78 A Programmer’s Guide to the Mind
enjoying ourselves. Or, we state in the middle of a party, at which there is
lots of tasty food, fun games, exciting music, and good friendship, that we
want to go home to bed.
In contrast to Mercy thought, Perceiver strategy is stuck with a sort of
„chicken-and-egg‟ problem: Eggs are laid by chickens, but without eggs,
no chickens will hatch. Which then comes first, the chicken or the egg?
How can the cycle of chicken and egg start without having both a chicken
and an egg?
This is the situation faced by Perceiver thought. In order to know what
to believe, Perceiver thinking compares new facts with the existing system
of beliefs already residing within the internal Perceiver world. But, a
system of belief can only be constructed by putting together a number of
individual beliefs. So what comes first, the system of belief or the belief?
How can the cycle of evaluating and testing new beliefs start without an
already operational belief system? Hmmm. For the Perceiver person, this is
not just a theoretical problem. He lives within the Perceiver „room.‟
Conscious thought in him requires an operating internal world of beliefs.A
Wow! We have barely started this book and already we are into heavy
questions of metaphysics and philosophy. Let us step around some of the
mental minefields and approach this loaded topic from the viewpoint of
programming a computer. After all, this is a Programmer’s Guide to the
Mind, right?
We will start with a simple fact. Suppose I believe that „2 + 2 = 4.‟
Why do I think this is true? Because I learned it in school. Why is the
school correct? Because the information
came from a book of mathematics. Why is
mathematics correct? Because someone
decided that the symbol „2‟ would represent
two of something and he discovered that if
he gathered two of something twice, then he
would end up with something which he
decided to call „4.‟ But why is this so?
Because the world happens to be that way.
But why is the world that way? Because!
Now quit bugging your mother and go play
with your toys.
A We will see later that facts which are repeated within automatic Perceiver
memory are suggested as beliefs to the internal Perceiver world. However,
this mechanism of reasonableness only moves the problem to an earlier
stage. I must acquire many facts in order to determine the reasonableness
of a new piece of information. But, how can I know whether the
knowledge which gives me my sense of reasonableness, in automatic
memory, is itself reasonable?