Mind Field

PART ONE

VIEWS OF THE WORLD: AN IDEOLOGICAL THEORY OF COGNITION

I. Introduction: Thinking about Cognition

The word “cognition” in its simplest form means the act or process of knowing or thinking. Depending on who you talk to, the actual definition being used may be long or short, simple or complex, and may focus on any number of different aspects of the mental process. Up to now, I haven’t found any definition, explanation or theory in current use that makes much sense to me. None of the many views on the nature of cognition that I’ve heard of seem to fit with my own experiences, and so I’ve taken it upon myself to formulate my own views on the subject. I’m sure that there are those who would disagree with these views, and I imagine that there are others who might agree with them. My intention is to put down in a more-or-less systematic way the basic outline of my ideas and the evidence that I believe supports them, and to let the reader be the judge of their value.

When I refer to cognition as “way of thinking,” I don’t mean the nuts-and-bolts of those mechanisms and processes which underlie the phenomenon of thinking. Biochemists, neuroscientists and others are concerned with human thought on that particular level. They recognize the essential fact that the mind is a biochemical entity and attempt to understand and describe the physical, chemical and biological processes that are responsible for that which we call “thinking.” What I am speaking of here is the phenomenon of thinking as it is experienced on a subjective level. While the study and description of thinking at the subjective level may be difficult (or perhaps impossible) to put upon a solid scientific footing, I believe it is necessary to at least make the attempt, because without it, I contend, our understanding of ourselves will always be incomplete.

That said, I will here summarize the main thesis of this work of which we will discuss in more detail in Towards an Ideological Theory of Cognition:

Whatever word we use, whether it is “idea,” “concept,” or “thought,” I believe that it is proper to describe this mental activity as a basic element of consciousness. It should be noted, though, that while everybody may think in terms of ideas, it is not necessarily true that the particular ideas that people hold onto about things are always the same. On the other hand, it seems that the thoughts of different people DO tend to have something in common: Regardless of what ideas they hold, a person’s thoughts are seldom random, disjointed entities. Rather, they tend to form coherent patterns or systems that stem from a few discrete fundamental principles and branch out in logical directions to encompass–to a greater or lesser degree– their whole universe of experienced phenomena. In other words, the conscious mind somehow organizes its mental product (whatever you might want to call it) into systematic frameworks of concepts, and these conceptual frameworks or systems of thought are of decisive importance in determining people’s basic ways of thinking–that is, their cognition–and serve as the foundations of their consciousness, bending the world into a shape that makes sense to them.