As of right now, no one can definitively explain mind, and no one can definitively explain the complex ways we mentally map. The state of cognitive science with regard to mind and mapping parallels the state of the philosophy and physics of time. Substituting “mind” and “mental maps” for “time” in a paraphrase of Augustine of Hippo’s famous statement, we all say, “If no one asks me, I know what mind (or a mental map) is, but if someone asks, I don’t know.” Maybe you partially know, but try to explain to someone the process of recording a mental map and the process by which you return to it in detail.
Mapping processes seem to take one of three forms either individually or in combination: top-down, bottom-up, and comparative. The top-down process starts with wholes and concepts and works toward comprehending and organizing the parts. The bottom-up process does just the opposite. The combination runs from big picture to small picture and back again until focus centers on one or the other. You will not find these processes described this way in the literature of cognitive scientists intent on grinding particular paradigm axes. But think about this for a moment.
If you walk into a familiar grocery store, you know where to go for the milk. Typically, grocers put items like milk and eggs at the back of the store so that you must walk by other products whose attractive packaging might tempt you to add them to your cart. The management uses top-down mapping to arrange the store’s products, deducing from research on product sales and years of data. As you enter a familiar store, you have a map that points the way to the product you desire, and as you walk the aisles, you see familiar landmarks that you previously mapped.
Having shopped in one American grocery store gives you a map that guides you when you walk into the second store. It is a map based on inductive reasoning and analogy. You have seen multiple grocery stores arranged similarly, so you conclude an unfamiliar store has the same arrangement of goods. That’s essentially mapping by comparison, a system of orienting based on the concept—either inferred or learned—of grocery store patterns. The arrangement applies to large stores throughout North, South, and Central America, so the pattern crosses cultural lines.
Most open street markets, straw markets, and flea markets manifest bottom-up development that result from seasons or even years of randomness. The ability to map such randomly developed markets presents no special problems for the shopper. Walk the street a time or two. Even if you do not stop at all the tables or stalls, you map the market, and the map is valid as long as the participants maintain their relative positions. In a typical street market, the sellers usually take the same position, usually earned by seniority (or longevity), so week after week, the buyer knows how to navigate along what is often a linear arrangement of vendors. Many stalls or tables lining an American flea market’s rows might randomly change from week to week, posing a mapping problem for the buyer.
Start over. Cognitive scientists propose models of the mind based on experimentation. That’s the nature of science you know: Test and verify; observe and verify; verify and re-verify. From the late nineteenth century through the early twentieth century, some “scientists of the mind,” like Wilhelm Wundt, William James, and Franz Brentano thought that asking individuals to look inward and report might yield “scientific” insights into motives for behavior. In their efforts, they sought some experimental methodology that could overcome the subjective nature of the process, subjective because, in using memory to reconstruct motive, the subject under examination might not possess a perfect recall of causes and circumstances and might additionally be influenced by memories superimposed upon memories. Also, reporting is, at best, too dependent upon vocabulary. Take words for “blue.” According to nineteenth century philologist Lazarus Geiger, most European languages have words for “blue” derived from ancient words for “black,” but some languages have words for “blue” derived from ancient words for “green.” I might say, “It looks blue,” and someone else might offer, “It looks azure.” Are we thinking the same color? Language is one of the problematic aspects of introspection. Yet another is an extension of the language problem: If you frame a pattern for your life in retrospect, isn’t that pattern subject to your culture’s way of describing a person? Still another problem is that introspection is, we commonly say, a conscious act. So, you might ask, isn’t looking inward what we’re advised to do by the guys who speak from atop those many hills of wisdom? “Consciously look inward, my child, if you want to understand yourself.”
Well, stop a moment. How conscious were you of the individual letters in the sentences you just read? How conscious were you of the seat upon which you have been sitting? Get the point? Much of what we do doesn’t seem to be open for detailed introspection. If we spent time on those details, we would not have time to do anything else. And since some of that underlying mental activity is always infusing what we do, then we can’t really “introspect” with “flawless” accuracy (a.k.a. “scientific accuracy”). And so it goes with some of the most familiar patterns in our lives. The patterns of letters on this page are cultural forms you have mastered unless I write something like orpwfm. The first two letters make a recognizable pattern: or, as in orphan and order. Even the pattern orp is somewhat recognizable because it is found with a silent p in Marine Corps. But pw is a new pattern, one not used in English, and the pattern pwfm is similarly strange.
Maps are also patterns. They can be patterns of patterns. We see patterns of objects, for example, on a table game, such as chess or checkers, and we transform the pattern into a memorable mental image or into a word description that can be converted into a pattern we recognize: Qe5, or “move the Queen to e5.” On a football field, “Run a post pattern,” the quarterback tells the receiver, and the receiver transforms the words into a movement along first a straight line perpendicular to the line of scrimmage followed by continuous, but second movement along a diagonal line toward the field’s center section. “Put the book on the top shelf.” “Sit at the head of the table.” “Place a fork on the left side of the plate.” “Line up downstage.” “Build a backdoor here.” “He grew up on the other side of the tracks.” “I think something is spoiled in the fridge.” “Hey up there! Turn down that music!” These previous sentences, and an indefinite number of others, all imply this: If you know the terms, you can transform them into a pattern, and the pattern is a map. When you don’t know the terms, you still map by visual clues. When you can’t see, you can map by sound. When you can’t hear, you can still map by touch. When you can’t touch, you can map by smell. “Ah! freshly baked bread. We must be passing the bakery.”
So, we map in many ways, and we apparently map everything in our sensible world. I know your face. You know mine. The pattern doesn’t even have to be complete for the reading of the map. I recognize you by your eyes. I recognize you by your posture. I recognize you by your walk and by an overall appearance. I see you in profile, and I know it is you. I see the back of your head, and I know it is you. I map in 3-D. Recognizing involves more than a set of lenses focusing on all the details because, in fact, we don’t literally see all the details. Remember your elementary school science class and the little test on vision. The human eye has a blind spot. Yet, we ignore that gap in our visual field as we view any scene. We map more than we see.
Now here’s the human part. We also map the intangible, particularly attitudes. “Avoid that neighborhood at night.” “Party here for a good time.” “Stay there for peace and quiet.” “One of the great vacation spots!” “It’s a war zone.” “The ground is unstable.” “The property has no value because there’s a mine fire beneath the town.” “I don’t want to live anywhere in Nunavut.” “There’s gold in them thar hills!”
Because mapping is essential to motile living in a complex world, each of us might consider how, why, and what we map. Understanding both the process of mental mapping and its content will yield clues not only about our personal nature, but also about the nature of any animal species with a brain.
Mapping processes seem to take one of three forms either individually or in combination: top-down, bottom-up, and comparative. The top-down process starts with wholes and concepts and works toward comprehending and organizing the parts. The bottom-up process does just the opposite. The combination runs from big picture to small picture and back again until focus centers on one or the other. You will not find these processes described this way in the literature of cognitive scientists intent on grinding particular paradigm axes. But think about this for a moment.
If you walk into a familiar grocery store, you know where to go for the milk. Typically, grocers put items like milk and eggs at the back of the store so that you must walk by other products whose attractive packaging might tempt you to add them to your cart. The management uses top-down mapping to arrange the store’s products, deducing from research on product sales and years of data. As you enter a familiar store, you have a map that points the way to the product you desire, and as you walk the aisles, you see familiar landmarks that you previously mapped.
Having shopped in one American grocery store gives you a map that guides you when you walk into the second store. It is a map based on inductive reasoning and analogy. You have seen multiple grocery stores arranged similarly, so you conclude an unfamiliar store has the same arrangement of goods. That’s essentially mapping by comparison, a system of orienting based on the concept—either inferred or learned—of grocery store patterns. The arrangement applies to large stores throughout North, South, and Central America, so the pattern crosses cultural lines.
Most open street markets, straw markets, and flea markets manifest bottom-up development that result from seasons or even years of randomness. The ability to map such randomly developed markets presents no special problems for the shopper. Walk the street a time or two. Even if you do not stop at all the tables or stalls, you map the market, and the map is valid as long as the participants maintain their relative positions. In a typical street market, the sellers usually take the same position, usually earned by seniority (or longevity), so week after week, the buyer knows how to navigate along what is often a linear arrangement of vendors. Many stalls or tables lining an American flea market’s rows might randomly change from week to week, posing a mapping problem for the buyer.
Start over. Cognitive scientists propose models of the mind based on experimentation. That’s the nature of science you know: Test and verify; observe and verify; verify and re-verify. From the late nineteenth century through the early twentieth century, some “scientists of the mind,” like Wilhelm Wundt, William James, and Franz Brentano thought that asking individuals to look inward and report might yield “scientific” insights into motives for behavior. In their efforts, they sought some experimental methodology that could overcome the subjective nature of the process, subjective because, in using memory to reconstruct motive, the subject under examination might not possess a perfect recall of causes and circumstances and might additionally be influenced by memories superimposed upon memories. Also, reporting is, at best, too dependent upon vocabulary. Take words for “blue.” According to nineteenth century philologist Lazarus Geiger, most European languages have words for “blue” derived from ancient words for “black,” but some languages have words for “blue” derived from ancient words for “green.” I might say, “It looks blue,” and someone else might offer, “It looks azure.” Are we thinking the same color? Language is one of the problematic aspects of introspection. Yet another is an extension of the language problem: If you frame a pattern for your life in retrospect, isn’t that pattern subject to your culture’s way of describing a person? Still another problem is that introspection is, we commonly say, a conscious act. So, you might ask, isn’t looking inward what we’re advised to do by the guys who speak from atop those many hills of wisdom? “Consciously look inward, my child, if you want to understand yourself.”
Well, stop a moment. How conscious were you of the individual letters in the sentences you just read? How conscious were you of the seat upon which you have been sitting? Get the point? Much of what we do doesn’t seem to be open for detailed introspection. If we spent time on those details, we would not have time to do anything else. And since some of that underlying mental activity is always infusing what we do, then we can’t really “introspect” with “flawless” accuracy (a.k.a. “scientific accuracy”). And so it goes with some of the most familiar patterns in our lives. The patterns of letters on this page are cultural forms you have mastered unless I write something like orpwfm. The first two letters make a recognizable pattern: or, as in orphan and order. Even the pattern orp is somewhat recognizable because it is found with a silent p in Marine Corps. But pw is a new pattern, one not used in English, and the pattern pwfm is similarly strange.
Maps are also patterns. They can be patterns of patterns. We see patterns of objects, for example, on a table game, such as chess or checkers, and we transform the pattern into a memorable mental image or into a word description that can be converted into a pattern we recognize: Qe5, or “move the Queen to e5.” On a football field, “Run a post pattern,” the quarterback tells the receiver, and the receiver transforms the words into a movement along first a straight line perpendicular to the line of scrimmage followed by continuous, but second movement along a diagonal line toward the field’s center section. “Put the book on the top shelf.” “Sit at the head of the table.” “Place a fork on the left side of the plate.” “Line up downstage.” “Build a backdoor here.” “He grew up on the other side of the tracks.” “I think something is spoiled in the fridge.” “Hey up there! Turn down that music!” These previous sentences, and an indefinite number of others, all imply this: If you know the terms, you can transform them into a pattern, and the pattern is a map. When you don’t know the terms, you still map by visual clues. When you can’t see, you can map by sound. When you can’t hear, you can still map by touch. When you can’t touch, you can map by smell. “Ah! freshly baked bread. We must be passing the bakery.”
So, we map in many ways, and we apparently map everything in our sensible world. I know your face. You know mine. The pattern doesn’t even have to be complete for the reading of the map. I recognize you by your eyes. I recognize you by your posture. I recognize you by your walk and by an overall appearance. I see you in profile, and I know it is you. I see the back of your head, and I know it is you. I map in 3-D. Recognizing involves more than a set of lenses focusing on all the details because, in fact, we don’t literally see all the details. Remember your elementary school science class and the little test on vision. The human eye has a blind spot. Yet, we ignore that gap in our visual field as we view any scene. We map more than we see.
Now here’s the human part. We also map the intangible, particularly attitudes. “Avoid that neighborhood at night.” “Party here for a good time.” “Stay there for peace and quiet.” “One of the great vacation spots!” “It’s a war zone.” “The ground is unstable.” “The property has no value because there’s a mine fire beneath the town.” “I don’t want to live anywhere in Nunavut.” “There’s gold in them thar hills!”
Because mapping is essential to motile living in a complex world, each of us might consider how, why, and what we map. Understanding both the process of mental mapping and its content will yield clues not only about our personal nature, but also about the nature of any animal species with a brain.
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