How we consciously experience the world is not necessarily a reflection of what the
brain is doing. While it is fully
possible to assume that the brain does a bunch of things, I find it a better
way of going about things to not
assume that the brain does more than necessary. Is it possible that we internalize
the world and represent it in our mind? Yes. Is it necessarily so? No. What then are the most basic abilities our brain
necessarily has in order for us to
function successfully in the world? In my perspective, it is necessary for our
brain to perceive change in a meaningful way across all sensory modalities,
inform each other and produce motor-movement.
·
Change here is defined as whatever is discernible
to our senses from something else.
·
Meaningful here is defined as; Experiments where
we do not see change, it is often in situations where change would not matter
for our safety or well-being. Changing words in a text when someone isn’t
looking and other change-blindness experiments, is non-threatening and not a
part of the current goal of the situation, thus, non-meaningful. Even in
repeating a pattern of coloured blocks, and changing the colour of completed
blocks, is non-meaningful in the sense that, in a first person perspective a
part turns non-meaningful when it has been completed (but obviously not in an
objective sense, where the overarching goal is to create the same pattern of
colour for all parts of the picture).
Change is something that could be universal within the brain
and wherever our sensory organs connect with the brain, enables cells to
activate on change, as well as connect to all other modalities. Detecting
change is necessary, because without
it we could not navigate through the environment. This all necessarily needs to be connected to motor-movement of our bodies,
because without it we couldn’t respond to these changes. Why then aren’t
representations necessary? Because of the simple fact that we do not need to internalize the world in order
to successfully navigate in it. The Portia spider and Webb’s crickets in Louise
Barrett’s Beyond the Brain exemplifies this. Does all of this mean that we don’t internalize the world and create “representations”?
No. However, in order for us to conduct science, we need to criticize and
reflect upon the assumptions we make about ourselves –even the ones that seem
to make sense in regard to conscious experience as well as the concepts standing
for invisible inner processing.
I believe it too indulgent to see the brain as
an infinitely complex organ, I just do not believe it to be the pinnacle of
evolution. We just make far too many mistakes. I also believe that internalizing
every single object that exist through our contact with them makes little sense
too. The amount of cognitive load that this requires, in terms of
representations, computation, memory and other concepts created by traditional
cognitive literature, seems to me to be all too overwhelming. While it is true
our brain allows us to act in ways afforded to few other animals, we are still
animals and we are not too different from other animals either. In my mind
then, it is simply more probable that our brain evolved to sufficiently solve navigating our environment in a cost-effective
way, rather than overkill with extreme specialisation. Evolution should have selected for the simplest possible way to achieve, shouldn't it?
Oh, time, also.. maybe. Serially ordering events makes life easier.. if it is necessary however is another question. Change might incorporate time, but not necessarily in the sense that change itself is necessary to find in the brain, but, in the sense that a change is necessarily perceived in serial order perhaps regardless of what our brain is doing. After all, time may just be something we created because it is the way we consciously experience the world.. Because one event supercedes another, we may have created a objective 'time' (the one on the clock) but, we consciously experience time differently fast and slow (without clocks) so serial ordering may not be necessary, it may just be a consequence of detecting change serially. Maybe.
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