Mechanisms of the Brain and Cultures

摘要

Mathematical and neural mechanisms of concepts, emotions, instincts, imaginations, intuitions are described. The paper reviews past mathematical difficulties of modeling the mind and a new mathematical theory of dynamic logic (DL) and neural modeling fields (NMF), which overcome these difficulties. DL evolves fuzzy logic into crisp one. Orders of magnitude improvement is achieved in recognition, fusion, predictions. NMF-DL is extended to a hierarchical mind system, to language and interaction of language and cognition. It follows that language, symbolic abilities, and higher cognitive functions could only evolve jointly. Models of neural mechanisms are developed for the mind hierarchy; they explain roles of the beautiful, music, sublime in the mind, cognition, and evolution of languages and cultures. DL is related to the knowledge instinct, a mechanism that drives the mind to understand the world. This instinct is more important than sex or food. Two mechanisms of the knowledge instinct, differentiation and synthesis, determine evolution of consciousness and cultures, and explain three types of cultural evolutions. The knowledge-acquiring cultures lead to science and technology, but doubt their values; traditional cultures invest limited amount of knowledge with strong emotions, values are certain but knowledge stagnates; multi-cultural societies combine knowledge and values. Different languages lead to different emotionalities and different evolutionary paths of cultures. Differences in emotional mechanisms of languages lead to different paths of cultural evolution and affect cultures no less than lexical contents.