Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine Philosophy Question for EDE (or anyone)

I'm thinking primarily of EDE when I ask this question, but if anyone else knows, please chime in.


What is the word (or is there even a word) for the phenomenon by which an individual's total concept of something isn't informed only by thing itself, but rather as a clustered set of ideas peripheral to the thing?

I know that's horribly worded, so let me give the specific example that sparked this:


I'm growing a beard right now and someone just said, "Hey... I like your Grizzly Adams look".

That got me thinking that - although, I've heard the name, "Grizzly Adams" before - I have no real recollection of who that actually is. I only have a loose concept that "Grizzly Adams" was some sort of 1970's TV mountain man. When I try to think about it, I get a sort of conglomeration of Marlin Perkins, Merlin Olsen, Euell Gibbons, Victor French, and Gentle Ben(!). So, basically, my total concept of who "Grizzly Adams" is a mental combination of all these (to me) peripheral ideas.


I sort of imagine that's how all thinking really occurs, but I was wondering if there were a specific name for the phenomenon, like an "ideoplex" or an "idea cluster", or something. (Neither one of those turn up any helpful google results).

I'm not sure if there is a specific name for what you have in mind, but what you're describing sounds like what is generally known as the "cluster theory of meaning" for proper names, which basically says that the way we pick out any individual is through a "cluster" of descriptions we associate with it, which may or may not accurately describe the thing in question.

*thinks*

I'd say EDE is probably really close, though I would throw in that it probably also corresponds vaguely to Mental Association or the Association of Ideas. All external stimuli are processed through the mental highway of past experience, right? So when you're thinking of Grizzly Adams you're processing a current thought through a conglomeration of past experiences and picking bits and pieces from those memories before coming to a current mental image.

What you are describing is pretty much the same as an associative array in programming. I did a little search based on that and found a concept call associative learning which is almost the same.
Neither the "array" or "learning" forms are exactly what you describe but they are very very close

It's funny you should mention programming, Viridis. That's exactly where my mind first went, too - I initially thought of clustering as used in data mining.


After checking out a few articles on "cluster theory of meaning," and "association of ideas," I'm thinking a component of the latter called "the law of contiguity" probably comes closest to what I'm talking about.

From wikipedia:

"Actions, sensations and states of feeling, occurring together or in close connexion, tend to grow together, or cohere, in such a way that, when any one of them is afterwards presented to the mind, the others are apt to be brought up in idea."


Basically, "Grizzly Adams" was a show when I was a kid, during a time when the "natural world" was a popular entertainment theme. Even if I never saw it, I was aware enough of it that my mind associates the words with other things from the same time period like "Wild Kingdom", "Little House on the Prairie", "Grape Nuts" commercials, etc.

Fascinating stuff. Thanks, guys!

Actually I thought it coincidental you described that..umm, thing?
I've been working on a program for my work on the side and associative arrays are what I've been using to track everyone's qualifications, training and hours

The psychological concept of a schema, which is very similar to what Conjure Lass described above, can also be related to that.

http://psychology.about.com/od/sindex/g/def_schema.htm

Note that schemas are mental frameworks that help us process new information, and tend to ignore new information that contradicts the existing schema - which explains why some of us tend to stubbornly hold on to current conceptions of things that aren't true at all! This refers not only to opinions, but also to facts.

I've always known that.

btw, Merlin Olsen was Grizzly Adams

No... I think you're suffering the same sort of memory clustering that I was, Vee.

Although I don't remember the show, I did look it up and "Grizzly Adams" was played by an actor named Dan Haggerty. Merlin Olsen was the ex-football player who played "Jonathan Garvey" on "Little House on the Prairie".

Both were rustic guys with beards, though.

yep. Dan Haggerty had a big drug bust in the 80s, and made an appeal for clemency based on protecting the kids who were his fans... at a time when anyone who remembered the show was at least in high school if not beyond.