How the Brain Creates Emergent Information by the Development of Mental Models: An Analysis from the Perspective of Temporal Factorisation and Criterial Causation

Mental models usually are considered to represent a form of information or knowledge about situations or processes in the world or about mental states and processes in humans. In this chapter it is explored how this informational view on mental models relates to two more general principles that have been introduced in recent years: temporal factorisation and criterial causation. Propagated activation of neurons in the brain through their network co-occurs with adaptation of characteristics of this network such as connection strengths or excitability thresholds. According to the principle of criterial causation, these adaptive network characteristics can be interpreted as informational criteria for future activation of a considered neuron. This then is viewed as a form of emergent information formation and use of this information: the activation of neurons as determined by such information is termed criterial causation, where the information defines the criteria. The criterial causation principle strongly relates to the principle of temporal factorisation for the dynamics of the world in general, describing how the world represents information about its past in its present state, which then in turn determines the world’s future. In the chapter, these processes are analysed in more detail and modeled by (adaptive) network models showing how mental models that are learnt can be interpreted as emerging information according to the principles of criterial causation and temporal factorisation.