John Page

This thread is about the necessity of minds to invent hierarchies in their interpretation of reality.

The proposition to debate is The mind must necessarily categorize its experiences in order to make any sense of reality and this process of categorization results in hierarchies of the "conceptualized experiences".

Adrian Selby

Hi John,

Could you clarify for me, I have notions based on Laszlo's systems philosophy that conceptualise reality as a hierarchy of systems, with these systems being differentiated merely pragmatically from our 'getting on with our lives in our environment efficiently' point of view. So essentially concepts are 'level of hierarchy' specific to that aspect of reality they're developed and applied.

Is this where you're going?

Adrian

John Page

Interesting - any good links on him?

I guess my direction was slightly different, suggesting that conceptualization is impossible without predicating categories and hierarchies of categories. "Systems" would fall into the hierarchy of categories through which we idealize reality.

Cheers, John

John Page

Adrian:
is this by the guy you're referring to?

Adrian Selby

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...901515-9896133

this guy

If I understand your proposition, I think I agree with it, the mind must categorise, in the sense that we have models of reality constructed from the data we're given by the senses. In this respect, the fact that we focus on certain things and not others shows that there are categorising processes at work.

That seems uncontroversial to me, which is why i'm asking you to expound a little

John Page

Ta muchly.
Here's the last page of parent thread here, where Lu is asking about hierarchies and truth.

I wonder, must there be informational hierarchies created by a brain in order for the mind to exist?

Adrian Selby

Why do all these good mind brain threads come just as i'm sat here waiting for my books from amazon on cognitive neuroscience of consciousness etc.

I'm working without up to date theories, but never mind, i'll be back to haunt future threads with it all I suppose.

Being a mind is the brain type guy, then I would be framing the question as, 'Is a necessary component of the brain's functioning as a self aware system with consciousness that it orders information into hierarchies?'

Worded like that I would wonder whether it was an essential feature of brains that are like ours and therefore it could not be other than that a self aware system requires that processing occurs. I think if you could give an example of something lower and higher in the hierarchy it would help me.

BTW, I have a post on my own forum related to systems philosophy as worked into epistemological pragmatism. You're welcome to drop by, I've aimed it at people who might not be 'into all this'.

John Page

Reframing of question accepted, perhaps without the reference to consciousness, though.
[U]
Low examples: Light, warmth
High examples: Light Festival, car, logarithms

Cheers, John

spacer1

John,
What is the basis for the hierarchy? Judging by your example, less complex concepts seem to be associated with the lower realms of the hierarchy, while more complex concepts are associated with the higher realm. Is this what you meant?

If there is any hierarchical structure to the mind, I would assume it would revolve around our survival, rather than the complexity of our concepts.

John Page

Well, this is an exploration and I'm not entirely sure what I meant. I just posed things that seemd "higher" and "lower" to me and I agree the qualifier "complexity" fits the bill.
First, I'm not sure this is about the structure of the mind, just the way that the mind structures things - but maybe they're the same. How about the proposition that the understanding/analysis comcomitant with survival is complexity.

Now, that being the case, what is complexity but increasing dependent levels of an hierarchy?

Cheers, John