Open-Ended Elaborations in Creative Metaphor - Computational Creativity Research: Towards Creative Machines - page 222

Intuitively, something can exist in both spaces, but formally they are treated as sep-
arate but “corresponding” entities. We can take A to be the (set of) managers in the
pretence and B the same managers in reality. Again, A “corresponds” to B. Thus,
the rule delivers a correspondence between emotional distress of the managers about
the conversations, in the pretence, and emotional distress of the managers about the
conversations, in reality. The managers are indeed inferred to experience distress in
the pretence, so the correspondence is used to infer that they experience it in reality
as well.
The VNMA that handles causal relationships etc. takes the form of a rule like
(10) that says that P causing Q in the pretence corresponds to R causing S in reality,
if P corresponds to R and Q corresponds to S. As a result, the conversations causing
the emotional distress in the pretence is inferred to correspond to their doing also in
reality. Since the former casual link can be inferred to exist in the pretence, it is also
assumed to exist in reality.
Note that there is nothing assumed in the causal chain in reality space to correspond
to the neck-crick itself or the physical pain it causes. This is simply because the neck-
crick itself does not correspond to anything in reality, nor does the physical pain. A
causal link in the pretence between P and Q is only inferred to correspond to one in
reality if P corresponds to something R in reality and Q corresponds to something S
in reality. Similarly, (10) is parasitic on the existence of a correspondence between
P and S and a correspondence between A and B.
Equally, the within-pretence difficulty for the managers of continuing with the
conversations transfers to reality, because of VNMA rules handling time-course (a
case of which is the continuation of a situation) and difficulty. For example, here is
the rule for some aspects of the Time-Course VNMA.
(11) IF some situation P in a pretence CORRESPONDS TO some situation S in the surround
THEN
(in the pretence) P's having a specific qualitative temporal attribute
CORRESPONDS TO
(in the surround) S's having the same attribute.
The continuation of a situation is one case of a qualitative temporal attribute. So,
because the conversations in the pretence correspond to the conversations in reality,
the continuation of the conversations in the pretence corresponds to their continuation
in reality, because of the Time-Course VNMA.
Then, given that these continuations correspond, and the managers correspond
between pretence and reality, the difficulty the managers have in engaging in the
continuations also corresponds, by the Ease/Difficulty VNMA.
Notice here how VNMAs can recursively build on each other: for example, con-
tinuations are made correspond by one VNMA, allowing another VNMA to make
the difficulty of the continuations to correspond. If, further, an agent in the pretence
were to have a mental/emotional state about this difficulty, then a corresponding
agent in reality would be inferred to have it as well. Thus, the emotional/mental-state
VNMA would have built on the Ease/Difficulty VNMA, which would have built on
the Time-Course VNMA.