The Everything of Theory: Mind

[Brian O'Donnell]

Human emotions can be shown to relate to the way information is processed in the mind and in particular, the rate at which patterns of such information are built up or broken down.

Humans have physiological and psychological drives which have to be met in order to have a satisfactory existence. People need to eat, sleep, to feel wanted by others and to have a sex life. Some have a drive to win, others need to sing but the general principle is homeostasis. In psychology, this is the fulfilment of the needs of the body or mind until these needs build up again in time.
I will concentrate on the creative urge which is within all of us to varying degrees. Creativity involves inventing or discovering patterns relating to the world around us. Painting, music and sculpture involve different kinds of pattern making but it is the same basic process as a scientist seeing patterns in the physical world.
Arthur Koestler's book 'The Act of Creation' details many examples from different field of human endeavour of the 'eureka' moment when the feeling of things falling suddenly into place is accompanied by a huge release of enengy and a feeling of euphoria. Many examples have been reported since.

My own eureka moment happened in December 1978 when it suddenly became apparent that my feelings of happiness depended on the rate at which fully coherent mental patterns were forming, regardless of the content or whether they were absolutely correct. The intensity of this feeling is very difficult to convey to those who have not experienced it. The feeling of happiness/joy/elation depends on how co-ordinated and how important the subject matter is and on the time it takes for it all to fall into one place. The less time it takes, the more intense the emotion.

The opposite of the above is where previously coherent patterns suddenly fall apart, such as a treasured possession being smashed to tiny pieces, or a coherent theory about someone or something being shown to be wrong. The rate at which ideas fall into place (or the rate of gain of coherence) is negative and a sense of sadness ensues. The most extreme cases trigger off depression where a person feels he/she has to climb out of such a deep hole that it is impossible.
From the above brief summary of instantaneous feelings, the theory can be extended to examine the effect of looking back and forwards in time. A person looking back to a time when things were falling into place better than at present is likely to feel less happy than if life was something of a mess previously.
Hopes or fears of solving a problem in the future or failing to do so create feelings of confidence or dread at the moment. On completion of the task a person will feel happier or sadder according to whether they exceeded or fell short of their expected target.

But can any of this be tested? Yes. Take a sample group of puzzle fans, set them puzzles of agreed degree of difficulty and time how long each person takes to solve each one. At the point of completion of each puzzle, ask each person to record how happy or sad they feel, say on a scale of 1 to 10. If there is a clear mathematical relationship between the rate of solving puzzles and the reported levels of happiness, the theory would have some validity.
Any such scale of happiness would be restricted at first but it would be a toehold in the attempt to quantify human emotions.

I would dearly like some feedback on this idea so please feel free to leave a comment below.

[mkirkpatrick]

Many thanks Brian for your opening post here,thought provoking,welcome to the forum,
and greetings to you from both the UK and Turkey to you.

I too have had that Eureka moment,if only it would last!Mind that travels in the wake
of consciousness is a truly amazing thing,can it really be measured?




regards michael.

[austintorn@aol.com]

Dwelling in the torturous past is a surefire way to build depression. If one has to reside there sometimes, due to present pains calling from there, than one might at least make the scenes of bad memories dark and dim, slowly obliterating them.
For good memories, make them bright and colorful

Better still, than the sad past taking over, if possible, is to live in the moment, whatever the stages of one's plans are.

When wanting too much lower consciousness stuff from the future we can lose much of the present.

Creativity can be stirred and spurred by reading and learning—then ideas connect and creativity follows.

Happiness and a good outlook causes things to fall into place, then more happiness, then… on and on.

Of course it can go the other way, too:

Deep one falls, into valleys of despair,
Although for them mountains wouldn’t be there;
But, it is difficult to see the tip
When you are at the bottom of the pit.

[Brian O'Donnell]

Thank you for your reply, Mkirkpatrick.
On the subject of measurability, tests on crossword/jigsaw/sudoku fans could give an initial scale of measurement of emotions for particular types of puzzles but it would be a much greater problem to generalise from there.
If there were a reasonably objective measure of a level of understanding / degree of importance / coherence at any moment, it could be plotted on a graph as a function of time. If this idea is denoted by f(t) then the rate of gain in such understanding would be the first derivative, f '(t).




Lines missing - see below.

[mkirkpatrick]

Thank you for your reply, Mkirkpatrick.
On the subject of measurability, tests on crossword/jigsaw/sudoku fans could give an initial scale of measurement of emotions for particular types of puzzles but it would be a much greater problem to generalise from there.
If there were a reasonably objective measure of a level of understanding / degree of importance / coherence at any moment, it could be plotted on a graph as a function of time. If this idea is denoted by f(t) then the rate of gain in such understanding would be the first derivative, f '(t).

Thanks Brian,our emotions are capable of great depth and shallowness this I suppose
could be graphed.



regards michael.

[Brian O'Donnell]

Thank you for your reply, Mkirkpatrick.

On the subject of measurability, tests on crossword/jigsaw/sudoku fans could give an initial scale of measurement of emotions for particular types of puzzles but it would be a much greater problem to generalise from there.

If there were a reasonably objective measure of a level of understanding / degree of importance / coherence at any moment, it could be plotted on a graph as a function of time. If this idea is denoted by f(t) then the rate of gain in such understanding would be the first derivative, f '(t).

The effect will decay as the time since the 'eureka' event increases. The lasting mood depends on the net gain since just before the event divided by the time.

I tried to post this in the forms of graphs but it didn't work out.

[Brian O'Donnell]

Austintorn, thanks for your reply. A trough of depression is the mirror image of the 'eureka' situation. It will pass but it does not seem like it when you can't see over the 'rim'.

[Brian O'Donnell]

Since I can't get the graphics to work I'll try to describe it in words.

Where f(t) shows a discrete step up, the rate of gain in knowledge is extremely high so that a graph showing f '(t) has a high peak in the centre with a flat section before and after.
The 'mood' graph would show a large jump at the moment of discovery followed by a slower tailing off to a normal level.

The set of graphs relating to depression are similar but upside down.

In normal situations, f(t) shows a gentler slope up (or down) and the other graphs show a more muted effect.

I realise that some people suddenly get high or low for no apparent reason, paticularly in the case of clinical depression. Chemical imbalances in the brain are a better explanation here.

[BrianO'Donnell]

The following pairs of graphs should make my idea easier to understand. The y-axis on the upper graphs, f(t), represents the extent of knowledge or degree of coherence for an individual in a given situation. The x-axis, 't', is a measure of time.
In the lower graphs, f'(t) shows the rate of change of this knowledge at each point in time.
FIG. 1 shows a typical learning curve above a graph showing how quickly a person is learning at any point in time.
In FIG. 2, the same information is built up in a shorter span of time, resulting in a tall spike in the lower graph.
In my experience, this spike has corresponded to a feeling of elation. The question here is whether this is universal or whether I am in a self-deluded minority of one.
If the general principal is valid, it does not produce a full answer to how the human mind works but it progresses the problem to the matter of how to measure it in non-trivial situations.