Everyday Theories
There is a set of “images, stories and theories” in our minds,
which we use when we encounter some new events, when we organize our
experiences, when we plan to do something, when we make everyday decisions,
etc. We use them, expend them, modify them, link them with
other “images, stories and theories” – this is how we think. In any
conversation, we seamlessly exchange and modify these “images, stories and theories”
- this is how we talk. These “images, stories and theories” are social
creations - members of the society contribute to their introduction, correction
and transmission.
We will call these “images, stories
and theories” “everyday theories” because we:
·
perpetually use them during almost every activity –
they are our everyday companions;
·
perpetually update and polish them that they better
“reflect” or “describe”, what we are dealing with;
·
pick the “theory” according to the situation, with which
we are dealing at the moment - different “theories” deal with the world from
different points of view and we select one, which fits the situation;
·
try different
combinations of “theories” to get better understanding of the situation.
Not all “everyday theories” are
tightly bound with logic. Some are vivid memories. Some are bound with a story.
They all are helpful, when one wants to get a grip on the situation. However,
“everyday theories”, which are bound with logic are powerful, they could be
used as ready building blocks to create an overall picture, and could be used
to convince others. They are compact, memorable, and easy to apply in new
situations.
“Everyday theories” are creatures of the mind.
Individual minds and minds of social groups are actively engaged in their
initial creation, modification and development.
However, the mind deals with
patterns: patterns of the stream of signals, which it gets from sensory organs,
and patterns of structured information, which it gets from other minds. The
mind deals with patterns. Patterns are the field of operations of the mind - we
store in memory nothing more but patterns.
The mind is very peculiar in its
choice of patterns.
The mind can reason only about
objects of finite structure and only about finite number of them. The objects’
structure could grow and the number of objects could grow step-by-step, but, on
every step of such growing description, they have to be of finite structure and
number of them has to be finite.
Using the technique of “building a
growing finite scaffold”, the mind can think about infinite objects in terms of
creation such “scaffolds” and comparing “scaffolds” instead of comparing
objects. The “scaffold” is built simultaneously in the object (properties of
the concept) and around it (relationships with other concepts). This “scaffold”
could grow without bounds, but the “scaffold” should be finite on each step of
its growth.
Hence, “everyday theories” is a
growing “finite system of finite patterns”.
This is an important observation. Based
on it, we could attempt to build a meaningful theory of the ways we think based
on finite patterns.
However, feelings are an integral
part of our thinking, and we cannot have a meaningful theory of thinking, which
ignores feelings, bat it is hard to imagine feelings described with finite
objects. Use of feelings during thinking should be characterized as an
“infinite” step. Seemingly, this would prevent any construction of a theory of
thinking, based on finite patterns.
There is a way around this problem,
though, because when we build new theories, we use feelings in a special way. While
we are thinking, we could “feel” something and could use this “feeling” to
guide our thinking. However, we use this “feeling” only to help us arrive to
conclusion faster, to avoid dead-ended paths of thinking. Hence, in our
analysis of the nature of mind’s working with theories or patterns, we could
ignore existence of “feelings”. They are just helpers to arrive to results
faster.
We could assume that each our task of
thinking is accomplished in finite number of steps. These steps include
selection of the ways to:
·
perceive something as a concept,
·
perceive concept’s properties and structure,
·
communicate about this concept,
·
manipulate and change
this concept.
This way, we use essentially finite
system of thinking to operate something, which, as we understand, is infinite. The
tools of thinking, which we use to operate that infinite something, are our
theories or patterns.
We use the name “theory”, when we
think about something we made and the name “pattern”, when we think about
something that exists and we just learnt it. However, we have no way to
differentiate one from the other and we will call them Patterns/Theories.
Using these finite Patterns/Theories
we operate “infinite”.
This is how we think and operate. It
is remarkable, because there is an infinite gap between something, which we
operate, and our knowledge about it, which is finite.
Our knowledge about the world is
our tool, which we use to change the world. This tool has to be adjusted and
improved each time we use it. We need to perceive each and every attempt to change
the world, as an experiment and we should learn from it as much as possible. We
have to share this newly acquired knowledge and form common knowledge.
This perpetually developing
knowledge of the world is a tool of Humanity.
Note, that we do not learn
“internal structure of the world”, we even do not know, if such “structure”
exists. We just develop our tool – the knowledge.
We figure out, which changes of the
world we want to make, in the process of using/developing this tool. Often, we even
do not know which changes are possible, before we develop more knowledge,
before we work for awhile with our tool and improve it.
This works. Why it works, we do not
know.
In the process of development of
our Patterns/Theories we perpetually communicate with other people. This
communication reduces amount of “experiments” which we have to make with our
potential Patterns/Theories before we accept them as something useful and kind
of outline their area of applicability. We could say that the society as a
whole develops these Patterns/Theories. This is the activity, where it is
almost impossible to differentiate between an individual and the society.
We learn how to work with Patterns/Theories,
we like results, and we are not concerned with theoretical justifications. We
work together to remove useless and misleading Patterns/Theories and to add Patterns/Theories,
which help in making acceptable decisions.
It is possible that there are some
limitations on the set of Patterns/Theories, which we choose in our perpetual
refinement of them, we have no mechanism to detect them. For example, we have
no idea, if there is some “underlying reality”, which limits our freedom of
working with Patterns/Theories.
This conclusion is scary, and some
people need a basis for understanding of why entire system could work. They try
to build the foundation of understanding of this phenomenon based on a set of theories
relying on concepts of “underlying reality” or even “underlying material
reality”. Note, that there are other theories, relying on concepts of
“not material reality”, or even “not knowable reality”. Often these “material”,
“not material” and “not knowable” reality theories coexist nicely in the
same personal system of views. It is impossible to prove or disprove any of
these theories.
The System of Patterns/Theories is
developed by the society through perpetual application of this System to
decision-making. Patterns/Theories, which help achieve wishes of the society in
various situations, are kept and enhanced. Those, which do not support
achievement of the wishes of the society, are modified or discarded. There are
no absolutely good, or absolutely bad, Patterns/Theories.
Successful use of the System of Patterns/Theories
is the Guiding Light of the development of this System.
Our System of Patterns/Theories
should have a subset of Patterns/Theories, which cannot be constructed using
other Patterns/Theories. We call them Basic Patterns/Theories. Other Patterns/Theories
are constructed from them. New Basic Patterns/Theories are formulated by
creative individuals in the society, this is their
major contribution to the operation of the mind of the society.
Basic Patterns/Theories are
included as elements in other Patterns/Theories and sometimes could be
extracted from these other Patterns/Theories. The society perpetually
reorganizes Patterns/Theories and remembers methods of such reorganization –
construction, deconstruction, etc. This way, Patterns/Theories exist in a
dynamic system and this assures their longevity and ease of use.
Especially attractive are
Patterns/Theories, which bind together other Patterns/Theories, which, at some
point, looked unrelated. These Patterns/Theories allow faster learning, better
recall, faster discovery of mistakes of reasoning, and provide a richer set of
examples of descriptions of situations and associated decisions. They are so
attractive that some members of society specialize in their development:
mathematicians, scientists, writers, story tellers, etc.
Logical binding of some groups of
Patterns/Theories is especially useful.
Creation of a unified logical view
on a situation is a powerful and convenient tool of thinking. It helps to get
to the decision quickly, and to convince others to agree with us. However,
sometimes such “unification” cannot be achieved. In such cases, we need to use
a few “logical views”, provide careful logical analysis in bounds of each such
logical view, and after that arrive to a decision relying on “intuition”, “feeling”
and “experience”.
However, usually, during
decision-making, we operate with a few potentially logically incompatible views.
Forming a set of
Logically Incompatible Views during decision-making is natural and used
broadly. Most importantly, having a set of Logically Incompatible Views on the
world is very natural. For example, many scientists, who dedicated their life
to theories corresponding to a view on the world as a material one, faithfully
hold religious views. Logically incompatible Views are rather a norm than
exception. However, in bounds of some narrow task, logical coherence of
theories is desirable, because it simplifies work with theories and
communication of ideas.
Systematic work with
Logically Incompatible Views contributes to growth of understanding, to ability
to incorporate information from seemingly unrelated fields into the
decision-making.
Attempts to use logic, where it
does not belong, could be disastrous. For example, people with bad memory often
try to logically reconstruct events, which they forgot, and this leads to
“wrong memory” instead of “weak memory”. Sometimes, people see dreams, remember
some of them, but do not remember that their memories are memories of dreams.
They often try to logically “embed” these memories of dreams into memories of
real events and this causes problems for them. Logic is a powerful tool, however, one needs to be careful with it.
Our world view consists of
Logically Incompatible Views: scientific, religious, poetic, etc., each
contributing to our better understanding of the world. We have to be
comfortable with this.
When one needs to make
a decision, he selects a few General Views relevant to the situation and
outlines Special Views corresponding to the situation. For each such Special View,
he formulates a set of constraints and goals – a set of Patterns to which the
decision should conform. He combines them into one clearly defined problem.
Most likely, right on this step, there is no logical compatibility between some
of these goals and constraints and this is not and should not be an impediment
to the decision-making.
He proceeds with some analysis and
experimentation with these goals and constraints and modifies them, because in
the process he learns something new about the problem.
Eventually, he outlines a set of
potential decision candidates, and he does not have enough knowledge to reduce
this set any further. This is a natural point in the process. At this point,
one relies on own intuition, relies on something, which goes beyond patterns
and knowledge, and makes and implements a decision.
This way, new knowledge emerges
about Patterns/Theories and new manifestation emerges of something, which we
call intuition, which cannot be described in terms of Patterns/Theories. Both
phenomena are important.
We organize the stream
of information from our sensory organs using a System of Patterns/Theories. We select
a group of Patterns/Theories and use logic to bind some of them. Usually we
make a few attempts to do that and could end up with a few variants of chosen groups
of Patterns/Theories “describing” given stream of sensory information from
different points of view. This is acceptable and often desirable, especially, when
we face a particular difficult decision.
Chosen variants of groups of
Patterns/Theories are everything we know about the situation, everything we
perceive in that situation. This knowledge depends heavily on the System of
Patterns/Theories in our possession. The rest in the stream of sensory
information we perceive as “noise”. We do not perceive as meaningful anything,
which we cannot describe using existing System of Patterns/Theories.
Let us repeat – we do not perceive
something as existing, if we cannot construct a Pattern/Theory and match it to
the stream of sensory information, while another person could have such
perception associated with the same stream of information.
Fortunately, there are some
individuals and groups of individuals, who perpetually expend the System of
Patterns/Theories. Sometimes, they do that in the process of analysis of some
streams of sensory information and sometimes through analysis of the System of
Patterns/Theories. Normally, a System of Patterns/Theories grows. For each Pattern/Theory
in this System, the set of associations of it to some stream of sensory
information also grows. This is the strength of this System, the System, which we
use it to get better “grip” on the world.
Alexander Liss 4/21/2020