Our Noble Mind
An Investigation Into Human Nature.
Consciousness, Intellect, and our Mind.
Thoughtfulness
Focused Thinking: What we Think is not Just Random.
The Focuses described in the H I Mind Model represent a very simplified mapping of the human neocortex and the complex processing that is involved continuously throughout the neocortex that drives our behaviour. We know that the human neocortex is massively parallel, functionally specialized, and 'partially autonomous' in its processing (meaning that parts of the neocortex can handle processing tasks automatically). Different cortical systems are continuously generating competing predictions, goals, and action suggestions.
The end result is that our brain needs some form of management system that will manage what goes on in the brain as a whole. An executive function that will make sense of the multiple outputs of the whole brain, that will set priorities, that will allow inconsistences to exist until a descision-point is reached, that will resolve conflicts, that will provide an on-going consistent coherence, that provides biases to maintain relevance and resilience, and so on. In the H I Mind Model that executive function, combined with the part of that functioning that we experience as consciousness, is called our Planning Focus.
Our Planning Focus is not fully conscious but works constantly to provide a consciousness that makes sense over time. We believe that we think in a linear manner, in a logical way, but that can sometimes be a bit of self-deception so that we can make sense of the complex processing going on continuously in our other Focuses. Our Planning Focus directs our other Focuses, setting priorities and objectives, and manages outputs from the other Focuses.
What we think of as 'consciousness' is a kind of summary of the executive processing that is covered by the Planning Focus. At a 'conscious' level we are presented with a coherent story-line that seems to make logical sense over time. This story-line is just a small part of what our Planning Focus is busy with continuously. It seems logical, until we take the time and effort to follow our own processing more deeply. This is one strength of Cognitive Psychology that fiollows not just our most obvious conscious story-line but explores the varied biases, beliefs, conclusions, conflicts, and presumptions that actually influence our thinking.
What we think is not just random, and nor is it as simple and logical as we sometimes might believe it to be.