Prompted by reference 3, already mentioned at reference 4, we now put a time dimension on those two diagrams.
This new diagram is organised in roughly the same way as its predecessors, tail left and head right. The lower triangle is intended to suggest the increasing processing times associated with the move to the right, the higher triangle the increasing degree of consciousness. With the idea being that words and higher levels of consciousness go together.
With the further idea being that as one moves further up the food chain, up into the realms of higher thought, one needs more time. So when reacting to something or other, perhaps some stimulus from the outside world, perhaps from a grizzly hiding in the bushes by the side of the path, the animal, usually a human, a very fast reflex action might be appropriate, an action which does not involve the brain at all. At other times there might be a bit more time available and an emotional reaction may be appropriate, an emotional reaction which codes that stimulus in a single dimension, stuff like: like/dislike, trust/distrust, fight/flight. Such a reaction might or might not include physiological change or a consciously felt emotion. But while the reaction, the gut reaction or the intuition, might have been quick, it might also have been wrong. Not much better than a guess. So while there is a good deal of variety in the quality of intuitions, important, complex decisions are usually better made in other ways, in slower time. So when there is a bit more time still, one might stop and think, be aware of having so stopped, but with the thinking itself, the thoughts themselves not making it to consciousness; perhaps Hurlburt’s unstructured thought, for which, for example, see reference 5.
More time still and we have inner thought, in words, in consciousness. LWS-N, the chip of reference 2 has been fully deployed.
And lastly, on the far right, we have what I have called outer thought. This is where our human resorts to talking out loud, to external props like paper and pencil (or a Powerpoint) or to sharing thoughts with others. Perhaps a structured decision, with points for and against, with scoring, maybe the sort of thing described at reference 6, the sort of thing that I do not think inner thought is going to be at all good at. And heights which gut reactions are unlikely to scale. All of which props might result in a really good decision, about, for example, whether to build a bridge to Skye or where to put the new London airport, both matters which have or which are attracting much debate, but which is apt to take a little time. But a decision which will be taken with the full support of consciousness, a decision which will be written to memory, which we can hold to and on which we will not wobble.
The middle of the diagram is about right for skilled manual tasks such as making furniture, playing golf or making lace. One wants to be good enough at it that one can just let it flow, without the need for distracting and brain-cycle consuming conscious thought. In other contexts, there may be a simple trade-off between decision speed and decision quality. With the complication that there has to be some fast process, or at least some fast something, making this trade-off and if necessary blocking or aborting some reflexive, instinctive or intuitive response. A process which can result in a pause; the look before the leap. One possibility is scoring against a threshold: if the action score is above the action threshold, then the action goes ahead, otherwise the brain keeps on looking. With the idea being that, by training, one can either lower the action score of emotional responses or raise the corresponding action threshold.
From where I associate to the related business of training children to control their impulses, to work to rules, for example to ask for a second chocolate biscuit rather than just grabbing one, or perhaps to forego something now on the grounds that there will be something better later. Also known as delayed gratification.
Turning briefly to LWS-N, it may be that it is deployed all the time, that something is going on there all the time. But we only get a subjective experience, we only get consciousness when there is enough activation and when things have slowed down enough for LWS-N to generate a stable, coherent activation signal for long enough for it to be experienced.
And for it to have evolved at all, LWS-N must have or have had some network function. There must be some good reason why so much stuff is channelled through this one small patch of cortex. Is it enough to say that in order for a signal to get from one place to another on the surface of the brain, it is generally quickest to go via the central hub, rather as if, when travelling from Wichita Falls to Dorking, you are apt to pass through the hubs of Forth Worth and Heathrow? Or is it more to do with the fact that all traffic between the periphery and the centre has to pass through the brain stem? Damasio, for example, does diagrams, more complicated than that above, of its goings on. See, for example, Figure 8.3 in reference 7.
PS: regarding delayed gratification, Wikipedia has reminded me that Freud talks of the (pleasure seeking) forces of the id being balanced by the morality of the super-ego. Rather to may surprise however, a search of the pdf of the collected works turned up very few uses of the words ‘gratification’ and ‘delay’, none of them relevant here.
References
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/its-dogs-life.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/its-chips-life.html.
Reference 3: Before You Know It: The Unconscious Reasons We Do What We Do - John Bargh – 2017.
Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/mistake.html.
Reference 5: Unsymbolized thinking - Russell T. Hurlburt, Sarah A. Akhter – 2008.
Reference 6: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/the-choice-model.html.
Reference 7: Self comes to mind – Antonio Damasio – 2010.
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