Mental Moves (book, v1) — Introduction
A possible book about the Attachances of Moving between Thematic Spaces
On March 10, I wrote a post titled [Knowledge Engagement] How to develop a concept called “Attachance”? on Linkedin. In order to highlight this significant insight, I made a new possible theme called “Mental Moves”.
I used Knowledge Discovery Canvas to frame a knowledge project to curate more examples about “Moving between Thematic Spaces” and edit a possible book titled Mental Moves: The Attachances of Moving Mental Elements. See the diagram below:
My original goal is to collect more examples about “Moving between Thematic Spaces” and edit a book as an archive. Later, I started working on case studies one by one.
On June 17, 2023, I mentioned a rough TOC (Table of Contents) framework in an email conversation about a thematic discussion about Note-taking and Knowledge Engagement.
Now it’s time to close the Mental Moves knowledge project (phase 1) with a real possible book.
This article is the introduction to the book.
Contents
- The Concept of Attachance
- The Attachance Approach to Ecological Creative Cognition
- The Slow Cognition Method
- The Outcome
- The Framework
- A List of Attachances
- The Limitation
- A Possible Book
- The Reflection
1. The Concept of Attachance
The “Mental Moves” project aims to curate more examples of “Moving between Thematic Spaces”. It means the primary object of the project is the concept of Attachance.
I coined the term Attachance by combining Attach and Chance in 2018 to discuss some ideas related to Affordance, a core idea of Ecological Psychology.
Affordance means potential action opportunities offered by environments. I want to highlight the meaning and value of actual action itself, however, the term Affordance only refers to potential actions. Thus, I coined the term Attachance to emphasize the potential opportunities offered by actual actions, especially the attaching act and the detaching act.
In 2019, I started working on my own theoretical account of the Ecological Practice approach after finishing a book titled Curativity. The 2019 version of the approach is a curated toolkit version. The concept of Attachance is part of the toolkit. In May 2020, I wrote a book titled After Affordance: The Ecological Approach to Human Action in which I proposed several new theoretical ideas for expanding ecological psychology to the modern digital environment. The primary theme of After Affordance is the concept of Attachance.
The concept of Attachance is planned to develop as 1) an ecological practice concept for practice studies such as interaction design and startup innovation, and 2) a philosophical concept for developing a social theory.
The book After Affordance only achieves the first goal and it focuses on the following acts:
- Attaching to an environment
- Detaching from an environment
- Attaching to an object
- Detaching from an object
I use the concept of Attachance in many ways.
The Attachance Perspective refers to its philosophical meaning. You can find more details in D as Diagramming: The Attachance Perspective.
The theoretical concept of “Attachance” for the Ecological Practice Approach. It refers to what I explored in the 2020 book After Affordance. For example, I used it and Affordance together for discussing creative actions. You can find more details in Creative Actions: Second-order Affordance and Attachance.
The word “Attachance” is for normal discussions. I often discuss some stories or topics from the perspective of Attachance. You can find an example in Possible Practices: Attach, Detach, and Opportunities.
In 2022, the development of Attachance was tied to the development of Thematic Space. As mentioned above, Thematic Spaces refer to a specific type of container: cognitive container. You can find more details in [Slow Cognition] The Development of the concept of “Thematic Spaces”.
On March 24, 2023, I made a list of articles about the concept of Attachance. You can find more details in the following link:
2. The Attachance Approach to Ecological Creative Cognition
The concept of Attachance belongs to the Ecological Practice approach which is inspired by Ecological Psychology, Activity Theory, and social practice theories. In a broad sense, the Ecological Practice approach has its philosophical roots in traditional Pragmatism and contemporary embodied cognitive science.
On Dec 8, 2022, I introduced a new concept called “Ecological Strategic Cognition”. The Mental Moves project aims to explore a similar idea: Ecological Creative Cognition.
I took a simple strategy. First, I adopted Dean Keith Simonton’s Chance-configuration theory (Scientific Genius,1988), especially the concept of Mental Elements, for my case studies. Second, I conducted several case studies about Mental Moves between Thematic Spaces without considering Mental Elements.
Traditional Creative Cognition tends to focus on the perspective of cognitive psychology. According to Steven M. Smith, Thomas B. Ward, and Ronald A. Finke, “Although there are many useful and productive approaches to understanding creativity, the creative cognition approach (Finke, Ward, and Smith 1992) focuses on the cognitive processes and structures that underlie creative thinking.” (The Creative Cognition Approach, 1995).
Attachance Theory is about the ecological meaning and value of detaching acts and attaching acts. In other words, we pay attention to the process of moving between containers. The Attachance approach to Ecological Creative Cognition considers the following unit as the basic model of creative thinking:
Container [Configuration (Mental Elements)]
- Each project corresponds to a thematic space.
- Each project is supported by a digital platform.
- A mental element can move between two thematic spaces.
Moreover, we can use the concept of “Nested Containers” to define several containers for case studies. For example, we can find the following three types of containers from my case studies.
- Projects: social containers
- Thematic Spaces: cognitive containers
- Digital Platforms: physical containers
In this way, Ecological Creative Cognition highlights a new perspective to creative thinking: moving from head to head-body-environment.
3. The Slow Cognition Method
Last year, I worked on the Slow Cognition project which aims to explore the development of thoughts of creative workers. I have conducted several case studies about creative works.
One idea I found from my case studies is the “Creative Attachance” technique. In May 2022, I published a Slow Cognition research about 12 significant insights. I highlighted the following techniques behind these insights.
- Creative Attachance: #1, #2, #3, #5, #7, #10, #12
- Symbol Awareness: #1, #11
- Writing as Thinking: #2, #5, #11
- Double Container: #2
- Deep Analogy: #2, #11, #12
- Double Dialogues: #3
- Diagramming as Thinking: #4, #5, #6, #7
- The ECHO Way: #4
- Thematic Curation: #5, #12
- Concept Analysis: #6
- Expandness: #6, #7
- Co-creation: #8, #10
- Self-reflection: #8, #11
- Theoretical Development: #9, #12
- Empirical Research: #9
- Ecological Awareness: #10
- Immanent Development: #12
This result encouraged me to pay attention to the “Attachance — Thematic Space” entanglement.
The Mental Moves project continued the journey with the Slow Cognition Method.
Inspired by Howard E. Gruber’s Evolving Systems Approach and Activity Theory, I used “Slow Cognition” to name my method of Creative Work Study which is the master theme of Ecological Creative Cognition.
The Slow Cognition Method is also inspired by the following ideas:
- The Historical-cognitive method (HC)
- The Cultural-historical method (CH)
- Experience Sampling Method (ESM)
- Project Engagement method (PE)
The Historical-cognitive method combines historical research and cognitive research together. This method is developed by Howard E. Gruber.
The Cultural-historical method refers to Activity Theorists’ methodology in general. We should notice the newest development of Activity Theory is CHAT which stands for Cultural-historical activity theory.
The Experience Sampling Method (ESM) is also called the Daily diary method, or ecological momentary assessment (EMA). It asks participants to report on their thoughts, feelings, behaviors, and/or environment on multiple occasions over time. The experience sampling method was developed by Larson and Csikszentmihalyi.
The Project Engagement method is called Cultural Projection Analysis which is inspired by Activity Theory and Ecological Psychology. You can find more details in Activity U (X): Projecting, Projectivity, and Cultural Projection.
The Mental Moves project (phase 1) only used my own experiences of creative work — such as developing concepts, frameworks, and running projects — as the source of data. In the past several years, I often wrote articles about my thoughts and diagrams. Now I used these articles and diagrams as original materials for cast studies.
I also used other people’s experiences of creative work as data for the Slow Cognition (Phase II) project.
I conducted case studies one by one for running the Slow Cognition project (Phase II) with the following tools:
- Milanote: digital whiteboard for creative curation
- Miro: digital whiteboard for designing diagrams and mapping ideas
- Coda: doc-centered collaborative platform
- Medium: publishing long articles
You can find more details in The Slow Cognition Project and related methods.
4. The Outcome
As a project about the concept of Attachance which is a core idea of the Ecological Practice approach, the Mental Moves project marks an important milestone in the development of the approach.
While developing the Ecological Practice Approach, I have written three books (drafts) from 2019 to 2021.
- Curativity: The Ecological Approach to Curatorial Practice
- After Affordance: The Ecological Approach to Human Action
- Platform for Development: The Ecology of Adult Development in the 21st Century
Each year I write a book and each book establishes an essential theoretical concept for the Ecological Practice approach. Curativity introduces the concept of Curativity and develops the toolkit version of the approach. After Affordance introduces the concept of Attachance and develops the germ-cell version of the approach. Platform for Development introduces the concept of Supportance.
Both Curativity and After Affordance were written in Chinese. In fact, they are still unpublished drafts. Curativity is a 615-page Google Doc file while After Affordance is a 371-page file. Platform for Development is written in English, you can click here to see the contents of the book.
I also edited a book titled Ecological Practice Design: The Lifesystem Approach to Everyday Life Innovation in May 2022. The book marked the end of phase I of the Ecological Practice Approach.
My original passion behind the approach is developing a theoretical framework in order to use it to reflect on my over 20 years of work experience in various fields such as curation, design, strategy, learning, etc.
In the past three years, I developed a new vision for my career: connecting THEORY and PRACTICE. In 2020, I applied Curativity Theory to the field of Knowledge Building and started the Knowledge Curation project. In the past three years, I developed a series of frameworks and tools. In addition, I also edited or wrote the following books in drafts:
- Themes of Practice: The Information Architecture of Social Life (2021, edited, 440 pages, Chinese)
- Career Curation: Curativity Theory for Personal Innovation (2021, draft, 106 pages, Chinese)
- Diagramming as Practice (2021, English)
- Diagram Blending: Building Diagram Networks (2021, English)
- Knowledge Discovery: Developing Tacit Knowledge with Thematic Space Canvas (2022, English)
- Knowledge Curation: Turning Pieces into A Meaningful Whole (2022, English)
Eventually, I realized that I was working on the Ecological Practice Approach (Phase 2) by working on individual theories.
The Mental Moves project represents my effort to turn the concept of Attachance into Attachance Theory. It marks the start of a new journey of theory development:
Case studies on the various processes of developing theoretical concepts, such as Subjectification, Initiation, Objectification, Variation, Curation, and Validation.
Following the Mental Moves project, the next step of building Attachance Theory is the Social Moves project which will move the focus from knowledge projects to diverse social practices such as road trips (body moves), job change (career moves), etc.
The Mental Moves project (phase 1) also has its own significant theme: Ecological Creative Cognition. In the past several months, I conducted several case studies and developed a set of tools (diagrams, methods, lists) for further study.
- The Container [Configuration (Mental Elements)] Model (March 4, 2023)
- Three Aspects of Mental Element (March 27, 2023)
- The Hierarchy of Knowledge Center (July 12, 2023)
- Mapping moves between Knowledge Models (June 8, 2023)
- Mapping moves between Knowledge Projects (June 8, 2023)
- Mapping moves between Knowledge Centers (July 12, 2023)
- Mapping Multiple Moves (June 12, 2023)
- The concept of “Mental Focus” (June 17, 2023)
- A list of types of Attachances (March 8, 2023)
- A model of Note-taking (June 15, 2023)
These tools are useful for more case studies, personal reflection, and educational activities. It can be used to support my other projects such as the Creative Life Curation project and the Knowledge Engagement project.
5. The Framework
Based on a series of case studies, a systemic framework for understanding Ecological Creative Cognition emerged in my mind.
Eventually, I found the Life Coordinate (v2) model is really useful for curating the above ideas together. In other words, we can use it as a meta-framework to weave the above models together.
The “Life Coordinate” framework (v2) aims to highlight two tendencies of life development: Horizontal Tendency and Vertical Tendency.
I use the basic model of the Ecological Practice approach for the Horizontal Tendency.
If we repeat the above basic model, we see a Lifeflow which is the short name of the metaphor “Life as a continuous flow” which is inspired by William James’ metaphor “Stream of Thought”.
James used the stream metaphor to reject the British empiricists’ view of consciousness which refers to the chain or train metaphor. According to James:
“Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as “chain” or “train” do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A “river” or a “stream” are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness or of subjective life. (vol. 1, p.239)
What James emphasized is the Subjective Life. I follow this metaphor and directly use Life as a continuous flow to describe a person’s subjective experience of his own life. You can’t use a knife to cut a stream, you only can use a container to contain it.
The water doesn’t have a form which also means a structure, but the container has a form. The form of our experience is perceived as an interaction between our immediate actions with ecological situations which refers to physical environments and social environments. Since a container has its boundary, then we have experience of Enter and Exit. If we consider Life as a large container as a whole, Enter refers to Birth and Exit refers to Death. We can also consider Birth as a small life event, its primary life container is the Womb. Death, its primary life container is the Tomb.
The concept of Container is adopted from George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s conceptual metaphor Container and image schema Containment. However, I expanded the concept from a metaphor to a theoretical concept for the Ecological Practice approach. I use “Attach” and “Detach” to describe these experiences and other meanings.
For life development, what I want to claim is the meaning of “Attach something to containers” and “Detach something from containers”. This is not part of the conceptual metaphor Container and image schema Containment.
By expanding to “Attach something to containers” and “Detach something from containers”, we can talk about something. In this way, Life is not only a purely spiritual journey but a social material activity too. In other words, mind and matter are not separable.
For the Mental Moves project, Life Container refers to the following entities:
- Knowledge Models
- Knowledge Projects
- Knowledge Centers
They also form a nested structure: Centers [Projects (Models)]. From my case studies, we can see Mental Elements move between different levels of this nested structure. The following model is a simple model for understanding Moving Mental Elements.
I used Lifechain to name the Vertical Tendency of the “Life Coordinate”.
From the perspective of the Ecological Practice approach, the primary aspect of the “Subject—Object” relationship is the transformation between Potential (action opportunities) and Actual (actions).
The “Subject — Potential(Actual) — Object” schema is related to Mental Focus because a creative mind tends to detect opportunities for the next creative action.
Where does the potential opportunity come from?
It comes from 1) moving mental elements between containers, and 2) moving mental focus between containers.
Usually, these mental moves are ignored by many people unconsciously because it’s so hard to require our mind to observe its operations.
The Mental Moves project develops a set of tools to help people watch and analyze their mental moves of creative activities. The diagram below is an example of Mapping moves between Knowledge Projects.
Mental Elements and Mental Focus also move between different levels of the hierarchy of activity. I used the following three-level hierarchy of knowledge centers for the Mental Moves project.
The three levels of knowledge centers roughly correspond to three levels of activity:
- Knowledge Center > Activity (Building Knowledge Enterprise Activity)
- Knowledge Projects > Actions (Develop Knowledge Frameworks)
- Knowledge Elements > Operations (Work on Pieces of Knowledge )
The Project Engagement approach uses “Project” as the unit of analysis of Activity. If we see a knowledge center as a Project, then knowledge projects can be seen as sub-projects.
Since the Mental Moves project (phase 1) only considers knowledge activities as its primary object, the above framework is good enough for summarizing its significant insights.
6. A List of Attachances
From my experience of learning the concept of Affordance, I recognized that developing concrete types of theoretical concepts is very important in the journey of developing a new theoretical concept.
This insight guided me on the Mental Moves project. The outcome is not perfect, but good enough to make the “Abstract — Concrete” move. Here is a list of types of Attachances I discovered from case studies.
- The “Part-Whole” Attachance
- The “Knowledge — Meta-knowledge” Attachance
- The “Using It — Not Using It” Attachance
- The “Digital—Physical” Attachance
- The “Compare — Select” Attachance
- The “Universal Meaning — Particular Experience” Attachance
- The “Compression — Expansion” Attachance
- The “Synchrony — Diachrony” Attachance
- The “Past — Present” Attachance (Rediscovery)
- The “Situational—General” Attachance
Each type of Attachance has its own specific aspect. This is not a closed typology. We can discover more types of Attachances if we conduct more case studies.
7. The Limitation
The Mental Moves project (phase 1) ONLY used my own experiences of creative work as original materials.
It also ONLY considers knowledge activities as its primary object.
The Attachance approach to Ecological Creative Cognition needs to test the above framework by using other people’s experiences of creative work and using other types of social practices as the primary object for study.
The Social Moves project is expected to achieve this goal.
8. A Possible Book
Now we can start editing a possible book for the Mental Moves project. In order to curate case studies and original materials into one book, I decided to use three volumes to design the book.
Volume 1 aims to offer the Attachance Approach to Ecological Creative Cognition by collecting articles about cast studies. It is divided into the following six parts:
- Part 1: Mental Elements
- Part 2: Mental Focus
- Part 3: Mental Models
- Part 4: Creative Projectivity
- Part 5: Multiple Moves
- Part 6: Significant Insights
Volume 2 collects articles about the concept of Attachance. You can find the details in the link below:
Volume 3 collects articles about the concept of Thematic Space. You can find the details in the link below:
9. The Reflection
Last year, I edited a similar collection about the concept of Life Discovery and the Life-as-Project approach (1, 2, 3).
Both two projects are guided by the Thematic Engagement approach which is inspired by the following two theoretical approaches:
- The Themes of Practice Approach (2019, 2021)
- The Project Engagement Approach (2021, 2022)
Both approaches emphasize the importance of actions of Concepts and dynamic meanings of Themes. If we use “Theme” to represent these two approaches, and use “Concept” to refer to the mainstream view on Concepts, then we can find a new unit of analysis: Theme (Concept). See the diagram below.
While “Theme” emphasizes subjective experience and understanding, “Concept” is more about objective meaning and definition.
In this way, we can see two types of cognitive space from the perspective of “Container Thinking” (a nickname of the Ecological Practice approach).
- Container: Concept
- Containee: Theme
- Container’s boundary: Conceptual Space
- Containee’s living space: Thematic Space
The Spilling Space is a dynamic space because it can be smaller than the inside space or bigger than the outside space. In this way, the spilling space connects the inside space and the outside space. The Thematic Space can be smaller than the Conceptual Space or bigger than the Conceptual Space because it is a dynamic space.
For the Mental Moves knowledge project, I used “Thematic Space” as the primary concept and used it to refer to projects, models, and other things.
If we move to the Context(Mind) project, then we can use Context to refer to projects, models, and other things. In this way, the Mental Moves project contributes to the theme of Context (Mind).
In my 2020 book (draft) After Affordance, I introduced the Ecological Structure Schema (ESS) framework which lists eight types of structures of context for Attachance.
Since the Ecological Structure Schema (ESS) framework is an abstract model, we can’t directly apply it to the Mental Moves project. However, we can use it as a meta-framework to classify the following moves:
- Moves between Mental Models
- Moves between Projects
- Multiple Moves
We can also use the Ecological Structure Schema to reflect on mental moves and design mental moves.
Now we have a set of tools for conducting case studies for the Mental Moves project and the Context(Mind) project.
