Mental orientation.

Some people have perfect orientation in 3-dimensional space,some animals have it too in particular birds . The faster and further you move the more you need it! We think orientation is based on some understanding of primitive geometry ,yet we are the only animal having developed geometry. Perhaps orientation is pre-geometry,hence it is more fundamental and it is the origin of geometry? How does orientation start? Probably it is the result of ordering observations of objects in a 3-dimensional picture and then step by step abstracting the local picture in one big picture ,like a primitive map.Changes in the situation give rise to frequent up-dating of the information .But the memory may not contain “maps” of large area so you would expect some memory aids to be used.This could be the position of the sun ,then also a good estimate of the time of day is needed ,or perhaps the position of the stars for night dwellers but a feeling for time at night is harder to obtain,as we all know by experience!
Now I was thinking about orientation in our mind!
This should be a mental picture of meanings in our memory in a non-spatial environment ,a way of navigating quickly and without Google between ideas ! It is evident that an idea like cheese is closer to the idea of bread than to philosophy for example. So even if we are not aware of being guided by a context for the idea this seems to be the only thing one can think of in order to create some order in the chaotic mass of ideas . Order is related to topology (the logic of topos ,so something like the art of describing “place”) and the notion of context I employ rather intuitively here may be seen as describing “neighborhoods” of some idea or rather its meaning. But in the brain there is actually a 3-dimensional orientation going on ,however there is a kond of network ordering defined by the biological structure and the functions of the ingredients. This is something that could be investigated and modeled even by some mathematical theories,but we do not know enough about the brain activity in connection with meanings in the memory to really do this now already. Also we do not know whether the same meaning corresponds to exactly the same brain activity for example if the idea is thought again,again,… .It is clear that even a small change of meaning in an existing idea requires a whole correction process which is more elaborate than just thinking the new meaning immediately ,but that is impossible since a change of meaning depends on the link between the old and the new meaning . In fact such links may be the defining aspects of the topology on meanings we aim to arrive at ! Once in a “nightmare” I saw mathematical notions transform into daily objects like cheese and bread . That made me wonder (and it is the origin of this post) whether certain meanings of even unrelated ideas are nevertheless grouped in clusters by the memory ,like almost continuous deformations .So could it be that the mathematical idea “group” is a deformation of “bread” . I think this is true but the deformations are personal ,certain ideas that are used a lot by a person may be appearing in the memory as “priority ideas “in some mental class together ,the classes defining the neighborhood of the ideas in it .

In the 3-dimensional orientation ,when using memory aids like the position of the sun,the understanding of time was necessary. In the orientation in the universe of meanings what could be memory aids . You could think of the relation between meanings,eg bread and butter, that evolved from the use of the ideas by the person. But my group-bread nightmare suggests the priority meanings,those most used by the thinker could be used as beacons for navigation . The priority level may be seen as horizontal links,the relation in terms of meaning may be seen as vertical links. The horizontal links are then quickly recognized,for the vertical one it is necessary to compare meanings,these could also appear with “labels” referring to the neighborhood it lives in. If some meaning is not vertically linked to a priority meaning then the memory will have to search lower priority levels ,that will take time (perhaps this cognitive action can even explain the creation of time in our observations! which need not exist in reality!).We know this slowing down effect as “being not familiar with certain material”,so our aware notion of familiarity with something or some situation is just reflecting the depth of those ideas in the priority classification in the memory.The ideas in the priority level define the expertise of the person and these may be ranked via a learning process,the more advanced learning process on some idea the higher the meaning of it is in the priority ranking.

So there is certainly something like mental orientation. The orientation can be well developed or less depending on the person ,that could be a factor in distinguishing so-called quick thinkers from slow thinkers because they may navigate with different speeds between meanings.. Also the difference between people in thinking more abstractly or more concretely may derive from the topological structure of mental orientation.