Part V. Levels of Mental Activities

WTF

This is an early draft of part 1 of 'The Emotion Machine' which Minsky shared with me prior to publication.

"We are evidently unique among species in our symbolic ability, and we are certainly unique in our modest ability to control the conditions of our existence by using these symbols. Our ability to represent and simulate reality implies that we can approximate the order of existence and … gives us a sense of mastery over our experience." — Heinz Pagels, in The Dreams of Reason

No person has the strength of an ox, the stealth of a cat, or an antelope’s speed—but our species surpasses all the rest in our flair for inventing new ways to think. We fabricate weapons, garments and dwellings. We’re always developing new forms of art. We’re matchless at making new social conventions, creating intricate laws to enforce them—and then finding all sorts of ways to evade them.

What enables our minds to generate so many new kinds of things and ideas? This chapter will propose a scheme in which our resources are organized into six different levels of processes.

Beginning with simple instinctive reactions, each layer is built on the previous one—until they extend to processes that involve our highest ideals and personal goals. To see why we need many levels for this, let’s revisit the scene in §4-2.

Joan is part way across the street on the way to deliver her finished report. While thinking about what to say at the meeting, she hears a sound and turns her head —and sees a quickly oncoming car. Uncertain whether to cross or retreat but uneasy about arriving late, Joan decides to sprint across the road. She later remembers her injured knee and reflects upon her impulsive decision. “If my knee had failed, I could have been killed—and what would my friends have thought of me?”

The first part of this chapter will show how each level of this diagram could explain some of what happened inside Joan’s mind. We often react to events ‘without thinking’, as though we were driven by If–>Do rules like those described in §1-4. But such simple reactions can only explain the first few events that we see in this scene; the rest depends on activities in all those other levels of Joan’s ways of thinking.

Inborn, Instinctive Reactions: Joan hears a sound and turns her head. All animals are born equipped with ‘instincts’ that help them to survive.

Learned Reactions: She sees a quickly oncoming car. Joan had to learn that conditions like this demand specific ways to react.

Deliberative Thinking: To decide what to say at the meeting, she considers several alternatives, and tries to decide which would be best.

Reflective Thinking: Joan reflects upon what she has done. She reacts, not just to things in things in the world, but also to recent events in her brain.

Self-Reflective Thinking: Being “uneasy about arriving late” requires her to keep track of the plans that she’s made for herself.

Self Conscious Emotions: When asking what her friends think of her, she also asks how her actions concord with ideals she has set for herself.

The second part of this chapter will show how such systems could “imagine” things. Whenever you ask, “What would happen if,” or express any hope, desire, or fear, you’re envisaging things that have not yet appeared. Whenever you interact with your friends, you’re anticipating how this may affect them. Whatever you see, it suggests some ideas about possible futures those objects might bring. How could our mental resources conceive of things that do not yet exist, and then apply those new ideas to ways to change and extend themselves?