It’s the only theory of how the brain works that I’ve come across that seems like it could be valid. Unfortunately, like other posters have already mentioned, neuroscience is incredibly complex and we just don’t have the tools to test it.
Even if it ends up being completely wrong, it’s a beautiful theory and well worth checking out!
> Even if it ends up being completely wrong, it’s a beautiful theory
Not just that, but I think it's vitally important to be able to demonstrate how much we can potentially explain. There are some people that will never accept a physicalist model, but I suspect there are many who will happily accept it once they conceive of the possibilities. At least, that's the process I went through when originally learning about evolution by natural selection.
On a high level, I think Calvin’s theory is in the exact same vein as Dennett’s. Seems like we could sum them both up by saying the brain is paralleled and there is competition between thoughts?
What grabs me about Calvin’s work is he gets much closer to how this might work than anything else I’ve seen. Even cooler, I think he provides enough depth that we could potentially design a new architecture around his theory.
I think the clinical shift to focus on 'the individual' instead of the ensemble has overlooked the importance of inter-brain synchronisation, the process of which we are only start to grapple [0]. A feeling all to familiar to fellow musicians, and no doubt anyone involved in activities in which timing coordination is key.
[0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01497...
Love this.
> I think the clinical shift to focus on 'the individual' instead of the ensemble has overlooked the importance of inter-brain synchronisation
My sense is this is also the case for our cultural story of neuroscience. We can run massive analysis of the brain and what brain regions or neurons or transmitters are being used/activated and it all boils down to something we can't conceptualize. Even the principal components seem to be too complex for us to grock.
With this barrage of complexity I feel like we have a (bad but understandable) habit of reducing to the individual. We talk about the grandmother neuron or what region x is responsible for. We harp on the cog sci of individuals and we run experiments where we try to isolate them for "confounding factors" (other people).
I keep coming back to evolutionary theory as the middle ground between this over and under simplification of cognition.
On a deeper level, I also think the prior discrepency stems from how we perceive the world as individuals rather than a collective, our research methods implicitly reflecting this bias. In regards to synchronisation, you might find the following interesting:
"Brain Waves Synchronize when People Interact" [0]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-waves-synch...
Still I can’t recommend it highly enough. Act I is enough to grock the concept and you can crush it in an evening.