The Washington Post weighs in on Decade of the Mind

One thought on “The Washington Post weighs in on Decade of the Mind”

1. After reading Joel Achenbach’s article in Sunday’s Washington Post, I was struck by the lack of agreement on what the mind is. But since Jim Olds is quoted as seeking an answer, I thought I would share my thoughts here–although I am certainly no Einstein.My background is in software design, telephony, and an MS in operations research, with a life-long interest in psychology. Unlike my son who is “paying his dues” by completing his PhD at MIT in photonics, I never had the focus to concentrate on an in-depth core of knowledge. So please excuse this effort if it reeks of shallow thinking. But, for what it’s worth, I would like to share a paradigm that makes sense to me.Consciousness is (at least) a two stage process. The first stage involves storing an internal model of reality that can then be used in the second stage to make sense out of that reality. That is, we do not try to make sense out of what we directly perceive; we first must put these perceptions into a form that can be used (e.g., during sleep).This paradigm has several important attributes. Most important is that everyone has their own version of “Reality.” Two people experiencing the same situation can easily draw very different conclusions as to what is happening based on how they have processed their perceptions into their integrated reality model.Second, the “making sense,” or reasoning process uses information in the stored integrated reality model—not directly from perceptions coming from the senses.Third, the feeling of “I” comes from the reasoning process’s awareness and use of this integrated reality model that allows reasoning to occur—not from any separate entity.If this paradigm is accurate, research can be broken up into at least two reasonably independent tasks: how the brain stores perceptions into an integrated model of reality; and secondly, how the brain uses that model to reason, i.e., to reach conclusions based on that “reality” and to develop suitable responses.I’ve reached the conclusion that this is a reasonably accurate paradigm in several ways. One major contribution came from my work in telecom software design. In a stored program control switch there are two common methods of determining on-hook to off-hook transitions. The most intuitive of course is to provide an interrupt to the CPU whenever such a transition occurs. Another common method however is to schedule looks at the line’s on-hook status periodically and compare it to the previous look. This provides a view of what is happening over time by using a memory of what was seen before. Why not a similar method used in the brain?A second contribution was the findings of a study (whose source escapes me but I assume is well known) that dealt with the perception of light by viewers. Each viewer was shown a sequence of two lights (one red and one white) that were placed some small distance apart. The lights were switched on alternatively with a small space of time between them. The viewers reported seeing a single light moving back and forth, changing from white, to pink, to red, to pink, etc. The researchers then stopped both lights but the viewers reported seeing the transition to pink after the last light was turned off. This is clear evidence that the viewers’ conscious perceptions of color and light source position was not provided directly from the eye.These contributions provided a shift in my view that has since been reinforced by numerous other observations. For example, the perpetuation of one’s religious beliefs makes far more sense when viewed as the result of one’s internal reality—rather than different reasoning regarding the outside reality.Given my lack of experience in this area, this paradigm may already be inside the box of current thinking—or been considered and thrown out as wrong. But I offer it for whatever it is worth.

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