0.13 How does the mind process information?  (Page 4/4)

This is obviously going to be more complicated than simple symbols, a physical symbol is going to be more simple than a mental symbol - if you could call a mental symbol a representation anyway. Jung called significant mental constructs or symbols 'archetypes'. However - those a just single symbols or constructs - what would happen if a mental construct combined with another mental construct? A representation is just a single object - but a representation can be of a mental construct which could consist of multiple representations, and different mental constructs can combine and influence each other in the mind - and obviously are going to be emotionally significant.

Object representations

One form of a mental representation is simply objects from the world forming a mental representation - either multiple objects in someones vision or a single object in someones vision - this is called the 'object-based attention' model - Montemayor and Haladjian (2015) Consciousness, Attention and Conscious Attention. (2015) Montemayor and Maladjian. The MIT Press. :

• Such diverse theories and studies give us good reason to believe that different attention systems work together in complementary ways to process perceptual information, and that object-based attention is an evolutionarily newer processing strategy that developed after the more basic feature-based and spatial forms of attention. The usefulness of the object-based model of high-level representation is that it provides a structure wherein low-level information from the various visual pathways can be integrate to form a coherent and persisting representation of a visual object (Ballard et al. 1997, Kahneman, Teisman, and Gibbs 1992, Noles, Scholl, and Mitroff 2005). Some studies, however, suggest that this binding can happen even when pairs of features are simply superimposed spatially (Holcombe and Cavanagh 2001) and thus not necessarily bound in an object file format. Nevertheless, such forms of 'conjunction attention' enable the crucial integration of multiple features. This ability is particularly important for guiding actions and for conscious attention, which we discuss further in chapter 4. Our position is that before you can have a conscious representation, visual information must be organized in some useful way. Object file representations provide this organization, especially since visual features usually belong to discrete objects. Without the ability to select an individual object and bind its feature, an agent could not sustain a persisting representation of the object.(
• We are particularly drawn to the object-based attention model because it provides a nice structure for the integration of information from the various visual subsystems to form a coherent representation of a visual scene, in a way that allows mental representations to refer to external objects. Whether or not mental representations truly are organized via object files remains debatable, but for our purposes the form in which features are integrated is not problematic as long as there is some account for this integration. we believe that object files are theoretically important for providing the content of mental representations and for integrating perceptual information from multiple modalities, as well as from other forms of attention, in order to produce a cohenerent representation. It is these representations that most liekly make up the contents of conscious experience

I already mentioned in a previous article that vision was like the base-line cognition. They stated that vision is necessary for mental representations, which I pointed out before them that vision was the baseline cognition which is basically saying the same thing. People that can see use their vision to think, and when they aren't looking with their eyes open they are visualizing things which they are thinking about. That is going to influence their cognitions greatly because vision is always needed and is a part of the thought process.

I also pointed out in my previous article that vision is tied to more simple cognitions - which seems fairly obvious on the surface but could be extremely complicated if someone wanted to analyze it because it would basically be analyzing all of a humans thinking and where that thinking comes from. Does it come from vision, emotion or feeling or other thoughts or memories?

Measuring emotion and subjectivity

So far in this article I discussed mental representations and how they influence the mind cognitively and emotionally. The question that comes up when trying to measure how reality is expressed and represented in the mind is how could such subjective mental functions be measured?

Some things in life are obvious and their influence on the human mind is obvious also - however it isn't really that simple. Things in life have an unconscious and a conscious influence on people. If the influence is unconscious then it could be completely unknown what the influence is. Alvin Goldman phrased meta-representations on a simple lower level 'first order representation level' and a higher level a 'meta-representational' level. There are simple beliefs and desires on the first level and the second level is more reflective - it is a meta-representational level by which people think about their attitudes and their basic representations of the world - their basic beliefs and desires.

He talks about 'mental attitudes' and these attitudes are different from concepts. If someone has an attitude then it is different from a concept that they can form. Attitudes come from beliefs and desires and intentions and other mental attitudes - however - how do these attitudes become concepts? The Mentalizing Folk. Alvin Goldman. (2000) In Dan SPerber (Ed.) Metarepresenations. Oxford University Press

• What concepts do the folk have of mental representations? How do they conceptualize or represent to themselves such states as belief, desire, intention, and the other mental attitudes? What properties do they endow these states with, in their fundamental grasp of them? These questions should be contrasted with questions about the essential nature of mental states. ...do not conceptualize beliefs and desire as neural states. How do they conceptualize them?

So they conceptualize by looking at their first level representational state - their basic beliefs and desires - then they form higher or more complex representations of those basic needs. This might be related to a hierarchy of needs because it has to do with different levels of thinking. Thinking is basically the same as different levels of representation, because, just as the world is represented simply and more complex, so too can thinking be simple and complex - and it can be about the world or about the self and world intertwined.