Reflection

The chances are, if you're reading this, that you, like me, are one of the most fortunate people who ever lived. In material terms, you're better off than almost anyone who lived more than a century ago: not quite so much precious metal or land, perhaps, but better quality food in excessive quantities; a more comfortable bed; enough drinking water to swim in; more clean clothes than you know what to do with; books, music and other entertainments to occupy you for weeks, months or years; the whole internet to browse; most of the world reachable within 24 hours and almost instantaneous communication with almost everyone you know; good health or support for your infirmities; educated and a skilled user of the most powerful communication tool known to man, the English language...

But this isn't an exercise in counting your blessings. The question is: where does your discontent come from? I'm tempted to suppose that it is ultimately true that we are never satisfied. But why? Because we have an in-built appetite for improving our situation. When we evolved, there was no advantage to limiting this appetite; only recently (in evolutionary terms) has it started to kill us.

Of course, we can transcend this instinct: decide to seek more balance in our lives, a different kind of fulfilment (ponder that word). But there's a problem: the appetite doesn't go away. Whatever you do, this appetite will not go away. And if you master it or ignore it, it is liable to find an expression, possibly a neurotic or psychotic one!

That's not a very upbeat point at which to conclude. And a more positive perspective on this appetite is to give it its traditional name: hope. Hope is the instinctual belief that one's situation can improve, where "improve" means that the distance between the actual and desired situation is reduced. A change in perspective is required as this gap gets smaller. We need to focus less on the gap and more on the proximity. That is, we need to avoid accidentally taking two steps back to move one step forward. And we need to recall the greatest truth: the desire too can change, though it cannot simply be denied.

Decision

Recently, Dr Luke Houghton put up some posts on decision-making and biases. For one reason or another, it has taken me some time to get round to reflecting on these. Let's begin, as Dr Houghton does, by asking What are decisions.

First of all, I distinguish between the active process of making a decision and the results of the process. So really, I'm talking about "deciding". Secondly, the process of deciding is one that I consider as a pure thinking process. That is, as interesting a topic as "collective decision making" may be, I view that as a social context for individual decisions; broadly, collective "decisions" are agreements about the relative importance of individual decisions. The result of these circumscriptions is that deciding is viewed as a subset of thinking.

Technically, this allows for the possibility that deciding and thinking are one and the same, so we need to be clearer about what sort of thinking can be classed as deciding. There is, in fact, a simple characteristic of all decisions that we can propose as a defining characteristic: the reduction in the number of potential or contemplated outcomes. To break this down further, decisions are forward-looking (to be contrasted with memory, for example) and "selective" (to be contrasted with "productive" or "creative" operations, such as imagination). To be clear, though, when we make decisions we may, and often should, do so in the context of a wider process which includes productive operations (increasing the options being considered); but these productive operations are not part of the actual process of deciding. (It is also possible to make decisions about the past, but these are still "forward-looking" since they are in fact decisions about how the past will be viewed from that point onwards.)

Now Dr Houghton claims that we make decisions to solve problems, so he may be working with a much tighter definition of decision. In my view, deciding is a core sub-process of thinking. It almost seems inappropriate to classify a process as "thinking" if there is no "deciding" involved. The eye cannot see without sense-making "decisions" about what is being perceived, for example. And a purely productive process such as brainstorming has no utility without a subsequent process involving decisions about what is valuable. So, in my view, "decision" is best viewed as an essential component of intelligence. And it is for this reason that the thinking person comes with an in-built faculty for deciding. Or, to put it less emotively, thinking demands some limiting mechanism(s) to prevent an infinitude of alternative interpretations or potential outcomes. "Decision" is the term used for most limiting mechanisms. Some limiting mechanisms that I would not class as "decisions" are random and programmatic: essentially, where the reasons behind the limitation have no reference to the substance of what is selected for or against.

So..."decision" is a thinking process that limits the substance of thought by reference to that substance. I have been careful here to avoid the conclusion that "decision" is conscious or considered, not least because we have yet to explore these ideas. It seems to me that the various "flaws" in making decisions are generally the unfortunate result of more generally useful processes, just as optical illusions are produced by the operation of generally useful visual and perceptive processes. But the proper time to consider these "biases" (as Dr Houghton terms them) is after we have developed a coherent picture of "decisive processes", which will be the topic of a later post.

The Thinking System

From the start, I have referred to thinking as a process. One problem with this position is that it conceals the complexity of "the process". We may think in terms of a series of simple steps that could be summarised quite neatly. That is what we tend to do with processes: reduce them to a series of steps, or sub-processes.

If thinking is a process, the nature of the process as experienced in human beings, might usefully be described as "filthy". That is, it resists analysis because the interesting sub-processes interact in a non-sequential and self-referential fashion.

So, when I refer to the storyteller and the rationalising process, it is deeply metaphorical. The story is composed from plot ideas, influenced by prejudice and perception, altered by visualisations and linguistic choices, filtered through coherency and plausibility tests, adjusted in the light of imagined and dimly apprehended audience reaction...

We can begin to make sense of this confusion by considering thinking as a complex system. We may consider thinking in human beings as being activity in the brain, occurring at two fundamentally different levels. At the base "hardware" level, we have neurons "firing". There is a whole host of physiological activity surrounding this reasonably elementary process, which is how drugs affect our way of thinking. At the more conceptual level, which is at least conceivable as a system that might have an alternative implementation, are the processes I would refer to as thinking.

In the context of storytelling, a key sub-process is the tendency to create sequential associations. If you are presented with a number of different pictures, for example, such as you might find in a comic strip, but not in a particular order, you will (if you are "normal") generate one or more plausible sequences for the images. This is (probably) not because you are used to receiving jumbled sets of images and being asked to sequence them. It is because that is what your brain naturally does, all the time, in many different ways. In short, the brain tends to impose sequence. And it does so, I presume, because its environment, the world, appears to operate in this fashion. "Effect(s)" follow(s) "cause(s)". Of course, the belief in a causal relationship is a mildly special case of the sequential association, logically. But the default position, I venture to suggest, is that associations are both sequential and causal.

At the heart of the storytelling process, then, is a tendency to associate sequentially, and a default belief in a causal relationship. We can occasionally glimpse this process at work in waking dreams. These are dreams we "recall" on being awoken by some external stimulus. Often, such dreams seem to have their culmination woven into the very fabric of the dream's plot, as if no other outcome would make sense. The simplest explanation for this phenomenon is that the stimulus occurs first and the sequential narrative of the dream is instantaneously assembled from the pre-existing concepts in the brain being associated with the causally unrelated stimulus. And one reason why such dreams seem particularly vivid may be that the "recall" is, in fact, a glimpse of the actual process of generating a sequential narrative from the unrelated concepts, rather than an act of remembering.

The storyteller and the dreamer are one and the same.

The Rational and the Rationalised

One of the most remarkable series of experiments in neuroscience involves people whose corpus callosum has been severed. In these people, the two hemispheres of the brain do not communicate with each other. This allows researchers to test some theories about brain organisation. What they have found is that messages directed to the right hemisphere can remain unperceived by the left hemisphere. The human being can respond to the messages without the verbalising part of the brain, in the left hemisphere, being able to articulate the reason for the response, since it is unaware of the prompt. But here's the thing. Although the left hemisphere is wholly unaware of the prompt, it is totally convinced that it does know the reason for the action. Very plausible and coherent explanations are put forward. These are, an objective observer may conclude, complete fabrications. But apart from the existence of a secret truth known only to to the researchers and their subject's right hemisphere, the situation appears little different from any normal case where explanations for actions are offered.

The obvious conclusion, it seems to me, is that the verbalising left hemisphere generally seeks to integrate our actions into a coherent narrative. I simply refer to this automatic process as "the storyteller". The storyteller weaves perceptions of the world, pre-existing concepts and recently apprehended ideas into the story it is continuously telling, whilst we are conscious. In other words, we make it all up as we go along! The belief that we acted for particular reasons is persistent, perfectly plausible, but ultimately delusional.

Now, we should not conclude from this that our decisions are never rational. All we should conclude is that no matter how rational our decisions seem to be, our conviction that they are rational comes from the plausibility of our storyteller. In other words, decisions may sometimes be somewhat rational, but they are always rationalised.

Concepts

Dr Luke Houghton is at it again, wondering whether a change of concept is as good as a holiday? My immediate response is that a holiday is only as good as its changes to concepts!

What do we mean by "concept", here? Dr Houghton talks about Peter Checkland's definition: "a framework of ideas". But the simple fact is that ideas do not exist, as such. Ideas are abstractions from concepts, rather than concepts being compositions of ideas. If we think about a chair, we may think about a particular chair or about the abstract concept of a chair. In either case, our chair exists in our thoughts not in isolation, but in conjunction with other ideas, such as sitting, dining, reading, interior design, manufacturing, other chairs, memories involving chairs, dreams of chairs, fantasies about chairs, the Freudian interpretation of the chair symbol, stools, benches, sofas, rocks, tree-trunks... There is no end to the framework of ideas!

The essence of a chair, if we may talk about such a thing, is an abstraction that each of us has developed separately from our many real and imagined interactions with chairs. And this (mutatis mutandis) is true of all our ideas and concepts. Even our ideas about and concepts of ideas and concepts. Life is about developing concepts, either adding new layers to our existing concepts, or challenging them.

Which brings us to holidays. An important part of the abstract concept of a holiday is change. Rest and enjoyment are other important parts, but change is of the essence. By putting yourself into a different relationship with the world, you challenge your prevailing system of concepts. You see yourself not as local, resident, employed, but as global, visitor, at leisure. And from these changes in perspective come changes in the theories you have about the world and your place in it.

But while a holiday would not be much of a holiday without conceptual change, conceptual change is perfectly possible without a holiday (indeed, it is inevitable). The wisdom we recognise in "a change is as good as a rest", though, is that our prevailing system of concepts can become so oppressive that we need relief from it. And we know that making changes to our current situation can lead to just such relief. The important point is that it is the relief we value, whether it is the result of change or rest. And the relief is always only ever a change in the prevailing system of concepts.

What is less generally appreciated is that there is no need for physical change or rest, for this relief to be experienced. It's just that we have a tendency to keep running along on the same mental tracks unless we are derailed. We don't have to, but we almost certainly will; it's the way we're made. So, we can take a holiday, we can do something different, or we can just change our minds. At times of stress, knowing how to jump the mental tracks without, as it were, losing the plot, is what preserves the essence of The Thinking Person.

Frustration

Well, I admit this blog isn't going well.

I doubt anyone is reading, though I haven't checked. And I know no-one is commenting. This is hardly surprising. But when I say it's not going well, I mean that I'm not engaged with it. And that's because, so far, it has been about what I already think, which may interest you (as you seem to exist), but which no longer fascinates me.

A recent post in my favourite blog led me to comment to pertinent effect. It is too easy to be overwelmed by the immediate difficulties and lose sight of the ultimate objective. In this blog, I have, so far, been concerned to keep my comments "grounded" in what I presume you can readily understand. Where I want to be is helping both of us to grasp the subtleties of The Thinking Person.

Just putting down a marker!

Thought Transformation

A process transforms inputs into outputs. Thoughts are the outputs of the process called "thinking"; they are also its inputs. So thinking is the process of transforming thoughts into thoughts!

In principle, any existing thought may be involved (input) in the production of new or existing (output) thoughts. But if thoughts are only produced from thoughts, how can any thinking ever get started? Two possibilities are "innate thoughts" and "sensory inputs". In principle, innate thoughts can be generalised to initial internal conditions of the thinking entity, whereas sensory inputs can be generalised to impinging external factors. Thinking is the "magic" that moves the thinker from the initial conditions.

Sustaining the initial conditions, or zero movement, is a theoretical possibility. Whether this ought to be called thinking is debatable. But if there is a process that reproduces the pre-existing thoughts, I would consider it a mental (i.e. thinking) process.

Thinking and Believing

You might think (believe) that there is a strong connection between thinking and believing. But it's worth making the distinction prevalent in European languages. "Belief" is an attitude towards a "thought", whereas "thinking" is relating a "thought" to one or more other thoughts. In principle, though not, as far as I know, in practice, belief may be static, a "state" rather than a "process". "Thinking", in the sense of relating or manipulating thoughts, is always, almost by definition, a process.

UK House Prices and the Inability to Think

Ever since the US sub-prime mortgage difficulties started to have an effect in the UK, it has been obvious that house prices would fall. The inevitability of this has been downplayed, of course, because almost all experts and informed commentators have a vested interest in avoiding falling prices. And, to be fair, a "soft landing" might have been a result worth pursuing for the greater good. Never mind the relatively few unfortunates who might have been spared a poorly timed house purchase.

So how far will prices fall, and how quickly? Nobody knows how to predict the trajectory accurately. In part this is because individuals will not behave rationally or with predictable irrationality. And the net effects of all those unpredictable behaviours, though less unpredictable, is far from being subject to immutable laws. Despite the overwhelming likelihood that the property will be cheaper next month and cheaper still next year, people will agree to buy houses tomorrow, and the next day, and the next... Does this represent an inability to think?

The key to the apparent paradox, it seems to me, is that people have to live somewhere. To swap one £200k house for another £200k house is no more irrational than staying in the first house. So what stops a significant number of people from selling up, waiting for prices to fall, and buying back into the market at a lower level? There are the costs of accommodation and storage for the interim period, plus transaction charges of between 2% and 6%, not to mention the hassle factor. But the most significant reason is likely to be simply a lack of buyers.

If you don't own a house at the moment but are in a position to buy one, the prudent course of action appears to be to wait. But for how long? That depends on what happens to house prices while you are waiting! As house prices continue to fall, the long-term mortgage costs converge with long-term rental costs. Full convergence is unlikely, since that would imply an expectation that the property would have zero value at the end of the mortgage term. This argument from investment fundamentals should put an effective floor under general property prices.

Before we can arrive at a view on what this floor is likely to be, we need a view of long-term rental costs. The fact is that these ultimately depend on future house prices, but this recursive relationship is hardly fatal. A perfectly reasonable assumption, in the absence of complicating factors, is that rents will increase at least in line with incomes. This assumes that demand for rented accommodation does not fall. It is only likely to fall if something approaching convergence of rental and ownership costs is achieved. So... a property that could be rented for £500 per month today would be worth buying at a price that is somewhat in excess of the repayment mortgage that could be afforded for £500 per month.

Assuming mortgage interest rates of 5% (which is not a prediction, just an assumption for the purposes of illustration), and a term of 25 years, this would be £85k. How much more than £85k would it be reasonable to pay? If you assume that the value of the property in 25 years will be at least £85k in today's money (I said: "if") then you can add about £283 per month "savings" to the £500 "rent", suggesting a price of £134k. Repeatedly applying the same logic allows us to calculate a ceiling price of £199k, at which point repayments of £1163 per month would be equivalent to £500 rent and £663 per month savings (£199k in total, give or take £100).

A higher mortgage interest rate feeds through into lower floors and ceilings, but properties in general do not look expensive when viewed simply as an equivalent to renting and saving. This is despite the facts that most buyers, rightly or wrongly, expect to sell (eventually) at a higher price than they are paying, and to have to pay increasing rents if they didn't buy. What keeps prices below their "fundamental" ceiling is limited availability of funds. Until recently, availability of funds has been mainly limited by affordability. Now, lenders are increasingly reluctant to lend, which is further reducing availability of funds and, inevitably, in the short term, leading to lower prices.

Conclusion: house prices in the UK are reasonable, but today only a fool (or a philanthropist) would increase their investment voluntarily.

Circumscription: who or what "thinks"

One way to begin clarifying any concept is by identifying a boundary within which the concept lies. This process is called "circumscription". In a hierarchy of concepts, you can circumscribe a concept by identifying the more general category to which it belongs (thus a "lion" is a species of "big cat") or by enumerating the more particular categories that the concept comprises (thus the "cat" family comprises "big cats" and "small cats").

In stating that "thinking" is a "process" I am beginning this sort of definition process. It is customary to qualify "thinking" further by defining it as a "mental" process, but there is no need to suppose a priori that only "minds" can think or, indeed, that minds only think. We may not be surprised to arrive at this conclusion, but for the time being let's just consider who or what might legitimately be described as engaged in the process of thinking.

The only thinking that I'm familiar with is animal. In saying this, I'm not asserting that there is, for example, no botanical thinking (although I doubt that there is), nor am I expressing scepticism about artificial intelligence, divine intelligence or extra-terrestrial intelligence (just that I am not aware of having any experience of these). The question is: Is "thinking" the exclusive preserve of animate beings?

I think the answer is yes. If there were compelling evidence that Mount Kilimanjaro, say, could think, then I imagine I would be forced to conclude that Mount Kilimanjaro is an animate being! Of course, I appreciate that there is a circular argument here. But this corresponds to the limits of my imagination. For although life without thinking seems highly plausible, thinking without "life" does not. So that if thinking occurs where there is no (other) sign of life, it seems it would be my understanding of "life" that would need to change, not my understanding of thinking.

That's enough philosophising for now. Two questions I'll leave open for the time being: Do communities or organisations "think"? What about (assuming their existence for the sake of argument) God or gods?

Fundamentals

I couldn't resist beginning this blog with a little wordplay!

The "mental" in "fundamentals" has no etymological connection with the "mental" of mind, but there is a connection in my brain and, perhaps, in yours too.

The posts in this blog will explore how people think, both in general and in particular cases. I have long been fascinated by the topic of thinking, and by how little attention people in general pay to it. But the immediate provocation for (and proximate cause of) this blog is a post on Dr Luke Houghton's Problem Solving blog. Credit where credit's due...

Now the aforementioned post was on the topic of "Lateral Thinking". It would be premature to start talking about that topic on this blog, save to note that it is a style of thinking and therefore on-topic.

Well...I'm determined to keep it snappy, so I'd better say something fundamental about thinking! Thinking is a process and a thought is a snapshot of that process. Think about that for a while. We'll explore this idea further in a later post.