In writing and organizing this web site, I have found that artificial neural networks and cognitive psychology use different terminology for key Mental Construction concepts.
Terminology Used
The table lists the most important terms to assist the readers from those fields to understanding the ideas developed in Mental Construction.
| Mental Construction | Deep Learning | Psychology of Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| Concept Elevator | Hidden Layers | 100-Step Rule |
| Internal Worldview | Submerged in hidden layers | Mindset |
| Pattern-Matching | Data Classification Data Clustering |
Linguistic,Cultural Personal categories |
| Learning | Supervised Unsupervised |
Neuroplasicity |
The concept elevator is the incremental progress of a sensation, idea, concept, or memory on the trip from its inception to decision-making and back out to behavioral action. It uses many hidden layers and has empirical support from the 100-Step Rule.
The internal worldview is akin to mindset, but it’s not identical. The internal worldview emphasizes its role as a steady state disturbed by experiential perturbations. Different stages of development make different aspects more prominent.
The distinction between data clustering and data categorization is one I was aware of but didn’t have such concise terminology. Henceforth instead of pattern-matching I will use the appropriate more useful term. Data clustering (unsupervised learning) is the core type of learning that Mental Construction focuses on. There is discussion about supervised learning in how culture and society affects our knowledge; however, it is taken as a given. Once, those linguistic and cultural categories were developed by clustering, by pattern-matching which had no precedents.
Physiological changes are regular as we grow from infant to adult. The role and domain of supervised and unsupervised learning is significantly different before and after the critical periods, as of language acquisition, long-term memory storage, and puberty.
A glossary for Mental Construction is available.
Musing on Amateur Terminology
Being an amateur has a blessing and a curse.
Let me start with the curse. The shortcomings of amateur theorizing make them the butt of jokes, especially to members of the field they address. An amateur can be woefully ignorant of basic facts of the discipline, which to the specialist topples their train of reasoning at a very early stage.
The blessing is that his thoughts can roam unfettered by the received wisdom of his field of interest. He can see things and arrange information in new patterns that won’t occur to field practitioners as they have been instructed to understand them in particular manners.
The ideal amateur, who doesn’t exist, is aware of the facts, theories, and interpretations of his special interest. Yet he is able to look those facts and basic principles and hypothesize new conclusions.
A side aspect of the amateur is that he names things in an idiosyncratic manner. The first impact is that others, knowledgeable in the field, do not understand the points the amateur is raising. The same words or phrases have different denotations and connotations. T.S. Kuhn raised this point about miscommunication due to terminology, although his point was about scientists across the divide of a scientific revolution (physicists who retained a belief in classical theories and those who subscribed to relativity).
Another consequence of the difference in terminology is that, even in the time of Google, the amateur can often miss information in the field because his search may focus on the wrong term. Before I found that data classification was restricted to supervised training, I thought paragraphs using it applied to unsupervised training too.
Blessing
As far as I can uncover, my idea of the Almost Gate as a good description of the brain’s underlying associative processing has been overlooked. Also the characteristics of the category hierarchy resulting from repeating handing of information from reception to rarified abstraction in the prefrontal lobes, either in the Concept Elevator sense or that of the Neural Cascade, has not been well explored.
Since you’re interested in how the mind works, post a comment, a question, or alternative ideas. You may want to scan the table of contents.
Remember I may organize my thoughts by different terminology than you.