The Power of Your Mind

Your Mental Toolkit
--- It’s Huge

 

Introduction.

No aliens. No animals. Only us humans. Humans operate at multiple levels, from the primitive to the highly intellectual, from skilled labor to the space engineer, and so on. All of us, with the same brains, do similar things in similar ways. In considering all the mental abilities we have, it is important to understand how we live and what we can do. In the first part of this essay, the foundations of the mind’s activity at various levels are discussed. In almost every case, they require training – the period of growing up. Even still they are distributed in unequal quantities between individuals. It is reasonable to suggest that the child growing up serves as a family apprentice, implying children were students long before there were schools.

 

Early tribes needed some rules to follow, plus many taboos about danger. The great modern civilizations also need rules to be sure but more than that, they need theories and beyond. We assemble the lot of them into a hierarchy of organizational traits or operational containers. 

 We begin with the brain basics, those core attributes that most of you know and use every day. To some, say language and intuition, you may have a natural proclivity in varying degrees. Schools can mitigate a few, though schools are less theoretical and more pragmatic.  Many of these you learn at home from thoughtful parents through immersion within the family and community.   

Core Attributes

1.      Perception

2.      Attention

3.      Memory

4.      Language

5.      Reasoning, Critical Thinking, and Problem Solving

6.      Decision Making

7.      Conceptualization and Categorization

8.      Imagination

9.      Metacognition – i.e. control and regulation of your thinking

10.  Intuition

11.  Abstraction

The first four are shared by many other animals, while the fifth has been demonstrated so by a smaller number. The others seem to be strictly human – an opinion. More than a few humans have little ability toward #11 - abstraction.

 You might think “Mathematics” should be on the list. It is, through #5 – reasoning et al., and remarkably through #11 - abstraction. This brings up a never-considered point about numbers. They are taught in the abstract, with arithmetic, fractions, and the like. It is easy to teach two fish, two girls, or two of anything. However, in the schools, it is the abstract two, as in twoness, that is taught. This is both conceptual (#7) and abstract. The difference may sound minor, but then consider all of math is taught abstractly. We do not know if this is a root cause of math difficulty for a large proportion of youngsters – and adults. It is easy to overlook #9 - metacognition, which allows us to focus our attention (#2) on solving math problems.

 Now let’s become more pragmatic or utilitarian by reconstructing this theoretical list, and translating it to actual life and life’s needs. This outline is not therefore about epistemology or even ontology, topics having precise but different meanings. This is about doing, assembling, understanding, theorizing, and realizing. It is about multiple categories that mix up, contradict, conflict, and reject. You can have a taboo but reject and confirm it on the same day. These categories can be individual, yet more commonplace in tribal or higher societal settings. Finally, the individual points below do not and really cannot pair up with the group above.

 Utilitarian Attributes

o   Skills

·        Hunting, farming, scouting

·        Marriage, mates, family, sociability  

·        Shelter, clothing, protection, vigilance

·        Craftsmanship, toolmaking

o   Taboos  

·        To do not

·        To eat not

·        To forbid

o   Rituals

·        Incantations

·        Rights of passage

·        Holy books, Scripture, Religion

·        Emotions

·        Beliefs

o   Methods

·        Hunting/fishing/farming

·        Construction – for material and mental outcomes

·        Competition – i.e. games and war

·        Comprehensive schemes/strategic thought

·        Strategies, intentional and random

·        Programmed – i.e. adapting previous methods to new, similar situations

o   Rules

·        Regulations

·        Policy

·        Procedures and protocols        

·        Steps to follow

·        Social

·        Games

o   Core Curriculum

·        Language arts, calculation

·        Music, visual arts

·        Social life, debate

o   Models

·        General and robust, allowing testing

·        Scientific

·        Political

·        Social

·        Logical

·        Hierarchical

o   Visions

·        Hopes

·        Dreams

·        Ideas

·        Inspiration

·        Innovation

o   Theories

·        Opinion

·        Pre-theoretical

·        Explanatory

·        Comprehensive with or without models

·        Axiom-based

·        Fact-based

·        Rigorous/logical

·        Fuzzy, stochastic, random – i.e. alternate logics

o   Laws

·        Common (local and universal)

·        Canon

·        Statutory, case

·        Scientific

·        Propositional

A natural (but not so simple) exercise is to consider which of the eleven core attributes is employed toward each of the ten utilitarian attributes. A more difficult exercise is to order the utilitarian attributes according to their emergence in human evolution.  Note the Core curriculum attribute is somewhat modeled after the ancient Greek Quadrivium.

 Obviously, particular skills needed to operate small towns or cities have been omitted as they form a collective of many people with organized planning and are not the function of the solitary human brain. However, the notion of leadership, a mental capacity, could be included. What is entirely remarkable is your brain, your marvelous brain, can achieve all this.  Some items require much training. Experience and study are certainly necessary. Yet, this toolkit gets us along.

Conclusion.

Finally, these lists are flexible. More items could be added to either. We may have missed your favorite. So, make your own list. However, the sheer number of attributes speaks for itself. If you want to discern differences between humans and other animals, simply consider the lists and where other animals’ attributes form a subset within them. The human brain is a most powerful engine, and we should celebrate it. To my mind, the human brain functions so far beyond basic survival needs, that it seems a miracle it evolved at all.

 Finally, a conjecture. When considering all the core attributes, we may conclude the brain could or must have various components that specialize in them. These components must communicate as so many of them (particularly #9 - metacognition) could or must be used in utilitarian pursuits. This internal communication could be termed consciousness. This makes consciousness a process, not a thing. This is akin to a factory, which is a thing and a place, but which functions as a process with internal components constantly in communication.  

 

 

 

© 2024 G Donald Allen