Paste your essay in here…Some people argue that many unconscious decision-making systems such as reflexes, Procedural, and Pavlovian are not a part of oneself. However, I would argue that these systems are definitely parts of oneself because of their correlation with the brain that brings about changes in the mind, and their neural basis that share some similarities with the deliberative system. Moreover, to claim that only a decision-making system that exerts self-control belongs to oneself is to overemphasize on self-control and neglect the other important aspects of self, such as the advantages of these systems for survival and the neural activities responsible for the decision-making systems.
Those who reject Pavlovian, Procedural, and reflexes as parts of self, assume that to belong to a “self”, a decision-making system must be conscious and make the agent be aware of the actions taken. However, this definition of “self” is problematic because of its overreliance on consciousness and its failure to recognize the interaction between the brain and the mind. In philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, consciousness is often interpreted as the mind, which can deliberatively control human actions. The brain, on the other hand, is a physical thing that performs computations by using algorithms and processes, thus allows an agent to make decisions. Sometimes the brain makes the decisions quickly and unconsciously, but still, changes in the brain lead to changes in the mind and the actions. Hence, a part of self must include both conscious and unconscious systems driven by both the brain and the mind.
First, all systems have their own functions that bring benefits for individuals’ survival and reproduction. They all, to some extent, help the agents make better their decisions. Thus, regardless of consciousness or unconsciousness, they must be all considered as parts of self. For instance, reflex system, the simplest decision-making system, helps us make quick actions without going through complex computations, which are beneficial for survival purposes in some situations. When you suddenly perceive intense and extremely light pointing towards your eyes, you immediately close your eyes to protect them from being injured by the light without thinking. This example demonstrates the quick and simple processes of reflexes that are often elicited by the interaction between the sensory systems and the motor systems. Reflexes are genetically wired over evolutionary time into the spinal cord, peripheral nervous system, and central brainstem. (Redish, 2013)
Furthermore, the Pavlovian system is also advantageous for survival. The Pavlovian actions are often emotional responses, of which the processes are prewired contingent on the conditioned stimuli. In other words, in the Pavlovian system, the actions are not learned but the cues to elicit the responses are. For animals, reproduction is crucial for survival. In Japanese quails, for instance, the male needs to approach a female to have a chance of copulation in naturalistic environment. Domjan and colleagues (1986) conducted an experiment to pair the approach behavior of the male with the conditioned stimulus such as a light. Thus, the male learned that the light was associated with the approach behavior and the access to a female quail. Thus, whenever the light was turned on, the male could demonstrate approach behavior. This Pavlovian action-selection system facilitates the reproductive responses that are crucial for survival purposes.
The procedural system creates habits and actions dependent on different situations that are encoded in our brain. The system alleviates the computational load when the agent faces similar situations. This benefit is best demonstrated in the difference between novices and experts. Experts, with years of effortful practice, have learned to categorize situations and react quickly to various situations without thinking consciously. A professional soccer player never takes the time to think about how to receive and pass the ball during an intense situation. Depending on the directions of the incoming ball, the number, and the locations of his teammates and opponents, he could immediately pass the ball or shoot long range. As a novice player, I could not react quickly like him because my memory did not have the categorization for various situations in a soccer match. Hence, I took the time to compute the possibilities and imagine different scenarios before selecting a sequence of actions. By the time I finished my computations, I already had lost the ball to my opponents.
Besides the advantages of these systems for the life of animals and humans, another evidence affirming that those systems are parts of self is their neural basis and algorithms. If the Deliberative decision-making system is a part of self, other systems must also be considered parts of self because they share fundamentally neural similarities such as learning, the basin of attraction, and categorization. It hence becomes unreasonable to count the former as a part of self while omitting the latter.
Indeed, the Procedural system is like the second phase of the Deliberative system. This comparison sounds oversimplified and inaccurate; however, it helps to better understand the reason why the Procedural system should be counted as a part of self. In the Procedural system, the actions are chunked and become sequences of actions elicited for certain situations. To categorize situations and create chunking, the decision-maker must learn by numerous trials to find a satisfactory way to react in different situations. This phase is deliberative because the agent imagines, then computes the future possibilities for a given situation. It happens in the effortful practice of experts. In this phase, they categorize situations in different basins of attraction (with the memory as the bottom of the basin), which includes set of conditions to categorize or generalize pieces of memory. After categorization, experts become better and faster at recognizing situation-action and respond by producing an appropriate sequence of actions selective for a given situation. The basal ganglia, along with the cerebellum, the brainstem, and the motor cortex, is the most important anatomical structure responsible for the Procedural system. The striatum has two pathways, of which one encourages taking actions by releasing “Go” command and recognizing a rise in dopamine and the other inhibits actions by commanding “Don’t Go” and recognizing a drop of dopamine.
The Pavlovian system also depends on the categorization of visceral responses to create different emotions. In other words, the emotions are a categorization of Pavlovian action-selection. Different from the Procedural system that categorizes situations and correspondent actions, the Pavlovian system categorizes emotions as responses to different stimuli. While the cues are learned, the responses are pre-wired. The amygdala is the storage of emotional memories and does the computations for the Pavlovian system. For a clearer analysis, let us recall the sexual conditioning example of the Japanese quails. Sexual behaviors are stored in medial amygdala and hypothalamus. Moreover, male and female differ in amygdala size and sex hormones that have high densities in the amygdala. (Hamann, 2005) The differences lead to different sexual and emotional behaviors in male and female. For instance, research has shown that men have greater amygdala activation elicited by visual sexual stimuli. Moreover, experiments conducted by Canli and colleagues (2002) showed that memory for emotional events is better in women than men because of greater correlation between brain regions sensitive to emotional experiences in women. This is also an evidence for the neural basis of individual differences that cannot be fully explained by experiences. In brief, since individuals vary in their categorizations of emotions, they could produce different Pavlovian responses to the same stimulus. This difference is rooted in their brains, such as the amygdala, which is partially responsible for the personality and individual differences.
“Self” is often referred to the concept of self-control and consciousness. Since the Deliberative system is believed to make rational decisions, the Deliberative system is undoubtedly a part of self. However, in many situations, the Deliberative system also fails to exert self-control. For instance, students often set goals for doing homework and studying for exams. They must have calculated and imagined the outcomes if they did not prepare well. However, many students fail to keep up the motivation to perform. Hence, according to that definition of “self”, the deliberative system sometimes does not reflect the “self”. The decision-making systems are parts of self not because of consciousness, but because of their benefits for survival and actions, and their neural basis in the brain that influence the mind. In conclusion, all decision-making systems are parts of “self”, which includes the mind and the brain, the unconsciousness, and the consciousness.