I have approached this topic many times – giving lists and logic but never completing the “map”. My thought has reached sufficient maturity; I can now give the map a completed form. “Completed” does not mean “final”; rather it means that the implicit structure has sufficient maturity that giving it explicit form makes sense

Various kinds of revision are always possible: details and kinds of mental process; the relationships; structure of mind and brain; place of mind – and concept of mind

What is a map?

As I use the term, a map refers not only to a territory but also its dynamics…

§ There is a logic or conceptual aspect: the map makes it possible to identify kinds – levels, variety – of mental elements – kinds, processes

The concepts are not arbitrary. They introduce illumination, identification, understanding and efficiency. Illumination: the subject appears in focus. Identification: individuals recognize themselves in the map. That should be natural since the “concepts” that illuminate a domain are not ad hoc but have roots in common explanation. Usually, common explanation will have some degree of validity. The purpose of seeking new of altered conceptual and explanatory is to get better explanations, predictions and so on. To identify what is correct and what incorrect in what came before. The empirical part is in getting positive explanations and predictions. Additionally, of course, when the conceptual foundation is enhanced, explanation can be pushed into domains previously unmarked. And, here, there is potential for illumination and further empirical or experimental test. Understanding means that there is a feeling that the concepts enable one to truly know the subject matter which is not merely predictive. Of course the feeling of understanding may be merely circular in the sense that it is due to the enhanced explanation that gives the feeling of understanding. But, when there is a conceptual system that provides explanations and predictions, matches the common understanding either by roughly copying it or by changing it, and, also, agrees with the material underpinnings [in this case neural science] we feel that the feeling is more than mere feeling. Efficiency: the system of explanation allows more explanation with less “machinery” and effort. The classic example is the Copernican vs. the Ptolemaic systems but, of course, many other examples could be given – that is one thing that scientific revolutions are about: [almost] every scientific revolution is a “Copernican” [Kant used the term in connection with his new approach to the theory of knowledge] revolution

A rational system of explanation is one in which the explanatory factors are the state and history of the organism [system], the effect of the environment, the causal relations. It may be objected that this allows room for “occult” factors. When the principle is applied not only to the system under consideration but to every system, the occult is eliminated, isolated or made visible

§ Dynamics. The map is dynamic when state and process are connected by causative factors that permit prediction of the evolution of the system. Not all systems of explanation are dynamic. The paradigm of dynamics is the relation of change to cause. Causative factors can be seen to be intermediary

Sources

BE, M&M, Mind Words, Guttenplan…

These sources have been used in the treatment in Journey in Being

Explanatory factors

Category, concept, function, organizing, explaining, understanding, essence words

Work out the relations among the following factors. Mutually modify and synthesize

What is the ontological status of cognition, feeling, and emotion? Especially consider the status of drive, motivation

Conation

Literally, “striving,” used either as a general term inclusive of all experienced mental activity, or as the act of “striving” or “willing” being itself an ultimate type of experience, and not infrequently with confusion of these two senses

Levels – rough Higher [organism]

Conscious

~~Being in the world: sensing, feeling, perception~~

~~Imperatives: emotion, drives – sex, community, hunger – binding~~

~~Negotiating: thought – freeing~~

The metaphor of the triune brain

Neo-cortex: negotiating

Limbic: emotion, drives

Lower brain stem or “reptilian”: autonomic behavioral patterns

The question of absolute differences among cognition, emotion, and conation: this issue has been worked out in Journey in Being

Consider: evolutionary and proximate basis

Map of brain and sub-systems

Not conscious

Autonomic behavioral patterns

Lower

Autonomic, down through organ, tissue, cellular and molecular

Mind, world and person

~~Relations to self/other~~

Person: with whom communication is possible. That would bring animals, perhaps even plants, other than plants in to the realm of some degree of personhood

Direction of fit considerations

§ ~~Experience~~

~~Null: mind~~ ~~® mind~~

~~World~~ ~~® mind~~

§ ~~Attitude~~

~~Null: reflection~~

~~Mind~~ ~~® world [intensionality]~~

§ Agency
[action]

~~Mind~~ ~~® self~~

~~Mind~~ ~~® other~~

~~Mind~~ ~~® world~~

Personality, tone and mood

Personality

Personality has to do with the strengths, including relative strengths, of the various factors / functions of in the mental domain – including factors that color the state of mind and present in interpreting and coloring internal and external events… and are include predispositions to [kinds of] action – slow, sudden, precipitous, reflective or based in thought-feeling-emotion, gentle, violent…

The unconscious

~~Personality also reflects the presence of unconscious determinants – Freud~~

On the difficulty of knowing oneself

~~The purpose of this comment is not to discount the unconscious and defense mechanisms such as denial~~

For each individual there are many “others” and, so, in reflecting on a given other, there are many points of comparison – the other others. Since the individual sees him/herself only from inside there is no comparison point. This points to a possible difficulty not impossibility since there is listening and empathy and there is introspection not as a special faculty of introspection but as in self-disclosure

Types

~~Here enter, possibly, some of Jung’s types:~~

~~Disposition to come to a decision, to act: perceiving / judging~~

~~Perception: sensing / intuition~~

~~Reflective approach, processing: thinking / feeling~~

~~Self / other focus: introvert / extravert~~

Tone and mood

Tone is related to general disposition at a given time. It is the “coloration” of mental states as emotionally positive or negative, anticipation as optimistic or pessimistic. Thus, when tone is positive there is a tendency to maintain a positive emotional bearing despite negative events and to anticipate positive outcomes. It is not “cognitive reinterpretation” thus a negative event is accepted as such but the tendency is to maintain a positive bearing. Positive tone implies the tendency, not absolute, to maintain itself in the face of negative contexts; this is due to the fact that negative events would not get one down

~~Tone, unqualified, refers to emotional bearing or color~~

Practically, for many purposes, tone and mood are not distinct: they refer to the same mental dispositions. I allow a possible distinction as follows: when tone remains fixed over more than a few days one would refer to mood. Tone is more elastic than mood. There seems to be a need for this distinction

Cognitive tone

Although tone is the coloration of the emotions it affects cognitive bearing and there is such a thing as cognitive tone. Cognitive tone should, perhaps, be broken down into perceptual and conceptual aspects. The kinds of tone interact and affect one another; the factors of tone – constitutive and causative – are multiple

Psychosis/neurosis

~~The following is a thought~~

~~Psychosis: natural reality~~

~~Neurosis: social reality~~

Dynamics

In the following, I have left room for structural, dynamic, functional, and descriptive approaches and traditional explanation. The descriptive includes literature, drama and art

State dynamics

Need for well integrated negotiation of physical and human environment; evolutionary and proximate relations. The environment “as it is” in the moment-to-moment: perception; anticipation is experiment or play with the [remembered] elements of perception: conception, imagination and thought – since the future is not given, imagination and thought have an element of freedom and error; binding and emotion. Foundation in physiology / neural science

General formulation of response to particular situations

Conceptual and empirical study

Response to particular situations

Kinds

Based in general formulation – the dynamics

Descriptive and ad hoc

The descriptive approach requires a language of description and is, therefore, not merely empirical

Personality dynamics

Development

Relation to the world and others; here is a dynamics

Descriptive factors, dynamics of mood and tone

Personality dynamics includes but is not limited to Freudian concepts of and in it. It is a good place to abandon, or begin to abandon, folk psychology – not for neural or cognitive science but for a more rational system of mental terms and concepts, i.e. the idea of folk psychology is not abandoned but it is broadened, subject to imagination, criticism, test

Note on Reality

These dynamics have to include reference to reality. Of course, they do – as I have noted, perception, thought, emotion etc., and the division into state and personality dynamics…

However, there are some considerations of reality that may have been omitted and therefore the “nature” of reality needs explicit consideration

Reality

Reality has to enter somewhere. But it is not as though there is the map of mind, above, and there is reality and now the two have to be patched together. The map of mind and its structure are rooted in “external” reality. External is in quotes to remind us that the body is also part of reality as is mind itself; and so the map of mind comes with a map of the map. That is what language, the conceptual, imaginative and processing [thought] abilities are about. And, don’t let the 2^nd last sentence be mistaken as subscription to mind/matter. The absence of that distinction and the nature of the absence are taken up in and resolved Journey in Being

The key point is that we expect to see the essential nature of reality reflected in the makeup – elements, dynamics – of mind. And, given that mind is part of world, it is inevitable that there can be a reflexive organism, one that reflects on mind and mental processing. Obviously, the foregoing sections reflect and express reality

But, I am thinking of something deeper – not in the sense of profound but rather the following idea:

The ontology of the organism reflects the ontology of the world

This applies to the structure and function of the mind

It applies to physical structure and function

It applies, potentially, to the contents of thought

This is deep in the sense that the structure of the universe and the character of its fundamental process are reflected in the organism

I choose three examples

Example 1. Originality

Alternative and similar words: creativity, freshness, imagination, ingenuity, innovation, inspiration, inventiveness, novelty, resourcefulness, uniqueness, vision

This is essential to life. And to mind. Without this there would be not just none of the higher elements but none of the lower:

Perception: the origin of perception in the infant is a creative, though not fully conscious, act

Thought

Language, logic, elementary arithmetic, hammers, technology

Learning – learning is a creative re/discovery, sometimes under tutorship…

A primary question: What is [are] the element[s] of the creation of a new idea. I am not thinking of Mozart composing. I am thinking of everyone faced with the simplest of problems. Somewhere, a new idea enters. What is the spark of that? And what does it imply for the brain? Here is an analogy: computers simulate random processes by generating “pseudo-random” sequences of numbers using an algorithm. The sequences are pseudo-random in that while some of the characteristics of truly random sequences are reproduced they are not truly random: after a certain number of trials, the sequence repeats itself. That cannot be the source of something truly new. What happens in the brain when there is a new idea or spark of an idea? There are new ideas: there was at least one human who thought of the number one without having been “taught” by another human

Example 2. All = Nothing

Where is this represented in the brain, the function of mind? Is it represented?

The following are taken in their conceptual, feeling and neural aspects:

Freud’s “oceanic feeling”

Peak experience

Yoga: the meditative state that is complementary to the Vedantic concept “Atman = Brahman”

The state of “pure action”: action in the knowledge of but without commitment or attachment to results

Not accepting the ultimate nature of any ultimate limit

Ontological psychology

Attitudes that orient the individual to the real – include but are not limited to the esoteric. What is esoteric is relative

The elements, functions, processes […] that enable the individual to be so oriented… or built in elements of orientation

Example 3. The nature of belief

Belief is a core feature of mind, the organism’s intrinsic understanding of the world as a whole and in its details

Here is how ontology enters:

If the world is given, then the only place in robust – not psychotic/neurotic – belief is due to doubt

“Maybe it is raining, may be not”

[Looking out of the window to check is not neurotic. Looking out every 2 seconds would be.]

But we would not say,

“It is raining and it is not raining”

Well we might if we mean something like, “It is raining in London but not in New York.” But I take for granted that “It is raining and it is not raining,” refers to the same time and place

The foundation of the rejection of “It is raining and it is not raining,” is objectivity. The world is given

But, consider:

“It is raining”

“The sun is shining”

Well, imagine a mist coming in. It comes slowly, so that the brightness of the sun is slowly diminished. Finally, there is no sun to be seen. At which point did the sun stop shining? Oh, the sun is shining in space. Imagine traveling away in a space craft. Eons pass. The sun is just a point to the naked eye. Finally it has disappeared from view. There was period of time over which we were not sure whether we could see the sun. When did the sun stop shining? Oh, it never stopped we just did not see it anymore. Now the sun goes through its paces, consumes its fuel, becomes brighter, fades, and fades, till it no longer has enough radiation in the visible spectrum to be seen. When did it stop shining? Oh, “shining” is not an intrinsic quality. Now, the sun slowly evaporates and at some point there is no sun. When did it stop existing? Oh, the sun is not an intrinsic thing; neither is existence…

But what if the world is not given? Of course, in the temporal mode, the future is not given. But I don’t mean that. I mean: What if the world is a superposition of states – as in quantum theory. Then, should not belief reflect that? What if belief states are as quantum states? With coefficients in the “classical limit” being 0’s and 1’s?

Is not belief actually like that. What are you feeling when you are certain? Certain! What about the unconscious states?

Mind words

Mind words are in Words, Language, Metaphysics which includes a system of words for metaphysics

Copyright and Document Status

Document Status: February 11, 2013

Main ideas are already in and no further action needed for Journey in Being

Maintained: interest