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The Human Mind: An Informational Interface Approach
The human mind as four domains of informational interface.
Posted April 4, 2018
This blog divides the human mind into four domains of “human mental behavior,” and characterizes these domains in terms of informational interface. It was prompted by a recent article in the New Yorker, which in part explored the question of where the human mind is located. One question it asked was: Does the human mind exist only inside of people or is it also somehow extended into the environment?
To make this question concrete, consider the following example. In scenario one, you memorize a list of items that you need at the grocery store and you go to the store and gather all those items, pulling up the list from your memory. Virtually everyone who uses the concept would agree that the list in memory was “in your mind.” Now consider the scenario that instead of committing the list to memory, you simply write down the list, and then when you get to the grocery store, you pull it out and look at it. Is this different from committing the list to memory? If they are functionally the same thing (the information is stored and then retrieved), then does it follow that the written list is an extended memory system, and therefore is a part of the human mind that somehow exists on the outside?
I think the vocabulary afforded by the unified theory of psychology can help us sort out this issue. I will jump to the punchline and say that yes, in many ways, ‘mind’ extends into the environment. Indeed, along with many philosophers, I consider ‘mind’ to be something that exists both within individuals and between the individual and the environment (or between individuals). And, at the same time, it also does makes sense to talk about ‘the mind’ as existing solely inside of a person. How can both of these seemingly contradictory positions be taken? The way forward is via a larger vocabulary for the domains of the human mind.
Before introducing that vocabulary, let’s do a quick survey of common definitions of mind. First, ‘the mind’ often refers to the self-conscious reasoning and deliberative reflection in persons. This is how Rene Descartes used the term when he separated the world into the dual domains of “mind” and “matter.” Second, the mind also sometimes refers to the conscious experience of being-in-the-world, the “first person” world of felt perceptions, urges, emotional reactions, and imagined wonderings (e.g., the pain of a pin prick, or dreams of what might be). Third, the term mind also relates to what people are doing, ways of investing effort and attention. For example, if someone were to say, “Frank really put his mind to getting on varsity soccer,” we would know that Frank was working hard to get on the team. Finally, there is the “behind the scenes” element or domain of mind; this refers to mental activity beneath or outside of conscious awareness. Freud became famous for introducing the idea of the “unconscious mind.” Although he was misguided in many aspects of his formulation, modern psychology and neuroscience have conclusively demonstrated that consciousness represents only a small portion of mental activity.
The goal of this blog is to explain how we can integrate these four conceptions of mind into one picture. Consistent with how Dan Siegel conceptualizes mind, I consider it to be deeply connected to the flow of energy and information that is mediated by the nervous system. My goal here is to be very concrete and descriptive regarding the different domains. As such, let’s start with a simple diagram of a person in the act of perceiving and interacting with a table. Four domains are identified, and they line up closely with the everyday definitions of mind.
The first domain of mind in the diagram refers to the information instantiated and processed by the nervous system. This corresponds to the unconscious “behind the scenes” processes and messaging that takes between parts of the nervous system. The second domain is the subjective theater of experience or experiential or perceptual consciousness. This is the first-person (or first animal) integrated sensory experience of being in the world; the subjective theater of being. In this case, it would refer to the consciously accessible sensory experience of how the table looked and felt. Third, we have overt actions, which are changes between the individual and the environment. Such actions involve muscular movements coordinated by the nervous system. In this case, if the person was moving the table or pushing the chairs around, this would be overt mental responses. This meaning connects to the example of Frank trying to get on the soccer team. Finally, in humans there is the explicit, language-based beliefs and values that foster deliberative, reason-based thinking and can be directly shared with others. For example, a person can clearly describe the table and give reasons for why he should or should not purchase it.
Mind, mental behaviors, and the mind
I map concept of mind via the Tree of Knowledge System. The ToK System is a new picture of the universe as an unfolding wave of energy-information or behavior. The ToK posits that there are four different dimensions of behavioral complexity behavioral complexity (Matter, Life, Mind, and Culture) that correspond to the behavioral patterns of four different kinds of entities: 1) material objects (e.g., hydrogen atoms); 2) organisms (e.g., bacterial cells); 3) animals (e.g., dogs) and 4) people.
The ToK gives rise to a new vocabulary to help us make sense of the concept of mind. Specifically, it gives rise to differentiating between Mind, mental behaviors and ‘the mind.’ Mind on the ToK System is the third dimension of behavioral complexity. As with Matter, Life, and Culture, when capitalized, Mind refers to a distinct dimension of complexity in nature, and consists of the set of mental behaviors and corresponds to the behavior of animals. Animals are multicellular creatures that move around in their environments. They are heterotrophic, meaning that they rely on other organisms for their energy sources (i.e., they must consume other organisms because they cannot transform the sun’s energy directly into workable forms). The elements of free movement combined with the requirement of finding and eating other organisms are the central forces that shaped the structure and function of the nervous system—the centralized information processing system that allows for the coordination of the behavior of the animal-as-a-whole.
These behaviors are characterized by the ToK System as mental behaviors, with mental being an adjective that characterizes the unique kind of behaviors exhibited by animals. Mental behaviors take place both within the animal and between the animal the environment. The latter can be considered overt mental behaviors, whereas the former are covert. Hunting, mating, and defending a territory are exemplars of overt mental behaviors. Perceptions, drives, feelings, imaginings, and nonconscious cognitive processes are also considered mental behaviors; they simply take place within the animal and thus are covert. In slight contrast to ‘Mind’ (which is the entire set of mental behaviors), in the ToK framework ‘the mind’ refers to the architecture of the neuro-information processing system, as well as the information instantiated within and processed by that system. That is, the mind refers to the "covert" domain of mental behaviors.
We can move from this map to address long-standing issues associated with the mind, namely: How does Mind and the mind relate to the brain and to what extent is it observable by others and to what extent is it not? The flow of mental behavior can be observed following ways. First, scans of nervous system activity provide pictures of the electrical, chemical or metabolic activity, which are associated with the information being exchanged between different parts of the nervous system. Second, when an animal engages the environment, we are observing the overt mental behaviors associated with the activities of the information being processed by the nervous system. Third, there is a special kind of mental behavior in humans, called verbal or language-based behaviors. Finally, the thing we observe most directly of all is our own conscious experience of the world. Although no one else can directly observe our conscious, subject experiences, we can observe our own consciousness. Indeed, one could argue it the only thing we can directly observe.
The goal of this analysis it to make a couple of points. With this analysis we can clearly see that mental behaviors exist both within and between individuals and the environment. Mental behaviors are mediated via the nervous system and thus are dependent upon nervous system activity. However, there is also a very clear distinction between the brain and mental behaviors. Mental behaviors (the subject matter of psychology) are a different kind of behavior than neuronal behaviors per se (the subject matter of neuroscience). Finally, we can use this map to be clear that there are some aspects of mental behaviors that are clearly observable by third persons (i.e., overt mental behaviors) and some are observable by first person observation (conscious experience) and some are only indirectly observable (the information instantiated within and processed by the nervous system). We can add to our understanding by considering the concept of informational interface.
The Human Mind as Four Domains of Informational Interface
The concept of “informational interface” can help clarify the links and relationships between these four domains of human mental behavior, and allow us to clearly specify the relationship between the mind, mental behaviors, and the brain. Informational interface refers to the transfer of information between systems, and includes feedback loops and communication between different kinds of systems or mediums.
Examples of what I mean by informational interface are all around us. Consider, for example, what happens when you are speaking on a cell phone. Information is being translated through various media throughout the process. In a phone conversation, an explicit, self-conscious thought is translated into motor speech and the speech information flows as sound waves into the receiver in the phone. Those sound waves are translated into electrical signals which are then beamed as radio waves to the nearest cellphone tower, where they are then sent to a satellite in space and beamed back into another cellphone tower, and then into the person’s cell phone. They are then re-translated into the speaker, which projects the information through the air via sound waves. These sound waves are then translated into liquid waves via the ear drum and three small bones (i.e., hammer, anvil and stirrup), which cause vibrations in the cochlea which results in a pattern of fluid that is picked up by auditory receptors and then translated into words that can be processed and pulled together to form meanings. And the person responds, “OMG, I can’t believe she did that!”
The point I am making here is that we can see the human mind by observing the informational interface occurring between the four domains of human mental behavior. Specifically, to map the human mind broadly, we should be considering the following four domains: how different parts of the human nervous system communicate messages and store information (domain 1); how brain-based information processing gives rise to and is influenced by subjective conscious experience (domain 2); how information flows from the nervous system into the muscles (and back again) to give rise to controlled, functional movements and purposeful actions (domain 3); and, finally, how experiential consciousness and other neuro-information processes are translated into symbolic language, which can then be shared directly with others (domain 4). From this perspective, we can think of the human mind as a neuro-behavioral-experiential-linguistic informational interface system.
This analysis allows us to return to the New Yorker article and be clear about what is going on. First, as this analysis makes clear, it very much is the case that we should be thinking about “the mental” extending into the environment via the concept of mental behaviors. When an animal or person is acting on the environment, they are engaged in “mental behavior,” and in that sense, it is all part of the mind-brain system. Language-based mental behavior is a particularly clear example. A conversation between two people is the direct flow of linguistic information, an obvious domain of human mental behavior.
At the same time, we can use the concept of “the mind” to technically denote the information instantiated within and processed by nervous system. When defined this way, we see that observing the mind directly, without interface with the other domains is tricky. Moreover, if we return to the conundrum in the New Yorker about where the mind is located, we can see clearly what is confusing and how to get the terminology correct. If the interface is simply between the conscious recall and the information stored within the nervous system as was the case when just memorizing the list, we can say that, technically, the information resided fully in the mind of the person. In contrast, the physical written list does exist outside the person’s mind, when defined this way. At the same time, the act of writing the list and reading it are human mental behaviors, and in that sense, they are clearly part of the broad meaning of we are referring to when speaking about the human mind.
There are a number of additional pieces that are needed to fully explicate the argument. For example, there is much to be said about the architecture of the human mind as a neuro-information processing device, about the various domains of human consciousness, and the implications of human language as a new system of information processing that evolved in the hominid line, and how that changed the informational interface equation. Those elements are topics for other blogs and papers.
One final note is worth making about the concept of informational interface. The implication of this analysis is that as other information processing systems emerge, there may be opportunities for blending the information processing of the human mind with those systems. Of course, this is exactly what is happening. Indeed, one can readily argue that a fifth domain of human mental behaviors are emerging as a function of how they interface with computational technologies. In his interesting book, The Future of the Mind, the physicist Michio Kaku details the advances that are happening in many areas. And, just as the informational interface concept would suggest, these advances really are giving rise to a new kind of mental behavioral patterns because they are allowing for fundamentally different kinds of informational interface.
