Noise in the brain, decision-making, determinism, free will, and consciousness
Advances in Consciousness Research October 28, 2010 DOI: 10.1075/aicr.79.16rol (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Proposes that free will describes the reasoning system's operation and that consciousness requires higher order syntactic thoughts, while decisions by the implicit system may produce an illusory sense of free will. |
Abstract
Noise caused by randomness in the spiking times of neurons in the brain has a number of advantages, including contributing to probabilistic decision-making. However, noise results in the brain operating effectively as a non-deterministic system, which has implications for free will. Noise also results in decisions being taken probabilistically between the reasoning system and the implicit reward system. I propose that free will can be used to describe the operation of the reasoning system, and that consciousness is a property of a reasoning system that must use higher order syntactic thoughts (HOSTs) to correct its first order thoughts. When the implicit system takes a decision, we may confabulate a reason for the decision, and in that case the feeling of free will may be an illusion.