Consciousness or awareness is a passive conduit which allows complex choice, deliberation and action

[Dimebag]

The human organism is a coming together of physical forces and causes. Yet, at the centre of it all rests a seemingly single, unified, source of all actions, choices etc.

In a physicalist world view, consciousness seems out of place, and as yet consciousness has avoided being pinned down by physicalist explanations. The most obvious problems with the physicalist ability to describe consciousness are borne out in the hard problem. The other real problem is how consciousness, free will, and the physical brain and body and world intersect. And it does seem a real problem. On one side we have inert, physical matter, having no consciousness or volition. This matter comes together, and gets organised in certain ways into the biological self reproducing, self determining form.

Life itself is viewed as mechanistic within science. Yet biological life seems far different from any machine we humans have so far put together. Life as a process is self sustaining, self repairing, and seemingly, self determining. Even down to the smallest life forms such as amoeba’s. The smallest life forms will work to maintain their bodily structures. They have within them, small factories which allow this bodily maintenance. The organism as a whole must strive to provide the conditions required to maintain itself. As such, the organism’s behaviours will be “tuned” towards these goals. But, the organism doesn’t function robotically. It seemingly makes choices moment to moment, sensing its environment, avoiding possible dangers in real time, and seeking resources to maintain its bodily structure.

This is what life does, and it does it exquisitely, precisely and yet, extremely flexibly and fluidly. It’s behaviours are not robotic and in fact, nature would never select such robotic, rigid forms of behaviour, because even we know, they aren’t ideally suited to functioning in a world.

So nature is much smarter than we are at coming up with ways of functioning in the world. The currently accepted means by which nature finds these optimal functions is evolution. It lets the environment determine the best way to function, from the bottom up, instead of trying to chisel out a particular mode of being from the top down. Nature is lazy, but clever.

So there is a natural means by which the right kind of biological functions can be found in a species, but it requires a multiplicity of population, and a variation in the range of functions present in the species. The functions which are the most successful for that environment are the ones which are most likely to reproduce.

Nature does this, not Charles Darwin. Darwin among others proposed the mechanism, but nature figures it out.

In even the smallest of organisms, there is a sensing, and acting going on. But, there may not be, and likely is not, a deciding.

In humans, we sense, decide, and act. Or not act, that is also a decision.

Sensing comprises our perceiving a world around us. We are capable of simple sensing and acting, but only when the complexity of the task does not demand an unencountered choice. Because humans function in a world which may change from moment to moment, our required actions might change slightly or massively from situation to situation. Thus we cannot only rely on this simple sensing and acting which less complex organisms rely on. There needs to be something in between sensing and acting. For that reason we have deciding. Deciding is not a simple action reaction process.

Deciding implies there are multiple possible courses of action. A kind of branching decision “tree”. Because the number of possible choices actually explodes in number when it becomes unconstrained, there must be a limited number of possibilities, there must be some balance between the number of possible choices, and the time it takes to decide. For that reason, nature has likely tuned that number, and it will again, be driven by the environment.

Our sensory system is intimately connected to our motor system. Such that, depending on the situation, it will “present” possible actions based on the surrounding environment. The possible actions are “determined” (don’t take this too literally) by a kind of importance to the organism, what is the most, relevant, or maybe “salient”. Because there are so many possibilities, we have a selection mechanism to filter out most of the irrelevant environmental features. Furthermore, relevance will also be driven by the bodily sensations and requirements. For instance, if the body feels thirsty, the sensation of thirst will present itself as more salient for possible solutions. If the organism feels threatened, the body will prepare it for a possibility of action, by raising the heart rate, etc which will serve as a trigger to be ready to face a possible threat.

But under less threatening or demanding conditions, the importance will be based on what underlying goals are present for that organism.

Us humans have consciousness, and awareness. Awareness is just consciousness of consciousness, a kind of feedback loop on any mental content. Consciousness is sensation, but it is not directly linked to action. In that way it is a kind of floating, recurrent sensation. Under normal sensing-acting conditions, a sensation directly “drives” a behaviour, it kind of directs a behaviour. There is feeling, but not “reflection”. Consciousness introduces reflection, which is connected to the fact that the sensation is kind of separated from action now. Remember as a child, you would sense and act. In fact, the two were’t really a separate process, they were so intimately linked you can’t really say they were distinct things.

But as we grow, a kind of pulling apart happens between sensing and acting, and something gets inserted there inbetween that gap. That something is consciousness, and reflection. Consciousness kind of “holds” sensation in it, almost in a holding pattern like an aircraft waiting to land. That sensation which was normally directly connected to a single action, can now connect to many possible actions, but only because of this separation. Of course, on the other side of consciousness is now, the motor system. The motor system was so intimately linked to the sensory system, it would almost mirror it. Now that they are separated, it still mirrors the senses, and as such, it is kind of “imagining” possible actions based on the sensory content. But, it’s waiting for the go ahead from consciousness. Consciousness monitors what the motor system comes up with, and kind of remembers those possibilities. And because the sensations are constantly changing, so too are the possible motor action solutions to the sensory dictates. So consciousness can kind of wait and allow several of these possible motor solutions to come into consciousness, and it can tell the motor system which one might have the best possible outcomes.

Obviously to do this, consciousness needs to almost predict the future. And it does this by “playing out” those behaviours in a kind of simulation. This simulation occurs between the “top down” features of the sensory system (bottom up being signals from the environment, top down being fed from the motor system). The motor and sensory system work together to create a simulation for consciousness, almost like when we dream. This simulation which essentially is a dream, occurs in real time. This is a possible action. We imagine this possible action and it is presented to our consciousness. Several of these possible simulations play out.

But it’s not done yet, we don’t yet act, because there are constraints on our possible actions, not only from our desired outcomes, but for our perceived limitations. This is our self concept. It tells us what we can or can’t do. What we are or aren’t capable of. It’s also linked to social conventions, but is more of a physical constraint of what our physical organism is capable of. This self concept also selects and narrows down the possible behaviours we can choose from, until there exists only a small number of possible choices, or maybe only one.

Remember, time is ticking, and the environment is demanding an action. One particular action will be standing out usually as the most appropriate one. And so that choice will usually be taken. But of course, we aren’t robots. Remember nature fluidly and smoothly does everything. My description here is a mechanistic, digital explanation of something far more analogue and fuzzy.

Consciousness is kind of like the conduit, or resource which allows this whole process to happen. As such, it is a key link in the chain, but it is passive, it simply partakes in the process. It doesn’t call the shots. It’s a little like a network, it connects all those separate processes. But of course, they weren’t always separate. When they weren’t they would simply sense and act. But now, this intervening network which seems to direct things, and in a way does but not in the way we think, allows far more complex and appropriate actions to happen. It is a highly flexible system.

This is how choice happens. There is no “agent” inside making the choices. The whole system partakes in the process of choosing. No one part is doing the choosing. Choice is a process. But, without consciousness, the passive allowing network, no choice can happen. As such, consciousness sees itself as the most important aspect of the choice process. This is the sense of agency which is so tightly tied to the sense of being conscious. But we forget that without our senses, and the hidden intelligence of our body and motor systems, no choice would be possible. We take all the credit without thanking the other parties for making it possible.

This is of course always the way in organisations.

Don’t forget the little guys inside you making it all happen.

[Impenitent]

the conscious repetition of body movements can train the reflexes to behave, or make the body move, without thought, at the time of necessity...

practice makes perfect

-Imp

[Dimebag]

the conscious repetition of body movements can train the reflexes to behave, or make the body move, without thought, at the time of necessity...

practice makes perfect

-Imp

Yes, practice without consciousness is trial and error. Practice with consciousness is deliberate learning, then training, then consciousness lets go of the reigns and the senses can again be intimately joined to action.