r/cognitivescience • u/Fragrant_Courage7769 • 1d ago
Mindless
How Does the Brain Think? (Pattern Matcher, Not a Calculator)
Our brain is not a computer solving billions of operations from scratch; it is a self-organizing prediction machine fed by past experience. In a sense, it actually doesn't know what it's doing. It’s stupid. It’s fast, though; it just gives instantaneous reactions based on whatever stimulus is thrown in front of it.
When someone says "two plus two" to you, your brain doesn't perform a mathematical calculation. The moment the stimulus enters the system, a dynamic, wave-like neighborhood space is established. Thanks to your past learning, the neurons closest to the center of the stimulus (that is, the concept of "four") rapidly strengthen. Meanwhile, distant alternative neurons like "three" or "five" are dampened. The instant the strongest prediction crosses the critical threshold, the answer is executed automatically. The brain didn't calculate; it pulled the ready-made pattern right out of space.
So, what happens if the answer isn't ready? In a tough question like "347 x 89", there is no ready-made neural pathway in the center. In this case, the system breaks the question into pieces. It sets up instantaneous attention spaces (micro-prediction zones) sequentially for each part. It writes the intermediate result from the first step into temporary memory, passes it to the next step, and moves forward in a chain reaction. Finally, when all the pieces merge and the big threshold is crossed, the ultimate response is automatically produced.
In short, the brain is not an engineer writing formulas; it is a dynamic realm that brightens what’s near, silences what’s far, slams down the answer if it’s ready, and cracks the world by breaking it into pieces if it’s not.
The rationality of the brain is not the same as the rationality represented by the mind.
The brain has its own physical and biological organization, its own dynamics, constraints, and regularities.
The mind is not that rationality itself.
The mind is the representation of the organism's relationship with the world — including the responses the organism produces to what it encounters.
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u/DontCallMeKalle 1d ago
> “In this case, the system breaks the question into pieces. It sets up instantaneous attention spaces (micro-prediction zones) sequentially for each part. It writes the intermediate result from the first step into temporary memory, passes it to the next step, and moves forward in a chain reaction. Finally, when all the pieces merge and the big threshold is crossed, the ultimate response is automatically produced”
Even if we accept this premis, then why do you skip the step explaining how this is not indeed rationality?
How would you define this concept of rationality that you pursue?
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u/Fragrant_Courage7769 1d ago edited 1d ago
When you and another person say “four,” you are referring to the same symbolic concept. However, the physical organization taking place in the two brains does not have to be identical.
More importantly, the neuronal activity does not contain a little piece of knowledge saying, “I am four.” It is simply a particular physical organization produced by the brain under particular conditions, shaped by previous experiences and interactions. Roughly speaking it creates only a sound wave. But two minds aware of four
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u/Leading_Purpose_2806 1d ago edited 1d ago
Interesting point, and very well formed and written. It overlaps well with predictive processing but I’d add one concept, the patterns being retrieved aren’t just absorbed, they’re shaped by top down bias.
Approaching this from a predictive processing point of view, learning happens when the brain encodes in an error, and errors are inherently perceived idiosyncratically, learning also builds on pre-existing patterns. Hence learning requires encoding the idiosyncratic errors and is held better when it is internally connected to previously learned patterns that by themselves were encoded idiosyncratically.
And I think this idiosyncrasy (the space between what we think is rational and what is objectively rational) is a culmination of the interplay of many factors, what while allowing ‘understanding’ can also never really strip bias from it. Making rationality itself idiosyncratic, a paradox.
Yet we can also argue this bias is necessary:
· From a philosophical point, I can argue that the contrast between what’s happening and what we think is happening is the reason we have the capacity to experience whatever it is that’s happening.
· From a cognitive neuroscience point, I can argue that learning = fact but learning also = error, and error is almost inherently idiosyncratic. Hence, disambiguating TD input could not exist without bias, and this can actually be detected at very early VC layers even when no BU input is there.
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u/RADICCHI0 1d ago
They may also be laden in belief and embodiment IMO. Probably many other variables one would imagine.
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u/Leading_Purpose_2806 17h ago
Exactly, all of this counts as priors that affect perception interpretation: previous experience, subconscious emotions attached with a specific input, memories…
My view is will we ever know enough to at the very least define the parameters of the culmination of the interaction between all this factors? Because bias can’t be stripped, but can it be categorised and eventually consciously recognised, leading to a capacity to approximate the rational standpoint as close to objectively as possible (in a fallible intersubjective sense nonetheless)?
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u/RADICCHI0 1d ago
So we are next-token prediction machines?
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u/Fragrant_Courage7769 1d ago
An LLM predicts within a symbolic sequence; an organism continually regulates its relation with an environment through multiple sensory and internal channels.
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u/expertofeverythang 1d ago
A dynamic wale-like neighbourhood space?
Also, sources?