A Brief Explanation on Cognition
Ideation is the process of generating and evolving ideas. Using findings from cognitive studies on animal behavior and logical structures, we understand ideation as a combination of learning and adaptability. It involves processing and responding to information. This post will discuss the basic concepts influencing our ability to think and create.
A significant aspect of ideation is the 'double bind.' With Hebbian learning, organisms strengthen synaptic connections in response to repeated stimuli. However, they face a contradiction when they experience two conflicting behavior patterns. This can lead to schizo-typical reactions. If the organism resolves these conflicting patterns, it shows new behaviors different from its previous learning. This resolution indicates rational thinking.
In animal psychology, the animal's mind uses abstractions. These are patterns of neural activations. Neural networks, influenced by their architecture and external stimuli, encode an embedding of the animal's environment. Abstractions exist as patterns of activations in the neural net or as regions inside the embedding. These abstractions help the animal make decisions.
In humans, the complexity of neuronal connections underpins higher-order cognitive processes. Simple decisions evolve into multifaceted ones as our brain interprets and analyzes intricate situations. Significantly, our use of language facilitates the formation of epistemologies—refined ways to understand and frame the world. Words, in essence, become tools to reference and elaborate upon abstractions or the embeddings of our environment. This linguistic and conceptual capacity forms the crux of our introspective abilities. What we term "free will" encapsulates our capability to reflect and, from an epistemic standpoint, recognize that our choices, given the same set of circumstances, could have taken different trajectories.
More broadly, the argument I am trying to draw out is this notion that double binds lead to conflicting abstractions and that conflicting abstractions with the right neural architecture can lead to novel behavior like language that allows for rationality.
Let’s look down a level, at what might be termed the the neocortex, for some reason or another it above all other things has allowed humans rather than other organisms the capacity for language, I’ve described a mechanism for why language, conceptuality and rationality may have been developed, but what is thinking more broadly, and why abstractions?
The simple idea is that all thought is really just movement. There are grid cells that allow animals to do path exploration in their environment. The neocortical cells in this case would be exapted from grid cells. Instead of learning to explore physical environments, they learned to the embedding space of abstractions. When one uses a word, they are using a path tracking “algorithm” to that place in the embedding space.
The subsequent question is: how do humans ensure words and concepts correspond to factual realities? Human consciousness processes the world predominantly using quantitative data, emphasizing the countable attributes of entities and their connections. Induction, which involves drawing general conclusions from specific cases, is rooted in this quantitative perspective. This process becomes clear when humans formulate generalizations based on their perceptual grasp of cause and effect using concepts. This treats what may have existed as an abstraction in an embedding space into a concrete and reliable concept that can called with a few words.
Lastly, and perhaps most crucially, let's delve into the development of self-awareness. While many organisms process perceptions and form abstractions based on these, humans stand out in their profound self-awareness. Why is this? It's primarily due to our mastery of language and concepts. While the notion of 'self' might exist as a rudimentary abstraction in many animals, it is our ability to assign linguistic labels to the self that sets us apart. By binding the concept of 'self' to specific words, humans can not only introspectively understand their identity but also make informed choices about their actions and beliefs.