Choice Without a Central Chooser

Abstract

This corrected preprint presents its research question, method, bounded result, and principal limitations in a standardized reader-facing format. Neural tissue contains no single executive that inspects every available action, yet an organism can maintain alternatives, commit to one action, monitor its consequences, and alter later behavior. This paper proposes a multiscale model in which learned synaptic and dendritic states make cellular transitions criterion-sensitive; excitation, inhibition, and disinhibition change time-varying effective connectivity; distributed cortical and subcortical dynamics transform competing action-related states; and action-conditioned sensory feedback updates the criteria governing later transitions. Four biological scales are kept distinct: cellular transition, circuit route selection, population commitment, and organism action. The account credits prior work on recurrent path diversion, criterial causation, evidence accumulation, affordance competition, context-dependent dynamics, basal-ganglia and superior-colliculus selection, thalamic switching, cerebellar evidence processing, dendritic events, corollary discharge, and reafference. It belongs to the Self-Aware Networks neuroscience and consciousness research program. This is a corrected preprint edition released under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.