Table of Contents

The Table of Contents suggests a reading order for Mental Construction pages from fundamentals to conclusions.

1. How We Think with Neurons. Mental Construction develops the answer that biological characteristics of the brain’s neurons shape our thoughts and their associations.
2. External to Internal. Sensory data steps into our mental worldview
   1. Partial and Personal Experience. Importance of our particular events to our worldview and to our understanding
   2. Genetic Factors. Common human construction yet unique, idiosyncratic features
   3. Learned Knowledge and Uncertainty. All knowledge is not created equal
3. Neural Connections. Regularities in the brain’s cortex
   1. Neurons. Dendrite, axons, and signaling
   2. Neural Threshold. All-or-None. The Almost Gate
   3. Maps in the Brain. Sensory organization. Critical learning periods.
      1. Semantic Maps. Internal worldview, 3 Imperatives
4. Brain Building. Human minds, built layer-by-layer. Preconscious and conscious
   1. Brain Through the Ages. Physical structures, behavioral growth from single cells to primates
   2. Development to the Adult Mind. Language, culture, and critical periods
      1. Classic Stages of Individual Development. Maslow, Kohlberg, Erikson
5. Cognition. Pyramid and functions
   1. Sources of thought. Sensations, similarities, associations, and deductions
   2. Concept Elevator. Concepts stop at brain building stages
   3. Neural Cascade. Quantifying increasing abstraction
   4. Reasoning. Induction and deduction
      1. Induction Operation. Neural properties lead to abstraction, similarity, and association
      2. Deduction from the Neural Brain. Standing on the shoulders of giants
6. Creativity.  Handling demands with incomplete information and perhaps more quickly than we desire. We all have creativity. The magnitude depends on neural threshold.
7. Decision-Making. Cogitation starts with physical desires and fears, merged into emotions and capped by cortical parallel processing, fast and slow.