Ever since I was a child I have tried to explore mind in a subjective-objective manner, that is, in a way that feels right, helps me to really know what’s going on, not just having logical, rational consistency. So, I naturally became interested in meditation (or mental cultivation) quite early on whilst also studying formal methods in computer science. I have explored numerous avenues as a result, trying always to retain coherence of an overall picture. In some cases, I have not got very far.

Just a few glimpses on this page, with further reading in the respective sections.

Mind, Brain and Education

Advances in neuroscience, aided by ever-higher spec’ed imaging equipment, has led to ever-finer neural correlates being established between human behaviour and well-being and observable phenomena in the brain. In recent decades, a particular area of research has been emotional development, especially among children. It is an area that I first learnt about through the work of Antonio Damasio, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang and colleagues at the University of Southern California, who observed in the context of online engagement that nobler instincts take time.

I then learnt about the International Mind, Brain and Education Society (IMBES) and was encouraged to submit a poster proposal for their 2018 annual conference, my first consideration of the use of cognitive interventions — in the form of thinking routines — in the design of systems. But whilst the selection panel found it interesting, they considered that it didn’t meet the conference remit. Nevertheless, I decided to continue the research and shortly after posted a couple of articles on my blog

• Blog post, 27 August 2018: Pause for Thought: The Use of Interventions in Social Networking Sites
• Blog post, 4 September 2018: Pause for Thought: The Use of Interventions in Social Networking Sites (Part 2)

There is a lot of talk in academic circles about interdisciplinary research, but based on my experiences at Oxford University, whilst there continue to be some wonderful discoveries across boundaries, it is more normal for activities to be specialist and compartmentalised, at the expense of being holistic.

In the case of mind and education, the assumptions about mind are objective/materialist. From this the research inevitably becomes heavily dependent on machinery and thereby prevents a vital broadening of inter-disciplinary dialogue to encompass other methods in cognitive science. There are indeed many approaches to study the mind, and their proper appraisal should lead to a fuller, more holistic understanding its nature.

Mapping Mental Processes

The Buddhist approach to studying mind is epitomised in Abhidhamma, an exceedingly detailed and systematic analysis of the processes in which our minds are caught up. The technical term is citta and it may be broken down into many kinds of cetasikas (thought moments). I believe it is useful to study Abhidhamma to create mind maps and thereby learn more about how processes become variously wholesome and unwholesome. It helps to establish the right basis on which to introduce cognitive interventions, but the study is not for beginners — a general understanding of basic teachings is a prerequisite.

Mind and Artificial Intelligence

How do humans think? And what about machines? We may approach this from an orientation of cultivating more discerning awareness, as intimated above. There are many useful applications of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly in the field of education and personalised learning. However, unrestrained development is likely to be disastrous and where it is used there needs to be transparency in the methods and processes.

We may also gain clues by studying historical figures who displayed extraordinary creativity, particularly in the field of mathematics. One such figure was Srinivasa Ramanujan, a mathematical genius, who displayed extraordinary intuition. I have spent some time exploring his approach by reference to recollections from contemporaries. He features prominently in my book, Buddhism and Computing: How to Flourish in the Age of Algorithms.

My original motivation for studying Abhidhamma was to seek some rigour as I approached the nebulous area commonly referred to as ‘mind, brain and consciousness’. Since developing the Sigala project, I have narrowed this down to the consideration of safety-critical aspects in human cognitive processes. By safety, I mean protection from serious human loss across the khandhas i.e. body, feelings, perceptions, memory and mental formations and consciousness.

Abhidhamma says a lot about processes, so my basic idea is to identify key (safety-critical) processes in the lifecycle of social media use and then seek to model them formally in terms of Abhidhamma processes involved. Such processes may typically be characterised as wholesome, unwholesome or neutral — and can be broken down to the micro level — as cetasikas (‘thought moments’).

The mind maps below are offered as an aid to navigating just a portion, concerning some of the more well-known aspects. They were created using XMind on a Mac (for other systems, you may need to choose another font for viewing).

Please download the zip file and then unzip the archive. This should provide you with five files:

• mātikā (classification of terms): matika.xmind
• citta (consciousness, heart/mind) : citta.xmind
• cetasika (mental properties): cetasika.xmind
• paccaya (conditions): paccaya.xmind
• vīthi (processes): viithi.xmind

Application to cognitive activities

How do we design systems that lead to generally wholesome states? We may use cognitive interventions!

Feel free to get in touch with queries via the contact form, though please note I am not an expert in Abhidhamma!