What is imagination?

Previously, I referred to a system of symbols which emerge in the human brain, its purpose being organising information on the consciousness level. So, the question is: If this system and its components are produced from the humans' experiences, then how is it possible that people have thoughts with no correspondence in reality, at least the way they feel it?

I think the answer is rather simple. The human mind, in its efforts to categorise all these classes of objects it has registered, creates hierarchies of abstraction, with more and more abstract classes. By filling in some parameters in these symbols more concrete classes can be produced and by continuing this process the level in which symbols fully correspondent with experience exist can be reached.

Similarly, the products of filling in the parameters in different ways are symbols that in no way correspond with the real world. At this point, an example may come of use: Let's imagine a human. In our minds, we have an idea about his characteristics, the colour of the skin, of the eyes, of the hair, the size and shape of the ears, the nose and so forth. The properties are symbols themselves. Now, it is evident that there are some limits on the values these properties can have because of our experience in the real world. However, in our minds, we can set them to whatever fitting value we want.

By using the same logic on more abstract symbols, we can create symbols that have no correspondence with the real world in every level of abstraction. So, for every symbol for which and the symbols that originate from it there is no correspondence with real world experience, there exists a path in the abstraction hierarchy upwards that leads to a symbol from which there is a path in the abstraction hierarchy downwards which leads to a symbol that does have correspondence with reality. To put it simply, let's grab a symbol with no correspondence to reality and start walking on the path towards less tangible symbols from which it inherits properties. Then, at some point, we will reach a symbol that if we walk on the path towards more tangible symbols that inherit from it, we will end up on something we can recognise from the real world.

Of course, beyond the abstraction hierarchy and properties assignment, there are other relations that connect symbols with each other, for instance how a pencil is related to a notebook. The symbols that belong in our imagination may connect with other symbols with relations like this, whether those symbols correspond with reality or not.

Consequently, imagination is defined as the set of symbols and their connections which exist in the human mind for each of which the following property is true: the symbol in question nor any more tangible symbol which inherits properties from it has any correspondence with the real world. If we want to be less rigorous, we can include all the symbols which do not correspond with reality, as we experience it. In that sense, Plato's ideal forms would be part of our imagination. A third, even less rigorous definition would argue that imagination is comprised of the whole system of symbols in our mind, a sub-set of which being reality.

Finally, no matter which definition one may choose, it is undeniable that imagination is an integral part of the human psyche. One could say that the symbols which belong in our imagination are just errors of the system in its efforts to produce symbols that do have correspondence with reality. On the other hand, imagination may well be the mechanism by which humans make hypotheses, experimenting with the limits of consciousness.

What is consciousness?

In my previous article, I referred to mental constructs that I named "symbols" but I never explained what exactly I meant. I also referred to something that comprised of these entities, the "symbolic representation of the world humans have in their minds".

Well, a symbol is nothing more than what the word implies in its literal meaning: it's a formalistic representation of something. Since we are on the topic of the human mind, these symbols are thoughts. Obviously, the entities symbols represent may or may not have a tangible form. In practice, this formalism is not very strict. In other words, the outline is more important than the sharpness of the mental picture, especially when the definition of the symbol is done intuitively, using patterns and not with other symbols.

These symbols may have attributes and be subject to editing. They may even interact with other symbols. Thus, an object-oriented view of the world is created from these symbols. This symbolic representation of the world humans have in their minds I call consciousness.

Technically, the human brain works by storing data distributed to neurons. What data each neuron holds doesn't mean much on its own, but when the brain is fed with a stimulus, it is able to recreate relevant information by putting together data from a specific path on the neural network. Consciousness is like a virtual machine. It is based on the functions I described above, but implements a radically different way to represent the world. It uses relational memory and machine learning to create an object/symbol-oriented system.

Even if this is a good model to describe consciousness, it still needs to be noted that it is in no way absolute. Neither do all human functions go through consciousness nor is this network of symbols implemented as well as I imply. Where I'm getting to is that the fact that consciousness is not fully compatible with the human mental faculties nor does it cover them fully, means that there is a gap between it and the rest of the brain's functions.

I think this is the reason why there is this perceived distance between mind and body. In any case, the tools consciousness provides enable humans to build a variety of object-oriented systems, which may or may not have anything to do with the real world. For instance, mathematics is a logic system which is comprised from entities with relations, all which have nothing to do with senses. Also, it is really interesting to study the way in which consciousness is related and interacts with the "lower" level functions. Using mathematics as an example once more, one may notice that while a problem's solution is a sequence of logical steps, most of the time the solution is not calculated algorithmically-symbolically but intuitively.

To sum up, consciousness is defined as a system of mental symbols which is founded on the human brain but functions with a completely different logic. In computers, there are logic programming and object-oriented languages whose code ends up being compiled to machine language, which is always procedural. I think that a similar process takes place inside the human brain, which compiles the symbols of human consciousness into data which can be stored on biological neurons.

What is definition?

Greetings, dear readers. From this blog, I will try to give definitions to various terms. It is sound, then, I think, to begin by defining what a definition is. Now, we encounter one of the hardest problems with this procedure: circularity. Since in order to define a term, which is a symbol, we will have to use other symbols, don't we have to define these as well? Likewise, shouldn't we then define the symbols we used to define the symbols we used to define the original term? This goes on ad infinitum.

So, we are forced to either stop defining or to end up doing circles, without an end in sight. Things aren't exactly like that, however. Now, I am imprinting my thoughts on a language, which is a symbolic means of communication. I am imprinting them and then publishing the results, fully expecting that when someone reads up to this point, he will have at least a partial understanding of my original thoughts. Is it senseless to expect that much? The answer to this question seems to be an obvious "no" but why exactly is that?

Humans have the ability to identify symbols in a non-symbolic way: with patterns. Our brains, which are neural networks, can learn to identify a stimulus if it is repeated enough times. Consequently, when a person is reading these words here, his mind understands and composes them, up to a point, producing an imprint of the original idea that existed in my mind. A neural network can execute this learning procedure to identify something -a symbol in this case- but because of the way it works, it is not capable of doing so with absolute accuracy. Now, the way we will get around circularity as well as what is the point in defining things start to become apparent.

A definition is a symbolic description of a term. A good definition needs to be absolute and formalistic. Why? Because that's what is missing from the way the human brain interprets symbols. If the learning procedure of the human brain was capable of identifying and processing symbols with absolute accuracy, then the need for symbolic definitions would cease to exist.

All in all, definitions are part of the symbolic representation of the world humans have in their minds. The role of these symbols is to enhance the human mental power by covering for the built-in weaknesses of the inner workings of their brains. To be more specific, definitions are that system that connects all those symbols. For this reason, I believe that studying and extensively using definitions is beneficial to humans.