Aïleen Lotz & Pierre Gosselin - A Dynamic Model of Interactions between Conscious and Unconscious

There have been a whole mess of books lately offering insight into and evidence of the interaction between the unconscious and conscious minds. Perhaps the best is Daniel Kahneman's Thinking: Fast and Slow, but there is also David Eagleman's Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain, Michael Gazzaniga's Who's in Charge?: Free Will and the Science of the Brain, Leonard Mlodinow's Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior, or Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Essentially, all of these books argue in lesser of greater degrees that our conscious mind is little more than a small man trying to ride bareback on an elephant, Haidt's metaphor for the unconscious mind.

The article included here (free PDF download at the SSRN site) argues that the unconscious mind is entirely irrational or emotionally-based - the present evidence for a rational unconscious agent, part of a multi-rationality model of conscious/unconscious interaction.

A Dynamic Model of Interactions between Conscious and Unconscious

Aïleen Lotz

Cerca Trova, BP 114, 38001 Grenoble Cedex 1, France

Pierre Gosselin

Institut Fourier, UMR 5582 CNRS-UJF, Université Grenoble I, BP 74, 38402 St Martin d’Hères, France
February 15, 2012

Abstract:      This paper advocates that some limits of the rational agent hypothesis result from the improper assumption that one individual should be modeled as a single rational agent. We model an individual composed of two autonomous and interacting structures, conscious and unconscious. Each agent utility form depends both on external signals and other structures' actions. The perception of the signal depends on its recipient and its grid of interpretation. We study both the static and dynamic version of this interaction mechanism. We show that the dynamics may display instability, depending on the structures interactions' strength. However, if unconscious has a strategic advantage, greater stability is reached. By manipulating other structures' goals, the strategic agent can lead the whole system to an equilibrium closer to its own optimum. This result shows that some switch in the conscious' objective can appear. Behaviors that can't be explained with a single utility can thus be rational if we add a rational unconscious agent. Our results justify our hypothesis of a rational interacting unconscious. It supports the widening of the notion of rationality to multi-rationality in interaction. 

Citation:

Lotz, A. and Gosselin, P. (2012, Feb 15). A Dynamic Model of Interactions between Conscious and Unconscious. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2006085

Here is a small excerpt from the Introduction:

It is assumed that individuals are, most of the time, driven by their emotions, and, ultimately, their unconscious. The action being irrational, so is the unconscious, and so is the agent.

If the unconscious is indeed irrational, nothing can be said about it, and we must reduce ourselves to sum the list of its behaviors. If we are to understand anything about the unconscious, we have to suppose him to be, at least partly, rational : we must endow him with all the attributes of the rational agent, in the economic sense of the term. Besides, this is what Browning and Chiappori results tend to prove. The question therefore is not to know whether the unconscious is rational or not, but rather in what respect his rationality differs from the conscious’ rationality.

Note that utility optimization, possibly including some forecatings, has already successfully modeled (unconscious) automatic behavior, for example in the motor or visual system4 . These results con…rm that economics is relevant to explain unconscious neural processes. Yet similar models for conscious decision making, and, more generally, non automatic processes, have been highly criticized. The main criticism is that they should include some unconscious phenomena. It advocates the use of partial rationality to describe seemingly unrational, or sudden switches in, choices.

For example, a well know anomaly is described by the following situation: In a restaurant, a consumer can choose chicken or beef. He orders chicken. But when the waiter suggests a third dish, …sh, the consumer orders beef. This exemplify the independence of irrelevant alternatives. Some choices, even when they may be rational, lack intelligibility.

In this paper we confront this problem by extending the range of the rational explanation. We advocate that some of the limits of the rational agent hypothesis result from an improper assumption: the fact that one individual should be modeled as a single rational agent. What can suffice to explain automatic processes should be extended for more complex tasks. It seems natural to postulate decision making not only involves the conscious individual but also some rational unconscious processes.

 This was a bit of geeky but interesting research. This press release was posted at . . . .

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It seems that consciousness is not even required for the integration of new information - nearly all processing, including integration, is done at sub-conscious or pre-conscious levels.

Once again, however, I would argue that the brain can be trained to do things differently. What would the study look like if the subjects were Buddhists with 10, 20, or 30 years of mindfulness practice?

New research distinguishes roles of conscious and sub-conscious awareness in information processing

30 November 2011 Hebrew University of Jerusalem

What distinguishes information processing with conscious awareness from processing occurring without awareness? And, is there any role for conscious awareness in information processing, or is it just a byproduct, like the steam from the chimney of a train engine, which is significant, but has no functional role?

 These questions - which have long puzzled psychologists, philosophers, and neurobiologists - were recently addressed in a study by Hebrew University of Jerusalem researchers and published by the journal Psychological Science.

The study was headed by Prof. Leon Deouell from the Hebrew University’s Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences (ELSC) and Department of Psychology and Prof. Dominique Lamy from the Department of Psychology at Tel Aviv University, and conducted by research student Liad Mudirk of Tel Aviv University with collaboration of research student Assaf Breska from the Hebrew University.

We are not consciously aware of most of the input that hits upon our sensory systems.  Yet subjectively, conscious awareness dominates our mental activity. “One of the dominant theories in cognitive sciences and psychology posits that parts of the information perceived without awareness may be processed to a certain extent,” says Prof. Deouell. “Yet to bind the different parts of a
complex input into something meaningful and coherent requires conscious awareness.

To test this theory, the research team ran a study in which they presented participants with pictures of natural scenes including some human action, like a picture of basketball players jumping to reach a ball.

In other tests, the same scenes were presented -- except that the central object was replaced by another, unlikely object. For example, the basketball was replaced by a watermelon.

The participants viewed the pictures through a mirror stereoscope, a simple device that allowed the research team to present the pictures to only one eye. At the same time, the other eye viewed rapidly flickering patterns of colors which drew the subjects' attention, so that the participants were not aware for many seconds that anything was presented to their other eye. This allowed the researchers to measure how long it takes normal and unusual scenes to “win the competition” against the flickering pattern and break into awareness.

"We found that participants became aware of the unusual scenes earlier than to the usual scenes," commented Deouell. "The conclusion was that even before the participants were aware of the existence of the picture, the semantic relationships between parts of the scene were interpreted."

The study shows that, counter to previous theories, integration is not the prerogative of conscious awareness but is achieved even without awareness. When and why then do we need conscious awareness?

The findings of this research suggest that when the results of the integration between parts of the input are incompatible with expectations or prior knowledge, awareness is required in order to account for the conundrum. Thus, the study expands the realm of unaware processes, yet shows that conscious awareness is not a meaningful luxury - it allows us to deal with novel and unexpected situations.

Prof. Leon Deouel

 

Full bibliographic information
Liad Mudrik, Assaf Breska, Dominique Lamy and Leon Y. Deouell, Integration Without Awareness - Expanding the Limits of Unconscious Processing," Psychological Science, June 2011; vol. 22, 6: pp. 764-770., first published on May 9, 2011, doi: 10.1177/0956797611408736.