I Always Knew There Were Many

Jonah Lehrer on his blog The Frontal Cortex says:

I believe our head holds a raucous parliament of cells that endlessly debate what sensations and feelings should become conscious. These neurons are distributed all across the brain, and their firing unfolds over time. This means that we are not a place: we are a process. As the influential philosopher Daniel Dennett wrote, our mind is made up "of multiple channels in which specialist circuits try, in parallel pandemoniums, to do their various things, creating Multiple Drafts as they go." What we call reality is merely the final draft. (Of course, the very next moment requires a whole new manuscript.)

Sitting around 12-Step or recovery meetings you will often hear people refer to "the committees" in their head. All those voices that pull you one way or another. Or you may hear others refer to "Slick" sitting there on one shoulder trying to get you to go back to your addictive ways with the wise and recovering voice on the other shoulder.

Perhaps there is truth in the metaphor. Everything we feel and know is electro-chemical with all those neurons and synapses firing all over the brain. Is there some kind of unheard background noise that these firings do? Are there combinations of those firings that lead us one way then another, imitating voices, urges, discussions?

It's too bad logic is actually so "illogical" and fleeting in its power. Or maybe not. If logic were truly so powerful and controlling we would probably end up as robots or automatons. I may not have the committee meetings in my head, but I might not be able to enjoy life either.