\mindless agents of an inteligent mind\
...It, too, is a society--of many small ideas. Each by itself is only common sense, yet when we join enough of them we can explain the stangest mysteries of mind.
One trouble is that these ideas have lots of cross-connections. My explanations rarely go in neat, straight lines from start to end. I wish I could have lined them up so that you could climb straight to the top... instead they're tied in tangled webs. (perhaps the fault is actually mine...)
What can we do when things are hard to describe? (sketching out the rough shape, it doesn't matter if some of it is partially wrong, do some detailing for these skeleton ideas and discard what no longer fit.)
When we see the mind as a society of agents, each answer will illuminate the rest.
What kind of agents choose your words so that you can express the things you mean? How do those words get arranged into phrases and sentences, each connected to the next? What agencies inside your mind keep track of all the things you've said--and, also, whom you've said them to?
Common sense is not a simple thing. Instead, it is an immense society of hard-earned practical ideas--of multitudes of life-learned rules and exceptions, dispositions and tendencies, balances and checks...
This illusion of simlicity comes from losing touch with what happened during infancy, when we formed our first abilities. As each new group of skills matures, we build more layers on top of them. As time goes on, the layers below become increasingly remote until, when we try to speak of them in later life, we find ourselves with little more to say than "I don't know."
Sketches from “Society of Mind”, just some thoughts I’d like to remember and pass on to everyone who wants.
