Thinking Beyond Science

Default Mode Network is not necessarily a network for cognitive encumbrance only, but more importantly is commissary of non-conscious processes which without being subdued during lax conscious states, hosts information repertoire that can be put to use for refined conscious task.

Ideologies featuring free will as their core theme have infused an ulterior turpitude into a greater part of human civilization than would have been in its absence.

Left to evolution alone, the human race might have accumulated a more expansive bucket of fortunate and legal traits, than under the authorship of free will tethered to metaphysical or theological doctrine.

The implacable consort of free will with pernicious practices of belief systems has really masked human longing for a better recourse based on empathic outlook. Acceptance of such a dualistic invasion on fragile conation and cognitive behaviour of human beings had markedly impeded the attempts to let mankind unshackle from such a bogus enclosure of grotesque principles.

We can opine that consciousness emerged as an adaptive evolutionary apparatus in human beings and free will notion resting exclusively on an intact conscious faculty is in non-way a separate functional category of our daily lives but a more evolved mode of actions directed to complement entropy lowering mechanisms of an organism.

Evolution of consciousness in such circumstances might be considered as a wholesome path designed to decrease our entropic (In the form of changes in information, uncertainty, energy) load in all exchanges with the environment that are necessary to enhance and stabilize the survival.

Dopamine signals a reward prediction error by activation of corresponding neurons in cases where reward is more than what is predicted [ Positive prediction Error], showing a depressed activity where reward is less than predicted [ Negative prediction Error], & without a change in baseline activity where reward matches prediction.

Without knowing the value of an encountered stimulus or object, the dopamine neurons start processing to save time for behavioural preparation necessary to judge the nature of stimuli or object. This nonspecific response increases the chances of finding rewarding cues in the environment and this is soon followed by a second component which validates the reward value associated with the object so sought.

Based on these incentive reward driven pathways, dopaminergic neuronal circuits can be regarded to play a permissive role in all cognitive expressions bearing an emotional component of behaviour. This emotional component invariably incorporated into traits of an individual personality denotes a key factor of sensitivity to stimulus of reward system.

While dealing with the Locus coeruleus – norepinephrine system responsible for sleep – Wake cycle (low levels of activity in LC enhance sleep and disengagement from the environment) and regulation of various aspects of behaviour, we once again have to appreciate the profoundness of entropic principle in our successful survival.

Source : Free Will by Rauf H Tak

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