Untitled Document

The Unified Theory of the Nervous System
and Behavior

Cognitive Philosophy /Brain Theory by Steven Michael Harris

I’ve met with Daniel C. Dennett

For a period of time I thought that the person closest to the truth in the realm of cognitive philosophy was Churchland (as I wrote earlier). Fairly recently I discovered the writings of Dennett and now think he is the closest to the truth of the published writers on the subject. I cornered the man for a talk. (I figured that I need to approach the leaders in the field, the best, because if they imply that I am deluded I can then ask them: "Is the crazy part that I picked you as the best in the field?")

When I told him that I thought I had come up with a unified theory and needed somebody to talk to about it, it was clear from his expression that he was not excited about the conversation and was already considering me to be naive or ignorant or worse. I would not get much time with the man. In spite of any feelings he might have had, he was quite gracious and I was able to talk to him for about 50 minutes or so. (Please think on how difficult it is to be really heard when the person you are talking to has already assumed that you are ignorant or crazy. It is difficult enough for these professors and doctors to consider the theories of other respected professionals in their fields. It is almost impossible to reach somebody who has already decided that you are wrong based on your lack of status and credentials.)

He told me that he thought I had some sound ideas but that he’d heard nothing new and that I was reinventing the horse. He proceeded to give me a reading list of the current writers in the field so I would know what has already been covered in the field. In this he was right. I have not come into the arena following the usual path and I would not know what would be most important points to argue when given a limited amount of time to make my case, but, then again, I have not had much experience trying to make my case because nobody ever is willing to give time to an outsider such as me.

I was trying to walk him towards the original parts of my theory as a great deal of time is necessary to argue most of the theory. So as he was saying that I was giving him nothing new (and as he was citing the variety of current writers on the subject who have stated similar ideas) I gave him something new and he agreed that it was new but that he was not sure that he could buy that idea. "But it would take several hours to make the case for that idea and you are not going to give me that time, are you?" I said. He agreed that he was not going to give me that time.

What I could not tell him (because the truth of it would sound too strange) was that I was able to discover many of these current ideas proposed by a variety of current professors in the realm of cognitive science - people who have gotten doctorates in the field and who have read the great body of literature available in the field and who have access to a great amount of clinical and scientific data - without any exposure to the same information. I pretty much covered the ground of these people by carefully looking at a copy of the DSM-IV and converting the data into a quirky mathematical/visual-spatial language and trying to mentally create a system that would predict the data, predict the groupings of symptoms and numbers in the population having such symptoms as the by-product of a brain organization that is designed for success but uses a language that makes these disorders occur in a predictable number of people as a result of the characteristics of a successful system. And I went much further than these current writers and thinkers but I have not yet been given a chance to explain what I have found.

I did this using the same kind of ability and in the same way that all autistic savants perform their variety of mathematical or artistic or musical accomplishments. (I will explain later why and how these abilities occur in these damaged people in the ways that they occur. I will explain later why these abilities are always in the same kinds of realms and never in the arena of language and emotion and social abilities. I will explain why they can’t put into words how they are able to do these things and explain how I was able to overcome that limitation and do the same thing in a variety of ways.) I have not told people this because it is difficult to believe how much I have overcome using the technique over the years. I don’t appear to be autistic (or Aspergers) at all these days but it would have been apparent during my childhood if current knowledge about such things was available when I was a child.

This kind of ability has run in my family as well. I’m told my grandfather was able to instantly multiply any two large numbers given to him and give the correct answer faster than you can work a calculator. He could not tell you how he was able to do this. He just did it. He did not appear to be autistic (although he did have his problems). He was not considered smart as a child and did not go to high school. He worked as a brick mason.

I was considered very smart as a child but I had serious limitations in language and social functioning. I have spent my life overcoming such difficulties and found an autistic savant-like way to make such growth. Many of my early inabilities have become great strengths. I will write much more about this journey elsewhere at another time.

I just need to say this to give a sense that there are ways possible to solve tremendous problems if you can figure out how (and why it is necessary) to trick the brain into solving these problems.

So I figured out how the brain creates intelligence mathematically, and once I figured out how it must work I then needed to read a great deal of information on a great many things (neurology, psychology...) to see if the mechanisms I predicted were really in place and to see if many of the things, data, numbers, behaviors that my theory predicted had been observed.

I’ve spent three years trying to disprove my theory and I don’t think it can be done. Every once in awhile I would come up with some material presented as fact/data that would disprove my theory and it would deflate me, but further examination of such data would show that the medical establishment was working off of a wrong conclusion and presenting the conclusion as a fact and the real observations and real data would actually support my theory better than it supported their wrong assumptions. This is extremely difficult work.

To communicate this theory I have needed to have more than one way of working my mind because I need to be able to quickly go back and forth from that non-language visual/spatial autistic savant way of thinking and then interpret it all in the form of language and current thought in a great number of different realms - and visa versa.

To be good at thinking up new theory of value does not necessarily imply that you will also have good ability to communicate such theory, but I think I’m doing a pretty good job at that in spite of my difficulties getting the attention of any part of that establishment. I have not gone to college so I’m not party to the rules of academic idea sharing. (And I’m starting to discover that some of these academic traditions are actually getting in the way of finding the truth in more ways than just making it difficult for me to get a hearing.)

So I’m an autistic savant without really being autistic. Instead of being focused on, say, listing all the prime numbers out to a hundred digits, I am performing mathematical calculations that explain most functionings of thinking and behavior and emotion and I do it instantly. I see a problem or behavior to explain neurologically, then I look at this enormous mathematical construct (it’s kind of like looking at a picture but vision is only 3-D and this mathematical "picture" is in many dimensions) and instantly know the answer. Eventually with enough time doing this many new problems don’t seem to be new problems because there are so many answers coming from the same mechanisms, so there is a lot of repetition.

If I was crazy, I'd probably pick Chalmers or some religious explanations of how the mind works rather than Dennett as the one closest to the truth in writings. (Dennett, or any other prominent thinker in the field, would probably prefer that I didn't make an endorsement like this.)

I will explain how these mechanisms work in other essays.

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