3: The Interpreter

Lecture abstract

"The “interpreter” is the device we humans enjoy that provides us with the capacity to see the meanings behind patterns of our emotions, behavior and thoughts.

This concept is central to understanding the relationship between our brain and our strong sense of self. In a way, it is the device that liberates us from our automatic ways spelled out in Lecture 1 and 2.

The interpreter constructs the sense that there is a “me” arising out of the ongoing neuronal chatter in the brain and making all of life’s moment-to-moment decisions. Our compelling sense of being a unified self armed with volition, deployable attention and self-control is the handiwork of the interpreter, for it brings coherence to a brain that is actually a vastly parallel and distributed system.

This view stands in contrast to much neuroscientific theorizing or existential musing about our unified, coherent nature. In most models of brain and cognitive mechanism, one can identify, as Marvin Minsky once said, “the box that makes all the decisions.”

Yet if modern neuroscience has taught us anything, it has taught us, as I said in Lecture 2, that our brain is a highly parallel and distributed system with literally millions of decisions being made simultaneously. There is simply no place within this sort of architecture from which a single decision system could operate. Instead, this parallel processing is producing an organism that looks like a self-motivated, morally coherent, decision-making and conscious entity.

Indeed, understanding how it works will emerge from understanding the workings of the interpreter and the brain that enables it. Moreover, this understanding will allow us to rid ourselves of the homunculus problem once and for all, while, perhaps paradoxically, setting the stage for why “you” are to be held responsible for all of your actions."

Lecture video