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These are excerpts and elaborations from my book "The Nature of Consciousness"
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The Multimind Reacting to the identity
theory, the US psychologist Robert Ornsteindeveloped his "multi-aspect" theory of the
mind: the mental has an experiential (the experience of feeling a feeling), a
neural (the corresponding brain processes), a behavioral (the related action)
and a verbal (the related utterance) aspect. The human mind is viewed by
Ornstein as many small minds, each operating independently and specialized in
one task. In other words, the body contains many centers of control. The lower
level ones developed millions of years ago for basic survival activities, and
humans share them with other animals. The most recent ones (e.g., the cortex)
deal with decisions, language, reasoning. The brain is not a single whole, it
is a confederation of more or less independent brains. The goal of the mind is to
simplify, to reduce the complexity of the external world to what is useful for
the body. Minds are, therefore, attracted only to four types of events: recent
events, unusual events, relevant events, events that can be compared to other
events. When information is meaningful, it gets organized (i.e. simplified).
That is the role played by the mind for the benefit of the body. The mind is an adaptive
system that has been shaped by the world. It is the way it is because the world
is the way it is. Human minds are initially
endowed with many possible ways of evolving (e.g., with the capability for
learning many possible languages), but only some are pursued and the other
skills are lost during growth. The mind could potentially adapt to many
different environments, but will actually adapt only to the ones it is exposed
to. During development, a number of specialized, autonomous centers of action
develop. These "minds" within the mind compete for control of the
organism. Each one tends to stay in place for as long as possible, with its own
memories and goals, until the circumstances favor the takeover of another mind. In a sense, this is a
Darwinian model, very similar to Edelman's model for the neural structure of the brain. There are many selves
that take control of the brain and succeed or fail based on natural selection.
Some die out, and some get stronger, depending on how often they succeed. Back to the beginning of the chapter "Consciousness: the Factory of Illusions" | Back to the index of all chapters |
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