I go into this next entry with an unfortunate lack of proof. I hold that it comes out of some very basic logical ideas which are mostly lost to me. I start out with the idea that in this hierarchical structure of the brain, it can be said that any mneme within it is a statistically averaged compilation of smaller mnemes. Here is a classical paradox of an item being defined by itself. But as is written in one of the many examples in Godel Escher Bach, the object is only being defined by smaller Versions of itself. Attempting define these recursively defined objects plagues the mind with recursive problems. Pondering this enough leads one to think that the only way to fully understand the workings of a mneme, you must first fully understand the workings of a mneme. Depending on the kind of person you are, this can either seem like a brick wall, or a path of infinite opportunity. Obviously I think the latter.

Now I would like to say that trying to define the mneme is a bit difficult because no-one would really accept a definition simply as "a recursive object that eludes defining". What I'd expect works best is attempting to define both its smaller parts , as well as its context. But wait, not only are the smaller pieces, mnemes themselves, but the context is a grander mneme the over arcs the original mneme. Unfortunately, the reason it is difficult to explain what a mneme is, is because our only tool for understanding, explaining, visualizing, and thinking, is this universal mneme. Its like trying to explain what an orange is, when all you have is the smell of one; you know there is something unique there, but you do not have the pieces to understand it.

We do however have a couple other tools. We do know that the brain has a basic biological basis, and therefore physical basis. Before i knew much of the structure of the cortex, I had believed that hypothetical webs of neurons with no distinct organization were the hierarchies in the brain. However, upon reading Hawkins' On Intelligence Ive come to believe the basic unit of thought is not a single neuron, but is a highly repeated structure known as a column in the cortex. This is a much more versatile structure than the simple input-output system of a neuron, and has most likely been time-tested by evolution. What must be noted is that the mnemes are not contained in or synonymous with the columns. The networks of columns are the mutable medium for which the mnemes travel through.

The last point I want to make in this entry is that the repeated layers of columns in the cortex are what cause the basic structures of low and high level mnemes to be identical. The individual columns are unaware of their place in the whole scheme of the brain; they are simply built to receive information, process it in its own way, and if conditions allow, pass the information on. As the different layers are built the same way they interact in relatively similar ways, but the scale in both time and space(in the brain's context) are very different.