From Reading to Commonsense Assumptions

Consider this sentence : 

John was preparing an omelet. 

The moment we finish reading this sentence, some things instinctively flash in our minds - like, John was in the kitchen, it was probably morning breakfast time, the omelette was for breakfast etc. (It doesn't flash in our minds that say, John was on a street-hawkers' cart preparing omelette for a customer.) 

These are commonsense follow-ups from a piece of data presented to us. This works in 3 broad stages (not necessarily in ordered serial processing; we shall come to that later; first just note the 3 essential stages) : 

Stage 1) Factual content collection - The mind has to firstly know what matter is being presented i.e. the words. This simply decides if there is a 'bird' in the data or a 'man' in the data - something to that effect.

Stage 1') Applying the rules of language learnt, to piece together these bits into an ordered structure knowing all the relations that exist amongst the bits. So, for example, if it is given that John was preparing an omelette, it amounts to understanding that it was John who was the one preparing; what was being prepared was an omelette etc.

Stage 2) Likening - 'Likening' (refer article 'First law of Commonsense') the understood ordered content to a known/valid entity in memory. After the mind understands that someone was preparing an omelette, it likens it to a typical entry from experience/memory of someone preparing an omelette (in the kitchen). This is our typical idea of someone preparing an omelette.

Stage 3) From this likened entity, we observe the surrounding/other elements in its visual (like it is happening in a kitchen, it's typically morning time etc.)

It is clear that Stage 2 follows Stage 1 and that Stage 3 follows Stage 2 , but what is the actual sequence of the processing of the information as a whole, till the instinctive flashes occur to us? Let's argue and piece things together.

Without the ordered content being complete, the likening to the memory-entity (Stage 2) cannot happen/begin. Note - for a sub-part of a sentence that can happen (i.e. without the sentence being technically fully complete) but that is a "complete" chunk of a scene in itself, which can be treated as a small complete "sentence" or a "unit".

So, somehow the ordered content has to be created first. Let's see how that is done. 

As we read each word, one by one, its definitions start flashing in the mind. This is an obvious, common experience. This process can be seen, again, as a Likening of the script to the known, understood stored entity (definitions) in memory, of its. The script - words (composed of letters) - are the external-world-entries, and the definitions in memory are our ideas of what they mean/stand for, stored in the mind, to which the former are Likened to. We obviously dont first read the whole sentence and then the definitions of each flash after that. That happens as we read each word. So this process can be represented (for a sentence ABCD; A, B, C and D are the words) as - A1 A2 B1 B2 C1 C2 D1 D2. 1 indicates the Stage 1 process mentioned above, and 2 indicates the stage 2 process mentioned above. 1 because you are factually collecting the content - the script (the words, composed of letters) - and 2 because you are likening them to your ideas of their definitions in your memory. For example, when you read John, the A2 is "some human person", or when you read omelette you liken it with the idea of the definition of an omelette you have in memory (/mind) - "ya, THAT such and such dish/food item".

Now, parallely with this sequential process, i.e as you are reading the words, one by one, is happening the process of Language-rules being applied (Stage 1') over the contents to piece them in an ordered weaved fashion as to the key linkages between them. So, a typical example of a result of this process would be - "ok so, so and so doer was doing such and such process on such and such doee, in such and such manner". 

So Stage 1 and Stage 1' operate in parallel, first. When both are complete, a rough skeleton or sketch of the scene in a form which 'relates correspondingly the order of the words in the sentence to their actualisation in the weaved/pieced-together structure of the story' occurs in the mind. Let me elaborate a bit on this. This amounts to saying that the order of the words - John, was, preparing, an..... - corresponds in a "tune" with the actual semantic actualisation of how these entities are placed in the scene in its knitted-form. This is sent to memory for retrieving a likened piece from it (Stage 2). This leads to the first flash of the visual of the scene, upon retrieval. The retrieval is the "flash". This process can be called as (ABCD)2 standing for the fact that the sentence as a whole (its understood ordered content) is likened to some piece from experience/memory, with the latter being "flashed" as a visual in the mind.

The process after this is obvious. In this likened visual, one sees the various elements surrounding/in the contents, like the background, the time, the situation, the nearby entities etc. This is Stage 3. From this, the commonsense follow-ups occur in the mind. This can be called as ((ABCD)2)3 standing for the likened entity from memory of the sentence as a whole being seen along with the surrounding elements in the scene (from which commonsense assumptions are drawn). The 3 stands for Stage 3 applied on ((ABCD)2).

So, the net order / sequence of processes is - [(A1 A2 B1 B2 C1 C2 D1 D2) || (Language-rules being applied)] [(ABCD)2] [(ABCD)2]3