7.8 Cognitive Contexts

No matter what you are trying to do, there will be other things trying to get your attention. Some of these can be ignored, but if some are subgoals of what you are trying to do, this may require you to switch to some other Way to Think that uses different resources and bodies of knowledge. Then, once you have accomplished those subgoals, you will need to return to your previous job—but to avoid repeating what already was done, you must have retained some information about these aspects of your previous state of mind:

Your previous goals and priorities, The representation you used for them, The bodies of knowledge you had engaged, The sets of resources that were active then, The Selectors and Critics that were involved.

This means that our larger-scale model of mind needs places for keeping such sets of records. Let’s give these the name of “Cognitive Contexts.” Without them, every ‘train of thought’ would be disrupted whenever we were interrupted. In simpler brains, it might suffice to maintain no more than a single such memory, but for looking several steps ahead—or for managing larger subgoal trees—we’d need special machinery to enable us to rapidly switch among several remembered contexts.

More generally, because every hard problem keeps forcing us to switch among several different Ways to Think, a typical ‘present mental state’ must actually be part of a larger panalogy that can fluently navigate among several different points of view. In popular folk-psychology, we simply imagine all that stuff to be stored in our “short-term memories”— as though we could put such things into a box and take them out whenever we want.

However, we still do not know very much about how those “working’ memories operate; there is evidence that such records are stored in various different forms and locations in different parts of our brains—but we still know little about how those various brain centers actually work. So here we shall simply assume that those short-term records are stored in some place that we’ll call the “Context Box.” [15]

If you asked Joan what she was thinking about, she might mention the subject of tidying-up, and further questions would show that she is maintaining several different representations of the kinds of changes she is planning to make. Furthermore, for her to be able to switch among these, she must be able to store and retrieve various kinds of structures like these:

Her current collection of sub-goal trees. Some records of recent external events. Some descriptions of recent mental acts, Her presently active fragments of knowledge, Simulations she uses to make her predictions.

This means that Joan’s context box for ‘tidying up’ must keep track of various aspects of that task:

Also, of course, other topics and subjects have been ‘on her mind’ for longer spans of time, so she’ll need to keep track of several of these:

Why would we need special systems like this to keep track of multiple contexts? It seems quite natural to us that after any brief interruption—for example, to answer a question that someone has asked, or to pick up a tool that you have just dropped—we can usually get back to what we were doing without needing to start all over again. It is the same when we interrupt ourselves—for example, to attend to a subgoal of a task, or briefly to think in some different way. When such a diversion is small and brief, this causes little trouble because it leaves most of our active resources unchanged.

However, a larger-scale change could cause more disruption and result in wasted time and confusion. So, as we evolved more ways to think, we also evolved machinery for more quickly returning to previous contexts. In everyday life we simply say that we’re using our ‘short-term memories’— but any good theory of how that might work must answer questions like these:

How long do recent records persist, and how do we make room for new ones? There must be more than one answer to that because various parts of the brain must work in somewhat different ways. Some memories may be permanent, while others may rapidly fade away, unless they happen to get “refreshed.” Such records also would get erased if stored in a ‘place’ that has a limited size—because then each new item would have to replace some records that are already there. Indeed, this is how modern computers work: whenever data is created or retrieved, it is first stored in a cache—a device that has been designed to be especially quickly accessible. Then, whenever such a cache gets full, its oldest records get erased—although some of them may have been copied to larger, more permanent memory boxes.

How do some memories become permanent? There is evidence that it takes hours or days for what we call short-term memories to be converted to longer-term ones. Older theories about this assumed that frequent repetitions made the original record more permanent. However, it seems more likely to me that new memories are briefly maintained in resources that act like a computer’s cache—and then, over time, more permanent versions are created in other regions of our brains. See §8-4.

In any case, some memories seem to last for the rest of one’s life. However, this could be an illusion because they might need ‘refreshment’ from time to time. Thus, when you recall a childhood memory, you often also have the sense of having remembered the same thing previously; this makes it hard for you to know whether you have retrieved an original record or merely a later copy of it. Worse yet, there now is ample evidence that those records can be changed while they’re being refreshed. [16]

How do we retrieve old memories? We all know that our memories often fail—as when you try to recall some important details but find that their records have disappeared, or that at least we cannot retrieve them right now. Now clearly, if no trace of that record remains, further search would be a futile quest. Nevertheless, we frequently manage to find some clues that we can use to reconstruct more of those memories. Here is a very old theory of this:

St. Augustine: “But what happens when the memory itself loses something, as when we forget anything and try to recall it? … Perhaps the whole of it had not slipped out of memory; but a part was retained by which the other lost part was sought for, because the memory realized that it was not working so smoothly as usual, hence, it demanded the restoration of what was missing. For example, suppose we see or think of some man we know, and, having forgotten his name, try to recall it—but some other thing presents itself, which was not previously associated with him; then this is rejected, until something comes into the mind which better conforms with our knowledge.”—Book 10 of Confessions, 427 AD.

So if you can link a few of those fragments together, you may be able to reconstruct a good deal more—

“... by gathering together those things that the memory already contains but in an indiscriminate and confused way, and now putting them together [so that] where they formerly lay hidden, scattered, or neglected, they now come easily to present themselves to the mind which is now familiar with them.”[17]

Augustine soon turned to other concerns, and concluded this discussion of memory by plaintively asking, “Who will work this out in the future?” But more than a thousand years were to pass before further progress on theories of memories.

How many thoughts can you think at once?

How many feelings can you feel at once? How many different things can you simultaneously ‘pay attention’ to? How many contexts can be active at once in your context-box? To what extent can you be aware of how many mental activities?

The answers to such questions depend on what we mean by ‘aware’ and ‘attention.’ We usually think of 'attention ' as positive, and highly regard those persons who are able to ‘concentrate’ on some particular thing, without getting distracted by other things. However, we could also see “attention” as negative—because not all our resources can function at once—so there always is a limit to the range of things we can think about at the same time. Nevertheless, we can train ourselves to overcome at least some of those built-in constraints. [See §§Attention.]

In any case, in our high level thinking we can only maintain a few different ‘trains of thought” before we start to become confused. However, at our lower reactive levels, we carry on hundreds of different activities. Imagine that you are walking and talking among your friends while carrying a glass of wine:[18]

Your grasping resources keep hold of the cup. Your balancing systems keep the liquid from spilling. Your visual systems recognize things in your path. Your locomotion systems steer you around those obstacles.

All this happens while you talk, and none of it seems to require much thought. Yet dozens of processes must be at work to keep that fluid from spilling out—while hundreds of other systems work to move your body around. Yet few of these processes ‘enter your mind’ as you roam about the room—presumably because they use resources that work in separate realms that scarcely ever come into conflict with what you are usually “thinking about.”

It is much the same with language and speech. You rarely have even the faintest sense of what selects your normal response to the words of your friends, or which ideas you choose to express—nor of how any of your processes work to group your words into phrases so that each gets smoothly connected to the next. All this seems so simple and natural that you never wonder how your context-box keeps track of what you have already said—as well as to whom you have mentioned them.

What limits the number of contexts that a person can quickly turn on and off? One very simple theory would be that our context-box has a limited size, so there is only a certain amount of room in which to store such information. A better conjecture would be that each of our well-developed realms acquires a context box of its own. Then, some processes in each of those realms could do work on their own, without getting into conflicts until when they have to compete for the same resources.

For example, it’s easy to both walk and talk because these use such different sets of resources. However, it is much harder to both speak and write (or to listen and read) simultaneously, because both tasks will compete for the same language-resources. I suspect such conflicts get even worse when you think about what you’re thinking about, because every such act will change what is in the context box that keeps track of what you were thinking about.

At our higher Reflective levels, our representations span many scales of time and space, and our current Self-Representations can range from thinking "I'm holding this cup" to “I am a Mathematician," or “I am a person who lives on the Earth,’ or sometimes, perhaps, only a little more than a constant, vague sense of ‘being aware.’ To be sure, a person may also have the impression of thinking all these simultaneously, but I suspect that these are constantly shifting; our sense of thinking them all at once comes from the “Immanence Illusion” of §4-1, because the contents of our various Context-Boxes are so rapidly accessible.

What Controls the Persistence of Processes?

Edmund Burke: “He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper. This amicable conflict with difficulty obliges us to an intimate acquaintance with our object and compels us to consider it in all its relations. It will not suffer us to be superficial.” —Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790.

Whatever you’re trying to think about, you have other concerns that compete with it—and each should persist for long enough to justify the effort and time it will cost to switch them on and off. Still, everyone knows such feelings as these:

“I’ve been spending so much time on this problem that I am losing my motivation; besides, it has gotten so complex that I simply cannot keep track of it; perhaps I should quit and do something else.”

When none of the methods we’ve tried have worked, how much longer should we persist? What decides when we should quit—and lose whatever investment we’ve spent? We always have at least some concern with how we conserve our materials, energy, money, and friends—and each such concern would seem to suggest that we have some Critics that detect when that particular element may be getting into short supply, and then suggest ways conserve or replenish it. Such critics would lead us to think, “I’m doing too many things at once,” or “I can’t afford to buy both of these,” or “I don’t want to lose my friendship with Charles.”

The simplest way to conserve your time is to abandon the goals that consume too much of it. But renouncing goals will often conflict with your ideals, as when they are things that you’ve promised to do, or that others already expect you to do. Then you might also have to suppress those values, or even regard them as handicaps—but going against your high-level ideals can lead to cascades that you recognize as tension, guilt, distress, or fear—along with the shame and humiliation we talked about earlier. So making such decisions can thus cause you to become “emotional.”

Citizen: But certain, well-disciplined persons seem able to set such emotional feelings aside, and simply do what seems “rational.” Why do most of us people find this so hard to do?

It seems to me that it is a myth that there exists a ‘rational’ way to think. One is always comparing various goals, and deciding which ones to put aside, but the apparent merits of those alternatives will always depend on other aspects of your mental state.

In any case, each Way to Think will be useless unless can persist for long enough to make some progress. To do this, it will need at least some ability to keep other processes from stopping it, and this could be done to some extent by controlling which of your Critics are working now. Let’s consider a few extremes of this.

What if your set of active Critics does not change? Then you would be likely to keep repeating the same approach because, after each attempt to change your way to think, those Critics would try to switch you back again—and you might get stuck with a ‘one-track mind.’

What if some Critics stay on all the time? Certain Critics must always be active to make us react to serious hazards—but if these are not selected carefully, it could lead to obsessive behaviors by repeatedly making you focus too sharply only on certain particular subjects.

What if all your Critics get turned off? Then all your questions would seem to be answered because you are no longer able to ask them, and all your problems would seem to be gone because nothing seems to have any flaws.

Everything may seem wonderful during such a ‘mystical experience’—but such ‘revelations’ usually fade when enough of your critics get turned back on.

What if too many Critics are active at once? Then you’d keep noticing flaws to correct, and spend so much time repairing them that you would never get any important things done. And if you find ugliness everywhere, your friends may perceive you as depressed.

What if too many Critics are turned off? If you can ignore most alarms and concerns, that would help you to ‘concentrate’—but it also might lead you to ignore errors and flaws in your arguments. However, the fewer Critics you activate, the fewer goals you will try to pursue, and then you would tend to be mentally dull.

Then what should decide which ones are active? Your thinking would become chaotic if too many goals were to freely compete without any larger-scale management—but if and particular Way to Think persisted too long, you would appear to have a ‘one-track’ mind.

Chapter §9 will argue that control over which of our Critics are active must never be too highly centralized, because sometimes we need to concentrate—yet still respond to emergencies. Also, consider what might happen if large classes of Critics turned off, and then on, for excessive durations of time: then there would be long cycles in which you would first be euphoric, when nothing would ever seem to be wrong, followed by intervals in which no goal would seem to be worth pursuing. In such cases, the Critics that normally help us to think could play a role, when they’re poorly controlled, in what we call manic-depressive disorders.

QUESTIONS

Which of our ways to think are inborn? Which of them are not innate, but are ones that each child eventually learns from its experience with its environment? Then do certain individuals go on to discover special techniques that lead them to yet better ways to think? We’ll discuss this in §8-8 Genius.

What determines the urgencies of our goals? What keeps track of the tasks that we have postponed? Are there clocks or timers in our brains that schedule or otherwise regulate our higher-level activities? We’ll talk about this in Chapter §9.

How many things can we think about at once, and in how many different realms? How many different contexts can we manage to keep active? How are such activities distributed among the billions of cells in our brains?

How does Context affect how we think? We’ll come back to this in Chapter §10.

[1]Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes' Error, Avon Books, Nov 1995, ISBN: 0380726475

[2][a system would also face similar problem if several selectors were turned on at once? refer to §currencies.]

[3] At the lowest levels, the Critics and Selectors become the same as the Ifs and Thens of simple reactions. At the reflective and higher levels, the Critics will tend to engage so many resources that they can’t be distinguished from Ways to Think. In his essay, “Reflective Critics,” Push Singh discusses Critics with such abilities. See http://web.media.mit.edu/~push/ReflectiveCritics.pdf

[4] Logic can be useful after a problem is solved, for making credit assignments [§8.5] and for solving simplified versions of problems. See §§Logic.

[5] There is an excellent survey of attempts to classify Problem-Types on Manuela Viezzer’s webpage at www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~mxv/publications/onto_engineering. One such attempt was made in a rule-based theory of thinking called SOAR. There, obstacles were called ‘impasses’ and were classified into just four types: (1) no rules apply to the situation, (2) several rules match, but there is no higher-level rules to choose among them, (3) there are several such rules but they conflict, and, (4) all such rules have met with failure. For more about Soar, See http://tip.psychology.org/newell.html

[6] Reference to Push Singh’s paper on “Reflective Critics.”

[7] Principles of Psychology. Chap. 25 p452

[8] See Ortony, A., Clore, G.L., Collins, A., The Cognitive Structure of the Emotions, New York, Cambridge University Press (1988).

[9] These quotations are from Poincare 1908. The Foundations of Science, 1982, ISBN: 0819123188.

[10]In comp.ai.philosophy, Nov 20 1995.

[11] Some theorists question the existence of —this sort of unconscious processing. Paul Plsek discusses this issue at length: “Some experts dismiss the notion that creativity can be described as a sequence of steps in a model. For example, Vinacke (1953) is adamant that creative thinking in the arts does not follow a model [and] Gestalt philosophers like Wertheimer assert that the process of creative thinking … does not lend itself to the segmentation implied by the steps of a model. But while such views are strongly held, they are in the minority. … In contrast to the prominent role that some models give to subconscious processes, Perkins (1981) argues that subconscious mental processes are behind all thinking and, therefore, play no extraordinary role in creative thinking.”—Paul E. Plsek in www.directedcreativity.com/pages/WPModels.html Ask him at [email protected]: See also Perkins, DN (1981) The Mind's Best Work. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; Vinacke, WE (1953) The Psychology of Thinking. New York: McGraw Hill; and Wertheimer, M (1945) Productive Thinking. New York: Harper.

[12] http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1973/tinbergen-lecture.html

[13] http://nobelprize.org/medicine/laureates/1973/lorenz-lecture.html

[14] This could be related to why some brain waves become irregular when our thinking encounters obstacles.

[15] This figure includes the names of some current ideas about how such records are represented. One can see descriptions of some of these schemes by searching the Web with keywords like working memory, short-term memory, and global workspace. The ideas of Bernard Baars (see http://www.imprint.co.uk/online/baars.html) seem especially relevant to me.

[16] The construction of long-term memories appears to involve special kinds of sleep, in ways that are not yet understood. It also appears that different kinds of memories (e.g., about autobiographical events, about other kinds of episodes, about what are called ‘declarative’ facts, and about perceptual and motor events) are each stored in somewhat different ways and in different locations in the brain.

[17] Section 19.10 of The Society of Mind described a scheme called “Closing the Ring” that could help to re-connect some of the parts that were not at first retrieved.

[18] This is a version of a scene described in chapter §1.0 of “The Society of Mind.”