Unconscious thought forms 95% of all thought

[coberst]

Unconscious thought forms 95% of all thought

 

In the 1970s a new body of empirical research began to introduce findings that questioned the traditional Anglo-American cognitive paradigm of AI (Artificial Intelligence), i.e. symbol manipulation.

 

This research indicates that the neurological structures associated with sensorimotor activity are mapped directly to the higher cortical brain structures to form the foundation for subjective conceptualization in the human brain. In other words, our abstract ideas are constructed with copies of sensorimotor neurological structures as a foundation. “It is the rule of thumb among cognitive scientists that unconscious thought is 95 percent of all thought—and that may be a serious underestimate.”

 

Categorization, the first level of abstraction from “Reality” is our first level of conceptualization and thus of knowing. Seeing is a process that includes categorization, we see something as an interaction between the seer and what is seen. “Seeing typically involves categorization.”

 

Our categories are what we consider to be real in the world: tree, rock, animal…Our concepts are what we use to structure our reasoning about these categories. Concepts are neural structures that are the fundamental means by which we reason about categories.

 

Human categories, the stuff of experience, are reasoned about in many different ways. These differing ways of reasoning, these different conceptualizations, are called prototypes and represent the second level of conceptualization

 

Typical-case prototype conceptualization modes are “used in drawing inferences about category members in the absence of any special contextual information. Ideal-case prototypes allow us to evaluate category members relative to some conceptual standard…Social stereotypes are used to make snap judgments…Salient exemplars (well-known examples) are used for making probability judgments…Reasoning with prototypes is, indeed, so common that it is inconceivable that we could function for long without them.”

 

When we conceptualize categories in this fashion we often envision them using spatial metaphors. Spatial relation metaphors form the heart of our ability to perceive, conceive, and to move about in space. We unconsciously form spatial relation contexts for entities: ‘in’, ‘on’, ‘about’, ‘across from’ some other entity are common relationships that make it possible for us to function in our normal manner.

 

When we perceive a black cat and do not wish to cross its path our imagination conceives container shapes such that we do not penetrate the container space occupied by the cat at some time in its journey. We function in space and the container schema is a normal means we have for reasoning about action in space. Such imaginings are not conscious but most of our perception and conception is an automatic unconscious force for functioning in the world.

 

Our manner of using language to explain experience provides us with an insight into our cognitive structuring process. Perceptual cues are mapped onto cognitive spaces wherein a representation of the experience is structured onto our spatial-relation contour. There is no direct connection between perception and language.

 

The claim of cognitive science is “that the very properties of concepts are created as a result of the way the brain and the body are structured and the way they function in interpersonal relations and in the physical world.”

 

Quotes from “Philosophy in the Flesh” by Lakoff and Johnson

 

Questions for discussion

 

Is all of this of any importance for ‘the man on the street’? I think so because if we comprehend these fundamental facts about human perception and motor movement we will better comprehend why we do the things we do.

 

We live our lives by our abstract ideas, i.e. morality, flag, nation, patriotism, value, motive, good, right, fairness, etc.

 

Do you think it is important for ‘the man on the street’ to comprehend how concepts are made?

[YT2095]

are you Sure you mean "Unconscious" and not Subconscious?

 

there is a Very significant Difference!

[coberst]

are you Sure you mean "Unconscious" and not Subconscious?

 

there is a Very significant Difference!

 

I am not aware of the difference. The books that I read always use the word 'unconscious' and I have never seen the cognitive science books I have read use the word 'subconscious'.

 

After looking at the dictionary I would have chosen to use the word 'subconscious' in this situation. However, it appears to me that the cognitive sciences have chosen to use the word 'unconscious' as their technical word for what the dictionary would be 'subconscious'. I have been reading a number of books that use unconscious in this way so it appears to me that they have ignored the dictionary definition.

[bascule]

Understanding consciousness does change your perceptions of the world. Sometimes you can almost feel what's actually happening.

 

Perhaps one of the most difficult things to grasp is that the same cortical structures dealing directly with sensorimotor impulses, restricted to only the input that senses a small part of your visual plane, or one of the muscles in your left toe, is the same type of cortical structure responsible for higher level thought. Consciousness (if you accept materialism) is made out of the millions of neocortical columns which comprise our neocortex, the (volumetrically) largest and most densely connected part of our brain.

 

The neocortex is arranged hierarchically, with lots of NCCs handling sensing or motor control, with a continuous feedback loop (what our lowest level NCCs think they're sensing is both a combination of the signal they receive and what their higher-ups think they're sensing)

 

At the top of the neocortical hierarchy sits the hippocampus, the center of short-term memory. It's job is to receive and store patterns that didn't get handled anywhere lower in the hierarchy, then repropagate them back down the hierarchy so they can be learned.

 

That's paraphrased from Jeff Hawkins' On Intelligence

[coberst]

Understanding consciousness does change your perceptions of the world. Sometimes you can almost feel what's actually happening.

 

Perhaps one of the most difficult things to grasp is that the same cortical structures dealing directly with sensorimotor impulses, restricted to only the input that senses a small part of your visual plane, or one of the muscles in your left toe, is the same type of cortical structure responsible for higher level thought. Consciousness (if you accept materialism) is made out of the millions of neocortical columns which comprise our neocortex, the (volumetrically) largest and most densely connected part of our brain.

 

The neocortex is arranged hierarchically, with lots of NCCs handling sensing or motor control, with a continuous feedback loop (what our lowest level NCCs think they're sensing is both a combination of the signal they receive and what their higher-ups think they're sensing)

 

At the top of the neocortical hierarchy sits the hippocampus, the center of short-term memory. It's job is to receive and store patterns that didn't get handled anywhere lower in the hierarchy, then repropagate them back down the hierarchy so they can be learned.

 

That's paraphrased from Jeff Hawkins' On Intelligence

 

 

If such is true does that not mean that all animals and all humans could not move or perceive until they had developed a neocortex?

[bascule]

If such is true does that not mean that all animals and all humans could not move

 

Earlier animals movements were the result of fixed action patterns (i.e. "preprogrammed" movement sequences), thus more akin to a robot than what we would consider to be the volitional movements of animals with a neocortex.

 

or perceive until they had developed a neocortex?

 

I would wager that animals which lack a neocortex or a functionally equivalent structure (such as in birds) are incapable of perception.

[coberst]

Earlier animals movements were the result of fixed action patterns (i.e. "preprogrammed" movement sequences), thus more akin to a robot than what we would consider to be the volitional movements of animals with a neocortex.

 

 

 

I would wager that animals which lack a neocortex or a functionally equivalent structure (such as in birds) are incapable of perception.

 

What leads you to make those conclusions? Have you read about such things or have you generated these conclusions without outside help?

[bascule]

What leads you to make those conclusions? Have you read about such things or have you generated these conclusions without outside help?

 

Primarily Jeff Hawkins' book On Intelligence and Douglas Hofstadter's books Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, and I Am a Strange Loop

[coberst]

Primarily Jeff Hawkins' book On Intelligence and Douglas Hofstadter's books Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, and I Am a Strange Loop

 

I think that those statements about programmed reflective actions by animals are beyond belief.

[bascule]

I think that those statements about programmed reflective actions by animals are beyond belief.

 

Well, Hofstadter would probably kill me for trying to use his work to defend the idea that animals without neocortical(-like) structures don't have "a light on in there". He's a vegetarian because he feels ethically obligated not to eat animals with "a light on in there". So do I, but I draw the line at a different place (albeit a place where he drew it until recently)

 

However, I'd suggest you read this Wikipedia article:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_action_pattern

 

It's a basic introduction to the origins of animal behavior, specifically innate releasing mechanisms and fixed action patterns.

 

Actually, the author I should really credit for my present mindset regarding animals is Dennett. He's the one who turned me on to these very concepts in the first place.

 

But anyway, I digress. The IRM/FAP solution was utilized by animal biology for quite some time. It forms the primary behavior model of many "earlier animals" (in terms of brain complexification and development), namely fish. It's why I don't feel bad about eating fish; they can't feel. They can't perceive. Their behavior is laregly stimulus/response.

 

The neocortical column was the structure that abstracted information processing to the point that consciousness could emerge. Because of this, I believe any animals who do possess a capacity for abstract information processing (namely mammals and birds) are capible of perception, albeit a radically primitive form compared to what humans are capible of.

[coberst]

It appears to me that CS has two paradigms, symbol manipulation (AI), and conceptual metaphor. When I speak of CS here I am speaking of the conceptual metaphor paradigm.

 

Cognitive science has radically attacked the traditional Western philosophical position that there is a dichotomy between perception and conception. This traditional view that perception is strictly a faculty of body and conception (the formation and use of concepts) is purely mental and wholly separate from and independent of our ability to perceive and move.

 

Cognitive science has introduced revolutionary theories that, if true, will change dramatically the views of Western philosophy. Advocates of the traditional view will, of course, “say that conceptual structure must have a neural realization in the brain, which just happens to reside in a body. But they deny that anything about the body is essential for characterizing what concepts are.”

 

The cognitive science claim is that ”the very properties of concepts are created as a result of the way the brain and body are structured and the way they function in interpersonal relations and in the physical world.”

 

The embodied-mind hypothesis therefore radically undercuts the perception/conception distinction. In an embodied mind, it is conceivable that the same neural system engaged in perception (or in bodily movements) plays a central role in conception. Indeed, in recent neural modeling research, models of perceptual mechanisms and motor schemas can actually do conception work in language learning and in reasoning.

 

A standard technique for checking out new ideas is to create computer models of the idea and subject that model to simulated conditions to determine if the model behaves as does the reality. Such modeling techniques are used constantly in projecting behavior of meteorological parameters.

 

Neural computer models have shown that the types of operations required to perceive and move in space require the very same type of capability associated with reasoning. That is, neural models capable of doing all of the things that a body must be able to do when perceiving and moving can also perform the same kinds of actions associated with reasoning, i.e. inferring, categorizing, and conceiving.

 

Our understanding of biology indicates that the body has a marvelous ability to do as any handyman does, i.e. make do with what is at hand. The body would, it seems logical to assume, take these abilities that exist in all creatures that move and survive in space and with such fundamental capabilities reshape it through evolution to become what we now know as our ability to reason. The first budding of the reasoning ability exists in all creatures that function as perceiving, moving, surviving, creatures.

 

Cognitive science has, it seems to me, connected our ability to reason with our bodies in such away as to make sense out of connecting reason with our biological evolution in ways that Western philosophy has not done, as far as I know.

 

It seems to me that Western philosophical tradition as always tried to separate mind from body and in so doing has never been able to show how mind, as was conceived by this tradition, could be part of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Cognitive science now provides us with a comprehensible model for grounding all that we are both bodily and mentally into a unified whole that makes sense without all of the attempts to make mind as some kind of transcendent, mystical, reality unassociated with biology.

 

Quotes from “Philosophy in the Flesh”