Scientific Brain Model Chapter III

 CHAPTER III - Concepts and conscious (natural-language coded) knowledge: (conscious) concepts are the stereotypes we form to use as sequences-of-actions- building blocks, so that it becomes feasible to elaborate complex plans for the achievement of our goals.

 * Unsupervised learning is followd to learn low-level feature detectors of those patterns, which we find more frequently and most faithfully describe the environment; whereas supervised learning is followed to learn those high-level features, which are better suited to code the tasks we execute to achieve our goals.

At this point we enter in the field of supervised learning. Until now, I have been discussing forms of unsupervised learning in the brain. However, generally, in order to be able to achieve some goal, some form of supervised learning will ultimately be necessary. The role of unsupervised learning is to highlight and squeeze out the most relevant information about our surroundings; however, in order to achieve some goal, eventually it will be necessary to settle on a course of action. Supervised learning is then the process whereby the system learns what is the most appropriate course of action in a specific situation. As rational as we enjoy thinking we are, fact of the matter is the immense majority of our learning occurs through trial and error (after all, it is generally the most effective method): Given a specific situation, some action is taken. If a positive result is achieved, we will be more inclined to repeat it the next time we are faced with the same scenario. However, if the outcome is negative, next time we will rather try some other course of action. The crucial question then becomes to accurately determine, when does the exact same scenario present itself again. 

* Supervised learning: let us assign a name and create a specification of complex features for those scenarios most significant for the attainment of our goals.

In order to be able to identify specific significant scenarios, complex feature detectors are acquired in higher-level brain areas. These complex features will signal the exact identity of the current scenario. Indeed, it is very useful to think of this learning process as the assignation of names to specific prominent scenarios. Whenever we reach some major success, we backtrack to the original state, that constituted the point of departure of the successful course of action. This starting situation is given some name, so that Next time it presents itself again, from its name we will know how to act. 

For instance, a young man looking for an adventure with some girl, will quickly learn, that he better focus his efforts on a girl, who exhibits a favorable disposition. Clearly, if she throws some dirty look at him, he will only be wasting his time. Needless to say, the best indication that she has some interest, is if she smiles at him. Consequently, the shape her mouth takes becomes the (complex) feature, which will signal the scenario where it may be a good idea to move forward and "attack".

Consequently, as it turns out, the kind of tasks we regularly carry out greatly determine, what feature detectors develop. As a matter of fact, this is particularly so for the more complex (high-level) features. Indeed, while basic (low-level) feature detectors emerge through unsupervised learning to reflect the statistics of the world outside; the higher up a feature detector resides in the representational hierarchy, the bigger influence we should expect the kind of supervise learning required for the acquisition of a skill must have hadin its development. Now, if the tasks we perform most often are a decisive factor to determine what features in the environment to look for and pay attention to; then it becomes even more evident that it is a poor design to decouple perception from action. In point of fact, it only makes sense to shape our analysis of our environment, based on how the acquired information is going to be used. For instance, if one is going to work as a lawyer, it only makes sense to grow one's vocabulary to gain a perfect command of the legal jargon. Likewise, if one is going to work as a medical doctor, it only makes sense to grow one's vocabulary to gain a perfect command of the medical jargon.

* Since the brain's aim is to understand how things work, the meaning of a 'thing' is determined, not by how it looks or feels; but by how it relates to our goals and other 'things'.

Here also we can see the main failing of current Artificial Intelligence systems: they are only useful for those problems for which they have been trained. If we consider again the example above of the imaginary child, who is raised entirely within a law firm, it will be very proficient in the practice of law; but it will otherwise be totally hopeless at anything else. The same could, obviously, be said of a child, who is exclusively trained in the practice of medicine: it will grow to know everything about illnesses and their corresponding medical treatments, but will be otherwise ignorant in any other domain. THe problem is not just that our legal and medical geniuses will not understand any jargon other than their own; but they will not even be able to fix themselves a sandwich, drive a car, let alone fix a flat tire. Consequently, since nothing in this world takes place in a vacuum, our friends' tunnel vision will limit them even in their field of expertise. Clearly, how is a lawyer going to be able to make a good case in a car-accident lawsuit, if he not only ignores everything about cars, but does not even know how to drive?  

Undoubtedly, it is far wiser to first get a general education, and only once one has a global understanding of the world, specialize in a specific field. That is, however, not how Artificial Intelligence systems are developed. Rather, much like our imaginary lawyer and medical-doctor friends, current AI systems are, right from their very inception, designed to carry out one specific task. 

With today's technology, it would not be a big deal to train a system to recognize whether a face is smiling or not. However, if we next want the system to identify the face's gender or race, it would not be possible to reutilize much of the logic implemented for the recognition of smiles. Basically, in order to resolve each of these tasks, the program will look for completely different features, bearing little relationship with each other. In sharp contrast, a child would learn concurrently to perform all three of these tasks and many more. As a consequence, as previously described, a hierarchy of features will form. In the lower levels of the hierarchy, unsupervised learning will yield a comprehensive set of feature detectors, specially conceived to squeeze out all the information necessary to form a detailed description of a face. These low-level feature detectors then serve as information-rich building blocks upon which more complex features in higher levels of the hierarchy can build up. These other higher-level (intermediate) features will be optimized to form the basis, from which a final group of feature detectors at the top of the hierarchy can easily determine a solution to all the various problems the system is faced with.    

 

Language comes here again really handy to illustrate, why simultaneous learning, in all the different tasks performed by the brain, leads to a seamless, optimal set of feature detectors perfectly suited to solve them. Let us consider how we should refer to the machine people use to make photographic copies of any sheet of paper. One straightforward option is to call it 'photocopy machine'; yet some folks find it more convenient to refer to it as "a xerox". The obvious advantage of using 'photocopy machine' is that it does not require any additional learning; but, from that name, anybody can easily figure it out, even if you have never seen any such machine before. Xerox, on the other hand, is not as self-explanatory. Moreover, if - not unlike a newborn baby - the AI system has not acquired some basic vocabulary, or simply does not have any general understanding of the world, and, consequently, does not know what paper is about, what is a machine, what is a photo or what it means to copy something; then it is certainly going to be quite a process to figure out what is this "xerox" thing.

 The key consideration here is that concepts get defined by how they relate to other concepts. For instance, a table and a desk are very similar things, in that their purpose is in both cases to serve as support to other items. However, whereas one would normally place tableware on a table, office material are more common on a desk. Once more, in the language domain it is particularly useful to consider how concepts relate to each other. Each noun can serve as agent, direct object or indirect object for certain verbs, but not for some others. Animals can eat, reproduce, sleep, love, kill, etc. ; but they would normally not crystalize, evaporate, be written, be sown, etc.. Similarly, adjectives make sense with certain nouns, but not with others. Finally, verbs likewise have their own rules on which adverbs are suited to qualify them, as well as which nouns they accept as agents, direct objects or indirect objects. Interestingly, it would be possible to conceive the meaning of any word based on these rules.

       As a matter of fact, if the whole purpose is to optimize our interaction with our environment, it only makes sense to build our understanding of the world based on how each concept functions in relation to everything else. Let us reflect on what it takes to solve the following questions: Is Tony crying? Who is Sergio talking to? Is Angelica smiling at me? Is David sleeping? Where is Maria looking? If we tackle these tasks in isolation, we will get a separate set of feature detectors for each of them. However, if we address them concurrently, seamlessly going from one to another; we will find that the eyes receive special scrutiny, as a significant group of feature detectors develops around them. Indeed, a detailed analysis of the eyes should extract decisive information towards the resolution of all five of the above tasks. As a matter of fact, it would almost seem like the eyes have life of their own. Undisputably, the eyes are more significant than, say, a patch of hair or skin.

* Those things, which we find are significantly related to the achievement of our goals, get a name and become concepts.

As it turns out, as we interact with our environs and act upon the bodies around us, we slowly discover what bears information and what does not. In other words, what is meaningful and what is meaningless, what gets a name and what remains nameless, what is coded and what is left out. For instance, whereas we employ specific names to designate vertical lines and horizontal lines, other degrees of orientation are simply lumped together under the term 'diagonal lines'. Clearly, vertical and horizontal lines are of special significance: while horizontal surfaces offer a safe ground on which other items can be placed without risk of sliding, tall structures will not fall, so long they stay vertical.

Indeed, there is a reason why some people find it more convenient to refer to photocopy machines as 'xerox': While 'photocopy machine' can mean several different things, 'xerox' is very specific and precise. Thus, if 'xerox' machines are significant enough, that everybody understands the term; then it may just be better to say 'xerox' and everybody will know what exactly you are talking about.

Yes, at the end of the day, all what really matters is that everybody understands what the thing is about. This, however, is exactly what today's AI system fail to accomplish. For instance, an AI system may learn to differentiate between women's faces and men's faces, and later between women's voices and men's voices; but it will never develop any concept of what is a woman and what is a man. In effect, all what the system will know how to do is to classify images between, say, category FX and category FY, and classify audios between , say, category VX and category VY. Yet, come Valentine's Day, do not expect the system to give you any kind of advice on, what kind of conduct to follow or how to go about it.

* If there is anything such as intelligence, it is the brain's ability to develop an accurate model of how things work, which will in turn guide the pursuit of our goals.

If a useful definition of 'intelligence' is the ability to learn to optimize one's interaction with the environment, in order to achieve one's own goals; then it would be reasonable to conclude, that our 'faces and voices classification' AI system is really dumb, since it will never be able to figure out anything other than classifying faces and voices. Given their undisputable prowess staying alive and thriving in this wild world, for all intends and purposes (other than the classification of human faces and voices), even a cockroach would be far smarter and more accomplished.         

Again, the whole purpose of perception is to support the recognition process, and the whole purpose of recognition is in turn to fuel the optimal interaction with our environment. In other words, the whole point is to find out what distinct bodies are there in our environment; where, from all words, 'what' is the key one here, as it refers to the meaning, that is all the information describing how those bodies function and how we can interact with them, in order to achieve our goals. We can therefore see that the end of recognition is not to assign some label such as FX or FY, but to deliver a key; namely, the key which unlocks all the information about the corresponding concept. Indeed, when our froggy friend looks at a fly, it does not merely see a six-legged cylinder, with two wing tapered ellipses on its back and other two tiny antennae poles on its head. Rather, it gets the idea that the thing, if captured, is going to satisfy all of its belly's desires. Similarly, when we look at a decorated christmas tree, we do not merely see a treetop, with lots of flashing lights, shiny balls and little figures of shooting stars, bells, bearded old men, reindeers, sledges, etc.. Rather, we perceive a decorated christmas tree, with all the meaning such concept represents: when do we put Christmas trees out? what mood and spirit is supposed to be predominant during that season? Where can we expect to find our Christmas presents?

We can therefore conclude that the learning process consists in building such a model of the world, where the brain maintains all the information it has acquired on how things work; so that the organism can then pursue its goals more intelligently. 

* Of all our knowledge and wisdom, our conscious knowledge is only the small part, which we are able to spell out with words.

contrary to what it intuitively seems, our knowledge about the world is not hosted by any single, central brain area, but it is spread all over the brain. Furthermore, importantly enough, only a fraction of this information is accessible to our consciousness and, therefore, constitutes the knowledge 'we' are actually aware of. Indeed, I have no doubt that you do not struggle the tiniest bit telling between a man's face and a woman's face. Yet, if you were to meet an extraterrestrial alien, who understands your language, but has never come across a human face, would you be able to write down a set of rules, that it could use to solve such task all by itself? While I would not be totally surprise if you can, I am far more sceptical, that you would be able to produce a similar written explanation on how to go about telling between a woman's voice and a man's voice. Certainly, we so effortlessly sort these tasks all the time, that one would think it should be easy to come up with such a set of written rules. In fact, it is very likely that we do not even ever learn them, but they are already wired up in our brains, when we are born. Yet, precisely because these tasks are performed unconsciously out of our intuition, and, therefore, our reason does not have access to such information, we find ourselves incapable of spelling out, what is the logic we follow. As a matter of fact, if we find it more difficult to explain how to solve a task by means of auditory information, it is because the visual modality is so predominant in the primate brain, and our reason thus only very rarely employs auditory information to perform any task. Consequently, the great majority of the concepts formed in our mind are defined from visual information, whereas only a few are defined from auditory information. Interestingly, we can start glimpsing, why - as we all have always intuitively felt - there is such a tight connection between consciousness and language.

* Our reasoning ability is not the crest of our intellect. In fact, we do not consciously carry out those many fundamental tasks, for which we are not able to write down an explanation, that anybody could use to resolve them. Yet, crucially, it is most definitely true, that our (reason's) ability to spell out with words a certain piece of knowledge is utterly powerful, since then it becomes possible to transmit such information to other people.

To make the point even clearer, let us consider the question of discerning a fake smile. Probably, we all have some intuition to tell, whether a person's smile on a photograph is genuine or (as it is most often the case) is just fake. However, unless one has conscientiously and methodically study the problem for quite some time, it is rather unlikely anyone would be able to provide an answer with any degree of certainty. Now, as a matter of fact, when I was in graduate school, I had a postdoc friend, who had precisely researched that exact question. He explained that it is possible to distinguish a genuine smile from the wrinkles that appear next to the outer corners of the eyes. Well, if you now come out saying, that you actually already knew it, you will definitely kill me here; but, assuming that you did not, now it got added to, and has become part of, your 'consciousness-accessible- knowledge base. Thus, the nnext time you are confronted with such a scenario, you will be aware, you will know an appropriate course of action to go about it. Moreover, if by any chance you are so inclined, you could now also go to your friends to boast about your knew knowledge and give them a dissertation on how it is possible to figure out, if someone's smile is fake. Yes, it all comes to show, there is a tight connection between consciousness and language.

 

Now, here it is of great importance to debunk a very-deeply rooted incorrect assumption; namely, it is not reasonable to argue, that someone is more stupid, just because he or she is not able to spell out, how to go about discerning a man's face from a woman's face, a man's voice from a woman's voice, or a fake smile from a genuine smile. Clearly, what matters is that you know how to solve a problem, not that you are able to spell out how you do it. Undoubtedly, if you can explain the reasons for your choices, nobody could reasonably argue you only randomly stumble upon the right solution, but you knew full well all what you needed to do in order to achieve your goal. However, if you are able to spell out your reasoning, it means it is possible to express in words the knowledge you employed. It is then far more doubtful that you actually ever figured out such knowledge by yourself; but, in all likelihood you acquired it from someone else. Or perhaps you are ready to allege you have power in your home, because you found out about electricity on your own? Now, if someone else taught it to you, then, on what basis could you reasonably argue your profound knowledge is proof of your superior intelligence?       

* The myth of Reason: Why are there left-handed folks and right-handed folks, and how there can be reasons for choices without any previous reasoning, or how prodigiously intelligent "choices" are possible in the absence of any reasoning. Long story short, the "intellegence" of an action or conduct is determined by the degree to which the system becomes fitter and so more likely to prevail.

 

In order to further illustrate the previous, really crucial point - how our ability to spell out the reasons for our choices - is not a reliable indication of someone's intelligence, we may want to consider why there are left-handed folks and right-handed folks. As a matter of fact, if there is a distinctive feature that sets the human brain apart from all other animals', this is the asymmetry of our brains. Now, since our neurons will never be able to produce an explanation as of what were the actual reasons why such design was "chosen", we will never get a clear and definite answer to the question; but we can certainly identify a reason why it is advantageous to be more dexterous on one side than the other. In order to understand the "rationale" it is important to take into account that information in the brain is generally maintained closest to where it is used. Thus, visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory or heptic memories are not kept in any central location, but in the respective brain areas where such specific type of information is processed. The same principle applies to motor programs: namely, the code on how to execute an action with the left hand is placed in the brain area controling the left hand, and viceversa for the right hand. For example, if we always use the left hand to unlock a door with a tricky lock, we will find that - even if we are generally right-handed - we will struggle significantly more, we will not be as dexterous, should we ever try to unlock the door with the right hand. Basically, when we use the left hand, our conscious thought will only need to issue the command to execute the appropriate motor program learned by the left-hand brain area. In contrast, if we ever try to use our right hand, since it never had the chance to learn the exact gesture the damn lock requires, such specific motor program will not exist in the right-hand brain area, and our conscious thought will have to exercise a more direct control on the movements of the right hand's fingers and wrist. Now, since there are many actions that are generally performed with a single hand, it would evidently be a waste of neural resources to maintain two copies of the same motor program: one for the left hand and another for the right hand. It is instead a far more efficient design to just always use the same hand for these kind of single-hand gestures. so that the neural resources that are freed on the other side can be dedicated to code some other skill. The downside is that you now lose the freedom to choose with what hand you want to carry out a single-hand action, but why would you want to be able to unlock a door with either one of the two hands?; would you not prefer to acquire a brand new skill instead?: say increase your vocabulary or enhance your navigation skills? 

Yes, the design just could not be more brilliant. If for only one thing, while a brand new skill represents an obvious evolutionary edge, it is far more doubtful that the freedom and ability to perform single-hand actions with either one of the two hands would put you ahead of the competition for survival. Therefore, given that genetic algorithms, of the kind of Evolution's 'survival of the fittest', are guaranteed to converge into the global optimum if sufficient time is allowed, it would be possible to say with mathematical certainty that, if given sufficient time, Homo Erectus were going to evolve the sort of brain asymmetry we observe in, and is such a distinguishing feature of, the human species. Indeed, once Homo Erectus started to walk upright and their hands became free to carry out a whole new universe of actions, - unless they would go first extinct for some other reason - it was a matter of time until their brains would evolve some asymmetry. Clearly, those individuals, who always employed the same hand to perform single-hand actions, used their brain's neural resources more efficiently, and were, therefore, able to develop a greater set of intellectual skills than those other individuals, who continued alternating which hand they would execute their single-hand actions with. Consequently, unless some other factor would tilt the scales against them in some other way, 'asymmetric brain' Homo Erectus were going to little by little drive their less talented 'symmetric brain' rivals into extinction.        

Now, it will always be possible to argue that the actual reasons why the human brain grew asymmetric were different, and, in fact, intervened before the evolutionary process described in the previous paragraph could play out. However, that would still not change in any way the fact that Evolution alone would have sufficed to do the trick by itself. After all, until DNAs or neurons develop some sort of mechanism, whereby they could spell out the motives behind their "choices", there will be no way we will be able to know with any certainty, what were the actual, exact reasons why things turned out the way they did.

Yet, far more important than the philosophical debate on what were the actual, exact reasons why there are left-handed folks and right-handed folks is the observation that some prodigiously "intelligent" developments can occur without the intervention of any agent. Indeed, even if we would want to think Evolution is the product of an intelligent agent, the exact same outcome would evidently still result (without any agent's intervention) from a genetic algorithm of the kind of 'survival of the fittest'. This is a more descriptive way of saying that there may be reasons without reasoning, or, if you prefer, there can be prodigiously intelligent behaviors without reasoning. Long story short, the "intellegence" of an action or conduct is determined by the degree to which the system becomes fitter and so more likely to prevail.

We immensely value the ability to spell out the reasons for an idea, since that will make us look really smart, and we evolved the very deep association, whereby folks will do as we say, if we manage to be perceived as more intelligent. However, let us be rational, an idea should be valued in its own terms, not by how it was attained. What matters is to what extent it is effective at bringing you closer to your objectives. If you know of a method, whereby you are able to systematically resolve a task; whether you stumbled upon said method or are aware of the rationale behind it, is something that actually will not reliably say much about your intelligence. For instance, if you can consistently accurately tell a fake smile from a sincere smile, whether you can spell out how you do it is not at all a reliable indication of your superior intellect. To begin with, the so very much valued skill to reason a course of action to go from Point A to Point B is actually not at all such a formidable feat. Probably because we believe they set as apart from all other animals, all those intellectual skills we associate to our "reason" are generally considered the most prodigious of all. In contrast we give very little credit to the resolution of all those other tasks that we effortlessly perform without our reason's intervention. After all, any other animal would be able to instinctively resolve then as skillfully, if not even more: whereas "reason", my friend, that is something that only you and I can do it... However, any artificial intelligence specialist will tell you, that, while it does not require any magical formula to program a computer to reproduce some basic reasoning skills, it is far more involve to solve those ordinary tasks that we unconsciously execute without ever breaking a sweat. In fact, tellingly enough, in the early days of artificial intelligence, the discipline achieved its first successes in the domain of game theory, where, for example, computers soon became better at Chess than human beings. In contrast, artificial intelligence is still struggling at figuring out such ordinary, real-world problems as maintaining balance while riding a bicycle, recognizing a person's identity from an image of his or her face, distinguishing a fake smile from a sincere smile, etc.. Now, if this first argument is not convincing enough, given that in the immense majority of the cases we learn from other folks the rational behind the solution to problems, it is worth considering who deserves more credit: someone who eventually run into the answer to a question after exhaustively exploring all possibilities, or the guy who learned the trick from some other folk? 

Furthermore, just because one alleges some reasons for something, it does not mean that the argument is actually correct. For instance, previously, I made a case about why there are left-handed folks and right-handed folks; but I am sure many people will not agree with my reasoning. Indeed, to the degree that it generally comes from someone else, this consciousness-accessible knowledge that can be expressed in words is very often not as reliable as we usually believe. As a matter of fact, the trick I just taught you - on how to tell a fake smile from a genuine smile - may actually be incorrect; I may have even lied to you! As a matter of fact, it has always generally been the case, that when someone found out something, he made sure to keep it for himself, so that he could extract the greatest benefit from the new finding. On the other hand, religions are one of a million other examples, showing how obtaining recognition and the authority and sway that come with it, is usually the real motivation behind humans' selective eagerness to explain stuff to others. THe good news, however, are that, since often you will intuitively know how to address the issue, if I lied to you or my theory is simply incorrect, you will intuitively be able to realize my misguidance (unless you choose to lie to yourself and fall for it, that is).   

Now, regardless of whether my theory is correct and constitutes genuine knowledge or it is only a hoax, there is no denial that the ability to spread the information all over, is extremely powerful. It may not denote someones intelligence but, undoubtedly, the feature bestows a mighty evolutionary edge.

* Our conscious knowledge is where we code in natural language, everything we have learned about the world, that we are able to spell out with words.

As a matter of fact, it seems reasonable to think of this consciousness-accessible knowledge base as the individual's current scientific state of the art, since it likewise represents the individual's most established beliefs on how all significant things work. Yet, it is here important to keep in mind, that, in the same way that, as a general rule, scientific theories are eventually proven wrong, the ideas, which make up our conscious knowledge may likewise be misguided.

In any case, the key consideration to take away is that our 'consciousness-accessible- knowledge base is not more than a supplemental layer of functionality on top of all the knowledge already kept in the unconscious areas of our brain, as part of our intuition. Crucially, however, contrary to our deeply rooted beliefs, 'top' is not intended here to mean the crest, jewel in the crown or most sublime expression of our prodigious human intellect; but it only refers to the fact, that it builds up from the information held in the unconscious layers.

  

For instance, whenever we spot a human face, in order to properly interact with that individual, one of the first pieces of information our brain will want to find out is that person's gender. Now, your brain has resolved such a question so many times that you will surely be better of following your instinct, than reasoning it out according to some obscure theory you may have developed on your own or somebody may have taught you. On the other hand, discerning a fake smile is not such an useful task, that our brain needs to carry out all the time. Thus, since it does not have that much practice on it, it may be a good idea to (consciously) follow some trick, like the one I offered above. Now, when it comes to solving a system of differential equations, there is no way around it, there is no way you can do it intuitively; but it will be necessary to reason it out. Yet, conversely, nobody would go about resolving differential equations, in order to maintain balance while riding a bicycle. It is not just that it would be impractical; but, as the current state of the art in robotics show, in all likelihood, the model our unconscious levels has learned, is more accurate than whatever mathematical model of equations we may have come up with.

* What is the essential role played by our instinct - the unconscious levels of our brain - in the resolution of those tasks, that our conscious thought takes on? 

As a matter of fact, even a highly cognitive task such as reading text is carried out with very little intervention by the conscious levels of our brain. Indeed, it is only when we are starting learning how to read, that we go about one by one consciously and conscientiously recognizing each and every letter. However, little by little, as we gain more practice, more and more we become able to identify at once strings of several letters or even entire words. In fact, as we go through a text, very often it is possible to make a rough guess of what word will come next. Surely there will be a plethora of sensible candidates, but as we take a closer look at the word, several different cues will help to tilt the scale towards the right one. Not unlike the fly-selection mechanism running in our froggy friend's brain, there will be a competition between the several word candidates. Cues such as the word's basic shape, its length, the first letter and the last letter, etc. will elicit higher firing rates in those groups of neurons selective for those candidate words most similar to the one in question. At some point we will feel confident enough of what will be the outcome and will call the competition good. Whichever candidate word is winning at that time will so become our (conscious) recognition and we will be ready to proceed with the next words.

  

* If we do not know how to solve a task; we go by trial and error. If the attempt is successful, we take note of it, so that next time we know how to obtain the same positive outcome. However, if the attempt fails, we likewise take note, so that next time we do not repeat the same mistake.

From these examples, it really seems difficult to conclude, that our consciousness acts as anything such as a intelligent, decision-making agent sitting at the very crest of our intellect. Rather, it is just an additional layer of functionality and, by no means, the most glorious and supreme of all. In fact, in order to understand the role and functionality of consciousness, it may be helpful to imagine our 'consciousness-accessible' knowledge base functioning as a Dictionary, where, throughout our lives, little by little, we write down new entries to consolidate the information of every new learning episode. Alternatively, in some other occasions, someone else may supply the information. Needless to say, the latter is typically the case for us, modern humans, as most of our knowledge is acquired from other people. Crucially, however, as opposed to real dictionaries, the information contained in our conscious knowledge is by no means always exact; but it only represents our current beliefs on what things mean and how do they work. Indeed, as confident as we may be of our wisdom, our conscious knowledge is not the kind of dictionary we buy from a bookstore, that has been edited by the most eminent authorities in the language in question; but it would be more accurate to think of it as a 'personal dictionary' that we - and the people we trust - haphazardly knock together as we explore the world around us.    

 

In order to illustrate this point better, let us imagine an immigrant, who arrives at a foreign country with no knowledge of the language spoken at her new place of living. At the beginning she will just do her best to guess the meaning of what the natives may say to her, and to express whatever she may think in response. Sometimes she will perform some gestures or repeat something she may have heard before. Basically, at first she would be experimenting and learning through trial and error. Indeed, sometimes she will get it wrong and sometimes she will get it right. In each of those occasions, she will create or correct an entry in her 'personal dictionary', noting down what is that she learned in the recent encounter and learning episode. Consequently, little by little, her 'personal dictionary' will get populated with the meanings and explanations for a plethora of lexemes and language expressions. Soon enough she will be able to use her notes as a reference. In the same way that someone may apply a trick he has learned to discern fake smiles, she could use her 'personal dictionary' to look up the meaning of whatever someone else has said to her. Similarly, she could go through her notes to prepare how to articulate her response. However, as she gains more experience and grows more proficient - in the same way that we follow our instinct, in order to determine a person's gender from and image of his or her face, or to keep balance while riding a bicycle - she will stop resorting on her dictionary. Certainly,she will come to be able to perfectly understand what people is talking to her, as well as intuitively, sort of automatically, come up with the right words to express her thoughts.

** The unconscious learning of associations between patterns and the acquisition of conscious knowledge go hand in hand and are nothing but interlaced components of the same learning process.

The general scheme therefor seems to follow three basic rules. The first time we encounter a given situation and have no clue how to go about it, we just try out something and see how it goes. 

However, very soon we will acquire some experience and will be in condition to 'reason out' how to proceed. If not exactly the same, probably we have previously faced a similar scenario. Thus, based on how it went on all earlier related episodes, we will be able to make an educated guess, of what should be our best next move. Importantly, the process, whereby our previous experience is gathered and an optimal response is researched, - as much as it may be coordinated by the conscious levels of our brain - is largely conducted unconsciously. Indeed, the current scenario will evoke reminiscent circumstances, which will trigger many different suggestions on how to answer the present question and advance to the next step. Whichever of these ideas is fit enough to best the competition, will then reach the conscious levels.

Eventually, however, we will have accumulated a lot of practice and will be able to immediately, 'instinctively' identify the specific case at hand, and will be ready to produce the most appropriate response. 

Clearly, unconscious learning and conscious learning do not follow separate, conflicting paths; but go hand in hand. In fact, fascinatingly enough, there is a parallelism between how conscious processes and unconscious processes work together, in order to learn how to optimize the animal's interaction with its environment, and how lab research and the publication of scientific findings are interlaced and lead together to the advancement of scientific knowledge.

    

* Since it is not feasible to learn direct associations between any arbitrary goal and any arbitrary initial state, it became advantageous to evolved some kind of neural planning mechanism.

We can therefore deduce that it would not be entirely accurate to depict consciousness as a mere alternative method to represent information. Rather, it appears to be a coding scheme developed for the purpose of implementing complex plans. There is no doubt about it, everything in the brain circles around the principle of how to reach one's goals. Unfortunately, the course of action required is sometimes incredibly serpentine.

Needless to say, that is typically the case for highly evolved species such as human beings. Life is certainly not easy for our new immigrant friend. Our old froggy pal may be able to make a living of (simply) processing visual information, hoping to discover something in its environs to satisfy its belly with; but our new immigrant friend's odds to succeed will depend critically on her skill of listening to whatever the people around her say, in order to find out what ideas they are trying to communicate. As little inclined as I am to exalt the superiority of human intellect and as far as I am of wanting to diminish our froggy pal's undeniable talents, it seems reasonable to say, that our ability to conversate and argue with someone else, trying to sway our interlocutor's views, or working out a common problem, requires a higher level of sophistacation than solving an - undoubtedly complex - visual pattern matching task. For one thing, bringing down an insect flying around one's space can be conceived as a one-shot problem; whereas making a point or producing an explanation (as I am doing myself here) calls for putting together a whole, intricate plan of action. In fact, Graeber and Wengrow very correctly and insightfully point out in their book "The Dawn of Everything" how conscious thought and reasoning can be seen and characterized as a mental exercise of arguing with or explaining something to someone else.

* The reasoning and planning process followed by a chess player can be conceived as the continuous elaboration of a plan to achieve victory in an argument against an opposing side.

For instance, it would be reasonable to conceive the mental processes followed by a chess player while playing a game, as conducting an argument against her opponent. As a matter of fact, viewed in this light, fascinatingly enough, we can get some clues on how the ability of reasoning and strategic planning may have originated, since a chess game is nothing but the simulation of a fight. Admittedly, most fights are limited to a rudimentary, brutish exchange of blows; but if, for example, you ambition to become the group's alpha male and your sheer life is on the line, you will be sure to put a whole lot of thought in how to go about the upcoming combat. 

As a matter of fact, the very same argument can be made for chess: The amount of effort put on the elaboration of a plan, is directly correlated to the relevance of the achievement of the target goal. Intellectuals past and present have always loved to elaborate on the wonders of human intelligence and all what set us apart from even the most evolved of all other animal species, (albeit, admittedly, no lesser is the passion with which we all listen to those words of praise). Undoubtedly, no other animal would be able to play chess, since they lack essential, distinctively human intellectual abilities, such as visualization, calculation, forwardd planning, abstract thought, etc.. 

* Yet, a chess player does not select the next movement based on an idea, that has magically popped up; but after exhaustively researching as many as possible promising combinations. 

It is certainly worth considering, how often, when playing chess, do we actually select our next move, based on something more than what our instinct says looks good? It is definitely not that we are not capable of thinking ahead a few movements; but we simply do not feel like making the effort. Indeed, it takes a whole lot of energies to explore and analyze in depth all possible combinations. Fact of the matter is our conscious thinking does typically not allow the unconscious levels of our brain enough time to exhaustively research the optimal answer to a given query. Yet, undeniably, the result will always be more accurate, if we make the effort. I guess we generally understand it is just not worth it, since, after all, it is just a silly chess game.

For some odd reason, the discussion is always restricted to what is strictly possible and what is strictly impossible. It would instead be more accurate to consider what is practical and what is not in each situation, or if any comparison is at all reasonable, since the circumstances are simply completely different. Namely, how on Earth is a monkey going to learn to play Chess, if, to begin with, we do not even share a common language, that a human can use to teach him? 

It is certainly a healthy idea to be always wary and distrustful of anybody, who starts singing the praises of humans' superior intelligence. Experience and History tell us there are powerful reasons to question, whether he is really thinking, that all humans are very intelligent, or what is actually going through his mind is rather a profound fascination with his very own superior intellect. In fact, it is rather unknown of anybody, who has exhibit any genuine belief in the remarkable intelligence of the unwashed masses. Of course, it is not difficult to see why the master of all orators, the illustrious Roman senator Cicero, was so fond of exalting the superiority of the Roman character. Clearly, it would only be foolish for me to suggest, that you should follow my guidance, because I am very intelligent. Instead, it would yield far better results, if I argue, that you and I are the only smart people around, and everybody else is just stupid.

* In order to simplify the elaboration of plans of action for the achievement of certain goals, those patterns that behave in significantly similar ways are grouped in a single concept. For instance, we will not develop separate concepts for male chicks and female chicks, so long we do not need to resolve any task, where male chicks and female chicks follow distinct patterns of behavior. 

  As a matter of fact, Chess is about the simplest task any animal could confront in its life. Indeed, in Nature there is no clear-cut definition for anything and the number of combinations is therefore literally infinite. In contrast, in chess the board is clearly divided in 64 distinct squares and each player has a total of 16 perfectly-defined pieces, in that, for instance, each of the eight pawns look exactly the same, and in turn strictly different from the knights, the bishops, the rooks, the queen and the king. These definitions amount to nothing less than a model of a far more complex reality (namely, a real life combat). As discussed before, the magnitude of the animal brain's feat, building such sort of model of the entire world around it, simply cannot be overstated: it is as prodigious as miraculous. Absolutely, every element in Nature is unique and only after some common pattern of behavior is found among a certain set of elements, it makes sense to the brain to group and form a meaningful concept out of them. 

For instance, every woman is unique and there are not any two women who are exactly the same. Yet, for a homosexual man wishing to find a lover, whatever differences may exist between women will never represent as much as a determent, as what he would feel towards another man. Now, in many other contexts, sex will not be an important factor, determining how we will interact with another human being. A colonial slave trader, for example, will discriminate people based on their race, and the slave's sex will generally not elicit that much consideration. In further contrast, a child's parents is the concept it will work with, when it comes to fulfilling its basic needs for love, protection and guidance. The perception of the environment allows our brain to collect information about everything that is out there. The analysis of this information yields cues on how to act in order to achieve our goals. It should not come to any surprise, that population codes of the kind that can be observed in the brain, are particularly well suited to represent all this information: When it comes to other humans, some neurons may code that person's estimated age, and some others may represent information about his or her occupation. When it comes to other animals, some neurons may code that animal's sex and some others may represent information about its degree of hostility against, or affability towards, humans. When it comes to inanimate objects or matter, some neurons may code that body's consistency and some others may represent information about its utility. As described earlier, all these neural selectivities would have developed (unconsciously) from experience gathered during previous interactions.

For instance, past experience should have made it clear, that visual information from the region occupied by the eyes, is very useful to the resolution of many tasks. Consequently, it is only to be expected that eventually some concept of the eyes will (somehow) form. Evidently, the appearance of the eyes bear more information than some random patch of skin. However, there are also some tasks, for which a close look to some specific patch of skin is very helpful. Indeed, a profusion of little lines in the skin next to the outer corner of the eyes is evidently a strong indication of a person's advanced age. Soon we will start refering to these short lines in the skin by the name of 'wrinkles'. If anything, the brain becomes 'aware' of the significance of those little lines next to the outer corner of the eyes: at a minimum, they hint what is the person's age. But, moreover, now that you comprehend the concept of 'wrinkles', you are in condition to understand my explanation on how to discern a fake smile.

Now,two stimuli may look very much alike; yet, if they function differently, they may represent different concepts. For instance, it is reasonable to wonder, if it should be at all possible to detect, when an old person fakes a smile. Indeed, if our trick to tell a genuine smile relies on the appearance of wrinkles next to the outer corner of the eyes; but older people always exhibit wrinkles next to the outer corner of the eyes anyway; then, whenever an old person smiles, we would always have to deduce, the or she did so genuinely. Or, perhaps, there are two different types of wrinkles on the outer corner of the eyes? Perhaps, the kind of wrinkles, that emerge when a person smiles are actually different from the wrinkles permanently visible on old folks? Perhaps, we should talk of "genuine smile wrinkles" and "old folks wrinkles"? I guess, at the end of the day, the question whether a smile is fake or not, is just not sufficiently relevant, that we would want to bother making such distinction, and start working with those two different concepts.  

In fact, matters will look much differently to an egg farmer: the success of his business depends critically on his ability to discriminate between male chicks and female chicks. Hence, he will be sure to figure out, what subtle details distinguish one from the other. Much to his displeasure, however, he will confront the mother of all problems in the field of Intelligence; namely, the credit assignment problem. Fustratingly enough, by the time the thing turns out to be a rooster, it would obviously be too late to analyze, what looked differently on him as a newborn chick, compared to his newborn sisters.