The Hidden Spring - Revision history

Robert.adlington: /* 10. Back to the Cortex */

2026-04-29T05:47:41Z

10. Back to the Cortex

← Older revision		Revision as of 05:47, 29 April 2026
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	* The world as we experience it is literally generated from cortical representations. Within the predictive coding framework, odd as it seems, what we perceive is a virtual reality constructed from the mind's own building materials.		* The world as we experience it is literally generated from cortical representations. Within the predictive coding framework, odd as it seems, what we perceive is a virtual reality constructed from the mind's own building materials.
	* What you perceive is not the same thing as the input that arrives from your senses. What you perceive is an inference. And the materials from which that inference is derived are for the most part your cortical predictive model derived from past (ie expected) experiences.		* What you perceive is not the same thing as the input that arrives from your senses. What you perceive is an inference. And the materials from which that inference is derived are for the most part your cortical predictive model derived from past (ie expected) experiences.
	* This the whole point of consciousness in cognition. You arrive at a situation in which you aren't sure what to do. Consciousness comes to the rescue: you feel your way through the scenario, noting the voluntary actions that work for you. Then, gradually, the successful lessons become automatized and consciousness is no longer needed.		* This is the whole point of consciousness in cognition. You arrive at a situation in which you aren't sure what to do. Consciousness comes to the rescue: you feel your way through the scenario, noting the voluntary actions that work for you. Then, gradually, the successful lessons become automatized and consciousness is no longer needed.
	* I want to emphasize that the cognitive work I have just described slows down the otherwise automatic business of acting in the world. This is the essential difference between voluntary and involuntary action, conscious vs unconscious cognition, felt drive vs autonomic reflex; the voluntary type is less certain and therefore requires more time.		* I want to emphasize that the cognitive work I have just described slows down the otherwise automatic business of acting in the world. This is the essential difference between voluntary and involuntary action, conscious vs unconscious cognition, felt drive vs autonomic reflex; the voluntary type is less certain and therefore requires more time.
	* What all of this implies is that the conscious state is undesirable from the viewpoint of a self-organizing system.		* What all of this implies is that the conscious state is undesirable from the viewpoint of a self-organizing system.

Robert.adlington: /* Postscript */

2026-04-28T15:06:10Z

Postscript

← Older revision		Revision as of 15:06, 28 April 2026
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	* Feeling by an organism of fluctuations in its own needs enables choice and thereby supports survival in unpredicted contexts. This is the biological function of experience.		* Feeling by an organism of fluctuations in its own needs enables choice and thereby supports survival in unpredicted contexts. This is the biological function of experience.
	* Needs cannot all be felt at once. They are prioritized by a midbrain decision triangle, where current needs (residual prediction errors, quantified as free energy) converging on the periaqueductal grey are ranked in relation to current opportunities (displayed in the form of a 2D "saliency map" in the superior colliculi). This triggers conditioned action programmes, which unfold in expected contexts over a deep hierarchy of predictions (the generative model of the expanded forebrain). The actions that are generated by prioritized affects are voluntary, which means they are subject to here-and-now choices rather than pre-established algorithms. Such choices are felt in exteroceptive consciousness, which contextualizes affect.		* Needs cannot all be felt at once. They are prioritized by a midbrain decision triangle, where current needs (residual prediction errors, quantified as free energy) converging on the periaqueductal grey are ranked in relation to current opportunities (displayed in the form of a 2D "saliency map" in the superior colliculi). This triggers conditioned action programmes, which unfold in expected contexts over a deep hierarchy of predictions (the generative model of the expanded forebrain). The actions that are generated by prioritized affects are voluntary, which means they are subject to here-and-now choices rather than pre-established algorithms. Such choices are felt in exteroceptive consciousness, which contextualizes affect.

			== Appendix: Arousal and Information ==

			* Arousal, fueling drive mechanisms, potentiates behavior, while specific motives and incentives explain why an animal does one thing and not another.
			* Generations of behavioral scientists have both theorized and experimentally confirmed that a concept like arousal is necessary to explain the initiation, strength, and persistence of behavioral responses. Arousal provides the fundamental forces that makes animals and humans active and responsive so they will perform instinctive behaviors or learned behaviors directed toward goal objects.
			* Pfaff's own principal component analyses suggest that the proportion of behavior across a wide range of data that can be accounted for by "generalized arousal" is between 30-45%.
			* How do internal and external influences wake up brain and behavior, whether in humans or in other animals?
			* Generalized arousal is higher in an animal or human being who is:
			** S - More alert to sensory stimuli of all sorts
			** M - More motorically active
			** E - More reactive emotionally.
			* This is a concrete definition of the most fundamental force in the nervous system. All three components can be measured with precision. Clearly there is a neuroanatomy of generalized arousal, there are neurons whose firing patterns lead to it, and genes whose loss disrupts it. Therefore generalized arousal is the behavioral state produced by arousal pathways, their electrophysiological mechanisms and genetic influences. The fact that these mechanisms, produce the same sensory alertness (S), motor reactivity (M), and emotional reactivity (E) as our definition affirms the existence of a generalized arousal function and the accuracy of its operational definition.
			* In Shannon's equation, the information in any event is in inverse proportion to its probability. Put another way, the more uncertain we are about the occurrence of that event, the more information is transmitted, inherently, when it does happen. When all events in an array of events are equally probable, information is at its top value. Disorder maximizes information flow.
			* For a lower animal or human to be aroused, there must be some change in the (interoceptive or exteroceptive) environment. If there is change, there must be some uncertainty about the state of the environment. Quantitatively, to the degree that there is uncertainty, predictability is decreased.
			* Arousal of brain and behavior, and information calculations are inseparably united.
			* Unknown, unexpected, disordered, and unusual (high-information) stimuli produce and sustain arousal responses.
			* Central nervous system arousal systems battle heroically against the Second Law of Thermodynamics in a very special way. They respond selectively to environmental situations that have an inherently high entropy - a high degree of uncertainty and therefore information content. But in responding, CNS arousal systems effectively reduce entropy by compressing all of that information into a single, lawful response. Arousal neurobiology is the neuroscience of change, uncertainty, unpredictability, and surprise - that is of information science.
			* The huge phenomenon called habituation, a decline in response amplitude on repetition of the same stimulus, pervades neurophysiology, behavioral science, and autonomic physiology; and it shows us how declining information content leads to declining CNS arousal. Thus arousal theory and information theory were made for each other.
			* It is important to recognize that the "mathematics of information" explains the behavior of neurons in both arousal processes and learning processes, which, combined, determine what the brain does. Therefore, although "information" is not a physiological construct, it lawfully explains the physiological activity of the brain. It is the function that is selected by evolution; the physiological phenotypes follow.

Robert.adlington at 13:50, 28 April 2026

2026-04-28T13:50:53Z

← Older revision		Revision as of 13:50, 28 April 2026
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	*Sheep and cows and pigs are fellow mammals and are subject to the same basic emotions that we are, such as FEAR, PANIC/GRIEF, and CARE. Mammals possess a cortex too, which means they are capable - all of them to some degree - of consciously "remembering the future" and feeling their way through its probabilities and likelihoods.		*Sheep and cows and pigs are fellow mammals and are subject to the same basic emotions that we are, such as FEAR, PANIC/GRIEF, and CARE. Mammals possess a cortex too, which means they are capable - all of them to some degree - of consciously "remembering the future" and feeling their way through its probabilities and likelihoods.
	*As we relinquish the familiar illusion that consciousness flows in through our sense, and the misconception that it is synonymous with understanding, let us take comfort in the fact that it actually comes spontaneously from our inmost interior. It dawns within us even before we are born. At its source, we are guided by a constant stream of feelings, flowing from a wellspring of intuition, arising from we know not where. Each of us individually does not know the causes, but we feel them. Feelings are a legacy that the whole history of life has bestowed upon us, to steel us for the uncertainties to come.		*As we relinquish the familiar illusion that consciousness flows in through our sense, and the misconception that it is synonymous with understanding, let us take comfort in the fact that it actually comes spontaneously from our inmost interior. It dawns within us even before we are born. At its source, we are guided by a constant stream of feelings, flowing from a wellspring of intuition, arising from we know not where. Each of us individually does not know the causes, but we feel them. Feelings are a legacy that the whole history of life has bestowed upon us, to steel us for the uncertainties to come.

			== Postscript ==

			* Self-organizing systems survive because they occupy limited states; they do not disperse themselves. This survival imperative led gradually to the evolution of the complex dynamical mechanisms that underwrite intentionality. Crucially, the selfhood of self-organizing systems grants them a point of view. That is why it becomes meaningful to speak of the subjectivity of such a system: deviations from their viable states are registered by the system, for the system, as needs.
			* Feeling by an organism of fluctuations in its own needs enables choice and thereby supports survival in unpredicted contexts. This is the biological function of experience.
			* Needs cannot all be felt at once. They are prioritized by a midbrain decision triangle, where current needs (residual prediction errors, quantified as free energy) converging on the periaqueductal grey are ranked in relation to current opportunities (displayed in the form of a 2D "saliency map" in the superior colliculi). This triggers conditioned action programmes, which unfold in expected contexts over a deep hierarchy of predictions (the generative model of the expanded forebrain). The actions that are generated by prioritized affects are voluntary, which means they are subject to here-and-now choices rather than pre-established algorithms. Such choices are felt in exteroceptive consciousness, which contextualizes affect.

Robert.adlington: /* 12. Making a Mind */

2026-04-28T12:13:20Z

12. Making a Mind

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 * Both laws are psychological and physiological (ie bound by chemical limits)
 == 12. Making a Mind ==
-* Bulleted list item
+* We may suppose that consciousness did not exist on earth before brains evolved - and perhaps only when vertebrate brains evolved; therefore, about 525m years ago. I suspect it arose in rudimentary form before that; that a precursor of affect gradually became felt affect, with no sharp dividing line between them, in tandem with the evolution of increasingly complex organisms with multiple competing needs.

Robert.adlington: /* 11. The Hard Problem */

2026-04-28T10:35:16Z

11. The Hard Problem

← Older revision		Revision as of 10:35, 28 April 2026
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	*The cortex contributes more to PLAY than to any of the other basic emotions.		*The cortex contributes more to PLAY than to any of the other basic emotions.
	== 11. The Hard Problem ==		== 11. The Hard Problem ==
	* ~~Bulleted list item~~		* Ribot's Law - Your internally experienced memory of what happened ten years ago is more securely consolidated than what happened ten minutes ago. This is why elderly people are more likely to forget recent events than remote ones.
			* Miller's Law - At any given moment, you can only retain seven units of information (plus or minus two). The duration of short-term memories can also be measured: they typically last between 15-30 seconds.
			* Both laws are psychological and physiological (ie bound by chemical limits)
	== 12. Making a Mind ==		== 12. Making a Mind ==
	* Bulleted list item		* Bulleted list item

Robert.adlington: /* 10. Back to the Cortex */

2026-04-28T10:31:23Z

10. Back to the Cortex

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 *Feelings are fluctuating, existentially valued, subjective states with differentiated qualities and degrees of confidence. This is the stuff of consciousness.
 == 10. Back to the Cortex ==
-* Bulleted list item
+* The world as we experience it is literally generated from cortical representations. Within the predictive coding framework, odd as it seems, what we perceive is a virtual reality constructed from the mind's own building materials.
 == 11. The Hard Problem ==
 * Bulleted list item
 == 12. Making a Mind ==
 * Bulleted list item

Robert.adlington: /* 9. Why and How Consciousness Arises */

2026-04-27T14:16:12Z

9. Why and How Consciousness Arises

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 *Prediction errors are the sensory signals that were not predicted by a current hypothesis, ie the ones that were not self-generated. This is the salient part of the data.
 == 9. Why and How Consciousness Arises ==
-* Bulleted list item
+* The basic question that living things must always ask themselves is "What will happen to my free energy if I do that?
 == 10. Back to the Cortex ==
 * Bulleted list item

Robert.adlington: /* 8. A Predictive Hierarchy */

2026-04-27T11:33:43Z

8. A Predictive Hierarchy

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 == 8. A Predictive Hierarchy ==
-* Bulleted list item
+* The brain's many complex functions really can, ultimately, be reduced to a few simple mechanisms.
 == 9. Why and How Consciousness Arises ==
 * Bulleted list item

Robert.adlington: /* 7. The Free Energy Principle */

2026-04-26T16:40:45Z

7. The Free Energy Principle

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 *Perception and action are an ongoing process of hypothesis testing in which the brain constantly tries to suppress errror signals and confirm its hypotheses. The more your hypotheses are confirmed, the more confident you are, and the less aroused - less conscious - you need to be. You can automatize your action sequences and drift off into the default mode. But if you find yourself in an unexpected situation - one in which your predictive model appears to shed no reliable light - the consequences of your actions become highly salient. You switch out of autopilot and become hyper-aware: the decision triangle carefully adjusts your predictions as you feel your way through the consequences of your actions and make new choices.
 == 7. The Free Energy Principle ==
-* Bulleted list item
 == 8. A Predictive Hierarchy ==
 * Bulleted list item

Robert.adlington: /* 6. The Source */

2026-04-26T11:48:42Z

6. The Source

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 *Learning how to reconcile the various emotional needs with each other in flexible ways determines the bedrock of mental health and maturity. To manage life's problems we use emotions as a compass.
 == 6. The Source ==
-* Bulleted list item
+* The reticulate (net-like) core of the brainstem must be about 525m years old, because it is shared by all vertebrates - from fishes to humans.
 == 7. The Free Energy Principle ==
 * Bulleted list item