If the Brain Receives Information, Who Creates It?
There is a hypothesis according to which the human brain does not create the contents of consciousness but receives them from some external source, much like a radio receiver picking up radio waves.
This hypothesis has been discussed not only by philosophers and proponents of mystical teachings but also by respected scientists.
The distinguished neurophysiologist Natalia Petrovna Bekhtereva recalled first hearing such an idea from Nobel laureate John Eccles at a UNESCO meeting in 1984. At the time, she found it absurd. Later, however, as she studied the workings of the brain and especially the phenomenon of creative insight, Bekhtereva began to take the possibility more seriously.
In an interview entitled “Labyrinths of the Brain,” she spoke of two possible explanations for sudden insight. According to the first, the brain acts at such moments as an ideal receiver of information arriving from outside. According to the second, the brain itself creates the conditions necessary for insight to occur.
Bekhtereva did not regard the reception hypothesis as proven and emphasized that the brain should not be viewed merely as a receptor.
But let us suppose that the brain-as-receiver hypothesis is correct.
If the brain receives already formed content, that content must have a source somewhere. But where does the source itself obtain its content?
By whom or by what is it generated?
We might suppose that the source also receives its content from somewhere else. But then the same question arises again—and so on, indefinitely.
Thus, the reception hypothesis does not solve the problem of the origin of psychic content. It merely moves the problem beyond the boundaries of the human psyche.
Sooner or later, we must address the question of generation: the emergence of content that has not been received in a ready-made form from another source.
It is precisely generation that forms the basis of my proposed model of the psyche.
The Generative Model of the Psyche
The generative model starts from the proposition that psychic reality consists of two opposing entities that arise simultaneously: the subject and the psyche. They constitute the two poles of a single dichotomy.
In this model, the subject is atomic, while the psyche is structured by three dichotomies:
- consciousness – the unconscious;
- perception of changes – perception of invariants;
- significance for the subject – significance for the non-subject.
The latter two dichotomies consist of four psychic functions that generate the contents of the psyche.
The dichotomy of consciousness and the unconscious differs from the other two in that it defines two domains of the psyche in which all four functions generate content in opposite attitudes: extraverted and introverted.
In the introverted attitude, the functions generate content relevant to the subject, abstracting from what is irrelevant. In the extraverted attitude, they generate content that is both relevant and irrelevant to the subject.
The attitude of consciousness determines whether a person belongs to an extraverted or an introverted psychological type. In the unconscious, the functions operate in the opposite attitude.
Thus, the model considers generation at two levels: as the principle underlying the emergence of psychic reality, consisting of the subject and the psyche, and as the activity of psychic functions that generate the contents of the psyche.
The model does not posit a special entity that first comes into existence and then creates the subject and the psyche. The simultaneous generation of opposing poles is taken as a foundational principle.
The Subject, the Psyche, and the Environment
An important clarification is needed here.
From the perspective of generation, psychic reality constitutes the dichotomy of subject and psyche. From the perspective of content, the same psychic reality constitutes the dichotomy of subject and environment.
The subject’s environment is the content generated by the psyche.
The term “environment” is used here in a specific sense. It denotes everything that is non-subject in relation to the subject.
This includes not only nature, objects, and events in the external world but also other people, social relationships, and, in certain respects, even one’s own body.
For example, a person may perceive their own body as an object: noticing changes occurring within it, recognizing its stable properties, and evaluating its condition.
Consequently, the boundary between the subject and the environment within psychic reality does not coincide with the physical boundary of the human body.
It is also necessary to distinguish the subject’s environment from independent reality.
Independent reality acts upon the human organism. According to the generative model, however, the contents of independent reality are neither transferred into the psyche in a ready-made form nor reflected in it. Psychic functions generate their own content as a result of these influences.
The brain is part of the physical organism. The subject, however, is not identified with either the brain or the organism as a whole in the generative model.
Therefore, the question of how the brain works and the question of how psychic reality is organized are not one and the same.
The Simultaneous Emergence of Opposites: An Example from Physics
But does the very assumption that two opposing entities can emerge simultaneously not seem rather unusual?
Physics provides examples of processes in which opposing entities arise at the same time.
One of the clearest examples is particle–antiparticle pair production.
Under certain conditions, a photon with sufficiently high energy, interacting with the field of an atomic nucleus, can produce an electron and a positron.
The electron has a negative electric charge, while the positron has a positive charge. Their masses are equal.
Both particles emerge in a single physical process. We cannot say that the electron is created first and then produces the positron, or vice versa.
This does not mean that every opposition in nature necessarily arises in this way. Nor does it mean that psychic reality emerges according to the laws governing the production of elementary particles.
The physical example does, however, demonstrate that the joint emergence of two opposing entities as the result of a single process is by no means implausible.
In the generative model of the psyche, the same general principle is used to describe the emergence of the subject and the psyche, consciousness and the unconscious, and opposing psychic functions.
The subject and the psyche, like consciousness and the unconscious, necessarily exist as both poles of their respective dichotomies.
For the two functional dichotomies, it is necessary to distinguish the emergence of their poles from their differentiation. The bimodal model of consciousness describes two alternative modes of differentiation of psychic functions: the right and left paths of consciousness. On the right path, all four functions are differentiated. On the left path, only the dominant function is differentiated, while the other three remain undifferentiated.
Thus, the principle of the joint emergence of opposites does not require them to manifest in the same way in every case.
Why Does a Fully Formed Thought Seem to Come from Outside?
Let us return to the brain-as-receiver hypothesis.
Some people find it particularly convincing in connection with creative insights.
A poet suddenly discovers a fully formed line of verse in consciousness. A composer seems to hear a melody that only needs to be written down. A scientist unexpectedly finds the solution to a problem they have been considering for a long time.
The person does not observe the process by which the content emerges. They become aware only of the finished result.
It is hardly surprising that such a result is sometimes experienced as something received from outside.
But the fact that the process of generation is not consciously observed does not mean that it takes place outside the psyche.
The bimodal model of consciousness offers an explanation for this phenomenon.
According to this model, the content of an insight is generated in the unconscious and subsequently appears in consciousness as an already formed result.
It is therefore necessary to distinguish between the process of generating content and the moment at which it becomes conscious.
The content does not come into existence at the moment of insight. At that moment, the result of preceding unconscious generation becomes conscious.
This proposition is a hypothesis of the bimodal model of consciousness, not an established neurophysiological fact.
It provides an explanation for the experience of suddenly encountering fully formed content without assuming that the content existed somewhere outside the person and was received by the brain.
Does the Brain Generate Psychic Content?
Modern neuroscience provides extensive evidence of a close relationship between psychic activity and processes occurring in the brain.
However, the existence of such a relationship does not, in itself, resolve all the philosophical questions concerning the relationship between psychic and physical reality.
One may suppose that brain processes directly produce psychic content. Another possibility can also be considered: that brain processes accompany the generation of psychic content without being identical to it.
I am inclined to consider the second possibility, although it requires independent justification.
It is important, however, not to confuse this possibility with the brain-as-receiver hypothesis.
The assumption that brain processes accompany the generation of psychic content does not imply that the content arrives from an unknown external source.
The generative model of the psyche describes psychic reality in terms of its own structure and the principles governing the generation of its content. It does not claim that the neurophysiological mechanism of this generation has already been established.
Generation Instead of Reception
The brain-as-receiver hypothesis thus leaves a fundamental question unanswered: where does the content supposedly received by the brain originate?
The generative model of the psyche proposes a different way of approaching the problem.
Psychic reality is understood as the result of the simultaneous generation of the subject and the psyche. Psychic functions, in turn, generate the content that constitutes the subject’s environment.
Independent reality acts upon the organism but does not transmit ready-made content to the psyche. And the appearance of fully formed thoughts, images, or solutions in consciousness does not prove that they have been received from an external source.
Physics demonstrates that opposing entities can emerge together in a single process. Research into the psyche shows that not all processes whose results become conscious are accessible to conscious observation.
The generative model of the psyche and the bimodal model of consciousness bring these two ideas together within a common theoretical framework: the joint emergence of opposites and the generation of psychic content, including unconscious generation.
Perhaps the greatest mystery of a suddenly emerging thought lies not in where it came from, but in how it was generated before we became aware of it.