the brain: no repetition, constant recreation

I read the NYT article (here) on Dr. Edelman’s work on the brain twice, because I wasn’t sure I was picking up the pieces in a coherent way. I can’t begin to summarize it in the usual 2-sentenced oversimplification that I do here—I’m sure to get it wrong.

But if you are just looking for the punch line (in the way that you would summarize the holding in a legal case for an exam outline) then you can go from title of the article: “The Brain? It’s a Jungle in There,” to the last 2 lines: “But this vision [referring here to the idea that human consciousness is born out of accident and diversity] can also spur discomfort, because it implies that there is no supervising soul or self — nobody is standing behind the curtain. This, for Dr. Edelman, is Darwin's final burden.” That pretty much puts you right into the heart of the matter (forgive the organ-hopping here).

Thus we are stuck without a soul, only new and intricate mappings, one after another, millions of them, setting the course of thought and action. No conductor in there, no inside little guy pushing buttons, selecting, or optimizing. It’s a comfort really – no one to blame for excesses (such as blogging or emailing) – somewhere along the line those patterns became entrenched and there is no one inside to reset the brain and start all over again.