Michael Kelly

Toward A Meta-Theory of Mind

Introduction

“Mirror” neurons are so called because the same neural networks have been observed
to fire in the human brain both when an action is observed or anticipated in another,
and when that action is performed by the agent herself.

When thinking about how I could model the possible structure of such a network, an
appropriate initial framework seemed to me to be an information processing algorithm,
taking a lead from the information processing metaphor for human cognition. From
general information theory and Bowlby’s concept of the Internal Working Model, I
understood “information” to mean patterns of destabilization or state change through a
system comprised of the sense organs, internal representational systems, and the
musculoskeletal system. Conversely, I understood encoded information as patterns of
restabilising responses within procedural memory. This resulted in a dynamic where the
more restabilising responses are encoded, the less resulting musculoskeletal state
change occurs, but the more sense organ state change takes place. This fits well with
the phenomenon of confirmation bias, and also predicts a dynamic between the
attentional “spotlight” and levels of arousal that fits the empirical evidence. Conversely,
Theory of Mind is here modeled as a triad of increasingly self-recursive frameworks
within procedural memory.

I used a fractal framework to visualize how the logic of the above played out, being an
established mathematical way of describing systems of self reference that are stable yet
mutually destabilizing. Applying directly to concepts of replication and the evolutionary
process, this also enabled me to apply the resulting model to the wider, developing area
of meme/teme theories of culture. Also, I have found the concept of procedural memory
codes as patterns of restabilising responses to destabilizing stimuli to fit well with
contemporary empirical reviews of Freudian theory of the unconscious.

Furthermore, I have found this model to be apparently capable of describing

phenomena from the fields of attachment theory, discourse analysis, emotion research
and semiotics, and may also come to be continuous or at least complimentary with
developing theories of consciousness as a Godelian infinitely recursive framework of self
reference.

Specifically, the structure that emerged from this line of inquiry were coupled together
Koch and Sierpinski’s Gasket fractals. Formerly speaking, what I have been attempting
to describe is a meta-Theory of Mind process, primarily unconscious for an individual but
potentially emerging as a conscious framework through pattern recognition guided by
application of the hyothetico-deductive spiral, yet within a purely deterministic, “free
will” free process of iteratively exploring the Sierpinski’s gasket fractal via movement
through a Koch snowflake fractal (Fig 1).
The Model

Fig 1. A Meta-Theory of Mind in terms of coupled together Koch & Sierpinski’s Gasket
fractals
mssc: musculo-skeletal state change
ssc: sensory state change