Conceptualizing Mind Wandering Using a Systems Approach: a Preliminary Exploration
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Conceptualizing Mind Wandering Using a Systems Approach: a Preliminary Exploration Saroj Jayasinghe 1 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Mind wandering (MW) is a very common cognitive activity of the human mind. In recent times studying its functional correlates have gained the attention of cognitive scientists and psychologists. Most studies have focussed on neurophysiological studies to model and explain it. The current article explores the phenomenological dimensions of MW and attempts to develop a model based on content of thoughts. The author proposes that a complex adaptive system (CAS) is a suitable explanatory model. If so, the patterns of thoughts are emergent properties of a range of subsystems such as emotions, memories and external environmental stimuli. Creativity of humans can be attributed to these emergent thoughts. These may have implications in our understanding of mental distress (e.g. rumination) and illness. Keywords Mind wandering systems approach
Introduction Concepts in psychology and cognitive sciences are based on several implicit and explicit assumptions and beliefs that find resonance with mechanistic views of the mind. This paper argues that the prevalent concepts on mind wandering are sketchy and influenced by Newtonian mechanistic views in physical sciences and explores the application of complexity science (CS) to deepen our understanding of the mind. Models of thinking have been topics of interest to scientists for many decades, if not centuries. In recent times there has been an explosion of research on models of intelligence, cognitions and thinking, mainly due to advances in artificial intelligence (Hewa and Hetherington 1995). A major influence on models in western science was the distinction made by Rene Descartes (1596–1650) between the body and mind, known as mind-body dualism. He described a physical body that followed principles of * Saroj Jayasinghe [email protected]
1
Faculty of Medicine of University of Colombo, Kynsey Road, Colombo 00800, Sri Lanka
Integr Psych Behav
physics and mathematics, and motions in mechanical terms and a mind which was nonmaterial, willful, rational and had self-conscious behaviour (de Melo-Martín 2009). This duality allowed scientists to explore the mechanistic body leaving the ‘mind’ to the church, clergy and philosophers (Berrios 2018). However, the mechanistic revolution by Sir Isaac Newton (1643 to 1727) based on theories of motion, optics and gravity, and a ‘clockwork universe, diffused to the biological sciences and by the eighteenth century the human body and mind were increasingly described as a machine and diseases as their defects (von Debschitz 2009; Engel 1977). These concepts influenced psychology, and an example is Freud’s (1856 to 1939) theories of psychoanalysis. His explanatory model describes psychopathology and behaviors in terms of interactions between three mental entities: an ego, super-ego and id, and implicitly recognizing a mechanistic relationship among them. Theo
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