The Physics of the Unconscious

August 27th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Unconscious cognitive processes, including those which produce physical actions, attitudes, and emotional responses, often react or refer to the physical properties of objects, events, or spaces. So, for example, the actions used to catch a ball are unconscious and automatic, and refer to the object and the space through which the ball travels. This unconscious processing of information, and its subsequent translation into effective action, requires the person engaged in that action to possess an internal model or paradigm of the behaviour of objects in spaces. We would not be able to catch a ball if we did not have, in some form, paradigmatic knowledge of the flight of objects and the effects of gravity, wind resistance etc on that flight. There is evidence to suggest that this paradigmatic knowledge is innate and that it closely resembles ‘naive physics’.

McIntyre, J., Zago, M., Berthoz, A. and Lacquaniti, F. 2001. Does the brain model Newton’s laws? Nature Neuroscience, July 2001.

Posted in McIntyre, J., Zago, M., Berthoz, A. and Lacquaniti, F, Naive Physics, Physics, Unconscious | No Comments »