The Components of Thought

It’s been a while since I formally studied cognition, and I haven’t kept up the reading as well as I should have.  It doesn’t help, of course, that my profession requires a lot of investment in studying within it.  However, I want to try to help you understand why software development is so meaningful to me…a lover of the study of human cognition.

How do you think about things?  How do you percieve the world around you?  There is a theory out there that says that you model the world around you mentally.  These models are usually called mental models.  They don’t have to manifest themselves as physical models do.  They are not constrained by space or time.  And, only you, can truly understand how you model the world around you.  That doesn’t, however, prevent Cognitive Science from trying to take a glimpse.

Most biological and cognitive theoretical frameworks come down to evolution.  The question is asked, “How does this trait either keep you from getting killed or assist you in procreating?”  The reason for this is that random mutations that lead to either not being killed or procreating a lot before you die are most likely the ones being selected for as humans evolved.  This is because those that have an advantageous mutation are more likely to live longer and procreate more.  Their progeny are also more likely to have the same mutation which will give them the same advantages.  This, by the way, is of course theory and not shared by everyone.  I’m mentioning it here for context.

Let’s get back to mental models.  What are they made out of?  Another theory is that they are based on abstract symbols systems.  A symbol system is a system made up of symbols along with the rules for manipulating those symbols.  These rules amount to affordances and constraints.  Affordance are what you can do, and constraints are what you can’t.  This might be difficult to visualize.  So, let’s concretize it a bit.  Mathematics uses a symbol system.  Think about algebra.

1 + x = 3

In order to find out what x is you have to manipulate the symbols.

1 + x – 1 = 3 -1

Doing this leads to the following.

x = 2

As long as the left and right side of the equals sign are balanced you are within the constraints of the symbol system.

What about this symbol system makes it useful?  As long as each manipulation of it is within its constraints, it preserves truth.  In other words, each manipulation of it gives us an accurate picture of the situation.  And, mathematics models reality.

Now let’s go back to the mind.  If we have an accurate picture of the world around us what advantage does that give us?  Think of it this way, what could an accurate understanding of physics give us if we are pondering walking in front of a moving automobile or off the side of a building?  If the symbol-system guiding our mental model of the situation preserves truth, it preserves our life.  I can reason that the automobile will hit me and kill me or that I will hit the ground and be killed.  Reasoning, it can be said, is simply a manipulation of a mental model based on a symbol-system.  If that symbol-system preserves truth then the reasoning is accurate.

So, what I have tried to establish above is that people have mental models of the world around them.  These mental models are made up of symbol systems whose manipulations must be guided by rules that preserve truth in order for them to live (and procreate).  They use these models to solve problems and guide their behavior.

Next I’ll discuss how these models are formed.

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My Background – Part 7: From Cognitive Science to Computer Science…

I was worried that I wasn’t going to be as interested in computer science as psychology. But, that fear soon subsided. It turned out that computer science is just as rich as cognitive science. And, there is the added benefit of the fact that human created computers and understood their creation better than the mind. It was nice not to have to “guess” as much, and just know that that was how us humans did it. To bad God couldn’t have at least been a guest lecturer in some of my psychology courses.

Also, it turns out that studying computers IS studying humans. My study of the human mind didn’t stop when I because a computer scientist. Humans created and programmed computers in their own image…on multiple levels.

Right now, a thousand examples of the statement above are swimming through my head. However, I’m going to stop with it because those examples each deserve there own posts. I’m also going to stop with my “background” for three reasons. First, my “career” experiences will make it into the future blog entries by the very nature of what they are. Secondly, as helpful as my career has been in terms of learning experience, my path before it is what helped me form the interests that I have now and am blogging about…for the most part. And, lastly, I’m getting bored.

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My Background – Part 6: Full circle…

The two more notable research experiences that I had was in a conceptual development lab and a cognition and skill acquisition lab. I won’t go into a lot of detail right now about these. But, the short of it, is that I learned how people create and experience the world around them and how this affects their perception of their world and how they consciously navigate it.

While I was studying psychology, computers were pretty much just for writing papers and checking email. However, at some point (which currently escapes me), I obtained a renewed interest in them. It occurred to me that a computer is an extremely flexible and potentially intelligent environment for human consumption. It can be molded into virtually anything that is needed to essentially supplement the human mind.

So, after graduating with my degree in psychology, I decided to forgo the lucrative career that a bachelor’s degree in psychology would afford me and go back for a computer science degree. I was told to me that I didn’t necessarily have to go get a computer science degree to get into software development, but I am a strong believer in understanding the fundamentals of a discipline before practicing it…at least for myself. Also, I knew that it would be easier to get a job in it if I had a piece of paper saying I knew it.

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My Background – Part 5: Goodbye Counseling, Hello Cognition…

Once I was fully immersed in the waters of academia and, more specifically, psychology I was able to navigate the domain enough to realize that, much like most domains there were sub-domains. And, some of these domains were very different from each other. The asked different sets of questions, and approached obtaining answers in different ways. For instance, there was clinical and counseling psychology on one end of the spectrum and cognitive and developmental on another side of the spectrum. The former were more directly applied, and therefore more visible to non-academics. The latter were more research-oriented and less visible to non-academics.

My first inclination was to go for what I was familiar with, and what I envisioned myself doing. So, I initially thought counseling psychology was for me. However, one pesky little thing kept happening in very one of my psychology and social science classes…The cognitive “pieces” were always what interested me the most. From the questions being asked, to the approaches to finding answers. It was simply the most interesting to me. Perhaps this was because of my computer background. Cognitive psychologist view the brain as an “information processor” similar to a computer. And, in my opinion, the most interesting computer that has ever existed.

Of course, the metaphor of “mind as computer” is easily extended to “mind as programmable”. When you hear something like that initially you might picture bad imagery like propaganda and such. That, to be honest, is what interested me. What interested me is how the mind could be possible reprogrammed to be improved and potential untapped.

So, finally, I resolved myself to the fact that cognition was what I needed to study. I liked the idea of helping people help themselves. Needless to say, I signed up for every “cognitive” class I could and worked in every research lab that I would allow me.

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