BI 230 Michael Shadlen: How Thoughts Become Conscious

So, okay, let's linger on the word thought for a moment, because in some sense, one could argue that you're, and this is not a knock on it at all, but operationally defining the term.

Because we have these terms like consciousness, thought, and you said, what do you say when people ask you what a thought is? And it depends on what you mean by thought, right? You know, it depends on where you're coming from.

And so how much of this are you sort of defining thought this way versus... discovering what this ontological thing that we call a thought and then describing it, for example? Well,

I'm kind of giving it a neurobiological interpretation.

I'm saying that what a thought is in the brain is persistent activity that represents a provisional intention.

The nice thing about that is that it avoids the category error.

This is what I wrote my essay about.

A little aside, just to finish that thought.

Sorry to use the word thought there.

We opened up a hole in the head, a craniotomy as we call it now, now that I've been to med school.

I didn't know anything then.

And I put a dime and I pressed it onto the cortex and it was represented in the cortex.

I could see the representation of that dime in the cortex.

How come we don't see it? Okay.

And I'm just sort of making fun of people who think in the Hubel and Wiesel days that because these spikes were coming in, that's how you saw.

There's a big gap there.

And philosophers call it category error.

You know, it's like spikes are one thing.

They're electricity, blah, blah, blah, you know, all the electrophysiology.

And then a thought is something else.

And we're not even going into, at this point, the distinction between that and conscious thought.

But so I'm just saying that what I've been studying in my whole career in decision-making is that something comes in and you deal with it and you're effectively asking a question, yes or no, left or right, mate with this or flee from it, whatever, you know, it's, um, we're in, and that's, you know, so I'm, you know, taking examples from Gibson and examples from really, you know, pedestrian or just, or our contrived tasks like the ones that I study.

Um, but they, um, But what the thought is and why it's justified to call it a thought and not just spikes is because it does have a weak something like.

So it's sort of like I think to try to – because it's an intention, that might be all it takes for philosophers to – kind of see the appeal there but but but but I think it's also worth thinking that that it's a bit like relating what what if you have isometric you know isometric contraction and you can do you know by stiffening at the at your you know at the elbow you know at the biceps you know and And if you do that, the arm doesn't move, but you're doing exactly what it would be when it does move.

So I think that this working memory-like signal, you could call it, but I'll just say persistent activity that is the outcome of some commitment, which makes it decision-like, and the outcome of some, I should say, evaluation that you are now committed to as a Provisional intention.

So, okay, let's linger on the word thought for a moment, because in some sense, one could argue that you're, and this is not a knock on it at all, but operationally defining the term.

Because we have these terms like consciousness, thought, and you said, what do you say when people ask you what a thought is? And it depends on what you mean by thought, right? You know, it depends on where you're coming from.

And so how much of this are you sort of defining thought this way versus... discovering what this ontological thing that we call a thought and then describing it, for example? Well,

I'm kind of giving it a neurobiological interpretation.

I'm saying that what a thought is in the brain is persistent activity that represents a provisional intention.

The nice thing about that is that it avoids the category error.

This is what I wrote my essay about.

A little aside, just to finish that thought.

Sorry to use the word thought there.

We opened up a hole in the head, a craniotomy as we call it now, now that I've been to med school.

I didn't know anything then.

And I put a dime and I pressed it onto the cortex and it was represented in the cortex.

I could see the representation of that dime in the cortex.

How come we don't see it? Okay.

And I'm just sort of making fun of people who think in the Hubel and Wiesel days that because these spikes were coming in, that's how you saw.

There's a big gap there.

And philosophers call it category error.

You know, it's like spikes are one thing.

They're electricity, blah, blah, blah, you know, all the electrophysiology.

And then a thought is something else.

And we're not even going into, at this point, the distinction between that and conscious thought.

But so I'm just saying that what I've been studying in my whole career in decision-making is that something comes in and you deal with it and you're effectively asking a question, yes or no, left or right, mate with this or flee from it, whatever, you know, it's, um, we're in, and that's, you know, so I'm, you know, taking examples from Gibson and examples from really, you know, pedestrian or just, or our contrived tasks like the ones that I study.

Um, but they, um, But what the thought is and why it's justified to call it a thought and not just spikes is because it does have a weak something like.

So it's sort of like I think to try to – because it's an intention, that might be all it takes for philosophers to – kind of see the appeal there but but but but I think it's also worth thinking that that it's a bit like relating what what if you have isometric you know isometric contraction and you can do you know by stiffening at the at your you know at the elbow you know at the biceps you know and And if you do that, the arm doesn't move, but you're doing exactly what it would be when it does move.

So I think that this working memory-like signal, you could call it, but I'll just say persistent activity that is the outcome of some commitment, which makes it decision-like, and the outcome of some, I should say, evaluation that you are now committed to as a Provisional intention.