Doug,
The central executive controls all the processes that are controllable by the human ego. But the term 'executive' should be considered the equivalent of what the chief executive officer (CEO) of a business does in managing a corporation. There are intermediaries at various points.
Baddeley & Hitch wrote their initial article in 1974. They wrote that in response to George Miller's "Magic Number 7, plus or minus 2." They realized that there was much more to short-term memory than just words and phonemes. They called Miller's storage "the phonological loop" and they added a visuo-spatial scratchpad for short-term imagery and feelings. And they continued to revise and extend their hypotheses for another 20 or 30 years. Other neuroscientists, who are specialists in different aspects, have been working on related issues.
The idea is an important one that the Generative AI gang has not yet latched onto. But some AI people are starting to take notice, and I believe that they are on the right track. In summary, there is more to come. See the references I cited, and do whatever googling and searching you like.
John
From: "doug foxvog" <doug@foxvog.org>
John,
Baddeley & Hitch's "central executive" (CE) is described as an attentional
controlling system. I have just briefly glanced at it, but it seems that
the point is coordinating and accessing memory through an episodic buffer,
phonological loop, and visio-spatial "sketchpad". The hypothesized CE
deals with information, language, memory, imagery, & spatial awareness.
That covers a lot, and i assume it would also cover conscious actions and
processes.
But i don't see it covering neurohormone production or things like
heartrate. Lower level processes like basal signaling between neurons
would have no need of a central executive, as they are just basal
processes.
It's the word "all" in "all processes" that indicates to me that the claim
is excessive.
FWIW, i note that sharks also have brains -- as do "higher" orders of
invertebrates.
-- doug f
> On Wed, April 10, 2024 18:38, John F Sowa wrote:
> Doug,
>
> The central executive was proposed by the neuroscientists Baddeley &
> Hitch, not by AI researchers. There is nothing "machine-like" in the
> idea, by itself. Without something like it, there is no way to explain
> how a huge tangle of neurons could act together and coordinate their
> efforts to support a common effort.
>
> It reminds me of a neighboring town (to my residence in Croton on Hudson,
> NY), which was doing some major developments without hiring a general
> contractor. They thought that their local town employees could schedule
> all the processes. It turned out to be a total disaster. All the
> subcontractors did their tasks in a random order, each one interfering
> with some of the others, and causing a major mess. There were lawsuits
> back and forth, and the town management was found guilty and had losses
> that were many times greater than the cost of hiring a general contractor.
>
> It is certainly true that there is a huge amount of computation going on
> in the brain that is below conscious awareness. Most of that is done by
> the cerebellum (little brain), which is physically much smaller than the
> cerebral cortex. But it contains over four times the number of neurons.
> In effect, the cerebellum behaves like a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit)
> which is a superfast, highly specialized processor for all the perception
> and action that takes place without conscious awareness.
>
> For example, when you're walking down the street talking on your cell
> phone, the cerebellum is monitoring your vision, muscles, and strides --
> until you step off the curb and get run over by a bus. That's why you need
> a central controller to monitor and coordinate all the processes.
>
> Sharks and dolphins are about the same size and they eat the same kind of
> prey. Sharks have a huge cerebellum and a small lump for a cerebellum.
> Dolphins have a huge cerebral cortex and a huge cerebellum. They are as
> agile as sharks, but they can plan, communicate, and coordinate their
> activities. When the food is plentiful, they can both eat their fill.
> But when it's scarce, the dolphins are much more successful.
>
> Please look at the citations in my previous note and the attached
> Section7.pdf. The cycle of abduction, induction, testing, and induction
> depends on a central executive that is responsible for planning,
> coordinating, and integrating those steps of conscious feeling, thinking,
> reasoning, and acting. With a central executive, an AI system would be
> more intelligent. But much, much more R & D would be required before
> anything could be called "Artificial General Intelligence" (AGI). That's
> why I have very little faith in anything called AGI.
>
> John
>
> ----------------------------------------
> From: "doug foxvog" <doug@foxvog.org>
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] The central executive
>
> On Wed, April 10, 2024 14:07, John F Sowa wrote:
>> In today's ZOOM meeting, I objected to the term 'neuro-symbolic hybrid'
>> of
>> artificial neural networks (ANNs) with symbols. Hybrids simply relate
>> two
>> (sometimes more) distinctly different things. But all the processes in
>> the mind and brain are integrated, and they all operate continuously in
>> different parts of the brain, which are all monitored and controlled by
>> a
>> central executive. ...
>
> This seems to me to be modeling the body as a machine and not an accurate
> description.
>
> There are a wide variety of processes in the mind and brain -- many
> processes in the brain occur independently without being integrated either
> with each other or with the mind. I am excluding standard cellular level
> processes that go on in every cell and the processes of the circulatory
> system in the brain. Every neuron regularly chemically interacts with
> adjacent neurons & passes electrical signals along its surface.
>
> As far as i understand, much that goes on in the brain we are unaware of,
> neurohormone production, for example. Sensory input processing does not
> seem to be integrated with a number of other processes. I have seen no
> evidence of a central executive in the brain that monitors and controls
> all the other processes. I'm not sure how such a central executive could
> have evolved.
>
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