Page Updated 30/12/2020 Previous Version: 13/09/2019 
Introduction
The high level ways of thinking that humans use have been called many things – I am calling them meta frames.
Genetic epistemology, psychology, learning theory are related terms which describe how human minds change.
Many thinkers, philosophers and scientists have considered how the human mind works. Aristotle, Plato , Euclid, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Friedrich Hayek, René Descartes, Abraham Maslow, Jean Piaget, Christof Kock ,psychologists and many others.
The human mind is complex and there has always been a debate about how humans learn. This problem is often presented as the a-priori argument or bootstrapping. What already exists in the mind that leads to the development of everything else? This is sometimes connected with the ideas of good, bad, morals and ethics and the motivations of human choice of action.
I hypothesize that there is general agreement of a large number of thinkers of general meta frames which are developed in humans.
1. Initial Conditions
We have to assume initial conditions before we can examine the universe. This presentation looks at the initial conditions and some symbols I might use to help describe human events.
Video MP4, PDF of Slideshow and Audio MP3
2. Exist?
That is the first question. Does anything exist, did I observe something to exist and then it existed or was it already there before I observed it. Do I exist only because I observed something? Did I observe that I observed something and that’s why I know I exist? The idea starts out very simply looking at the apple sitting in front of you and then develops into all time and all space to become a larger question of the universe.
Yes the apple exists and so do you. You are you and the apple is an apple.
These ideas keep thinkers, philosophers and scientists quite entertained. A lot of it is tied up with the idea of self awareness (being conscious), objectiveness, subjectiveness (ontology), reality, certainty and knowledge (epistemology). As we are complex creatures who are not exactly the same there can be different interpretations. Humans like to dissect and abstract things – breaking down everything into constituent parts and then trying to derive meaning and make connections with other objects and ideas.
I prefer to examine humans as complex complete creatures who operate as Humans (more in line with Martin Heidegger, Arthur Schopenhauer, George Berkeley and Bertrand Russell)
Imagine a new human senses pain, hears or sees something. The first question is WHAT?
3. Noticing Events and Actions – Observe
We start noticing things – everything, all the time. We notice objects, time, people, events, causes, effects – everything. These questions come out as WHAT, HOW, WHEN, WHERE, WHO. These sometimes get reduced to the question WHY?
Then we have to make sense of the answers to questions so we develop words and abstraction. Humans are naturally curious – it helps us survive.
4. Words and Abstraction
Child Psychologists have been looking at how new humans develop and what exactly is going on in the brain. Experiments have been done and theories have been developed and improved over time. B.F. Skinner and Jean Piaget have recently worked on this.
A word is an abstraction for an object. We don’t keep real apples in our head, we keep a word which means apple and we can share the word with other humans. This is an important development.
The Word IS is used to declare something worth noticing. e.g. “A blue dragon IS more dangerous than a green one.”, “What IS that?” The thing declared does not have to EXIST so it can be an HYPOTHESIS with no relationship to EXISTENCE.
As we are linking objects and events we start to build language constructs. E.g. I ate apple. As this goes on our Human brain builds schemas where abstract words are linked and arranged in order.
5. Same, Different, Like, Group, Order, Hierarchy, Memory, Time
That’s an apple, That’s meat. I can eat an apple and I can eat meat. They are similar. Let us call this a new word – food – which describes all the things I can eat. So when I eat something different – an orange – I can group that with food. An orange is more like an apple because they have seeds and are round. I could call them fruit. Fruit is a type of food.
There is a lot of work going on here building words, connections, grouping and hierarchies.
6. Numbers
Put an apple down and then put another apple next to it. What does that mean? Let’s call it two apples. We could keep putting down apples – let’s call that adding. We could take an apple away – let’s call that subtraction. A whole theory of numbers start to develop but what emerges then becomes really disturbing. Some of these concepts may emerge earlier or later as well but somehow it is easier to explain from my point of view with numbers.
If you take the last apple away – how many apples do you have?
If you keep adding apples and do not stop what does that mean?
7. Zero, Self Definition (Recursion), Infinity
Zero or Nothing seems to be a recently discovered concept. There is no real way of confirming this but we do know that it has been controversial and it’s (re)discovery was not universally well accepted.
Zero highlights the questions of existence. What if I don’t exist or the universe itself is nothing or becomes nothing? These thoughts can disturb some people.
Infinity comes at another extreme of the issue – if we keep adding numbers, doing a process to itself, – when does it end? The process just repeats – for ever – infinity. This is also a disturbing concept for some people.
Self definition is a disturbing thought. It is related to the notion of why something exists, where is the beginning or end of anything. So self definition, zero and infinity often get mixed up together and argued about.
What does the word word mean? It’s a word. You could describe what the word word does, how it is used, the various other meanings it has taken on but at the end of the day it just means itself. You could not describe word as a word until you had conceived word as a concept and given it meaning.
These concepts are debated all the time. How can we think if we don’t already know how to think?
8. Language and Symbols
Humans tend to form some conceptual model of the universe and will use words and symbols to represent that model. How we develop those models tends to be structured around choices, uncertainty and sequence. We need information to help make choices and we are not always certain what choices we should make. This is reflected in the structure of our language. We also recognize difference – when things are different and have developed the concept of same and different.
Video MP4 (10 Mb) , PDF of Slideshow and Audio MP3
9. Equality and Diversity
Equality (sameness) and diversity (difference) seem to be two sides of the same discussion.
Video MP4, PDF of Slideshow, Audio MP3 – Spreadsheet of Variables.
10. Proportion
What does proportion mean? How do humans get “fair” proportions? What is a proportional response? This looks at ideas about divided things and sharing.