The Ancient of Days. William Blake. (More about it)
I’ve just wrapped up my dissertation at the LSE, finally slamming shut a book that might have gone on for a little too long. A relief, after a sweaty tea-fueled ending. What I’d first set out to do since I was a pimply teen is done and dusted.
And then, I lean back in my chair, stare at the ceiling, and ask: what now?
Even in the dumbest thing, there’s a whole mess of gears turning in the back of the head. Like sitting on a train, you take in the passing scenery, but behind all kinds of things are at work - pistons pumping, electricity buzzing - just to keep the whole thing on track. The mind is a complex thing. Today, I want to poke around two little cogs with you. Let this be a break from the news.
1. Inference systems
We possess an inherent understanding of cause and effect. When a ball hurtles toward me and I find myself on the ground with a sore face, the connection between these two events is immediately clear. There is no need for explanation; you and me both understand the relationship.
The mind has a system that interprets information for us, and it’s frightening how automatic it is. The inputs we receive are fragments (ball, man, face), so the mind fills the gaps. I didn’t tell you the ball hit my face, but you still inferred it.
This is the mind’s ability to predict outcomes. It’s not so different from a large language model—give it a prompt, and it interprets based on its training. For us, these predictions are nearly instinctive, shaped by our knowledge, memories, and expectations. Catching a ball improves with practice, we become better at determining cause and effect for that particular situation. It is deeply ingrained. Even six-month-olds can grasp cause and effect, identifying that one ball at hit the other, making it move.
This instinct is also the essence of high-order reasoning. To give you the taste with far greater words:
All reasonings concerning matter of fact seem to be founded on the relation of Cause and Effect. By means of that relation alone we can go beyond the evidence of our memory and senses.
Source: David Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.
Cause and effect is such an instinctive thing, like kicking a ball. But what’s so special is how we can use it to discover things that are beyond simply what we’ve seen or done. We can use logic to infer it. What happens if interest rates rise? Well, less borrowing, more saving, and prices might fall. This reasoning comes from the mind, even while it is happening out there.
This is all within us. It’s not something we just pull out of thin-air and make happen. We are born with certain capacities —cause and effect — and from that we can cultivate it in instinct and careful reasoning.
2. Categories
When Schopenhauer made his claim that ‘[t]he world is my representation,’ it wasn’t to say the world was his. It’s just that the only way for us to know the world around us, is if we represent it ourselves. “[H]e is not acquainted with either the sun or the earth, but rather only with an eye that sees a sun, with a hand that feels an earth.”
In these representations of the world we also create categories. I look ahead of me: a laptop, a book, a horse. Immediately, I’ve divided up the world into these entities. Some are objects, some are agents. The book is not just the pressed collection of thin strips of paper on which uniform ink etchings appear. It is a book, a category.
Our chappie, Aristotle, came up with what he confidently declared to be the ultimate categories. The absolute bees’ knees of classification,
Substance (e.g., man, horse)
Quantity (e.g., four-foot, five-foot)
Quality (e.g., white, grammatical)
Relation (e.g., double, half)
Place (e.g., in the Lyceum, in the market-place)
Date (e.g., yesterday, last year)
Posture (e.g., is lying, is sitting)
State (e.g., has shoes on, has armor on)
Action (e.g., cutting, burning)
Passion (e.g., being cut, being burned)
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Do you believe the world is truly organised this way, or is it just our minds that impose this order? Kant argues it’s our minds, because everything we know is filtered through our perception (Not far from Schopenhauer). In the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Kant explained that we cannot see things as they are in themselves, the noumenon. We only see ‘phenomena’ — how things appear to us, filtered through our categories of understanding.
These representations serve a practical purpose. By categorising the world into objects and agents, we create models of cause and effect. Our minds filter reality to represent it in a way that allows us to predict outcomes. For example, if you close your eyes, you can picture your bedroom. In this mental scene, you can move objects or add a nervous horse. You can even imagine the consequences of these changes (I imagine chaos). This ability to manipulate and predict within our representations is central to how we understand and navigate the world.
So,
To release you finally from this mickey-mouse philosophy. There are very complex things happening in our thoughts and acts. Even as you glance outside of a train window, unseen wonders are happening behind your eyes.
For one, we have an intrinsic understanding of cause and effect. This allows us to represent the world, to catch a ball, and even reason independently.
For two, we categorise what we see around us. Everything is represented every time we look. It’s trippy but true. Organising the world in this way, filtering things, helps us create cause and effect representations.
There we are, done.