ThreeMinds

Thank you to contributors!

Under Construction!

This will be the first essay in a collection of dozens of essays describing the structural frameworks that make up Wondrous Wisdom.


Three Minds

An exposition by Andrius Kulikauskas



Answering, Questioning, Investigating

In this essay, I argue that we experience life by alternating between three faculties, which is to say, three minds:

  • A mind that knows answers.
  • A mind that asks questions, for it does not know.
  • A mind that investigates, thereby bringing the other two minds into accord, what we know and what we don't know.

We can learn to introspect these three minds by noting the different ways we approach our lives, appreciating the inner conflicts that arise and how they are resolved or not, and collecting examples of how others have talked about these three faculties, their properties and consequences.

We can learn to untangle these three minds. This untangling is done by the investigatory mind. We can then live harmoniously and help others likewise. This is the foundation for flourishing in every way.

Historical Accounts of These Three Minds

The Theory Translator database abounds with examples illustrating the opposition of the Answering mind and the Questioning mind. Several distinctions have been drawn.

  • senses vs. intellect Western philosophers Aristotle, Augustine, Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, Kant, Brentano, James
  • irrational vs. rational psychotherapist Ellis
  • unconscious vs. conscious
  • emotion vs. cognition neurologist Jackson
  • pictorial vs. verbal neuropsychologist Milner
  • sensations vs. representations Lotze, von Helmholtz
  • instinctual vs. learned Baldwin

These three minds express three levels of awareness.

  • Minimal awareness: The Answering mind presents us with a single answer but does not explain how it got that answer. It works unconsciously, instinctively, intuitively, confidently, averaging and summing up all of our experience to yield that answer.
  • Increased awareness: The Questioning mind does not know thus asks a variety of questions, consciously, conceptually, verbally, rationally, thereby building, updating, revisiting models of possibilities, where each possibility can be checked and the relationships can be validated.
  • Maximal awareness: The Investigating mind takes responsibility to make sure that the other two minds are truly in agreement, thus is ready to let go of the Answering mind's experience and the Questioning mind's model and reconsider them from scratch, in parallel, as necessary. And once the same information is expressed in two different ways, the Answering mind's integrated answer and the Questioning mind's web of questions, then the Investigating mind oversees which mind should behavior proceed from.

We experience life through all three levels of awareness and we can add to them a zeroth level of nonawareness which we do not experience but which may be consequential nonetheless. There may be complicated processes taking place within us that we are completely unaware of yet they affect us profoundly. The Answering mind is likewise mysterious but at least we are aware that it is giving us an answer.

In contemporary, every day English, we typically speak of the Answering mind as the Unconscious ("my unconscious tells me") and the Questioning mind as the Conscious ("I consciously know"). Metaphorically, we can imagine the Unconscious as setting up objects or actors on a stage, and the Conscious as shining various lights upon some of them. When we speak of Consciousness ("I have full consciousness"), then we refer to the Investigating mind, which has an even greater level of awareness, directing the show, deliberately, willfully, self-reflectively, cognizantly.

The purpose of this website, Theory Translator, is to describe these three minds as well as other important conceptual structures, and to overview evidence that they may indeed be universal, considering hundreds of examples from the history of world culture to show how they appear in different contexts under a variety of names.

Examples of Answer, Question, Investigation

  • #621 Indo-European hunters guessed (inferred) an animal (the answer) from its tracks (the question) by stepping into them with their minds.
  answerquestioninvestigation 
-2500Proto-Indo-Europeananimaltracksguess#621
1926physicsBose-Einstein statisticsFermi–Dirac statistics #131
1932quantum mechanicsstateobservablemeasurement#51
1971physicsbosonsfermions #130

Logical dialogue between a mind that knows and a mind that does not know

We can think of the first two minds, knowing and not knowing, as in a dialogue which the third mind facilitates. All manner of thinkers have noted various characteristics which distinguish the first two minds. These distinctions express the difference between knowing and not knowing. The third mind, by which these thinkers make these distinctions, is often left unacknowledged, although it may be inferred as facilitating the proper relation of the other two minds.

We can focus on the knowledge that these minds know or do not know. The logical square of classical logic can be interpreted as this dialogue between what is known and what is not known, manifesting their duality, where basically the same information can be expressed in these two different ways.

The distinction between not knowing and knowing grounds a distinction, respectively, between variables and the specific values they may take.

  • #655 Socrates: "I was conscious that I knew nothing at all."
  knownot know  
-399Socratesthink one knowsknow nothingbe conscious#655
1794William Blakeexperienceinnocencesolidarity#144

Also: what is and is not.

580Tiantaiexistenceemptinessmiddle#684
  assertionnegationintegration[1]
1781Immanuel Kantsynthetic a posteriorianalytic a priorisynthetic a priori#29
1794Johann Gottlieb Fichtethesisantithesissynthesis#6
1817Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegelfixed conceptengendered oppositerevealed unity#363

And the logic of success - the lucky intuitive mind, and the counterfactual logic of failure - the unlucky rational mind. For we can't only learn from success. We need to be able to model death and injury and avoid them. And we need to be able to choose which logic to apply. Which makes sense of the traditions of oracles.

Mathematics: Duality

This duality is important in mathematics. Sometimes it appears exactly, as in set theory, where we can think in terms of the elements that are in a set, or equivalently, the elements that are not in a set. The duality may appear with a slight modification, where the two perspectives differ slightly but essentially, as in topology, where the definition of open set ensures that arbitrary unions of open sets are open but only ensures that finite intersections of open sets are necessarily open. This grounds a duality between continuity and discreteness.

Mathematics: Adjunctions

In mathematics, and in particular, in category theory, the concept of adjunction grounds a mathematical analogy expressed by a pair of adjoint functors.

Philosophy: Introspective distinctions

  • #673 Goethe, in The Sorrows of Young Werther, juxtaposing innate free natural instinct with the narrow limits of an antiquated world.

Experimental pscyhology: Evidence for two minds

System 1 and System 2

Wikipedia: Cognitive bias

Polanyi: Tacit and Explicit

  • Understanding has us empathize with the tacit, as consciousness does.
  • Tacit knowledge is of what we know, not of what we don't know. Thus know-how is the maximal konwledge of the unconscious. Consciousness distinguishes what we know and don't know.
  • Forgetful functor yields tacit, free functor yields explicit. The same information in two different ways.
  intuitivelogical  
-350Aristotlesensitiverational #42
-275Zou Yanyīnyáng #3
53Christianitycarnalsoulishspiritual#24
1516Thomas Moreimprinting  #114
1620Francis Baconinductionsyllogism #46
1677Baruch Spinozarandom experiencereasonintuition#11
1739David Humeimpressionsideas #26
1748David Humematters of factrelations of ideas #27
1776Sturm und Drangemotionalityrationality #672
1811Jane Austensensibilitysense #20
1868Hermann von Helmholtzstimulisensations #32
1873Franz Brentanosensory consciousnessnoetic consciousness #585
1890William Jamesassociative thoughttrue reasoning #10
1894Library scienceprinciple of least effort  #15
1907William Jamesfactsprinciplesconsequences#324
1907William Jamessensationsrelationsprevious truths#667
1958Hannah Arendtlaborworkaction#335
1960Aldous Huxleypersonallyobjectivelyuniversally#475
1958Michael Polanyitacit knowledgeexplicit knowledge #642
1965Isaiah Berlininner voice createsexternal voice reflects #670
1966Gene RodenberryMcCoySpockKirk#19
1969neuroscienceappositionalpropositional #615
1969Julian Jaynessense perceptionmetaphorsintrospection#619
2001Jonathan Haidtintuitionrationalizationdiscussion#658
2004Social psychologyimpulsivereflective #23
2005Daniel Kahneman, Jason Riisexperiencing selfremembering self #9
2005mathematicseven part A of superalgebraodd part eA of superalgebrainduced R-automorphism a→a'#129
2016Michael Grazianoattentionawareness #94
2018Lois Isenmanunconsciousconsciousattending to inner experience#113
2023Jaemin Frazervictimsworkerswinners#108
1866neuroscienceemotional speechintellectual speech #611

Philosophy: Thinking Styles

From observing individuals and also the history of human culture.

  • #668 Archilochus: a fox knows many things, a hedgehog knows one big thing.
  divergenceconvergence  
-650Archilochusknow many thingsknow one big thing #668
-250Xun Kuangmeandering mindfixated mindempty mind#120
1872Friedrich Nietzschedisorderorder #651
1953Isaiah Berlinwide variety of experiencessingle defining idea #669

Philosophical introspection: Unconscious and Conscious

  unconsciousconsciousconsciousness 
1946Paramahansa Yoganandasubconsciousconscioussuperconscious#577
1946Paramahansa Yoganandabodymindsoul#576
1949Gilbert Rylemachineghost #629
2012Richard Barrettegosoul #573

Philosophical introspection: Past, Present, Future

  pastfuturepresent 
1997Eckhart Tollepastfuturepresent moment#641

Neurological evidence: Preconscious and Conscious

Preconscious processing and Conscious processing

Modeling Particular and General

  instancelanguage  
1050lawexceptionrule #649
1856Rudolf Hermann Lotzemuscle sensationslocal signs #30
1874Rudolf Hermann Lotzefactslawsstandards of value#31
1905Theosophycolorformclarity of outline#561
1905Theosophyradiating vibrationfloating form #562
1781Immanuel Kantquid factiquid jurisquid jus#25
-200Buddhismconcretenessemptiness #685
1949neuroscience language #614
1958neurosciencepictorialverbal #612
1958mathematicsforgetful functorfree functor #671
1967Neuroscienceright hemisphereleft hemisphere #21
1971neuroscienceanalogue codessymbolic codes #616
1972neurosciencejudge differencejudge sameness #617
1973neuroscienceparallel processingserial processing #618
1974Cognitive psychologyperformanceintrospection #16
1975Neuro-linguistic programmingneurolinguisticprogramming#427
1980Persuasionperipheralcentral #12
1980Persuasionheuristicsystematic #13
1984cognitive psychologyheuristicanalytic #17
1992David McNeillgesturespeech #582
1992John Graycounting unitsmeasuring sums #145
1996Cognitive scienceassociativerules based #14
1997John Cuttingindividual thingsclasses of things #593
1998John Templetonbrainmindlaws of life#35
1998Robert Hornimageswordsshapes#93
2005Malcolm Gladwellthin-sliceanalysis paralysis #111
2006cognitive psychologyheuristicanalyticdispositional#18
2006Karl Fristonsensory inputinternal model #33
2006Jonathan Haidtautomaticcontrolled #657
2009Iain McGilchristwhole-orienteddetail-oriented #328
2011Daniel Kahneman, Amos TverskySystem 1System 2 #1
2013Lois Isenmanholism  #112
2024Gabrielė Aleksėwaterstone #594
  focusframework  
100Jesustruthwordfree#485
1650Quakersinward lightministrysilence#589
1774Johann Wolfgang von Goetheinnate free natural instinctnarrow limits of an antiquated world #673
1776Thomas Painesocietygovernment #87
1797Johann Gottlieb Fichteself-acquaintanceself-explanationself-consciousness#591
1800William Wordsworthoverflow of feelingssimple languagerecollection in tranquility#674

The storehouse of our prejudices, the multiplier of our preconceptions - the truth will set you free - you can reconstruct it all anew, well formed, from scratch.

  person-in-particularperson-in-generalGod[2]
2021Anoop Kumarindividualityshared identityabsence of differentiation#688
2023Lucy Weirselfcontextobserver#359
 faculties    
1748Montesquieujudicialexecutivelegislative#34
1781Immanuel Kantjudgmentpractical reasonpure reason#28
-350Aristotlepossible intellectagent intellect #43

Neural network vs. conceptual language

  nervous systemconceptual language [3]
1941neuroscience language #613
1955artificial intelligenceneural networkssymbolic processingcombined#36

Neurological evidence: Right and left hemispheres

User requirements for a brain.

Right Hemisphere and Left Hemisphere

Rational, typed, linear

Gender Studies: Differences and Stereotypes

  femininemasculine  
-250JudaismEveAdamGod#203

Traditional Understandings of Female and Male Preferences

Concepts to consider that may be related

  • Anima and animus Jungian concepts. Animus is the unconscious masculine side of a woman, and anima is the unconscious feminine side of a man. My point here is not to embrace Jungian psychology but to show that Jung is distinguishing femininity and masculinity and asserting that they are both found in every person.

Balancing the two minds

  • #121 Plato, in Phaedrus, presents the metaphor of a charioteer (reason) driving a pair of horses, irrational appetite and moral impulse.
  • #5 Plato, in the Republic, expands with Subjects, Warriors, Rulers
  • #4 Freud: Id, Superego, Ego. The id is referred to as "It", the superego is "Over-I", which means that it is speaking of "You". The ego is refering to "I". But here we have an inversion due to socialization, participation in society with many actors. Originally, from its own point of view, our Unconscious id lives as our "I", our Conscious superego lives from the vantage of "You", our Consciousness - our ego - lives from the vantage of "Other".
    • id is the set of uncoordinated instinctual desire
    • superego plays the critical and moralizing role
    • ego is the organized, realistic agent that mediates between the instinctual desires of the id and the critical superego
  • #6 Fichte: Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis
    balance 
-375Platoappetitespunkreason#5
-370Platoirrational appetitemoral impulsereason#121
-350Confuciusduty and sense of shamelaws and punishmentsvirtue and propriety#117
-250Xun Kuangnaturally selfishconscious effort to do goodconscious development of proper standards#119
100Jesusfleshspiritwatch and pray#38
1283Kabbalahinstinctsmoral virtuesunderstanding#470
1860Horace Greeleyslaves of appetite and slothsubduers and cultivators of the earthGod who decrees, grants, eradicates#147
1864Robert Browninghalf monsterhalf humanhis creator#164
1895Gustave Le Bonrevert to instinctssacrifice personal interestsfollow excitable leaders#148
1896James Mark Baldwininstinctual behaviorlearned behavioraptitude for learning behavior#115
1920Sigmund Freudidsuperegoego#4
1929Anthropologyeconomicmartialsacral#22
1957Eric Bernechildparentadult#141
1964Eric Bernechildparentadult#140
1967Thomas Anthony Harrischildparentadult#139
1955Albert Ellisirrationalrationaleducation#661
1986Marsha M Linehanemotionalreasonablewise#682
2019Jessica Lockemotionalrationalwise#679

Expectations of unity

There is a curious trichotomy (beauty, good, truth) known as the transcendentals, which sometimes includes unity, making for a tetrachotomy. These are the latent expectations of each of the three minds, thus the purities, the unities and essences that each mind is attracted to, of itself. The answering, sensory, unconscious mind is attracted to beauty; the questioning, calculating, conscious mind is attracted to good; the investigating mind, governing the other two, working towards their correspondence, is attracted to truth. The overall expectation, general speaking, is unity.

One's ideal sweetheart meets these expectations, if they could ever possibly be met. They appear beautiful to the eyes, they are good in all they do, and in this they are true, that they seem as they are. Thus one adores them absolutely.

John Levi Martin details the history of this trichotomy in his paper, The Birth of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful: Toward an Investigation of the Structures of Social Thought. He finds it as far back as the Greek historian Herodotus, who noted the Athenian expression kalos kagathos (beautiful and virtuous), by which they characterized the ideal warrior, and how they spoke of themselves. I note here the significance of the concept and which is explicit in the construction k + agathos where agathos means good and k means and. The word and emphasizes that the person is not only beautiful, and not only virtuous, but is both. This is one of the oldest recorded expressions of the three minds.

This trichotomy otherwise seems quite odd, as the three qualities are of such different phenomenological appeal, ontological character and existential significance. They resemble a hodge podge list of incongrous animals. But let us exercise our imagination, what creatures are these? Perchance, beauty is the flower, good is the bee, and truth is the pollen which bees carry from flower to flower, as they feed on their nectar, proliferating bees and flowers.

  beautygoodtrue 
-430ancient Greecebeautifulvirtuousand#7
1711Earl of Shaftesburybeautifulgoodtrue#8
1820John Keatsbeautyimmortal worklove of principle#162
1916Max Schelerbeautiful and uglyright and wrongtrue and false#601

Grounds for Assent

Aristotle, in his Rhetoric, pragmatically noted three very different grounds for assent: pathos, logos and ethos. Each of these grounds appeals rhetorically to one of the three minds.

What speaks to them

  • #97 Aristotle's Rhetoric explains what speaks to them: pathos, logos, ethos.
 Appeal to:unconsciousconsciousconsciousness 
-357Aristotlepathoslogosethos#97
-357Aristotlerhetoriclogicdialectic#124
1240Sakya Panditaseetalk #570
1650Confucianismseehearspeak#104
1976Julian Jaynesverbal hallucinationsobeyingconsciousness#620
1982Chaïm Perelmanrhetoriclogicdialectic#126
1990Joseph Wenzelrhetoric as processlogic as productdialectic as procedure#127
2021Adam Grantpreachingprosecutingpoliticking#666

Perspective, perspective on perspective, perspective on perspective on perspective

  onefoldtwofoldthreefold[4]
1857Karl Marxconsumptionproductiondistribution and exchange#652
1867Charles Sanders Peircefirstnesssecondnessthirdness#2
2022active inferenceenactivepredictivecybernetic#142

First, Second, Third Person

As with God's Dance: I am God, You are God, They are God.

The structure of interpretations of the divisions of everything, with the third person (Consciousness, Thirdness) yielding the three-cycle.

Selfishness, selflessness

Answering mind is selfish. Questioning mind is selfless but may serve and accentuate the selfish. Investigating mind has selfishness serve selflessness, making us truly selfless.

Emptying the mind

    emptiness 
-325Daoismgentlenesseconomyshrinking from taking precedence of others#166
1237Dōgenmotherlyjoyfulvast#675
1969Pete Townshendpinball wizardengaging the mirrordeaf, dumb, blind#580

What, how, why

Three minds express What, How, Why from the idealist point of view. Whether is God.

Why functions like a break, allowing How to shift to What upon release, at which point Why becomes Whether.

Perception-Action Loop. Consciousness acts as a brake.

Consider how to interpret the opposite direction as given by version 2.0 of the Meaning of Life.

How does this relate to the equation of life?

Narration: Ways of creating tension

Four voices creating tension

  • Reality forces
  • Unconscious commands
  • Conscious explains
  • Consciousness cares

Mathematical models

Unreflected and reflected

Consider

  • O(n),O(∞). Rotations and rotoreflections.
  • Linear operators and antilinear operators. Complex conjugation as reflection.

Simple roots of G₂. Consciousness functions as a brake that the arrow from the unconscious to the conscious must wait for. Consciousness functions as a virtual unconscious.

Compare with a transistor.

More examples of the three minds

Galileo inaugurated modern science by dividing the world into the quantitative realm of science and, on the other hand, the qualitative realm of subjective experience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Goff_(philosopher)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Goff_(philosopher) book Why? The Purpose of the Universe

Quantum mechanics axioms in terms of C* algebras.

UnconsciousConsciousConsciousnessWondrous Wisdom
first personsecond personthird persongrammar
first personsecond personthird personnarration
comprehensionapprehension Iain McGilchrist
motherfatherchildR.Buckminster Fuller 1200.00
femalemale gender stereotypes
autonomous mindalgorithmic mindreflective mindKeith Stankovich
descriptivenormativeprescriptiveBell, Raiffa, Tversky
William James
associationism, spiritualismWilliam James

Under Construction: Three Minds

  • answer, question, investigation
  • dialogue: know, not know, discover
  • direct, model, apply
  • adds perspectives: P, P on P, P on P on P
  • level of knowledge: what, how, why
  • dialogue: child, parent, grandparent (status free)
  • dialogue: woman, man, child (gender free)
  • attracted to: beauty, good, truth
  • I, you, other
  • personality, character, God

Also appearing structurally

  • Flow of experiences - three minds
  • Six visualizations
  • Narration - voices for creating tension
  • Dialogue of two minds: foursome, fivesome, sixsome, sevensome
  • Eightsome
  • Emotion (boundary of self vs. world: sadness vs. surprise)
  • Emotion - Cognition loop
  • Truths of the heart and the world


My Relevant Writings

Three Minds

  • https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6531370_Dimensions_of_Mind_Perception
  • {$3\times 8$} theory of {$3$} minds and {$8$} mental states
  • Janet Pauketat
  • Megan M. Callahan, Terre Satterfield, Jiaying Zhao. Into the Animal Mind: Perceptions of Emotive and Cognitive Traits in Animals
  • Kara Weismana, Carol S. Dweck, Ellen M. Markman.Rethinking people’s conceptions of mental life
  • Hideyuki Takahashi, Midori Ban, Minoru Asada. Semantic Differential Scale Method Can Reveal Multi-Dimensional Aspects of Mind Perception.
  • Megan N. Kozak, Abigail A. Marsh, Daniel M. Wegner. What Do I Think You’re Doing? Action Identification and Mind Attribution
  • Bertram F. Malle. How Many Dimensions of Mind Perception Really Are There?
  • Kallie Tzelios, Lisa A. Williams, John Omerod, Eliza Bliss‑Moreau. Evidence of the unidimensional structure of mind perception
  • Consciousness +3 is self-reflection (which switches the direction of the twosome's mental shift). Is it then possible that the fractional charge of quarks indicates the Unconscious (1/3) and the Conscious (2/3) and so we have Consciousness (1) for electrons and protons?

The disembodying mind results from evolutionary pressure to devote more resources to modeling the unknown.

  • A mind that knows answers represents almost 100 billion neurons
  • A mind that does not know but asks questions represents perhaps 100 thousand concepts
  • A third mind that is just 8-fold (thus merely 3-bits) balances the two.

If we focus on user requirements than on neural implementation, then it makes sense to talk about left and right hemispheres as champions of these two mindsets.

Constructive hypothesis C:A->B for communication yields the 3 minds.


Work-in-progress

Andrius: I am thinking about the various manifestations of the three minds and how they are related. I am working on the diagram below.

One idea is that what manifests in consciousness, or perhaps related to what it takes to be God, in becoming habitual, is planted in the unconscious. For example, the answering mind is the storehouse of our prejudices, the questioning mind is the multiplier of our preconceptions, and the investigating mind sets us free with the truth. Consciousness as truth plants freedom in the unconscious answering mind. And then the questioning mind is about constraints. And so on...