Ideology

[sciwiz12]

I would like to take a moment to talk about approaching an understanding of psychology with a focus on ideas and beliefs. Now being admittedly not a professional on the subject I'm not sure whether the proposed topic is a no brainer or explored and abandoned as an impractical approach due to mechanistic obscurity, but I do study software and lately I have been focusing on artificial intelligence, so for me the notion of an idea is of practical and more immediate concern.

 

So I'm going to begin this thread by freely musing to construct a model and a framework for beginning to think about ideas as a distinct topic of study and allow more highly educated opinions to weigh in on the merit and uniqueness of whatever I come up with.

 

There are a couple immediate concerns, what is the makeup of an idea? What is the relationship between an idea and the physical, neurological functions of the brain? What role do ideas play in the psychology of a human? Can we still maintain a concrete understanding of an idea as we abstract it away from the human brain? Can we define the concept of an idea in such a way that is still accurate to the sense of what an idea is without being so vague that it loses necessary practical utility?

 

There are more concerns to be sure, but I would like to say that these question are a good jumping off point for the time being. I'm going to proceed a little more experientially and intuitively for now and attempt to course correct into objectivity afterward, but of course without the ability to get useful data and feedback concerning neuronal activity so a lot will have to based on my limited prior knowledge and a bit of pseudo-logical guesswork.

 

When I acknowledge something as an idea, it usually starts as a vague feeling or sense, an intuition of sorts, which I then use to query my knowledge of words in a sort of lock and key or best fit fashion in order to approximate the idea verbally, even if I don't intend to express the idea vocally to another conscious observer.

 

So an idea seems to begin as a sense, and I seek words out of a desire to resolve the sense with a concrete and communicable description. Of course I wasn't born with a complete language but it seems reasonable to suggest that the human race created language to make ideas communicable to others, if not also easier for one's self to process.

 

So a new question could be, why do I feel that ideas become easier to process through language if ideas are somewhat original to my nature while language is a foreign construct? If I think of words as references do I think of them as referring to real world objects or as references to ideas which hold the information which a word might be well suited to describe. If the idea refers more directly to information than the words which describe the information then why does my brain seemingly take comfort in the use of words to encapsulate ideas for the sake of consideration?

 

If I think of my brain as a web of interconnected nodes linked through pathways that change according to association, then it could be that each node temporarily or at times permanently holds part of the information or data required to form a more complete piece of information which itself acts as a component of an idea, then I could reason that because the word is so closely related to the information it acts as a doorway to further information stored with the word that might also relate to information being compiled in order to construct an idea.

 

So then I can think of an idea as a compilation of related and associated data and information in a constant state of flux. The brain may perform a sort of searching algorithm the process of which may also serve to strengthen connection as it utilizes them in the quest for relevant data. The signals travel through connected pathways and perhaps through a sort of guess and check operation is gradually directed to more relevant pathways. Under developed pathways would yield less relevant data more often and some process involved in guessing and checking would gradually show preference for more relevant pathways.

 

In this way the brain accesses all of the data needed to simulate and object, describe an object through various related pieces of information, make connections to seemingly related objects, and eventually create levels of abstraction by cross-referencing related objects until a new object is formed in the mind from intersecting information but with no specific objective point of reference.

 

That's what I'm starting with, feel free to school me now.

[iNow]

There's a lot to unpack there. Let me start by saying that ideas rely on the same functional areas and are incredibly similar to the areas responsible for speech and movement. There's an activation of a network, and what is activated and when drives everything. Simplistically, a rock is being dropped in a pond and those waves interact / reinforce / interfere with surrounding obstacles and elements.

 

Speaking of elements, recall that different parts of the brain are responsible for different functions. While a neural cascade (or spark of an idea or whatever we call it) may initiate in one area, it may not reach our conscious awareness until later in the chain when it reaches our higher cortical functions... the places where we interpret it and force it into our acquired language. There are more basic parts of the brain that usually get the input first... They're more emotional and often fight or flight (trigger reaction before we've consciously made sense of something, often saving our lives). The signal then goes to the higher executive areas where we do logic and math and rational thinking and we basically evaluate... "Is this response warranted? Is that shadow really a tiger, or is a tree?" and we temper what we do accordingly.

 

Point being, it's only after all of this more automatic super quick stuff gets processed that we even realize we've had an idea. It's after that when we start to compare the idea against past experience and memory to add texture and context or to be put it into words to share with others, but we process everything through "language" because that's what our inner voice sounds like and that's what the parts of our brains that are used for this work rely on.

 

What you're talking about really involves two basic ideas (and one is not so basic): The first is the nature of consciousness itself... How do these massively complex set of firing patterns in our nervous systems and how does activation of various neural webs consolidate into this emergent phenomenon we call "consciousness?" That's a tough nut to crack, and folks are still working on it. The other idea is the nature of neural function, and that's a bit more straight forward / accessible.

 

To make this a more meaningful discussion, though, you'd likely have to do some work on your own to set a foundation in both. Then you'd be able to ask a more specific question. Until then, this type of dialog may be better suited for a Saturday afternoon over beers and barbecue.

 

Some fun things to explore until said barbecue gets lit:

 

http://www.bioedonline.org/lessons-and-more/resource-collections/the-learning-brain-neuroscience/

http://www.hhmi.org/biointeractive/explore-neuroscience

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/introb.html

 

Side Note: I think perhaps the word "ideation" is a better fit here than "ideology."

[sciwiz12]

Well, I said ideology because while that's typically not the way the word is used, you could theoretically define it as a study of ideas, but thank you for your feedback.

Oh, harsh, "neuroscience for kids"? Was it really that bad? I... I see how you feel... No no, it's OK, I'll just go huddle in this dark corner and cry in shame and disgrace.

That said, thanks for the links.

[iNow]

Lol. Great site, bad name. I use it often myself if that makes you feel any better.

[DevilSolution]

I went to seminar on consciousness that involved 4 highly proclaimed professors, each in their own field of expertise. Now throughout the lecture various topics and subjects we're debated but fundamentally none of these experts (one of which co-authored a book with hawking and sounded quite ridiculous) actually agreed or came close to a simple definition of consciousness. Interesting to me was the fact that no one raised the issue of "self consciousness" or "collective consciousness".

 

If you want to understand the way the brain works learn neurology and psychology, but as A.shulgin once said, scientists love to study receptors, inhibitors, agonists, antagonists and reuptake (selectively so), but no one considers the "mind", the conceptual understanding of oneself and being.

 

Your limited to philosophical debate.

[sciwiz12]

I mean we're eventually going to see that crossover, eventually we will be able to understand how the physical process results in the experience. I suspect we'll basically resolve that consciousnesses, sensation and perception are all composite experiences. That there really is no consciousness but instead so much simultaneous information processing that it gets confused so that it doesn't seem like the simple operations of a machine. Like we compile the data into a recreation of what the world outside is like, a simulation that is used to coordinate actions, and simultaneously a lot of other processes are taking place to decide how to feel, what to think, etc... And there's so much extra processing going on that we convince ourselves that there's a ghost of the self looking through eyes when really it's just simultaneous processes. That's all speculation but if I had to guess how it would all shake out...

[DevilSolution]

Does that make any being with enough neurons and sensual inputs conscious? Where do divide sentience with consciousness? and would you scale consciousness? for example does a monkey have a higher level of consciousness than a cow?