A view of mind

A schematic view of cognitive processes

This diagram is an older project from the early to mid 80's, first drawn on large posterboards, then reproduced as still graphic images, and finally reconfigured as an animated GIF. This latter form represents the dymanic character of our mental processes rather well.

As you can see, the diagram is coded in colors to distinguish the various modules that comprise the mind (although modules with similar structures have been drawn with the same colors). I was both heartened and disheartened when I read Jerry Fodor's book Modularity of Mind in 1984. Heartened because some of my ideas had found a home among his ideas, but disheartened because Fodor was so pessimistic about the possibility of understanding the processes of our thoughts. This diagram makes essential use of simple and complex concepts, which analyze sensory perception, and which generate propositions in a language of thought. A deeper analysis of concepts and their processes go a long way to providing that clarity that Fodor found so wanting. Over some years, I have done a great deal of work on the nature and structure of concepts and their processes, the results of which are here available on-line at "Neurons, Concepts, and Connections in Thinking".

This diagram (now somewhat dated) borrows some heuristic, pictorial devices from computer design, such as a storage processor that records the locations of items in memory, and a distribution processor that combines those locations (not the items themselves) with other items. These devices should not be taken too literally. They only reflect that concepts have links to sensory and conceptual components stored in memory.

I have made an explicit commitment to and about the nature of consciousness in this project. We are conscious of all and only modes of sensory experience and never of conceptual thought. The only consciousness we have of our conceptual thoughts are the sensory echoes that are projected back onto our auditory sensorium in the form of silent words. The diagram represents conscious items by means of the color red. The flashing white areas represent the active (even if unconscious) stages of our mental processes. (Hit the Stop and Reload buttons to stop and start the animation.)

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