Investigating a Theory of Mind

Post date: Mar 29, 2012 7:51:14 AM

It can be observed that some amount of fundamental principles of reasoning is similar between analyzing of various independent tasks and subject fields, between different people and different knowledge. We can state that those principles might underlie the phenomena of thinking and form a peculiar core, which could explain us how our mind treats objects of reality, what language, what rules it uses to comprehend things it can observe. These rules give the intelligence an ability to create, to synthesize, i.e. to take a set of some uncoordinated things and make something organic, integral from them, changing the point of view to the whole picture. But not only virtual entities carry traits of such a structured view. Any kind of systems in our world, independently of their nature, uses the same rules in their creation as the mental space does. This can be seen for example in structural organization of objects or systems of real world and their interactions, other types of behavior (dynamics), which are in general case nonlinear. Moreover, the term “space” can be generalized onto any kind of spatial relations – mental relations (or intelligence) as the media of building connections and coordination (organizing) of conceptual views; physical space, as the media of interaction of physical objects by means of physical laws and coordination (ordering) of physical objects on the basis of their main characteristics using certain principles (rules); any other types of spaces, including cyberspace, which also has its own specific rules and characters. All these environments along with, naturally, their individual type-related specifics have also something in common. This is the general organization principles which display spatial relations themselves, without a direct connection to the nature of specific matter. Systematic properties of our mental images are the same as those of the real objects of any other nature. They interact conceptually in the same way, having the same principles of limitations. And these pro­perties (laws, rules) we should extract, optimally organize and represent in the form of a comprehensive theory.

In the development of mathematical basis for the theory as the primary source of objects’ dynamics we use topological views rather than algorithmic, because this leads to more stable and solid representation of phenomena of interactions, and the theory should be simple, observable and clear. The main criterion we use to develop a theory is an evaluation of optimality. Really, in optimal design for example we need to heed as more details as we can, providing the deepest level of reasoning to take into account all the possible variants of the further developments. But trying to do this we inevitably face the problem of choice, having a need to combine some uncorrelating objects or characters into whole. And we should be able to effectively solve this problem, to determine what should be serial and what simultaneous, what set of characters we should really consider to make a solution optimal, to regularize the relations between components, not to allow them to collide. Optimal solution supposes finding such a view, which allows packing up all the components naturally, without any conflicts and empty spaces, using the special set of methods. This requires thinking process to flow under specific limitations and be controlled by special criteria, i.e. boundaries, which we are investigating.

As a result we are obtaining a library (framework) for objective design, a universal objective language, which describes the generally principled relations; the infrastructure of thinking, able to provide the means for automated decision making and classification. A wide space of theoretical research is here. As well as a lot of topics for practical applications in engineering, research and control fields. For example, quick computer orientation, which is mandatory for computer control at, for example, manufacturing industry; or a creative computer assistantship which will be important in any kind of design tasks as well as problem solving issues.