Any nervous system starts with just two parameters:
1. Motivation
2. Spatial memory
Motivation initially presents as the drive for self-replication. As motivation develops, it can take more complex forms. An early addition is the motivation to self-preserve. Obviously, self-preservation is often conducive to self-replication. But because self-replication reigns supreme, nature is full of examples of self-annihilation for the purpose of self-replication. Furthermore, nature cannot make exact copies. Some copies are improvements, and others are deformations. Self-destructive motivation without a benefit for self-replication or group selection is a common short side branch in evolution.
Spatial memory is the second original component of any nervous system. Even primitive organisms like the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans, with a nervous system of just 302 neurons, exhibit it. The original capability embedded in spatial memory is the use of information regarding favorable conditions for self-replication and, by extension, self-preservation.
Spatial memory is biologically fairly straightforward. Storage occurs in constructs of proteins or other molecules that are shaped as images of the outside world. Not photographic images, of course, but representations of data, which can include all kinds of sensory input, as well as, by association, information derived from other data already stored.
Motivation and spatial memory interact, and in this process, images of the world stored in spatial memory are evaluated, first on a simple scale from worst to best. This evaluation is then translated into motor impulses, which are the origin of behavior.
While the encoding of motivation itself has probably seen comparatively less development to optimize its functionality, the brain’s spatial memory, which represents the outside world (a map in a rather conventional sense), has almost unlimited potential for improvement. The highly differentiated emotional tagging of the image of the outside world, for example, allows for extreme differentiation in motor response. This is why humans, with the most highly differentiated nervous system, rule the world. The more meaningful the spatial images of the world stored in a nervous system, the more benefit is derived from the corresponding motor responses.
Arthur Schopenhauer's main work was titled The World as Will and Representation. The first sentence states: “The world is my representation.”
Reword this in more scientific terminology, and you get: The World is Motivation and Spatial Memory.
Motivation and spatial memory, and the manner in which the relationship between the two translates into action, are at the base of human existence and all the intellectual capabilities we may possess. This is a central theme of the Kreutz Ideology and is evident even in mundane topics, such as evaluating where in the world we might expect to find the best sex.
