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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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There is a nice article here by Steven Pinker summing up the current theories in the science of consciousness. (thanks Timmer!) Quote:
Another startling conclusion from the science of consciousness is that the intuitive feeling we have that there's an executive "I" that sits in a control room of our brain, scanning the screens of the senses and pushing the buttons of the muscles, is an illusion. Consciousness turns out to consist of a maelstrom of events distributed across the brain. These events compete for attention, and as one process outshouts the others, the brain rationalizes the outcome after the fact and concocts the impression that a single self was in charge all along.Mark mentioned in some perception thread ages ago about the eye being an outgrowth of the brain. I went looking for some more info and found this cool sight, which describes "lateral inhibition" really well, complete with opticall illusion illustrations. Quote:
The organization of the brain is such as to create "abstractions", rather than to simply take input at face value. A checkerboard is a checkerboard is a checkerboard not because the input reaching our eyes is the same at all times but rather because the nervous system is organized to reject some information and replace it with other information. The "booming, buzzing confusion" of the external world is rendered stable and comprehensible by the organization of the nervous system. That organization represents information added by the nervous system to the information is receives, and constitutes a presumption that there exist stable, constant external forms with well-defined boundaries. The presumption is strong enough so the nervous system actually creates boundaries where none in fact exist...