Broad Speculations

I’ve compared the mind to a model but I’ve struggled to find a good example of the type of model it is.

We know there are different types of models. In science most models are abstract and mathematical. A couple of equations with tunable parameters could be used to model a complex physical interaction. For example, a climate model might need to account for variations in the Earth’s orbit and spin, influence of volcanic eruptions, solar variations, geological and oceanic changes, the effect of greenhouse gases, and the efficiency of carbon sinks. In a perfect model, the known and best estimate variables would predict accurately the variations in the temperature and ice caps over millions of years. Another example of this same type of model would be using physics equations to graph the arc of a projectile fired at specified velocity.

While the mind might be modelled abstractly, the mind itself isn’t an abstract model. Mathematical models quickly break down in modeling complex interactions. Even models of the interactions of as little as a hundred particles would require the computing power of the universe. While abstract models can be dynamic and arrive at different results with different inputs, they are frequently narrow in scope.

In contrast to abstract, mathematical models, there are concrete, physical models. The simplest of these to understand would be the scale model. Some of the earliest scale models were of buildings and dwellings from several thousand years BCE. Scale models are still extensively used in architecture, but the use has expanded to cars, rockets, and action heroes.

My first attempt at describing mind as model was the airplane in the wind tunnel. The problem with the example is that it is a static model and the mind is not static. We can put a model airplane in a wind tunnel and measure turbulence and lift, but the model just sits there. It doesn’t change. We can pull it out of the wind tunnel and change it, but it does not change itself. A second attempt was the YouTube video of kinetic art. This model isn’t static but it is very mechanistic and deterministic.

I was watching My Octopus Teacher for the third time with my wife (she hadn’t seen it) a few days ago. The movie is on Netflix and tells the story of the interaction between a man and an octopus over the course of a year. It begins with the octopus camouflaged in shells. Later we learn that the octopus does this to hide and protect itself from sharks. Through the movie, the octopus hides in kelp, merges with the sea bottom, and adopts the colors and textures of its background. Apparently the mimic octopus has even greater capabilities and can emulate more than a dozen creatures to trick predators and prey.

Mimicry in nature usually arises slowly through evolution and typically involves a harmless organism taking on the appearance or characteristics of a dangerous or poisonous organisms to fool predators. This is usually static. Once the organism develops it can’t change its appearance The dynamic sort of mimicry found in chameleons and octopi is more rare. In the octopus, apparently the skin has thousands of are chromatophores controlled by nerves that the octopus can squeeze or stretch to change their reflective properties.

The mimicry of the octopus is like the brain/mind model. First, it is biological. It is also dynamic. It can change rapidly based on environment. It is, I suppose, somewhat involuntary. The octopus may decide to take a form, color, and texture but we can suppose that whatever mechanism it uses to control each chromatophore is unconscious and automatic. Most importantly, however, the mimicry of the octopus reflects the world. In fact, it has been used to argue against extreme “no objective reality” views such as Donald Hoffman’s. Applied to mind and consciousness it could also be used to argue for some fundamental veridicality of mind.

This doesn’t mean necessarily that the mimicry of the octopus works identically to how the brain forms its model of the world. I am only arguing for similarity and likeness. The characteristics of mimicry – physicality, living, dynamic reaction to environment, reflective of reality – are similar.

Mind is essentially an internalized mimicry of the external world. The way it mimics is by creating spacetime relationships between sense datum coming from the senses. Closely related data become objects. The temporal-spatial relationships of objects is mimicked by neuronal speed (time) and the dimensional and patterns in the spatial architecture of of neural connections. This mimicry is what I have been calling a model and it maps (probably polymorphically) its internal objects with external objects based on a best fit for the sense data available.

If mind is internalized mimicry, the problem of explaining how it works becomes drastically simplified. We don’t have to imagine how complex computational algorithms evolved and became embedded in the brain. We just have to assume that the primary function of the brain is to mimic external reality by maintaining internally the same relationships that the sense data presents. The brain and its neurons doesn’t to know anything. It just has to faithfully copy the relationships and revise its copy whenever new data appears.

There certainly is more than this but this gets directly at how neurons can seemingly know about the world.