Philosophy Now Forum

As title says. I'm working on a theory for the engineering of ideas, but I'm not able to answer just this question of how or whether there is any common set of criteria for which can be used to describe the contents of the mind. We have many descriptive words, of course, but my quest is mainly in trying to atomize the mind, find its constituents and describe how they are like.

Anybody who can offer some nudge of inspiration or perhaps could offer some ideas themselves on this? It would be very helpful. I usually figure it out in the end, but I like keeping up speed and momentum, and I'm not at the moment feeling in contact with either.

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The Voice of Time wrote:As title says. I'm working on a theory for the engineering of ideas, but I'm not able to answer just this question of how or whether there is any common set of criteria for which can be used to describe the contents of the mind. We have many descriptive words, of course, but my quest is mainly in trying to atomize the mind, find its constituents and describe how they are like.

Anybody who can offer some nudge of inspiration or perhaps could offer some ideas themselves on this? It would be very helpful. I usually figure it out in the end, but I like keeping up speed and momentum, and I'm not at the moment feeling in contact with either.

You should read Grinder and Bandlers first books, "Frogs into Princes" and "Structure of Magic Vol I & II". Also very interesting is "Changing Belief Systems with NLP" R. Dilts.

While I thank you for the thought Arising I'm not sure they will help me atomize the contents of the mind. It seems they are more in category of offering description. It's basically me asking the difference as to how an atom is like (its properties and causal powers) as opposed to the dice it is part of.

The Voice of Time wrote:While I thank you for the thought Arising I'm not sure they will help me atomize the contents of the mind. It seems they are more in category of offering description. It's basically me asking the difference as to how an atom is like (its properties and causal powers) as opposed to the dice it is part of.

But in this context to "atomize" is to reduce it to its basic indivisible parts I assume? So what are the 'atoms' of a 'mind? Looks like the basic contents are the representations that the senses give us, i.e. sights, sounds, smells, tastes and 'feelings', i.e. 'touch'. if you're looking to have an 'engineering' of the 'mind' then why not start from these?

Sorry if I'm missing the point.

Well often we say that what something is, is what it is "like" (meaning an atom (we're not talking about physical atoms) is what it is like), by for instance asking "what is a football"? You could answer "a football is like... this... this... and this, hard, bumps on impact with ground, and so on", however, if you had never seen a football before, but were to describe it, knowing that it is a part of the game called "soccer", you'd have to make a theory on the functions you know it should have.

For instance, you'll know it should enter a goal at some point. You know it likely has something to do with using your feet. At that point, you could assume it's optimized for such purposes. And further, that somehow it must travel from the feet to the goal. Doing this kind of thinking should sometime lead to a theory which can be developed further on the likelihood of how a football is like.

I would be interested in any inspirations then, as to how the components of the functions of the mind must be like for them to do the things which the mind does. Producing words, images, "feelings" of all kinds including sensing and emotion, the order in which it creates it, they way it goes back and forth. The way the components necessary to do "association" must be like. All such answers could produce knowledge of how we can engineer ideas. Not to produce any particular product, not to "indoctrinate" anybody (which is really more a matter of "installation" than the what I'm interested in, which is design and production), but to know the boundaries for ideas and how to exploit the components to make good "wholes", or "ideas".

monads

-Imp

Impenitent wrote:monads

-Imp

I think I somewhat understand what you mean, but the wiki-articles were a bit heavy to digest for my sleepy mind atm, so not sure I understood entirely.

When I think about it, what more I'm looking for, is really "attitude" and "personality", not of the psychological kind, but in the same way physical atoms have a sense of attitude and personality in how they interact with the world, the same way I would need to give the components (the "atoms" produced by the atomization of the contents of the mind) attitude and personality, somehow to understand how they are distinct and their preferences in acting with the rest of the components forming together the complexes that becomes what we are able to see and experience in our minds.

after the Greek, try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monadology

-Imp