation and construction or deconstruction of its formal expression and
meaning. Imagination can selectively activate peripheral links to reinterpret the focal
image. This would occur through emotional motivation or intentional selection and
prioritization of neuron groups, elements and relationships. The hippocampus is highly
likely to play a role in such binding as it involves both emotional processing and memory
formation.
The Flux of Formative Thought
Core states (of consciousness) change from one to another within periods of hundreds of
milliseconds as different circuits are activated by the environment, the body and the brain
itself. Only certain of these states are stable, and thus actually become integrated. It is
this integration that gives rise to the unitary property of consciousness. Because the core
carries out reentrant interactions between perceptual categorical input and value-category
memory, both of which are continually changing, it also changes.
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Form in thought expresses the state of mind regarding the immediate focus of thought.
Whether conscious or not, mental imagery changes instantaneously in response to
information from the senses, brain and environment as it adapts to new information,
recall, and processing. This adaptation is presumed to occur continuously in short-term
memory, over the duration of an intentional thought in working memory, and through
adaptive change in long-term memory.
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Forms are presumed to change in short term memory through direct processing, in
working memory through intentionally directed processing, and in long term memory
through assimilation, adaptation, and forgetting.
Formative thought is presumed to be negotiable between situational information,
emotion, and reflection during short-term processing; between intention, focal context,
and established knowledge in working memory; and between emotional salience and
utility when in long-term memory.
Form in thought is assumed to be communicable from short-term memory through
behavior and from working memory through expression in some medium. It is expressed
from long-term memory through dreams, stories, histories, and adaptations of short-term
and working memories.
From a designers point of view the challenge of Formative thought is to suggest forms
that stimulate short-term memory, that engage working memory, and permeate long term
memories, that inform one of a designs intent, show how it can be realized, and create
forms that persist in long-term memory.
Whether consciously or unconsciously undertaken, the primary purpose of Formative
thought is to create and deploy an expression in the form of a holistic mental image
capable of conveying emotion, meaning, and content. Needs, desires, and declarative,
organizational, situational, performative, evaluative, and experiential form are expressed
and recognized as patterns of neural information.
Recognizing Form at Human Scale
Most forms in thought are recognized at a human scale. Formal networks encode words,
sentences, features, shapes, and other abstract entities useful in thought. Associations,
metaphors, and conceptual models manifested through structural patterns can be
referenced, recalled and applied as can scripts, procedures, and patterns of action that
express or recall behaviors. Mental images, their meanings and associated information
can be communicated outside the mind if they can be translated into forms appropriate to
a medium of communication. Subnets representing values, measures, and judgments
qualify the effective worth of expressed forms.
The creation of Form in thought recognizable at a human scale involves several
processes. These include:

Focusing on one perceptual effect over another (Figure, ground)

Focusing on discrete features such as a red dot in a field of green dots

Attending to patterns and gestalts within neural networks with the highest
potentiation.

Synthesizing information from different mental spaces.

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Differentiating things through boundaries, cues, and occlusions.

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Attending to movement, action or change in a situation, expression or scene.

Focusing on differences, as when something is smaller or larger than a

comparable thing.

Adaptive merging of events, episodes or scripts as they are assimilated into

existing knowledge or related to a focal situation or intentional goals.
The blending of concepts from different mental spaces is a function of Formative
thought. For example, the meaning of cats and feelings toward cats draw on the
mental spaces built on situated experiences of things previously categorized as cats. A
blend retains connectivity to the neural nets that provided input to it. The meaning of a
blend can be unpacked, edited, and reinterpreted through this connectivity. Conceptual
Blending is also involved in processes of functional processing and interpretation. For
example, for a material anchor such as a clock, the numbers on its face are interpreted as
units of time. Movement of the hands of the clock is interpreted as passing time. A
complete revolution of the hands is understood to represent half a day. We blend these
interpretations to represent the time of day.
In summary, it is asserted that Form in thought has an embodied, structural, dynamically
changing, and situationally mediated nature that should supercede understandings of form
as a descriptive attribute of a material object. A new approach to the study, creation,
construction and deconstruction of form is afforded based on how the mind works.
i
Burnette, Charles, 2006: A Theory of Design Thinking, at http:www.independent.academia.edu/
charlesburnette
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Burnette, Charles, 2009: An emotional Basis for Design Thinking, at
http:www.independent.academia.edu/charlesburnette
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Edelman, Gerald M., 2004: Wider Than The Sky, Yale University Press, New Haven,
p121
iv
Fauconnier, Gilles and Turner, Mark, 2002: The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending
and the Minds Hidden Complexities, New York, Basic Books
v
Gibson, J.J., 1950: The Perception of the Visual World, Boston, Houghton Mifflin