The Mind as Knowledge and Experience: Accumulation, Thought Block, and Bodily Presence in Choice
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: I propose an organizing model of the formal mind as knowledge and experience: reusableobservations and techniques, and the lived history from which they develop. Skills aretechniques trained through experience; habits are repeated patterns rather than a third substance.I call the architecture these processes train the metastructure: a proposed organization ofheuristics, reconstruction, anticipation, and usable continuity of thought, not a newly identifiedneural network. The model predicts that relevant learning can reduce both avoidable errors andstalled thinking, while fixation and bodily disruption can limit or reverse that benefit. I also arguethat bodily sensation, presence, and practical constraints matter as much to the person as mentalpersonality. My earlier phrase “more than half” is a qualitative generalization about thatinterplay, not a measured percentage. The account draws on memory research, expertise,predictive processing, and interoception without treating their findings as proof of the wholemodel. Eight predictions and two proposed studies distinguish the organizing assumptions fromtestable consequences. Companion manuscripts address incomplete knowledge of costs, sociallyshaped wanting, association between perspectives, and the deliberate experience of ordinaryboredom; those connections are proposals rather than independent evidence. No new data arereported.
Author: Withington, Cole David
Institution: Portland State University
Language: English
Subfield: General Decision Sciences
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7225623255
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