Theory Of Mind

What is mind? How is it that we think? Why are some things easy to understand while others seem impossible? Is a mind limited in what it can know of itself? What is the nature of the truth and how can we come to know and live with it?

These questions are old and yet still lacking common answers.

Ancient and traditional teachings about mind, consciousness and paths towards self-understanding are surely a rich source of knowledge.  But as religions are sectarian, so too are their insights often concealed.  Societies have created amazing mental and cultural spheres, but it is not always clear whether they are for our benefit or for our control.  So the answers could be there, but few would want to believe, or trust the answers given.

Science has brought more accessible and objective understanding.  Anatomical inquiry has shown that mind has a major biological basis in our brain and nervous system, and we can measure and relate the types of thoughts we're having to the electro-chemical activities in its networks of neural cells.  We are also beginning to learn how our minds grow and develop along with our brains during life, and that is beginning to help us understand common developmental problems as well as basic practices for mental health.  But there it stops.  It's as though science is interested in how a car works, but not in who drives it.

So we fall short of common understanding of how the mind as a total system works.  And then not only do our questions go unanswered, but also then do new questions go unasked.

In science this deficit is perhaps revealed most clearly in the fields of psychology and artificial intelligence, where there has been great interest for generations in the treatment of common mental pathologies on the one hand and modeling the basic structures of a healthy mind on the other.  But both have floundered from the lack of a theoretical base on which to stand.  Each decade seems to have finally delivered an excellent theory, only to be followed by disillusionment when it fails to yield the expected fruit.

Though as significant as these fields of study are, clearly the greater loss is to our culture and to our lives within it.  If we could integrate ancient wisdom about truth and spiritual wellness into practical therapies and information technologies, our daily lives would be greatly enriched.  Much further than that, if we could see the way that mind arises from matter, perhaps this revealed common mental identity would do for our sense of spiritual self what the theory of evolution did for our sense of place on the Earth of our bodily selves.

What would a Theory of Mind look like, that was guided by our ancient wisdom, but also powered by our scientific understanding?

Here will be presented a small sketch of this kind of theory. It will look at many levels, from the lowest to the highest, and then at the whole, to hypothesize how the functionality of each level works and integrates into Mind.

Goals

-- in progress --

First, the core motivating principle of mental development needs to be described and formalized enough to work with it objectively across levels of mental function.

A simple model that describes one of the basic functions of brains is perceptual control theory (PCT). PCT describes a system that is capable of controlling the value of some sensory input according to some goal. A familiar example is the cruise-control of an automobile. The cruise-control system controls the value of the speed sensor by adjusting the gas and wheel brakes, so as to keep the speed value close to some goal. What is nice about this theory is that it doesn't prescribe what kind of behavior is needed for a particular problem situation. Instead, the behavior is adapted as needed to control the sensor input. If this seems counter-intuitive, think of situations a cruise-control may find itself in, say going uphill or downhill. Going uphill, it may need to add more gas to attain the speed, whereas going downhill it may need to reduce gas or apply breaks. The point is, the system has no idea what is the right solution for given conditions, and indeed is not made to know about different situations like this in advance. All it does is try its two possible behaviors according to how much they help it control the difference between its perceived input and its goal for that value.

Let us hypothesize that a brain is perceptual control system and that it is trying to control many sensed values at once, both internal and external, so as to keep itself (or perhaps things is feels are part of itself) in health. The intuition for this hypothesis is that many body systems are already coordinated for homeostasis and that this is perhaps the original and main context for the development of the brain, as an integrating and quickly adapting system to aide in this basic function of life.

For example, a brain in this situation would have to control hunger levels by finding some behavior that managed to feed its body and so satisfy the hunger urge.

Adaptive Mechanism

The brain must, however, solve much more complicated problems than controlling a simple variable like speed given two well-engineered behaviors. In fact, the brain seems to be the nexus of millions of sense neurons as well as internal signaling systems representing the state of its body. Furthermore, in response to these inputs, the brain cannot "push the eat button", so to speak, but must cause outgoing chemical-electrical activity through other bundles of millions of neurons that must somehow become coordinated motions capable of fast interactions in a complex and competitive environment, where food may even be running away!

How is all of this done? The only mechanism we know of that has a demonstrated ability to "solve" complex problems like this is complex and blind adaptation, like what is seen in the fit of other biological systems to their environmental challenges.

If this mechanism is hypothesized for mental behavior, it solves the recursive problem of innate knowledge (i.e. if we are born with some basic knowledge of the world, where did this knowledge come from, and then where did that knower get it, etc. etc. ad absurdum), but it leaves a larger problem in its place, which is where do the complex adaptations come from?

For this we must first look at the nature of patterns, which can be used as a language for understanding the forms complex adaptations can take.

The Nature of Pattern