Home Abstractions and Planning - Strength of Modern Mankind

Mind Map
note1 The above diagram is derived from the book by Peter Gärdenfors, 2000, in Swedish: 
Hur Homo blev sapiens - om tänkandets evolution 
(How Homo Became Sapiens - about the evolution of thought)
As the title indicates, the book by Gärdenfors deals mainly with perceptions and imaginations.
More about sensations can be read in: A natural history of the senses, by Diane Ackerman.
note2 Finding a neutral and precise term for "Independent Mental Images" is not that easy. In English, Imaginations seems to be the best choice. In each language like English, German, the Latin group and the Scandinavian group of languages, there are several words for variants of Imaginations. Sometimes the context and situation determines whether a person with rich fantasy has a great gift or a social handicap. A foolish notion or an empty fancy are also imaginations. Revenge starts as an evil impulse in the mind of the avenger. 
Translating the term Imaginations literally to other languages is thus a bit dangerous, because the bias and flavour of a particular word may depend on the context in which the term was adopted, and the bias may even vary over time (like after the release of a certain book title). A particular term may have a bias towards too much independence or even towards hallucinations. In the above diagram, independent stands for independence of "time now & place here". It does not stand for complete independence of culture and background. Too little independence of cultural pressure would bias imaginations towards compelled indoctrination. For thousands of years, people have known that imagination is a subtle balance between independence of thought, faith, fantasy and "complete madness". Not all healthy dreams would be sound daydreams. Not all regimes have the same standards for acceptable expressions of Imaginations, not by far. 
 The human mind has great capacity for abstractions and planning, for innovation and art, for episodes and intrigues, for humor and ridicule. When it comes to abstraction, most animals "seem happy" with perceptions, including simple classification and tactics triggered by perceptions. Only three groups of animals show signs of advanced imaginations: apes, elephants and whales. Whales reminds us that our imaginations are not unlimited either. Whales seem to have imaginations that depend on their sonar organ. We can not even imagine what the mental image of a sonar echo is like. (Perhaps we can imagine why it is good dolphin etiquette not to sonar the interior other individuals.)

Because a large and active brain needs much energy, imaginations are obviously limited to warm-blooded animals. A large number of species seem to have concepts pre-programmed, categories like stinging insect, tasty food, or dangerous feline. In relation to time, the most advanced animals have consciously tactic planning, like elephants returning to a good grazing site or Orcas (note3) returning to the riches of a fjord. Some whales display advanced team tactics. Cats (including lions) and dogs (including wolves) also apply tactics in their hunt. The cyclic migration of birds relies on subconscious programs. Seemingly, no other animals but humans cover fictive time beyond one year. Here the word seemingly is important, due to limitations of our perceptions.

The human mind goes much further than tactic and defensive evaluation of dangers and opportunities as triggered through perceptions. Our fictive time covers a span of a typical lifetime, 80 years or somewhat more. Fictive time is an important element in strategic planning. Above all, people are great opportunists (in a positive sense). We can modify a strategic plan according to new opportunities. We can combine knowledge and experience into completely new conceptions. All of us can improvise and fable; some of us can tell a good story. Planning is imagined episodes in future fictive time. Imagined episodes in historic time represent history and news(!).

In other words, each person has a large Imaginations area. The Imaginations ability of the human brain is unique among animals. As far as we can perceive(!) through observation of other animals, no other species has such capacity for independent thought, fantasy and prediction. We even have a tendency to classify abstractions, like relations between people, or scientific disciplines.

The Imaginations area of the human mind supports episodic memories, abstract descriptions of categories (not only perception of categories), meta-concepts and conceptions, advanced planning, innovative design and art, humour and comic etc. The Imaginations area also gives us ability to transfer perceptions and abstractions to other persons through sounds, writing and drawings, and evaluate the receiver's perception of such messages. It is an important element of intelligence to be able to predict another person's perceptions, plans, and likely changes of relations. Machiavellian abilities rely on imaginations, which proves that apes "do imagine" at least to a degree.

Irony seems to be one of our most advanced imaginations. We identify an absurdity, formulate it ironically in speech/writing /pictures, and predict the receiver's mood and reactions. In politically dangerous situations, people also have to estimate the risk vs. the effect.

In the above diagram, the term meta-con