Consciousness; brain's role (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, July 17, 2016, 15:33 (3050 days ago) @ David Turell

This article describes work that the brain does theoretically for us in the subconscious:-http://nautil.us/blog/the-noise-none-of-us-can-live-without-"At the very bottom of this reality are physical forces and symmetries—and noise. They're equally fundamental. The very universe began as a random quantum fluctuation. Quantum mechanics tells us, for instance, that we cannot predict the time at which a high-energy state (say of a radioactive atom) transitions into a low energy state. This unpredictability creates a background of noise amplified by the unimaginably large number of random collisions and interactions of all particles making up our reality. -"This omnipresence of noise raises one vexing question in particular: If we are immersed in randomness, how come so much of the world seems so orderly? There are three answers—two familiar and one perhaps less so. The first familiar answer is that noise, averaged over many, many particles, becomes order. This is what happens in a gas, for example, where doing proper statistics on the random motions of gas molecules explains why a bicycle pump gets hot when we use it to compress air. The other familiar answer is that noise is constrained by physical laws and symmetries. This explains how atoms, stars, planets, and galaxies emerged from primordial chaos after the big bang.-"The third answer is the one we are looking for. This answer comes into play where information interacts with matter. Take evolution, for example: Here is a mechanism that feeds on randomness and noise to extract order and information. How does it do that? It uses a ratcheting mechanism—a mechanism that takes randomness and filters it to create progress. For evolution, the randomness comes from mutations and sexual recombination, and the filtering comes from natural selection. Both are needed: Randomness creates novelty, and natural selection sifts for advantageous changes. -***-"What does this have to do with creativity, agency, and free will? The puzzling thing about creativity is that it is hard to imagine how any deterministic process could lead to new ideas and insights. There must be a generator of new ideas somewhere. Let me therefore propose that the generator of new ideas is noise—random thermal, electrical noise in the subconscious processes of our brains.-***-"New ideas, then, may be the result of a noisy novelty generator in our subconscious generating random associations that are subsequently filtered by our brain. Subconsciously, our brain rejects the many nonsensical associations, only to allow us to become conscious of it when a newly generated idea makes “sense”. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman argued that we do many things without being conscious of them. There are systems in the brain, he says, that “decide” if something should become a conscious thought. Together, the noisy novelty generator and the filtering by our brain seem to ratchet up new ideas seemingly from nowhere.-***-"There is no proof for this idea, but it fits everyday experience. Often, when we think hard about a problem, we do not immediately come to a solution. But the hard thinking is needed—it primes our subconscious to generate random ideas, conducting a true “brainstorm”. The subconscious brain continues to juggle the possibilities and, only when the pieces fell into place, makes us aware of it. We all have experienced this.-***-"Random noise creates the possibilities, and our thoughts and experiences filters them. Our brains ratchet order from chaos. -"How about agency, or free will? Having it seems difficult for a deterministic machine as well as for a purely random one. Combining the two, though, allows us to have the cake and eat it, too, argues Daniel Dennett, a philosopher and cognitive scientist: In his 1978 book Brainstorms, he writes, “When we are faced with an important decision, a consideration-generator whose output is to some degree undetermined produces a series of considerations, some of which may of course be immediately rejected as irrelevant by the agent (consciously or unconsciously).” Our brain, although constrained by what we have known and experienced, is capable of making novel choices from the background noise it generates. -"We are, it seems, neither complete slaves to our environment or experience, nor are we tossed about by pure randomness. What makes us human is that our brains can ratchet up choice and creativity from a sea of randomness."-Comment: As I've observed, our brain works for us. Are we in full conscious control? Perhaps not, but our brain is not in the business of fooling us. In the end we have a practical form of free will.