"Hawking in the Brain Science", 60 years of masterpiece, revealing the instinct of consciousness

Is consciousness really instinct?

01

In the classic "Language Instinct", Stephen Pinke sounded the alarm for the entire scientific community: how can creatures form mental and brains, and how to modify their experiences?

This book provides a framework to guide us to think about the limitations of learning and how the local functions of mind are produced from natural selection. Pinke also keenly noticed how annoying the premium characteristics (such as language) as instinct.

Similarly, the phenomenon of consciousness is attributed to the instinct, including anger, shyness, love, jealousy, envy, competition, social networking, etc., which is also a way that is easy to fall into confusion.

We know that instincts are gradually evolving, so that we can better adapt to the environment. The practice of attributed consciousness as instinct is equivalent. We believe that this human traits that we cherish are not the talented magic skills held by our species.

If we allow consciousness to be an instinct, it is equivalent to incorporating consciousness together with its history, richness, diversity, and continuity into the pan -boom biological world.

Where does consciousness come from? How does it evolve? Does other creatures also have conscious attributes?

02

Let's pause it to see a basic question: What is instinct?

The word is used in various places, as if the parade was thrown up in colorful paper crumbs everywhere. The instinct list is getting longer every year. This makes people feel that if they can get into the human brain, they will see a lot of labeling lines, each of which represents an instinct. The human brain should indeed be composed of a lot of messy connections, which are connected together to complete their work.

However, if you let a neurologist show you a specific instinct to you, such as competition and social networking, the answer will be unknown -at least now you don't know. So, what is the use of functional costs?

It is always right when you are dizzy by the definitions and concepts of mind and brain, it is always right to ask William James for help. At least 135 years ago, James wrote an iconic paper, which was simple: "What is instinct?" He opened the door to see the concept as follows:

Instinct is usually defined as a behavioral ability, which can produce some results, but there is no expectation of the results and pre -learning of behavior performance ... (instinct) is a functional correlation of the structure.

Perhaps it can be said that the existence of each organ corresponds to a original talent that can apply its function. Didn't the bird have an glands used to secrete fat? It instinctively knows how to press oil from the gland and apply oil to feathers.

This definition looks very direct, but also cleverly contains dual theory. Instinctively uses structural exercise functions. The behavior of using the structure requires some kind of "talent", which seems to appear flat for no reason. It is feasible to find instinctual physical correlations, but how can we know how to use it? Is it a coincidence? This answer is not very scientific.

Does the bird have a reflection of the gland, and then slowly learned how to use the glands? Obviously, if there is no oil glands, there will be no oil, and the birds will not have the opportunity to learn to use oil to improve the flight ability.

It can be seen that the natural choice and experience constitute a ring, which produces what we call.

Bird behavior can be explained like this, but can it be applied to human cognition and consciousness? James provides a reasonable inference:

A complex instinct may have a series of awakening impulses ...

Therefore, a hungry lion began to look for prey because its brain awakened the imagination mixed with desire; it began to track the prey with eyes, ears, or nose because it felt the presence of the prey at a certain distance; it started to start Stepping towards the prey is because it noticed that the prey began to run away due to frightening, or the prey was close to it; it began to tear and swallow the prey because its claws and teeth felt the touch of the prey.

Looking for, tracking, sprinting, and swallowing, these are different types of muscle contraction, causing the stimulus of one of the activities to cause other activities.

James's work contains a kind of thought, which is exactly in line with the concept of modules and hierarchies.

James seems to be saying that the instinctual structural attribute is a module in a hierarchical structure. Each instinct can participate in a simple behavior independently, but they can also cooperate.

A single instinct can be arranged in an orderly manner to form more complicated behaviors, making it look like some advanced instinct. When the instinct sequence comes from the mountains, we have formed what we call.

James pointed out that the basic instinct sequence has a competitive dynamics and can produce complex behavior according to the complex internal state. He even supplemented a description of an instinct definition and about animal experience:

"Every impulse of all instincts and every step has its sufficient independence, and can become the only truth and obligation at the moment. Everything is just for yourself."

This sounds like a lot of bubbles follow the arrows of the incident, which has produced what we call a conscious experience.

03

This dynamic process is undoubtedly affected by experience and learning.

However, experience, learning and consciousness must be the same state, operating in the same system. Once we think about consciousness in this way, we can see the essence of the conscious experience: the drama of the mother of nature.

Seeing consciousness as a highly evolved instinct (or a whole instinct sequence) can let us know where to find the origin of consciousness in this cold and inorganic world. It opens our minds and lets us realize that all aspects of conscious experience are the instincts of human beings, and the mechanisms and capabilities behind these instincts have produced the conscious experience we can feel.

It is worth noting that in the past few years, biologists in different fields have found 29 specific networks in the flies in a amazing way, and each network is responsible for controlling a specific behavior. These behaviors can be flexibly reorganized and form a complex behavioral model. That's right, we learned consciousness from fruit flies! Today, the journey to find instinctual physical dimensions continues.

However, there are still many people hate the use of instincts to describe the experience of appearance consciousness. For them, this derives that humans have unique positions in the animal kingdom, that is, only we can be responsible for our behavior morally. Humans can decide what they do, so we can choose "doing the right thing." They believe that if consciousness is an instinct, humans are robots or zombies without thoughts.

However, if the physical reality and sections of quantum mechanics and sections and its revolutionary symbolic functions are temporarily put aside, we can say that there is a knowing mechanism that believes in complex entities such as brain, body, and mind On the desperate conclusion. James himself interpreted this doubt like this:

We have formed a simple physiological concept of instinct, and now let us do some simple deductions. If instincts are just an urge to stimulate exercise, because specific reflex arcs already exist in the biological nerve center, of course, it needs to follow all the rules followed by all such reflex arcs. One problem of such reflex arcs is that their activities can be "suppressed" by other processing at the same time.

Regardless of whether the reflex arc is born, or after a period of time, it is spontaneous, or a acquisition ability, it must compete with other reflex arcs, sometimes success, sometimes failing ... Instinct is constant.

The physiological view requires the instinct to have occasional irregularities. If the animals have a lot of different instincts, and the same stimulus, there is a great possibility to enter multiple instincts. This irregularity is the richness of the instinct of higher animals.

James also provides many other discussions. To digest the concept of instinct, it does take some time. He also pointed out the direction of progress and refused to accept the despair scene that regarded humans as a robot that was adapted.

For him, the complex behavior state can produce different reorganizations of simple independent modules. It is like a complex behavior of the pool jumping the bross leap in the crossbar.

When operating in a coordinated way, even simple systems will make observers believe that there is some other forces.

James's point of view is very clear: "The first behavior I do to show the free will will be believed in the will of freedom." This declaration is consistent with the components of the belief, opinion, and ideas.

The symbols in this system are flexible and random, but they are also firmly bound to the physical mechanism of the brain. Even in the minds restricted by the laws of physics, their views can affect.

There is no good despair: the mental state can affect the physical process in a top -down way!

Recommended reading

The issue of "consciousness" has plagued human beings for thousands of years. The popularity of brain science and the rise of artificial intelligence have made consciousness a hot topic again. Although a large number of breakthrough research continues to rewrite the science of the brain, people's consciousness Confusion always exists. Michael Gazangar, the father of cognitive neuroscience, has gathered his exploration results in the field of mental and brain science for more than 60 years, leading us to break free of this dilemma and provides us with a new perspective.

The language of the book is flat and seductive. Whether it is researchers, practitioners in the field of neuroscience, practitioners, or general public, they will gain intellectual expansion and reading enjoyment.

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