The Structure of Mind and the Role of Consciousness

Abstract

The term mind is used here to refer to all of the mechanisms in the brain that generate one's responses including thinking and experiencing. These mechanisms may be innate, or they may be learned but based on innate abilities. Most of these mechanisms respond in a rapid but flexible way to situations that one confronts frequently; some respond to occasional threats or opportunities; some are temporary mechanisms for responding to expected situations, or for controlling intended behavioural sequences; and some are capable of more generalised problemsolving. All of these mechanisms are unconscious; there is no evidence of conscious processing, and much evidencebased on psychological research, evolutionary principles, and theoretical considerations-confirming that no mental processing occurs in consciousness. Consciousness is a changing array of information in various forms; such as sights, sounds, and felt experiences, but consciousness is adaptive, and this can only be because conscious information enhances its possessor's responses in some situations. The mechanisms of mind generally operate with unconscious information, but they sometimes benefit from access to conscious information, and some mechanisms may have evolved to function solely with conscious information or use only conscious information in some situations.

The Neural Correlates of Access Consciousness and Phenomenal Consciousness Seem to Coincide and Would Correspond to a Memory Center, an Activation Center and Eight Parallel Convergence Centers

“…In this way, we arrive at the stage of semantic recognition, but always at an unconscious level ( Umiltà, 2000 ). At this moment, the percept can be processed for minor automatic tasks ( Vandenbroucke et al, 2014 ; Earl, 2019 ), of which the dorsal striatum is responsible. If the thalamic attention continues its active state beyond the first 200ms, at this point the NCC come into action.…”

“…I want to add here that the NC of attention acting in the preconscious phase are probably located in the thalamus ( Nakajima et al, 2019 ; Wolff and Vann, 2019 ), with selection also requiring input from the ventral striatum and amygdala ( Peck and Salzman, 2014 ; Slagter et al, 2017 ), based on innate or acquired emotional values ( Edelman, 1989 ; Damasio, 1994 ; Raymond, 2009 ). It has been shown that in the preconscious period there is the ability to recognize in the secondary cortices the identity of an object in an unconscious way ( Logothetis, 1998 ; Umiltà, 2000 ), and even to solve problems of a certain difficulty automatically ( Vandenbroucke et al, 2014 ; Earl, 2019 ).…”

“…In this context, attention is believed to select from among the unconscious perceptual images coming from either the environment or memory, those that are then made conscious by the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC; Mashour et al, 2020 ). To support this, based largely on studies on decision-making, hypnosis, or “neglect,” several authors agree that consciousness has no selective, executive, control, or metacognitive function ( Libet et al, 1983 ; Velmans, 2000 ; Earl, 2014 , 2019 ; Oakley and Halligan, 2017 ). It instead, has the exclusive ability to provide content in a format that constitutes the only source usable by high-level processors such as working memory, the decision-making executive and metacognition centers, and the language or memories of conscious contents ( Earl, 2014 ; Newell and Shanks, 2014 ; Jacobs and Silvanto, 2015 ; Oakley and Halligan, 2017 ; Kanai et al, 2019 ; Mashour et al, 2020 ).…”

Implications of Neuroplasticity to the Philosophical Debate of Free Will and Determinism

“…It has been suggested that the timing of being consciously aware of something may reflect the completion of a decision-making process (Dehaene et al 2014). Consciousness may have no selective, executive, controlling, or metacognitive function (Earl 2019), but has the exclusive ability to provide content in a way that it can be used by working memory, decision-making centers, metacognitive centers, and autobiographical memory. The treatment of consciousness as an epiphenomenon holds another challenge for the existence of free will, since decisions in this frame are emergent and cannot be considered causes of actions (Balaguer 2019).…”

Humans, fish, spiders and bees inherited working memory and attention from their last common ancestor

“… 1 Mind has been defined as the mechanisms in the brain which select, initiate, and control behaviour ( Chalmers, 1996 ; Earl, 2019 ). However, this definition excludes animals that do not possess a localised concentration of neural structures which might reasonably considered to be a brain.…”