Chapter 2: Polymorphic Mind

The Polymorphic Mind

The Archetype, expressed as something singular and also more general and universal, is the negative region to logical and rational thought. It gives the logical and rational meaning by holding the symbols in some configuration. But the configuration of the Archetype is like the (photographic) negative of the logical and rational process [Jong]. So it fills the empty space of logical and rational thought. It also fulfills the meaning of such thought as such thought is merely symbols that have either no meaning in themselves or that may have some meaning but not exactly the meaning that is referenced in some logical and rational thought [Jong].

Archetype Mind

This is polymorphism of the mind; actually the mind is the originator of polymorphism. The abstract class, the Archetype, is extended by a real class in memory. Then all the other real memories extended from that archetype are available immediately.

Programming the Polymorphic Mind

The base class of the ‘C++’ set of languages is the object class. This is the abstract class of all ‘C++’ abstract classes. In the mind the base class (and the most abstract) is the shadow. The is the abstract class of all abstract classes. This is how our compiler works.

So this archetypal region of thought is also tied to the world that our physical senses encounter. Thus we only understand the world from our senses as it is carried to our rational thought through the archetypal region. The Archetypes mediate our understanding of the physical universe [Jong]. The Archetypes are a way of discussing parts of this archetypal region of thought. But they are categories not things (like abstract classes).

As an abstract class the archetype holds rules abut attributes, methods, and events (and perhaps more functionality than our present computer languages have). These defining rules, by extension into other memories, tune a thought, which is otherwise just a naked fact, into a meaning once it is “contained” by an archetype “class”.

Abstract classes cannot be instantiated “in themselves”. The Archetype, as an abstract class. It gives the logical and rational meaning by holding the symbols in some configuration. Archetypes are the shadow of a symbol, which is then extended into the memory object. The archetype fulfill the meaning of the symbol in thought. The Archetype molds a thought into meaning [Jong]. Thus, again, the shadow is the Archetype of Archetypes.

Myth and Meaning

My studies have been in communication and culture. In those studies, structuralism indicates that meaning is in the foreground. There are these neat triangles of the sign, the signified, and the signifier. Each can be tied to other triangles that build the meaning reflexively in monster piles of triangles. But Mead points to a relationship between all that “has” been said and all that can “be” said which is meant to clarify this reflexivity; but here it is the behind the scenes linkage that defines who we are and what we mean. Wittgenstein continually refers to what something said appears to mean (to him) as you think about it. He avoids the dialectic methodology so such thoughts can be considered.

Triangle Memory

When we understand what Wittgenstein and Mead are saying we see that the words themselves are not really the meaning. They are just symbols; we (individually and as a communicating group) make the meaning. But how? I think that Jung answers this: Meaning is in the archetypes if we really understand that the archetypes are not the symbols we use to talk about them (such as “The Shadow”) but the “mental” space those symbols fit into that provides meaning to the symbols (i.e. polymorphism).

Demons and Dragons

Recognition of text input and comparison of the text with previous “knowledge” is based on the archetypes and story parts retained by allegory (myth-like or allegorical organization of story parts). This is a very powerful way for our mind to store and retrieve data in meaningful chunks. And it provides a way of attaining the memories and finding the meaning that is available to us very rapidly.

Note that archetypes or allegorical story parts are abstract classes. That is why they are meaning holes rather than meaning. Our natural brain knows how to use these processes so that the classes that fill the meaning holes can happen rapidly and must be real. The abstract classes are a method of rapid categorization that can quickly lead to real classes having real meaning.

The Polymorphic Mind

Matching Context

One grand-daughter of mine did not start talking words. She talked sentences. But the sentences were just nonsense words, but phrased duplicating our sentences in form, rhythm, and intonation. She would enter the conversation saying what was to us mumbled nonsense, but sounding like perfect senteces. In time she learned words and suddenly she put (real) words to the sentences she was saying all along. She didn’t start with mamma, or papa. She started with sentences.

To understand language I picture that there is some kind of probability holes that words can fit into. But the structure must be surrounded by applicable memories that are somehow linked to the memory holes so the content can be matched, quickly, to the contexts we already have. This matching starts tentatively. As the probability of success in interpretation goes up, the context and content are arrived at smoother, faster, and with immediate links to meaning .

It takes how many seconds to say a sentence. At that point we usually know what the sentence means; and can reply in an intelligent manner. If we don’t do it in a couple seconds people will wonder if we are missing something. Unless of course we are on satellite feed.

Let’s speculate on a mechanism to hold the words of a sentence. I think the first context of a word is the order (first word, second word, third word, . . .). That appears to be the way children start to understand the language. The word by number in the sentence is the start of the process of filtering out meaning from nonsense (even though the child does not know what number means). Now we need to compare these words with something. The comparison appears to be both close and not close. Some contexts are immediate or local and some are more distant. Ultimately “meaning” requires the combination of both contexts. Also, this is a set of probabilities not a truth table. When we interpret a sentence we don’t have time for a truth table.

The process is to compare the text of our sentence with contextual information we have. The question is: “How do we store and retrieve the context in our grammar?” It is not stored using relational algebra, which is the method we use to store computer database data for efficient computer store and retrieve mechanisms. Relational data storage is not fast enough and it is not broad enough in its combinatorial strength to explain the minds process.

The mind seems to have a huge and complex set of links to information that, to us programmers, appears to be strangely but somehow usefully related. We are able to link words with the contextual meaning by color, size, shape, and of course by various possible meanings in the text. And we also seem at times to use some rather unscientific link processes (metaphor and allegory). How do we do this?

Consider the triangles. There is no way that such a pile of triangles can be coded in any reasonable way. The links are totally specific and spread all over the universe. They are also tediously reflexive. One also needs to switch at the right time in the code from sign, to signifier, to signified. This process would be extremely slow in any coding methodology.

I am proposing a polymorphic process; a polymorphic process can be coded. We do that sort of thing every day in object oriented coding. The references are ‘backwards’ (Codd and his relational calculus had that right) but more general (contrasting with the specific, and separately repetitive, reference in the triangles). It only requires that the mind's polymorphism is polymorphism on steroids. I believe that the mind is polymorphism on steroids.

Two important issues with this processing. First our minds compiler is more polymorphic than object oriented. The object orientation, of course, is the child of our polymorphism. But being polymorphic is definitely the more important part of our mental object orientation. But there are some polymorphic rules used by our mental processes that, in general, the computer object oriented languages can not keep up with. One of the main parts is our minds ability to change the object designation on an entity at any stage. An object is not defined completely and then frozen. Object orientation has some late stage definition possibilities but for the mind this is an extremely important and extremely flexible capability. I think that all entities are at first an extension of the shadow, but usually also an extension of something else that is immediately contextual (such as word one, word two, . . . in a sentence). But then during processing they are discretely transitioned to a new ‘object definition’ on the way to discovery of the meaning.

Each word is linked to a context which then provides the meaning of the word. The phrases and then the whole sentence then can have a meaning built up from similar linkages to the context of the words and the contexts of words in sentences. The meaning has a broader context from the fact that the base classes (referring to the first sub-classes of shadow) are key story parts. So these form the basis for higher level meaning. The sentences can easily be classified as part of our larger narrative and thus our overall meaning (of everything). Our meaning is our narrative.

The words are linked to their context; and then the phrases are linked to their context; so the sentence can link quickly to contexts of similar sentences in our narrative.

In any such process the (complete) context of the process indicates the particular set of archetypes used in the full reference. The context is the transcendental means the set of archetypes is the reference and the meaning. Abstract transcendentals support meaning not truth. When the context is recognized, the word we were searching for ‘transitions’ immediately to those set of classes (i. e. - the archetypes and set of extensions) and thus defining the word from its context. This transition is not all bad since the context can quickly transition to another context with new information. The overall meaning context (in the overall conversation) is related to a particular entity in a polymorphic catalogue of narrative classes.

Recent polymorphic memories are like low hanging fruit in the mind. Referencing back to the archetypes is not needed when the thought is close at hand. In any case any such references are more immediate than the looping stepped reference process of relational calculus. Polymorphic reference is extremely fast (close to immediate).

Wittgenstein said: “The meaning of a word is in its use.” These pictures of how the mind works establishes how that not only can be true, but proves how is is true. Perhaps the archetypes are immutable (but not necessarily atomic). I do believe the archetypes can be circumvented by aggregate classes that are derived from commonly occurring thought patterns. These commonly occurring thought patterns speed up interpretation and thus replace an archetype or common set of archetypes. So , I would say, the meaning of a word emerges from its context.

The polymorphic mind is an important reason Agile programming works. The mind is naturally attuned to the object oriented methodology and so can picture the objects which have traits like “real things” in our memory (instantiated memory). The modules of structured programming methodology could not be dealt with in a normal, natural mental process. After such a long time of using the structured methodology (over 40 years), our minds still do not seem to be able to be bent into a natural understanding of modular processing.

Dr. Jerome Heath

The series of books by Dr. Jerome Heath: