top study-index prior next ------------------------------------------------------------------------ C MIND AS MODELING DEVICE. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CA REFERENTIALS AND FACULTIES 1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ In BB we have seen that the apparently contradictory concepts chaos/order and continuous/discrete become dialectic complements when interpreted with help of a very simple physical model. This model comprises two referentials: 1.the 2-d observation plane which lets appear 2-d patterns of forms 2.the 3-d imagination space which supports 3-d situations of images, whose projections upon the observation plane explains the otherwise contingent and meaningless patterns. Human mind accomplishes similar functions. 2-d patterns impressed upon the retina are interpreted by the brain as projections of 3-d situations of images. Although these interpretative images are entirely created by the brain, the subjective impact of the interpretation is so strong that the conscious mind considers them as objects of the real external world. The similarity is so striking that we feel justified to consider the structure of human perception and imagination as analogous with the membran model. It is surprising and impressing to find that this analogy based upon contemporary synergetic considerations is entirely contained in Plato's Allegory. Indeed, replacing the cave's wall and the chained slaves respectively with the retina and the conscious mind, we recognize exactly the human interpretation of our model. Consequently we shall consider that human perception and imagination are founded in two referentials analogous with those of the membran model: 1.SENSORIUM, analogous with the obserwation plane 2.IMAGERY, analogous with the imaginary space. Sensorium and imagery supply an epistemological base for human perception and imagination compatible with physics and requiring no metaphysical additions. However, they do not account for another essential human faculty, that of symbolic thinking. Humans are indeed capable to conceive symbols and symbolic structures such as languages and to perform with their help complex inferences. Allthough symbols refer to images, their power consists in the possibility of being processed without necessarily imagining their references. We believe that the network model of BC supplies an analogy with the human faculty of symbolic thinking, an analogy particularily striking due to the neural network structure of the brain. CA REFERENTIALS AND FACULTIES 2 We have seen in BC that an imaginary situation may be uniquely mapped into a network whose vertices represent the images. We may say that vertices SYMBOLIZE images and that their structure, the network, provides a referential supporting symbolic forms of thinking. We shall call this referential SYMBOLICS. In BC we have seen that its proper dichotomy is ENTITY with its terms TYPE and INSTANCE. In other words symbolics supports the procedures of classification and inference, i.e. logic. Within these procedures instances and types are respectively implied by symbols and propositions. Human Intelligence consists of the faculty of Symbolizing, or mapping Imagery to Symbolics and the faculty of Understanding, or mapping Symbolics to Imagery. We symbolize by expressing Situations and Images with Propositions and Symbols of our languages. We understand Proposi- tions and Symbols by imagining them, by getting their meaning, by mapping them to Imagery. In further chapters of this part we shall discuss sensorium, imagery and symbolics and try to construct with their help a model of human faculties and functions concerned with information and its processing.