Mental Models LVII

"Thoughts are the images of things, words are of thoughts; and we all know that images and pictures are only so true as they are true representations men and things. […] For poets as well painters think it their business to take likeness of things from their appearance."(Joseph Trapp, "Lectures on Poetry", 1711)

"By reducing imagination to the power of forming images, and by  insisting that no image can be formed except out of the elements furnished by experience, I do not mean to confound imagination with memory; indeed, the frequent occurrence of great strength of memory with comparative feebleness of imagination, would suffice to warn us against such a conclusion." (George H Lewes, "The Principles of Success in Literature", 1865)

"However rapid and remote their flight of thought, it is a succession of images, not of abstractions. The details which give significance, and which by us are seen vaguely as through a vanishing mist, are by them seen in sharp outlines. The image which to us is a mere suggestion, is to them almost as vivid as the object. And it is because they see vividly that they can paint effectively." (George H Lewes, "The Principles of Success in Literature", 1865)

"The strangest and most wonderful constructions in the whole animal world are the amazing, intricate constructions made by the primate Homo sapiens. Each normal individual of this species makes a self. Out of its brain it spins a web of words and deeds, and, like the other creatures, it doesn't have to know what it's doing; it just does it. This web protects it, just like the snail's shell. […] As such, it plays a singularly important role in the ongoing cognitive economy of that living body, because, of all the things in the environment an active body must make mental models of, none is more crucial than the model the agent has of itself." (Daniel Dennett, "Consciousness Explained", 1991)

"[Language comprehension] involves many components of intelligence: recognition of words, decoding them into meanings, segmenting word sequences into grammatical constituents, combining meanings into statements, inferring connections among statements, holding in short-term memory earlier concepts while processing later discourse, inferring the writer’s or speaker’s intentions, schematization of the gist of a passage, and memory retrieval in answering questions about the passage. [… The reader] constructs a mental representation of the situation and actions being described. […] Readers tend to remember the mental model they constructed from a text, rather than the text itself." (Gordon H Bower & Daniel G Morrow, 1990)

"We build mental models that represent significant aspects of our physical and social world, and we manipulate elements of those models when we think, plan, and try to explain events of that world. The ability to construct and manipulate valid models of reality provides humans with our distinctive adaptive advantage; it must be considered one of the crowning achievements of the human intellect." (Gordon H Bower & Daniel G Morrow, 1990)

"[For] us to be able to speak and understand novel sentences, we have to store in our heads not just the words of our language but also the patterns of sentences possible in our language. These patterns, in turn, describe not just patterns of words but also patterns of patterns. Linguists refer to these patterns as the rules of language stored in memory; they refer to the complete collection of rules as the mental grammar of the language, or grammar for short." (Ray Jackendoff, "Patterns in the Mind", 1994)

"When we visually perceive the world, we do not just process information; we have a subjective experience of color, shape, and depth. We have experiences associated with other senses (think of auditory experiences of music, or the ineffable nature of smell experiences), with bodily sensations (e.g., pains, tickles, and orgasms), with mental imagery (e.g., the colored shapes that appear when one tubs one's eyes), with emotion (the sparkle of happiness, the intensity of anger, the weight of despair), and with the stream of conscious thought." (David Chalmers, "The Puzzle of Conscious Experience", Scientific American, 1995)

"Actually, around 80% of the data we use to make decisions is already in our heads before we engage with a situation. Our power to perceive is governed and limited by cognitive filters, sometimes termed our ‘mental model’. Mental models are formed as a result of past experience, knowledge and attitudes. They are deeply ingrained, often subconscious, structures that limit what we perceive and also colour our interpretation of supposed facts." (Robina Chatham & Brian Sutton, "Changing the IT Leader’s Mindset", 2010)

"Mental models are formed over time through a deep enculturation process, so it follows that any attempt to align mental models must focus heavily on collective sense making. Alignment only happens through a process of socialisation; people working together, solving problems together, making sense of the world together." (Robina Chatham & Brian Sutton, "Changing the IT Leader’s Mindset", 2010)