TALE: A Possible Theme called “Context (Mind)”
A Unit of Analysis for Discussing Mind and Mental Moves
The above picture represents a Possible Theme called “Context (Mind)”.
- Name: Context (Mind)
- Clue: …
- Type: Knowledge Themes
- Contributors: a friend of mine
- Reference: The Curated Mind, Attachance
- Related themes: Mental Moves, Platform Ecology, Frame for Work
I had a thematic conversation about “Note-taking and Knowledge Engagement” over the past several days with a friend.
My friend’s primary theme is “Consciousness and Thoughts” from a practical perspective. He is not interested in developing a scientific or philosophical theory of consciousness. Instead, his goal is to create a simple framework to explain how consciousness works for high school students.
Our discussion covered several related themes, including note-taking systems, Zettelkasten, Niklas Luhmann’s concept of creative life, semiotic system diagrams, the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), project networks, mental moves, spontaneous concept systems, early discovery, and knowledge branding.
The day before yesterday, I shared my perspective on the mind and introduced him to the basic model of the Ecological Practice approach.
The Ecological Practice Approach
In a broad sense, the Ecological Practice approach has its philosophical roots in traditional Pragmatism and contemporary embodied cognitive science. In 2019, I developed the first version of the Ecological Practice approach as a curated knowledge framework. See the diagram below.
The diagram above illustrates several theoretical concepts. Some of these concepts are adopted from established theoretical sources. The concept of Selectivity is derived from William James’ Radical Empiricism. Affordance comes from ecological psychologist James J. Gibson. Reflectivity is based on the work of Donald Schön.
In addition to these, I have developed several original concepts, including Attachance, Containance, Curativity, and Themes of Practice.
In 2020, I created a new diagram to represent the germ cell of the Ecological Practice approach. In a theoretical framework, a germ cell is the smallest unit that encapsulates the core structure of thought, allowing for analysis at different levels. The diagram below illustrates the germ cell of the Ecological Practice approach.
The diagram above integrates three core concepts of the Ecological Practice approach: Affordance, Attachance, and Containance.
The term “Offers” is inspired by the concept of affordance and refers to the opportunities provided by the Container. The interaction between an Offer and an Act forms an Event, which in turn alters the state of the Container. This new state then affords fresh opportunities, guiding subsequent acts and events.
The diagram above also represents the concept of Attachance at the level of the Container. Entering the Container can be understood as an attaching act, while exiting it is a detaching act. However, the diagram does not depict a second level of attachance that occurs within the Container itself.
In the Ecological Practice approach, the “Form of Act” is fundamentally defined as either Attach or Detach — meaning that every action involves either attaching to something or detaching from it.
The image above provides an alternative representation of the germ cell of the Ecological Practice approach. In this model, the two fundamental forms of action are represented by binary numbers: 0 signifies a detaching act, while 1 signifies an attaching act. The parentheses symbolize the Container.
The diagram on the right illustrates an example of a complex status, introducing two additional concepts: Curativity and Themes of Practice. Additionally, I have incorporated the concept of Emergence from complexity theory into this representation.
Now, let’s shift to the landscape level to explore the Ecological Practice approach more broadly.
Building on the concept of the Container, I have introduced two related ideas: Network and Platform.
- Network refers to the pre-container state, where elements exist in a loosely coupled manner outside any defined structure.
- Platform refers to the post-container state, where elements remain loosely coupled but now exist within a super-large container.
Together, these three concepts — Network, Container, and Platform — form a triadic structure, which I consider the basic framework for collective contexts.
The diagram above presents a large-scale map of the Ecological Practice approach. It illustrates three fundamental types of collective contexts and the attaching/detaching acts that occur both within and between these contexts.
The Ecological Practice approach offers a radical perspective with its transactional worldview. It draws inspiration from multiple disciplines, making it an inherently interdisciplinary study. However, its core focus is ecological complexity, which examines the relationship between the structure and dynamics of environments and human action and social practice.
For more details, refer to Curativity Theory and The Ecological Practice Approach (v2, 2020) and The Development of Ecological Practice Approach.
Container Thinking
Since the Ecological Practice approach encompasses a set of interrelated concepts, I often apply individual concepts to specific projects. One such example is the concept of the Container (Containee).
One key component of this theory is the concept of Container, which draws inspiration from George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s conceptual metaphor of Container and the image schema of Containment. This concept helps explain how curated elements are framed within boundaries that shape their meaning, reinforcing the idea that curation is both a cognitive and spatial-organizational process.
According to Mark Johnson (1987), “If we look for common structure in our many experiences of being in something, or for locating something within another thing, we find recurring organization of structures: the experiential basis for in-out orientation is that of spatial boundedness. The most experientially salient sense of boundedness seems to be that of three-dimensional containment (i.e., being limited or held within some three-dimensional enclosure, such as a womb, a crib, or a room).” He further identifies at least five key entailments or consequences of these recurring experiential image-schematic structures for in-out orientation (pp. 21–22).
Moreover, my approach to container thinking goes beyond the conceptual metaphor Container, and the image schema Containment by integrating actions and lived experiences into the idea.
A personal experience in 2017 deepened my understanding of this perspective. One day, while visiting a local supermarket, I noticed a sideways flower pot. As someone unfamiliar with gardening, I was intrigued by both the container and the plants it held. I had always assumed that plants grow exclusively upward, so I was surprised to see some growing horizontally. This moment not only challenged my prior assumptions but also made me reflect on how our understanding of containment is shaped by experience. In that moment, I felt a sense of humility about my limited knowledge of botany.
This dramatic experience inspired me to further reflect on the concept of Container. In 2017, I was fascinated by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s conceptual metaphor of Container and the image schema of Containment. For Lakoff and Johnson, Container refers to the in-out orientation and the spatial boundaries that define a space.
After that day, I shifted my focus from the boundary of the container itself to the dynamic relationship between the Container and the things it contains. To facilitate this discussion, I coined the term Containee to simply refer to the things contained by the container.
The sideways flower pot taught me an invaluable lesson that became the foundation for the initial idea of Curativity Theory and the Ecological Practice Approach. Although a plant is held within a container, its living space extends beyond the interior boundaries of the container. This insight led me to theorize this phenomenon using the following terms and diagrams:
- Inside Space: The interior space of the container.
- Outside Space: The exterior space of the container.
- Spilling Space: The living space occupied by the container, which extends beyond the container’s physical limits.
It’s important to note that the Spilling Space is dynamic; it can be smaller than the Inside Space or larger than the Outside Space. In this way, the Spilling Space serves as a connection between the Inside Space and the Outside Space.
In February 2021, I applied Container Thinking to develop the Platform-for-Development framework (v2.0). In this framework, I define a Platform as a super-large container. This perspective allows for the following structural approach:
- Platform → A super-large container
- Participants → The containees within the platform
- Inside Space → The interior space of the platform
- Outside Space → The exterior space of the platform
- Spilling Space → The living space occupied by the platform’s participants
To further facilitate discussions in the Platform Ecology project, I coined the term Platform-ba (or Platformba) to describe the sum of the Containee and Spilling Space within this framework.
In both the Platform-for-Development framework and the Supportive Cycle model, I define Platform-ba as a platform-based sociocultural field.
The term “ba” originates from Japanese and has been widely used by management researcher Ikujiro Nonaka in his SECI model of knowledge creation. In this context, Platform-ba represents an emergent social substance formed by people who interact with a platform. While a platform is designed, managed, and controlled by its owner, its Platform-ba is shaped by the people, users, and stakeholders involved with it.
By introducing the term Platform-ba, I emphasize the active aspect of platform practice, which centers on people’s activities rather than just platform infrastructure.
For more details, refer to Platform, Platform-ba, and Platform Ecology.
Two weeks ago, I applied Container Thinking to explore the relationship between “Theme” and “Concept” in the “Strategic Thematic Exploration” project. See the diagram below.
In the Strategic Thematic Exploration framework, I made a distinction between “Theme” and “Concept”. While “Theme” emphasizes subjective experience and understanding, “Concept” is more about objective meaning and definition.
Additionally, I view Theme through the lens of “Themes of Practice”, which is a core concept of the Ecological Practice approach.
From this perspective, we can recognize two types of cognitive spaces using Container Thinking:
- Container: Concept
- Containee: Theme
- Container’s boundary: Conceptual Space
- Containee’s living space: Thematic Space
As previously discussed, the Spilling Space is a dynamic area — it can be either smaller than the inside space or larger than the outside space. In this way, the Spilling Space connects both the inside and outside spaces. Similarly, the Thematic Space can be smaller than the Conceptual Space or larger than it, as it is also a dynamic space.
Now, let’s apply Container Thinking to discuss the Mind.
2022: Context (Mind) + Curativity Theory
The concept of Context (Mind) emerged in March 2022 as the primary unit of analysis in the Curated Mind framework.
Inspired by the Anticipatory Activity System framework, I conceptualized the Mind as an Anticipatory Activity System consisting of two parts:
- Proximal Mind
- Pervasive Mind
See the diagram below for a visual representation of this framework.
This model adopts the Ecological Practice approach to reflect on the Mind. In this framework, while Proximal Mind corresponds to Proximal Contexts, Pervasive Mind corresponds to Pervasive Mind.
- Proximal Contexts (Proximal Mind)
- Pervasive Contexts (Pervasive Mind)
A key meta-theory behind this model is Curativity Theory. The term Curativity refers to the potential action opportunity of turning pieces into a meaningful whole. In this context, the Curated Mind represents the ideal status of the mind. If a person claims that their mind is a meaningful whole, it implies that they are capable of understanding the world as a meaningful whole.
To achieve the Curated Mind, a person must curate the following dimensions:
- Near — Far
- Self — Other
- Present — Future
- Thing — Think
- etc.
From the perspective of the Ecological Practice approach, Context(Mind) serves as the primary unit of analysis in developing the Curated Mind model. The other dimensions mentioned above can be considered secondary dimensions.
This is a rough idea and serves as a starting point for the Ecological Practice approach to the Mind.
You can find more details in Slow Cognition: The Curated Mind.
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Later, I developed the Curated Mind framework using eight operational concepts, represented in the diagram below.
You can find more details in Slow Cognition: The Model of Curated Mind.
While the Curated Mind Framework uses Context(Mind) as the primary unit of analysis, its primary theoretical perspective is Curativity Theory.
An important sub-theory of the Ecological Practice approach is Curativity Theory, which focuses on turning pieces into a meaningful whole.
The Curated Mind refers to three types of Curativity:
- The Curativity of Proximal Mind: Turning pieces of experiences into a meaningful whole within the loop of Proximal Mind.
- The Curativity of Pervasive Mind: Turning pieces of experiences into a meaningful whole within the loop of Pervasive Mind.
- The Curativity of Mind: Turning both “Proximal Mind” and “Pervasive Mind” into a meaningful whole.
You can find more details in The Curated Mind Toolkit (v1.0).
2023: Context (Mind) + Attachance Theory
In the past two months, I have been working on the Mental Moves knowledge project, which focuses on Attachance Theory and the concept of Thematic Space.
The term Attachance was coined by combining “Attach” and “Chance” in 2018. I introduced this term to discuss ideas related to Affordance, a core concept of Ecological Psychology.
While Affordance refers to potential action opportunities offered by environments, I wanted to highlight the meaning and value of actual actions themselves. The term Affordance only addresses potential actions, whereas Attachance emphasizes the potential opportunities offered by actual actions, particularly the attaching and detaching acts.
In 2019, after completing a book titled Curativity, I began developing my own theoretical account of the Ecological Practice approach, which resulted in a curated toolkit version. The concept of Attachance became part of this toolkit.
In May 2020, I wrote a book titled After Affordance: The Ecological Approach to Human Action, where I proposed several new theoretical ideas aimed at expanding ecological psychology to better suit the modern digital environment. The primary theme of After Affordance is the concept of Attachance.
The concept of Attachance is planned to evolve in two main directions: 1) as an ecological practice concept for fields like interaction design and startup innovation, and 2) as a philosophical concept to develop a social theory.
The book draft After Affordance achieves the first goal by focuseing 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 various ways.
The Attachance Perspective refers to its philosophical meaning. More details on this can be found in D as Diagramming: The Attachance Perspective.
The theoretical concept of “Attachance” within the Ecological Practice approach explores the concepts I discussed in my 2020 book draft After Affordance. For example, I use Attachance and Affordance together to explore creative actions. More details can be found in Creative Actions: Second-order Affordance and Attachance.
The term Attachance is often used in regular discussions, where I explore various stories or topics from this perspective. An example of this can be found in Possible Practices: Attach, Detach, and Opportunities.
In 2022, the development of Attachance was closely tied to the concept of Thematic Space. As mentioned above, Thematic Spaces refer to a specific type of container: cognitive container. More details on this can be found in [Slow Cognition] The Development of the concept of “Thematic Spaces”.
For more information on the Mental Moves project, see TALE: A Possible Theme called “Mental Moves” and Mental Moves (book, v1) — Introduction.
On June 12, 2023, I conducted a case study titled “Multiple Moves” as part of the Mental Moves knowledge project. The case study focuses on understanding the creative cognitive process involved in constructing the following knowledge framework:
I used this example to discuss a special topic: the Attachance of Multiple Moves and the Movement of Connection. To facilitate the discussion, I developed a canvas called Mapping Multiple Moves. Please refer to the attached canvas.
The map is inspired by the “THEORY — PRACTICE” connection present in the Knowledge Discovery Canvas. The diagram illustrates three major areas:
- Theory/Concepts
- Mental Elements
- Projects/Actions
You can explore further details in Mental Moves #6: Mental Models and the Attachance of Multiple Moves.
Yesterday, I realized that the case study of “Multiple Mental Moves” also serves as an excellent example of Context (Mind). In the Mental Moves knowledge project, I used the concept of Thematic Space to refer to projects, models, and other elements. However, in the context of the Context(Mind) project, we can extend the use of Context to refer to projects, models, and other things as well.
Additionally, “Multiple Mental Moves” can be viewed as a process of curating pieces into a meaningful whole. This brings us back to the Curated Mind project. In other words, the June 2023 case study for Multiple Mental Moves also functions as a case study for the Curated Mind project.
Attachance and Curativity
Both Attachance and Curativity are core concepts of the Ecological Practice approach. What's the relationship between these two concepts?
Let’s examine their basic models. The diagram below illustrates the basic model of the Ecological Practice Approach.
The primary unit of analysis in Attachance Theory is “Attach — Container — Detach”.
The diagram below also shows the basic model of Curativity Theory, where the primary unit of analysis is “Pieces — Container — Whole”.
Since they use different units of analysis, the outcome is pretty different!
Since these theories use different units of analysis, the outcomes are quite distinct. However, we can connect them by viewing each individual Move (attaching act/detaching act) as a Piece. In this way, Curativity can be seen as underlying the multiple moves.
- Attachance focuses on the micro-level dynamics of action, specifically examining the processes of attaching to or detaching from objects, environments, or contexts. It highlights the actual acts of connection or disconnection, emphasizing how individual actions influence or alter one’s relationship with the environment.
- Curativity, on the other hand, operates at a macro-level, looking at the overall process of turning fragmented pieces into a meaningful whole. It addresses how various actions, ideas, or elements (such as those involved in Attachance) come together and form a cohesive understanding or structure over time. Curativity is concerned with the curation of experiences, thoughts, and actions into a unified conceptual framework.
Thus, while Attachance provides insight into the individual moves of attachment and detachment, Curativity focuses on how these individual moves fit together to form a larger, more meaningful structure or understanding. Together, they offer complementary perspectives on how we interact with, understand, and make sense of our environment and experiences.
Kinds of Context
The Curated Mind framework (2022) introduces two main types of context:
- Proximal Context
- Pervasive Context
While this simple typology offers a foundational perspective, we can expand our mental focus by looking at specific case studies. The Curated Mind Framework (2022) uses the following model to develop its framework.
I used it to connect to the “Flow — Story — Model” schema. See the diagram below.
The “Flow — Story — Model” schema is designed to help develop tacit knowledge. In 2023, the Mental Model project also incorporated the concept of Projects.
Here, we can use the “Platform-ba — Project — Platform” schema to understand how these elements interact within the Mental Model context.
Though the Ecological Practice approach does not have a direct concept of Projects, we can think of a Project as a Container at a concrete practical level, as it is a social entity with clear boundaries. Similarly, Platform-ba can be viewed as a Network, as the human activities of a group of people can be understood from the perspective of a social network or network of activity.
Thus, we can reduce the triad of Platform — Project — Platformba to the triad of Platform — Container — Network. You can find more details in Platform, Platform-ba, and Platform Ecology.
In this way, we have a model for understanding and modeling human activity and social practices.
If we need more types of context, we can return to the Ecological Structure Schema (ESS), introduced in my 2020 book draft, After Affordance. The ESS framework outlines eight types of structures of context that are useful for analyzing Attachance.
1. Other as Context
a is an entity, b is another entity. In this structure, the Other serves as the context. a attaches to b, while b detaches from a.
2. Network as Context
a is an entity, while A and B are networks. In this structure, a detaches from network A and attaches to network B.
3. Whole as Context
A is a whole, and a is a part of A. In this structure, a detaches from A.
4. Circuit as Context
A is a circuit, and a is an entity that is part of A. In this structure, a detaches from A.
5. Container as Context
a is an entity, and B is a container. In this structure, a either attaches to B or detaches from B.
6. Chain as Context
a is an entity, and A, B, C, D, E are events that form a chain. In this structure, a exists at the end of one event and the beginning of the next.
7. Levels as Context
a is an entity, and A, B, C are levels. In this structure, a detaches from A and attaches to B.
8. Dimensions as Context
a is an entity, and A, B, C are dimensions. In this structure, a detaches from A and attaches to B.
Since the Ecological Structure Schema (ESS) framework is an abstract model, it cannot be directly applied to the Context (Mind) project. However, it can serve as a meta-framework to classify different types of mental moves, including:
- Moves between Mental Models
- Moves between Projects
- Multiple Moves
Additionally, the Ecological Structure Schema can be used to reflect on and design mental moves, providing a structured approach to understanding transitions in cognitive and practical contexts.
With this, we now have a set of tools for conducting case studies within the Context (Mind) project, enabling a deeper exploration of how mental and practical movements shape knowledge and action.
