Choice
Choice is defined in the Noah Webster Dictionary as: “The voluntary act of selecting or separating from two or more things that which is preferred.” Yogi Berra, the great Yankees baseball team catcher, and oft-quoted sage, once said: “If you see a fork in the road, take it.” At its simplest, making such a decision is pretty much a matter of choosing the best of two possibilities; the one which seems to promise the probability of the better outcome.
Such binary choices make up the fundamental underpinnings of computer logic. Programming is based on setting up a sequence of yes/no (more appropriately if/then choices leading to a desired outcome The string of questions posed, and attendant choices made, literally leads to the most appropriate master decision. That final decision is the product of having excluded all of the lesser possibilities in each question of the decision tree. That’s how computers … compute. People, on the other hand, operate with a broader set of parameters and permissions.
Perception
Perception is defined in the Cambridge English Dictionary as: “someone’s ability to notice and understand things that are not obvious to other people.” If you take the time to think about it, the notions of “ability,” “notice, “understand,” and “obvious,” are elegantly imprecise. This might be the ideal point at which we might insert a discussion on the difference between the brain and the mind; and why that matters.
The brain is essentially an electro-chemical device whose prime directive is to respond to external stimuli so as to ensure the survival of the organism in a demonstrably hostile environment. As such, its central operating principle is the calculation of threats and initiation of a selection of appropriate responses.
The relationship between threat and response needs to be symmetrical as an imbalance here is like to lead to termination of the organism. The brain job is to perceive physical threats and generate physical responses in a natural, life-sustaining rhythm; else all is lost.
When it comes to perception, the mind operates with a broader mandate than the brain. The difference between the brain and the mind is a parallel of the difference between natural connections and unapparent connections.
Natural connections extend to responsiveness to stimuli. “Unapparent connections” embrace “something more.” That “something” is that which manifests intellectually rather than merely physically. In the realm of human consciousness, such manifestations are every bit as “real” as reality itself. Moreover, that level of perception is creative rather than responsive.
Download Article 1K Club
