The World in Your Head

[NLN]

In an interview with cognitive scientist Steven Lehar, he argues that the world we see is actually a sort of simulation, represented in our brains. It's weird stuff, but his arguments are quite compelling. Highly recommended reading. I went on to read several of his papers as well. They can be quite technical, but I must say that he may be onto something.

[Glider]

Having no 'direct access' to ojective reality, what else could it be? Everything we experience; light, sound, texture, odour, temperature are all transduced by specific receptors into the same electromagnetic signal (action potentials).

 

All action potentials are the same, i.e. those resulting from triggering photoreceptors in the retina, are the same as those evoked from triggering auditory cells in the cochlea.

 

In order for us to be able to function in the world. these action potentials have to be reconstructed into representations of the original specific stimuli, and these representations combined into a representation of the immediate environment.

 

For example, being able to generate a perception of a painful stimulus (say, a burn) is useless unless it's combined with the perceptions of what is causing it (say the visual representation of a hot iron), so we can respond in a meaningful way to the original sensation. We cannot move away from the sensation, we have to have a representation of what is causing it to respond adaptively.

 

These 'immediate' representations are also combined with memory (stored representations). Otherwise nothing but what we are sensing at the moment would exist. I would never water my trees, because at the moment, I have no representation of them other than the stored representation that they exist.

 

These stored representations are dynamic too. If they weren't, then again, I would never water my trees. The dynamism of the representation means I can account for the changes that occur since I last watered them. They were wet the last time a saw them. If that representation was static, I would not bother watering again.

 

All these representations, the immediate and the stored are combined to make a dynamic, working model of the world (which is unique to me) and is held in the prefrontal areas of my brain.

 

One of the unique characteristics of humans is that they can use this dynamic model to run abstract 'test' solutions. That is, they can abstract problems from external reality and run predictive scenarios mentally to select the most favourable, without having to implement each possible solution.

 

This is essentially the difference between a tool user and a tool maker. A tool user will use what is to hand to solve an immediate problem. If there is nothing appropriate to hand, the problem remains unsolved.

 

A tool maker will abstract the problem and run predictive mental scenarios that will result in the representation of a tool that doesn't yet exist, and then will go and make it.