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!