KnowledgeNet

A model for the fabric of the mind has been tentatively settled-on [link]. It’s one that characterizes what’s inside my skull as a 3-dimensional network of delicately connected instances of prior experience and feeling. Prior experience is stored on this network in the form of linked propositions (as in predicate logic). This is referred to as a KnowledgeNet and it is necessary for reading comprehension. Reading is an active, constructive process that requires the interaction of elements of text and the KnowledgeNet. The more area on the net that you activate when you read, the more you are able to understand and remember. Under ordinary circumstances, signals from the senses produce ripples that spread out over this fabric, like stones on a pond, activating network-connections until a clear mental representation is formed. However, when something goes wrong, and there’s a disturbance in the fabric, activation may become amp’d and diffuse ..compounding insubstantial phenomena until, what may have started out as a gentle hummingbird, for example .. becomes a ferocious beast. Sometimes I think it’s only a matter of degree between clarity and delusion ..especially when I consider how many times I mistook a perfectly innocent remark as hostility.