The Theory of Mind

[MagickMuffin]

In doing more research I came across this interesting site. There is a lot of info there and still reading through it, but wanted to share this fascinating site with you.

Discovering a unified theory of mind and emotion is the purpose of this site, and anyone seeking a greater understanding of life should benefit from the ideas herein. To truly capture life and culture, any unified theory must be able to accommodate every field of human endeavor. From the rigors of mathematics and physics to the subtleties of fine art and music, from the idealism of philosophy and religion to the hard realities of biology and economics, a unified theory must encompass them all. It must handle the greatest scientific detail and yet elucidate the vagaries of passion and the human spirit. Most of all, it must explain the enigma of emotion:

"... emotion is a central organizing process for consciousness, and ... any theory of consciousness must have a theory of emotion as one of its linchpins ..." - Douglas F. Watt


To date, the best unified theory with emotion as a "linchpin" is "Emotive Energy" which combines and integrates many recent and standard theories. An extension of Gregg Henriques' BIT theory, it describes living organisms as "feeding success" and "starving failure" at both macro and micro levels of behavior. It closely aligns with Herbert Spencer's concept of "survival of the fittest" in that ideas which best "fit" the circumstances AND are of most "value" to the organism will dominate behavior. The following major theoretical components integrate with Emotive Energy:

Adjacent Possible Theory (APT) - Stuart Kauffman; a theory that living organisms (Autonomous Agents) move away from chaos (maximum entropy) and toward greater organization and complexity (Adjacent Possible).

Behavioral Investment Theory (BIT) - Gregg Henriques; a thermo-psychonomic theory asserting that living organisms use an "approach" system (Behavioral Activation System) and an "avoidance" system (Behavioral Inhibition System) to effect an energy efficient input output ratio.

Hedonic Tone Theory (HTT) - Victor S. Johnston; a theory describing emotions (positive, negative, and neutral) as key to a tri-loop adaptive system (evolutionary, learning, and rational thought).

Perceptual Control Theory (PCT) - William T. Powers; a theory that living organisms monitor perceptions and adjust behavior until the perceptions match a targeted state (Reference Signal).

Multidimensional Model of Emotion (MME) - Robert Plutchik; a theory that all emotions are scalar expressions of a small set of core emotions which, in turn, are categorized as either positive or negative.

Global Workspace Theory (GWT) - Bernard J. Baars; a theory describing mental processes as competing for access to consciousness using a "theater of consciousness" model.

Fuzzy Logical Model of Perception (FLMP) - Dominic W. Massaro; a theory of pattern recognition based upon feature evaluation, integration, and identification (decision) based upon relative goodness of match to the stimulus information.

Opponent-Process Theory (O-P) - Richard Soloman; a theory describing positive emotions as directly related to levels of previous stress.


http://www.theoryofmind.org/

Namaste

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. the Multidimensional model would best fit

the premise from A Course in Miracles--that there are only two emotions, really--love and fear. And mystics might go on to say that love is real, the others illusions. But I don't know that they would call love, in this instance, an emotion, but rather the essence of one's being.

[MagickMuffin]

2. I seem to google around searching out certain subjects,

which always lead me to other subjects, round and round I go, reading something interesting and deciding to post what I find.

I have fun and a great time exploring topics that I might not have known about, and then have someone else reply to my thread with additional info that I haven't heard about. Such as your post about "A Course in Miracles" in seemed vaguely familiar, from long ago but can't remember for certain.

This thread was mostly because of Orrex's thread and it got me searching for the article "What Gorilla?: Why Some Can't See Psychic Phenomena" NJCher had posted http://www.realitysandwich.com/what_gorilla. That article mentioned actual studies conducted on psi experiments, PubMed.gov has summaries of those experiments.

So, from there it snowballed into all kinds of directions. :blush:

[Celebration]

3. some people don't believe this stuff until THEY can do it

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-able-to-read-peoples-minds-1643968.html

Having the ability to read someone's mind with a "thought machine" has come a step closer after scientists showed that they could guess a person's memory simply by looking at the electrical activity of their brain.


Scientists have found that spatial memories can be "read" by a brain scanner so that it is possible to predict automatically where someone imagines themselves to be (the exact location in a maze, for instance) without actually asking them.

"It's also a small step toward the idea of mind reading, because just by looking at neural activity, we are able to say what someone is thinking," said Demis Hassabis of University College London.