Mind Reading - Social Cognition

I hope placing this topic in this category is ok. Technically if worded right I could also place it in the science category since this also relates to neuroscience. Given problems in relating the mind to the brain and what knowledge actually is, I think it can be placed in a few different categories. Here I am mainly focused on the topic of reading other people’s minds in many different situations and since we only have the internet…well…

In this post, I am not fully focused on how we build personal or social knowledge but I am interested if anyone has anything to offer to do with this.

…hopefully, this serves someone other than myself well.

Knowledge
A person is able to predict and understand the mental states of another person through his or her own past similar experiences and imagination, and through principles based on this people are able to build bodies of social knowledge through their social interactions with each other that add to each individual’s personal body of knowledge. We are in turn able to link the cognitive processes that serve social cognition to those that serve other mental operations in an individual and consider other ways that we might be able to build knowledge.

Similarity
A person will use projective strategies for social cognition to create a mental representation of another person’s experience. A person will anticipate the kinds of thoughts and feelings they might have in such a situation. A person will then assume the target of such anticipation will think or feel similarly. There is some limiting of this type of inference to targets that are perceived to be similar to themselves. Using one’s predictions about oneself as a proxy for others works only when one can reasonably expect another person to respond similarly to a situation.

Mistakes
When we make mistakes in our predictions of what another person is thinking it is because we are making false assumptions that are too often based on our own internal past states that we use to make our predictions of another person’s current state or a state that we are trying to predict of the other into the future. We have an unrivaled ability to predict and consider other people’s internal mental states. We can infer complicated emotional states in others and recognize that others can falsely believe things that can be easily demonstrated.

Summary
So to briefly reiterate: A person can predict and comprehend the mental states of another person based on similar past experiences and the use of imagination. Using one’s own predictions as a proxy for others works only when another person can reasonably be expected to respond similarly to a situation. We are capable of inferring complex emotional states in others and recognizing that others may believe things that are easily demonstrated to be false. We have an unmatched capacity for forecasting and taking into account other people’s internal mental states.

I am suggesting that most of our thinking is based on guesswork. Not a super new thing by any means but does help me in other areas of thought.

Everything we think of as real or true owes to a consensus of agreement from intersubjective communication. That we can communicate at all suggests that we have similar brains or that our brains behave in similar ways. It can be observed that minds unlike those considered “Normal” are affected by chemical imbalances in the brain. There is enough information in single brains to permit failure of communication because of focus. There are certain ideas that are necessary for our survival as individuals and as a species. And there are fantastic ideas based on projection, such as those used to create science fiction.
We agree on the ability of our senses to deliver accurate information to the brain. A lie could destroy us.

It seems, we have to be aligned to the “lie”? No? Or is gullibility perhaps something else? We seem to be able for the most part, able to differentiate fact from fiction, present world affairs notwithstanding.

Ever had a moment where you were not too sure whether you were using a word right? I just had this moment with the word: notwithstanding.

The lie, since Luther, has been the Western emphasis on the welfare of the individual at the expense of the collective. Both must be considered worthy for either to exist.
There are such situations as Like minds due to upbringing, education and likes and dislikes. “Birds of a feather…etc.” In such cases reading the Other’s mind is possible to some extent. There are people who, when conversing, have finished their partner’s sentence. This requires a modicum of familiarity with the Other person. It still suggests further examples of mind-reading. I wouldn’t rule it out despite its history.
Mind reading used to be a circus trick.

I understand what you are saying about the lie - I conclude that we(you know, not you and me necessarily) have become aligned to the lie over time since the lie began. My knowledge of history is hazy in a number of areas that would be useful to me. It would be good for me to read about the lie. Outside reading, however, it is obvious if I am to consider something as simple as collective hunting(and other tribal aspects of living) not in alignment with how we live now - I will go to the butcher to get my protein(emphasis on I and my). It seems evident to me that familiarity would transition to an extent into similarity especially when partners begin to live with one another.

The type of information You and Irr are suggesting appear as gotten through casual observation of brain - behavior content

This type of communication may differ from the type in a mind to moms type, if a brain-mind difference is presumed

ESP type may be extra sensory and extra phenominal, so I would hazard a differemt sort of mind reading at varience of immediate social cognition

The cognative associations may offer a different, a similar or an identical set of correspondences, depending on the level of considering them, a comparative search based on identification is considered typically the first tier of gross characteristics , whereas comparisons on similar atypical types are generally products of less exactly identifiable set characteristics.

Analysis of identity through cognitional identity are more likely be based on extra sensory, internally formed mind to mind signs, and social cognitional signaling is more do to cognitipnally similar sets of many partially variable signs and signals

Again if the distinction between mind and brain is maintained.

Alfred Rupert Sheldrake, an English author, and researcher on parapsychology, and characterized as a kook by some, has written about the concepts of Morphic Resonance and Morphic Fields. His education includes the following:

  • PhD (biochemistry), University of Cambridge
  • Frank Knox Fellow (philosophy and history of science), Harvard University
  • MA (natural sciences), Clare College, Cambridge

A paraphrased summary from his website:
Morphic fields underpin our mental activity and perceptions, and provide the basis for a new theory of vision, as discussed in The Sense of Being Stared At. There is now compelling evidence that a large number of animal species are telepathic, and that telepathy is a natural mode of animal communication. Over 80% of the population report having thought of someone for no apparent reason and then receiving a call; or reporting having known who was calling before picking up the phone. The existence of these fields can be experimentally demonstrated via the sensation of being stared at, and there is already substantial evidence that this sensation does exist.
https://www.sheldrake.org/research/morphic-resonance/introduction

One of my thoughts on this is that perhaps there will be some problems in experimentation involving observation(the observer effect). I am also interested in how he collected his evidence - Statistics?

Nonetheless, it is still interesting and of course, the universe is too big for me to understand.

I do have a response for you Meno but first I want to address this - and fair warning: if you do agree with this, it can still be easy to miss certain points:

We must understand what senses actually are so that we can understand how the brain/mind creates them. Is it unreasonable to believe that we create new senses for each of us throughout our lives? We have to shift away from common thinking. A sense is just something that tells us that something else is the case. Our sense of sight tells us something is there - such is the case of something and there. Our sense of taste tells us that this tastes good - such is the case of this and good. A new higher sense can help us understand that something is the case. Senses are developed through pattern formation and pattern recognition. Now prove to me that such is not the case. I am of course conveniently leaving out being specific about “pre-made” senses.

Perhaps you already know this or perhaps you disbelieve this. I am not married to this but if this is the case it may help to understand why it appears that some people have ESP and others don’t through creating an abstraction and reasoning on it. If this is the case and both of us know it then let it serve as a reminder for both of us(recognition of a prior formation - a sense loop of something being the case).

[size=85]Notes for myself: Pattern formation is also a general biological process that should hint at something else I am saying here - namely recognition and how that might work as a part of more than one loop.
A sense as I think of it is somewhat similar to or related to a knowledge packet.[/size]

This is an interesting flow of derivation of cogcition and recognition. Sheldrake, probably is hinting on general proprietal sequwncial progressions, as is held between the physical general characteristics of deduction and induction

The very minute incremental relationally in terms of quantum minimals is probably what Sheldrake means here? I would suppose there is nothing kooky about such pre-supposition.

If that may be the case, that would explain how the famous experemg with the slit experiment with light works, and how such minimal observation goes as well toward the slight energy displacement that happens betweem brains and minds.

The brain mind analogue may carry inordinately small but extremely focused energy inter alias of sources.

What do You think, Encode?

If a divine presence created us, I am thankful that it gave us an individual presence so as not to be alone. Everything is connected with the illusion of disconnection and this gives us the beauty of different forms.

This post is in response to your first post, Meno (I suggest not answering it directly - things just get out of hand with posts this size):

Meno_ wrote: The type of information You and Irr are suggesting appear as gotten through casual observation of brain - behavior content
Casual observation gives us useful data. I think it is one of, if not the first, observations we make. It is this type of observation I make before testing for something that might be there or otherwise leads me to study an anomaly that becomes something new, ie. a discovery. I also feel that there is a higher level to casual observation or at least a higher relation in and to our higher “senses” the way I describe them.

Also…the similarity principle that I mention would suggest more than a casual observation. We have to think about the similarity of individuals sharing the same external environment(or a more abstract internal environment common to individuals). There is a strong possibility that a lot of the time when we read a mind that we are not even aware of doing that - as if after a while it just comes naturally because of this sharing of external and/or internal environment/s. We should also remind ourselves at this point that we only ever share a partial cognition of the mentioned external(/s)-internal(/s) - that is not to say that this part can not be a large part shared - for instance, oftentimes a married couple have a large collective understanding of various current things and historical things and dreamt of future things in their shared environment/s. I hope this makes sense.

Did you mean to write memes? I don’t want to miss something new here, so I had better ask. Memes only go so far; when disseminating knowledge passed down over time, there is of course some loss of important information because everyone has what I call a different “net result” that happens after they receive the information which is why we(human beings) ever bothered with inventing the concept of interpretation, to begin with(think mutation of the meme being analogous to a mutation in the gene). It is more accurate to think in terms of variation like you often do(this is how geneticists think nowadays - variation can be different from a mutation if I am not mistaken). If we think in terms of the original post - I hope that you can see the issues that arise from variation when relating back to different individuals’ ability to read minds.

Meno_ wrote: ESP type may be extra sensory and extra phenominal, so I would hazard a differemt sort of mind reading at varience of immediate social cognition
Potentially. I think everything is connected. However, should I have a reason to believe it is not? Trying to rationalize the connections in existence is what we have always had the most problem with. Separating anything out from it’s connectedness is just a matter of convenience so that we can be more focused on it - study it and nothing else - then if we believe things are connected we can simply forget that our focus is connected or needs to be intentionally and consciously reconnected to view the bigger picture, so to speak. On a side note, I read that physicists believe that they may have discovered a new force - should it surprise us? I wonder all the time about the things we do not know about perception - it is quite clear that our understanding is incomplete. There is no real reason to not believe that there is something else there that we have not discovered in relation to cognition. ESP one way or the other must be connected to the “bigger picture”(perception as a whole).

You have probably observed by now that I personally do not believe that there is ever an “identical set of correspondences”. Furthermore, from this, I can not see how even the level of consideration can make a difference when thinking about “identicals”. Would we not all view gross characteristics a little differently? Aside from this, I mostly agree with you - perhaps this is why we have very little issue communicating(ever).

This may be true. I always like to start with the things that we can prove before moving on to the guesswork or perhaps extra-sensory intuitions. Anything extrasensory is more interesting because it invokes our curiosity - a curious frame of mind is a very healthy frame of mind to be in - we should not underemphasize this Meno. Being curious and wondering about what is possible while filling in the gaps of what we do know also lends itself to relative casual observations among other types of observations to further help us complete “pictures” and “stories” and I would hope from these completions that a further invocation would take place re-instantiating curiosity(this should be a self-feeding entity).

Meno_ wrote: Again if the distinction between mind and brain is maintained.
With the brain, I like to keep in mind its own electrochemical properties as one of its most basic features. Waves of the various sort that exist in nature have the potential to carry information - information that we can not see but information that we can detect - seeing and detecting share a lot in common. Fields of many sorts can affect waves of many sorts. I don’t have reason to not believe in more subtle effects taking place within nature - fields, waves, and names for other various things I am not mentioning may hold various keys to help us fill in gaps of missing information [allow me to be figurative only, to provoke tangential thought]. I don’t know how else to put this right now without bypassing certain topical information we are dealing with. I don’t think I have to fill in the obvious gaps here - if it is confusing then I will just use a shorter and different analogy.

Connecting back to the first two sentences that I wrote in this post, I see a lot of benefit to keeping things distinct but reinforcing their connectedness nonetheless…

My intention is to add some value by using variance to look at things a number of ways - to take many different paths that lead to the same destination - to enhance and not destroy.

:smiley:

I think this is a web of information in itself. I do intend on answering you with more depth. There is a lot of underlying data to decode here.

I feel something here, however, just like I am thinking more than I mention. I will allow this kernel to run its course…to permeate and transform…epoché…

I am still thinking about Sheldrake, Meno - I am just going to note a few things…

So what if those who have ESP are just picking up on patterns from others that mostly match patterns in their own head?

Given fall off at a distance it is possible they are picking up natural reconstructions too.

We don’t yet know everything about the brain and the mind - We don’t yet know everything about how the brain and the mind connect - there is currently still a possibility that part of the brain is connected to an extrasensory realm and even a possibility that the mind itself is special and that an essential component of the mind is connected to a special realm - I intend that my mind will always remain open.

Perhaps my own way of looking at the unknown will eventually offer some answers.

decode_encode

It is much more probable then not that shared patterns appear to predicate cognition then not, due to the appearent methods by which we learn to organize learning from bottom up.

By the bottom i mean the lower rungs of cognitive organization, as even young children appear to accept the most general precepts, as organized by outlined , general , process. It is later that they become disorganized especially in adolescence, to apply specific experiences to use in later life.

The cultural -social experiences of hystory confirm the analogous pattern .

This paradigmn is very archytipical, and the special , conscious history of man can be said to stratify this analogy, and.an eternal reoccurance would lift this paradigmn into a timeless level of near incomprlhensibility.

So I tend to agree with You on the probability scale by an overwhelming evidentiary display.

That Paradigmn, retrofits the computarized biniminal pattern into the transcending motive -turned intentional power of energy, as a marker or sign that did in fact occur; to pass the modern age into the postmodern , quantified era of approach thing the perceived limit from the known , experienced -reified structural paradigmn.

decode_encode

It is much more probable then not that shared patterns appear to predicate cognition then not, due to the appearent methods by which we learn to organize learning from bottom up.

By the bottom i mean the lower rungs of cognitive organization, as even young children appear to accept the most general precepts, as organized by outlined , general , process. It is later that they become disorganized especially in adolescence, to apply specific experiences to use in later life.

The cultural -social experiences of hystory confirm the analogous pattern .

This paradigmn is very archytipical, and the special , conscious history of man can be said to stratify this analogy, and.an eternal reoccurance would lift this paradigmn into a timeless level of near incomprlhensibility.

So I tend to agree with You on the probability scale by an overwhelming evidentiary display.

That Paradigmn, retrofits the computarized biniminal pattern into the transcending motive -turned intentional power of energy, as a marker or sign that did in fact occur; to pass the modern age into the postmodern , quantified era of approach thing the perceived limit from the known , experienced -reified structural paradigmn.

Sorry for duplicate, just adding that not too familiar with Shelldrake

Only adding that the ‘fallout’ mentioned is associated with the bridge between image - nation and reality, as a spaciotempiral cognitive pre-ceptiom, as when the fear of falling off at and from the limit did not yet correspond with the calculable reality of the spherical planet earth.

Softy for the duplicate, later will erase one.

Don’t concern yourself with the duplicates Meno - I am sure you have bigger fish to fry.

I really like this - thank you very much for this Meno. I am looking forward to the possibility of offering a more direct response.

Your mention of young children accepting the most general precepts reminded me of this: the power and purpose of the teenage brain.

An excerpt:

Siegel also discusses the transition from the “dependency of childhood to the responsibility of adulthood” and how the brain enters a transformational stage. Furthermore, he touches on “emotional spark”, “social engagement”, “novelty”, and “creative expression” which Siegel binds into the acronym ESSENCE. Adolescence is described as “a golden age for innovation” and apparently adults can use this ESSENCE to reinvigorate themselves.

This is interesting to me because there are processes in the brain that perform transformations all the time, even in what we refer to as the Default Mode Network - I like to think of these as micro-processes. In the case of the teenage brain, these processes are perhaps not so micro. All this also hints to me why there is such a thing as dangerous thinking and why it is sometimes necessary to encode things well enough that only a particular audience becomes privy. Sometimes we don’t take into account the negative impact such thoughts that appear benign on the surface can be…hyper-rationality…

Let me lay some substance down - I can not respond to all of this otherwise I may be here all day. I plan to add more segments as time goes on…

Simply put, Shledrake has come to a similar conclusion in biology as I have come to in neurobiology. Explaining this conclusion is a work in itself. What interests me is how this translates to the neural process itself. How this translates to the thought process and how this translates to mental processes - explaining our psychology. This is in terms of a geometric flavor rather than analytical flavors. Sheldrake speaks of the imposition of patterns - not unwelcome but necessary. Imposing partially fixed patterns on indeterminate activity. Partially fixed because patterns can and do evolve over time. In part offering part of the explanation to archetypal characteristics and how these vary whilst seeming to be embedded in more basic patterns. Furthermore, In part explaining how regular processes that are above the archetypical characteristics are in a constant state of change appearing constant but working in a dynamic nature - modified through environmental immersion and affected by the atmosphere.

The atmosphere is a more esoteric concept and requires some specialized knowledge, part of which we have imparted onto each other already.

There is likely acting on the quantum level - as always we have a missing piece to the puzzle that I hope physicists solve eventually. For now, we can think in terms of quintessence or affectance to offer two separate insights that would mirror each other. Insights that we don’t have to be directly concerned with here as each insight builds itself over time - some of which may have already entered the picture. There are definitely some minimal aspects in the story that the picture presents.

Will look up Sheldrake as a future project.

We are too often referring to things in an earthly realm situation…another larger post - so no need to respond directly - we don’t want things getting out of hand…

fMRI is still in its infancy. Data analysis and interpreting results are just raising more questions at the moment - leading to a plethora of hypothesis - this method may already be getting out of hand.

This is not to say that it is unuseful. It offers insights here and there. Very expensive insights…

Recurrence is perhaps looked at in a malformed way - there are some seeming constants but everything is variable - seeming constants are just the glue that stops things from flying apart but eventually everything changes - it has no choice. So yes there are things that recur but not identical - there are no identicals outside the divine realm. Identicals are more like primordial templates. So yes there is some evolution. Humankind typically wants hard-set answers - this is impossible. Luckily the glue is strong enough to make our answers usable for a long period of time - longer than our typical lifespan at least.

Sure, if this is something that interests you. Personally, I think it is great that a biochemist offers something so beautiful to the world - insight into the current nature of things - even a deeper outlook - deeper into the ages.

…ages: reversely as you say - in both directions…

I have not completely lost my mind - so don’t panic…I still keep my baseline embedded in reality as we know it…on the other hand evidence is evidence and change is very evident…

…quintessence, as I think of it…

Something useful to apply: “Thinking, though, is hardly all-powerful. The world is unpredictable and our emotions are unruly. Thinking can make us feel in control, even when we’re really not. We get addicted to thinking, spending many sleepless nights mentally gnawing on problems we simply can’t solve. The word “mindful” means that we are using our cognitive abilities, our rationality, and our intelligence, to be present and make conscious choices: we are full of mind. But our minds can be wild and wooly, full of assumptions, expectations, and anxieties that may or may not be rooted in reality.” Extracted from this article: Break Your Addiction to Thinking from PsychCentral.

From neuroscience we have discovered that motivation and addiction are tightly linked - essentially we need to be wary of over-thinking things - better to be precise than perfect.

Better to have a balanced motivation than an addiction…

Eternal recurrence - well that time frame is too immense to concern ourselves with too much in a deterministic realm that appears to hold infinite possibilities between alpha and omega and the serpent eating its own tail - information becomes too diluted to be too concerned - these are interesting and fun intellectual contraptions much the same as the games I play internally with the matryoshka and them becoming intellectual contraptions.

I stumbled across two videos on YouTube with Sheldrake in them. The first is slightly off of the track of social cognition but does touch lightly on some of the things I talk about that are related. Whereas the second describes things in such a way as to be somewhat related to what I discuss in terms of formation - adding the facet of reformation. I think it is important to understand some of his ideas on consciousness - this helps us to understand Sheldrake. We can only know consciousness by way of analogy - using similarity to say that you are conscious by analogy with myself - this is a sense(also in that it makes sense). Analogies themselves express similarity - refer to the relation between the source and the target patterns of information.

Rupert Sheldrake - Is Consciousness Fundamental? : Total viewing time = twelve minutes and eleven seconds(12:11)

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46kgmgI9fPs[/youtube]

These two videos offer some insight into the formation and recognition(reformation) concept. The videos as a pair, also refer to the quantum.

I should also point out that there are mistakes in the [subtitles/closed captions(c)(CC)] - for instance, the CC made a mistake with the word sun and spelled it, son, and the word emotion(I think it made it, mission).

Sheldrake also refers to nature being nested just as I refer to this through the use of nested dolls(matryoshka). As well as the double-slit experiment - future possibilities are closely linked to the present(I refer to this with extension: Essentially the underlying idea is bringing the past and the future together to result in some configuration of the present - redefining the present as we move forward through the continuum of time. Taken from one of my posts in the Mind - Knowledge – Knowledge - Mind thread).

At the end of the first video, Sheldrake makes mention of Gäa(Gaea).