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Mental Construction

Neurons to Abstraction, Similarity, and Associations

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  • Contents
  • Facts, Explanations, Opinions, and Theories
  • Faces Of Induction
  • From Neurons to Decisions
Almost Gate

Almost Gate at the Coffee Shop

6 Apr 20216 Apr 2021
Q: What’s this idea you’re so excited about, S? S: A second mode of thought. The Almost Gate is the term I use for this other mode. The Almost Gate…
Mental Construction

The Other Brain

8 Feb 20216 Apr 2021
In The Other Brain, Douglas Fields, PhD, tries to make the case that glia cells are more crucial to thought than neurons. Unfortunately, his chapter titles and subtitles promise more…
Thought Modes

Computer: Model for the Brain?

15 Oct 202015 Oct 2020
You will often hear the expression "The brain is just a computer." Is that a useful metaphor? No, it's not. There are fundamental ways the brain functions that are distinct…
Learning

Unsupervised Learning

26 Jul 202026 Jul 2020
Unsupervised learning plays a huge role in how we think and we make decisions. The basics of how we value situations and actions arise from unsupervised learning. The image below,…
Creativity…

Intuition’s Source

19 Feb 202026 Jul 2020
Definition of Intuition Wikipedia defines intuition as the ability to acquire knowledge without recourse to conscious reasoning. Eureka. The illumination of an intuition That's a good description that captures the…
Finite Brain

The Shape of Your Internal Worldview

21 Dec 201910 May 2020
In the right column the essay, "Limits of Perfection", explores a general phenomenon I noticed while working in software development. Typically, we try to close the most obvious gaps in…
Thought Modes

Mentalese

12 Nov 201910 May 2020
Mentalese is a term for the collection of ideas which attempt to describe our thoughts and internal monologues. What symbols do we use for thinking and what rules do they…
Creativity…

Pattern-Matching and Invariance

11 Nov 201910 May 2020
In neuroscience, the process I call pattern-matching is sometimes referred to as an invariant operation. Yohan John in Quora raises the question How does your brain discover association in the…
Learning

Culture in Nurture

25 Sep 201925 Sep 2019
When I hear the nature-nurture debate, it always falls into what genes you have or what experiences you have, bBut your experiences (your nurture) arrives via two distinct paths. That…
Language

Speech and Neurons

16 Sep 20199 Mar 2020
Figure 1. Neonatal cortical development in Broca's Area Do you find Figure 1 as exciting and revealing as I do? Broca's area, a part of the temporal lobe, usually in…

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Bowers, K.S., Regher G., Balthazard, C. & Parker, K. (1990). Intuition in the context of discovery. Cognitive Psychology, 22, 72-110.

Klein, Gary. The Power of Intuition. How To Use Your Gut Feelings To Make Better Decisions At Work. Doubleday Press. 2004. Kindle. eISBN: 978-0-307-42404-4

In general, each person has an idiosyncratic neural threshold. That is Almost Gates require different numbers of triggering inputs to fire.

A person with a high Almost Gate requires a close match (more similarities) between a new stimulus and a learned category to see a match. Their outlook is quite literal. Fewer categories are associated with the bar for matching so high. An extreme case would be a person who demands that the cover image of “rose petals” for a woman’s biking blog be explained. The metaphor makes no sense to him.

Contrary-wise, those with a low Almost Gate see associations between many, many things. That can be useful because they have more premises to draw conclusions upon; unfortunately, it also causes them often overlook differences that turn out to be significant.

Baddeley, Alan. Your Memory: A User’s Guide. Firefly Books, Buffalo, NY, 2004. Print. ISBN 1-55297-985-7

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is the theory that an individual’s thoughts and actions are determined by the language or languages that individual speaks.

The strong version of the hypothesis states that all human thoughts and actions are bound by the restraints of language, and is generally less accepted than the weak version.

The weak version says that language only somewhat shapes our thinking and behavior.

Instead of considering linguistic relativism as limiting the possibilities of thought, a more productive perspective is that language organizes experience in a manner which has yielded useful thoughts and behaviors over the language’s lifespan.

“Some believe their success is based on innate ability; these are said to have a “fixed” theory of intelligence (fixed mindset). Others, who believe their success is based on hard work, learning, training and doggedness are said to have a “growth” or an “incremental” theory of intelligence (growth mindset).

Dweck, Carol S. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Ballantine Books, Penguin Random House, New York, 2016. Print. 978-0-345-47232-8

A message box with a footnote

Spitzer, Manfred. The Mind Within the Net. Models of Learning, Thinking, and Acting. The MIT Press, 1999. Print. ISBN 0-262-69236-8

Information is believed to be transmitted not by a single firing of a neuron, but by the neuron’s spike train: either by overall rate of firing or by  precise timing of firing.

I have removed that complication in the discussion, because it does not alter the fundamental idea. Any set of input which exceeds the neuron’s threshold  is treated the same thereafter. The Almost Gate is operational.

Scholarpedia. http://www.scholarpedia.org/. Web site. Dec. 15, 2017.

Sternberg, Robert J. and Sternberg, Karin. Cognitive Psychology, 6th Edition. Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009. Print. ISBN 978-1-133-31391-5

From Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

The mathematical proof technique called “mathematical induction” is deductive and not inductive. Proofs that make use of mathematical induction typically take the following form:

Property P is true of the natural number 0.
For all natural numbers n, if P holds of n then P also holds of n + 1.
Therefore, P is true of all natural numbers.

When such a proof is given by a mathematician, and when all the premises are true, then the conclusion follows necessarily. Therefore, such an inductive argument is deductive. It is deductively sound, too.

From WikiPedia article. Bolding added.

Working memory is a cognitive system with a limited capacity that is responsible for temporarily holding information available for processing. Working memory is important for reasoning and the guidance of decision-making and behavior. Working memory is often used synonymously with short-term memory, but some theorists consider the two forms of memory distinct, assuming that working memory allows for the manipulation of stored information, whereas short-term memory only refers to the short-term storage of information

James, William. The Principles of Psychology. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc and Henry Holt and Company, Inc.1952. Print. ISBN 0-85229-163-9

Memory is not a photograph of external reality stored in the brain, but a reconstruction based on observed event, personal emotional impact, and learned relationships.

Consider the Almost Gates that the current situational features go through. Our remembered situations also go through the same path. When there is sufficient matching of results (neural thresholds are surmounted), the situations fit in the same abstract category. Other features of the situations may or may not be comparable.

 

Carter, Rita. The Human Brain Book: An Illustrated Guide to its Structure, Function, and Disorders. DK. London,  New York, Melbourne, Munich, Delhi, 2009. Print with DVD. ISBN 978-0-7566-5441-2

Professor Maguire quoted in a Wellcome press release in Dec. 2011.

The current situation, remembered situations, and 3S imperatives – in their manifestations as emotions, personality traits, goals, desires, and fears – feed into neurons whose outputs lead ultimately to different actions.

The neuron whose Almost Gate is surmounted triggers its action chain. With so many neural inputs streaming from various sources, it’s unsurprising that typically our 3S imperatives are not completely satisfied by our response.

 

“… the cortex works as a rule-extraction machine and produces maps of input according to the principles of frequency and simularity.” Spitzer (p 138).
Spitzer, Manfred. The Mind Within the Net. Models of Learning, Thinking, and Acting. The MIT Press, 1999. Print. ISBN 0-262-69236-8

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, A Peer-Reviewed Academic Resource, ISSN 2161-0002, http://www.iep.utm.edu/, Dec. 13, 2017.

Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 2012.

Pinker, Steven. The Language Instinct. Harper Collins Perennial Modern Classics, NY, NY, 2007, original William Morrow Company, 1994. Print. ISBN 978-0-133646-1

Garlick, Dennis. Intelligence and the Brain: Solving the Mystery of Why People Differ in IQ and How a Child Can Be a Genius. Aesop Press, Burbank, California, 2010. Print. ISBN 0-615-31921-1.

Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Print. ISBN 978-0-374-53355-7

Klingberg, Torkel. The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory. 2009. Print. ISBN 9780195372885

Stanovich, Keith E. What Intelligence Tests Miss: the psychology of rational thought. Yale University Press, 2009. Print. ISBN 978-0-300-12385-2

Hofstadter, Douglas and Sander, Emmanuel. Essences and Surfaces: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking. Basic Books, Perseus Books Group, New York, 2013. Print. ISBN 978-0-465-01847-5

Bayes’ theorem describes the probability of an event, based on prior knowledge of conditions that might be related to the event. For example, if cancer is related to age, then, using Bayes’ theorem, a person’s age can be used to more accurately assess the probability that they have cancer, compared to the assessment of the probability of cancer made without knowledge of the person’s age.

Martindale, Colin. “Biological Bases of Creativity” in Handbook of Creativity. Edited by Robert J. Sternberg. Cambridge University Press, 1999. Print. ISBN 0 521 57604 0

Hadamard, Jacques. An Essay on the Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field. Dover Publications, NY, NY, 1954. Print. ISBN 0-486-20107-4

Fields, R. Douglas. The Other Brain: From Dementia to Schizophrenia. Simon & Schuster, New York, 2009. Print. ISBN 978-0-7432-9141-5.

Kalat, James W. Biological Psychology, 8th Edition. Thomson Wadsworth, 2004. Print. ISBN 0-534-58836-6

Klawans, Harold, M.D. Strange Behavior. Tales of Evolutionary Neurology. W.W Norton & Company, NY, NY, 2000. Print. ISBN 0-393-32184-3

Caudill, Maureen and Butler, Charles. Understanding Neural Networks. A Bradford Book, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, 1992. Print.

[M]emory is not entirely faithful. When you perceive an object, groups of neurons in different parts of your brain process the information about its shape, colour, smell, sound, and so on. Your brain then draws connections among these different groups of neurons, and these relationships constitute your perception of the object. Subsequently, whenever you want to remember the object, you must reconstruct these relationships. The parallel processing that your cortex does for this purpose, however, can alter your memory of the object. McGill Memory and Learning

Zeman, Adam. A Portrait on the Brain. Yale University Press, New Haven, 2008. Print. ISBN 978-0-300-11416-4.

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ET Jaynes, 2003 (p133). Jaynes, E. and Bretthorst, G. (2003). Probability Theory: The Logic of Science. Cambridge University Press. Cambridge