A Thousand Narratives. Theory of Cognitive Morphogenesis. Part 1⁄20. Intro
The ultimate goal of this line of research is to gain a better understanding of how human value system operates. The problem I see regarding current approaches to studying values is that we cannot study {values/desires/preferences} in isolation from the rest of cognitive mechanisms, cause according to latest theories values are just a part of a broader system governing behaviour in general. With that you have to have a decent model of human behaviour first to then be able to explain value dynamics.
To get a good theory of the mind you have to meet multiple requirements:
A good theory of the mind must span at least four different timescales: (genetic evolution) for the billion years in which our brains have evolved; (memetic evolution) for the centuries of cultural accumulation of ideas through history; (personal) for the individual development during lifetime; and (neuronal) milliseconds during which cognitive inference happens.
A good theory must explain behaviour of the system on each of Marr’s three levels of analysis[1]: (1) the computational problem the system is solving; (2) the algorithm the system uses to solve that problem; and (3) how that algorithm is implemented in the “physical hardware” of the system. And, the part I think Marr is missing, the third level also has to include explanation of how the learning environment affects agent.
A good theory must at least make an attempt at answering the main questions: how is the generality of intelligence achieved?; what is the neural substrate of memory?; etc.
To meet these requirements I’ve combined insights from several fields: Developmental Psychology, Neuroscience, Ethology and Computation models of mind. The result is the Narrative Theory. The research is still far from completion but there are already interesting insights to be shared.
At this moment NT is similar to Shard Theory in many ways, but it also differs from it in many others: (1) NT is trying to integrate “more distant” but still crucial perspectives (like ethology and linguistics). (2) It is concerned with the flow of development of human behaviour as a whole instead of focusing of values. And (3) NT is only concerned with human intelligence, for now ignoring the topic of artificial agents entirely.
It’s pretty audacious to say that one can make progress on something as big as computational theory of human behaviour but there are two things giving me hope of succeeding: (1) It’s been quite a while since the last wave of overarching psychological theories. (2) The last decades were sort of a divergent period of scientific inquiry (when it comes to mind studies), efforts mostly have been focused on puzzling out the smaller pieces of The Problem and there have been no serious attempts at updating previous theories with newly found evidence (or even integrating those theories between each other). These together promise that there is now a room for improvements to be made.
Note on vocabulary. Each mentioned theory has it’s own unique language. This may present a problem for unprepared readers. While I will unpack and rephrase convoluted terms when possible, not everything can be stripped away.
This post is structured as follows: (the first section) is a list of constraints discovered by various mind related fields that are crucial for building an overarching theory mind; (the second section) presents the first claims of Narrative Theory built according with known constraints; and (the third section) covers implications of the theory, problems and future work directions.
A Thousand Narratives. Theory of Cognitive Morphogenesis. Part 1⁄20. Intro
The ultimate goal of this line of research is to gain a better understanding of how human value system operates. The problem I see regarding current approaches to studying values is that we cannot study {values/desires/preferences} in isolation from the rest of cognitive mechanisms, cause according to latest theories values are just a part of a broader system governing behaviour in general. With that you have to have a decent model of human behaviour first to then be able to explain value dynamics.
To get a good theory of the mind you have to meet multiple requirements:
A good theory of the mind must span at least four different timescales: (genetic evolution) for the billion years in which our brains have evolved; (memetic evolution) for the centuries of cultural accumulation of ideas through history; (personal) for the individual development during lifetime; and (neuronal) milliseconds during which cognitive inference happens.
A good theory must explain behaviour of the system on each of Marr’s three levels of analysis[1]: (1) the computational problem the system is solving; (2) the algorithm the system uses to solve that problem; and (3) how that algorithm is implemented in the “physical hardware” of the system. And, the part I think Marr is missing, the third level also has to include explanation of how the learning environment affects agent.
A good theory must at least make an attempt at answering the main questions: how is the generality of intelligence achieved?; what is the neural substrate of memory?; etc.
To meet these requirements I’ve combined insights from several fields: Developmental Psychology, Neuroscience, Ethology and Computation models of mind. The result is the Narrative Theory. The research is still far from completion but there are already interesting insights to be shared.
At this moment NT is similar to Shard Theory in many ways, but it also differs from it in many others: (1) NT is trying to integrate “more distant” but still crucial perspectives (like ethology and linguistics). (2) It is concerned with the flow of development of human behaviour as a whole instead of focusing of values. And (3) NT is only concerned with human intelligence, for now ignoring the topic of artificial agents entirely.
It’s pretty audacious to say that one can make progress on something as big as computational theory of human behaviour but there are two things giving me hope of succeeding: (1) It’s been quite a while since the last wave of overarching psychological theories. (2) The last decades were sort of a divergent period of scientific inquiry (when it comes to mind studies), efforts mostly have been focused on puzzling out the smaller pieces of The Problem and there have been no serious attempts at updating previous theories with newly found evidence (or even integrating those theories between each other). These together promise that there is now a room for improvements to be made.
Note on vocabulary. Each mentioned theory has it’s own unique language. This may present a problem for unprepared readers. While I will unpack and rephrase convoluted terms when possible, not everything can be stripped away.
This post is structured as follows: (the first section) is a list of constraints discovered by various mind related fields that are crucial for building an overarching theory mind; (the second section) presents the first claims of Narrative Theory built according with known constraints; and (the third section) covers implications of the theory, problems and future work directions.
David Marr. Vision: A Computational Investigation into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information. https://academic.oup.com/mit-press-scholarship-online/book/13528