Binary Brain

One issue I’m struggling with is, whence thought when our brains (and thus, the mind) are hybrid structures of parallel computing and sensory devices?

As I was brushing my teeth, a few significant thoughts poured into my head that overshadowed all of the other minor quibbles attempting to take front and center space in my consciousness.  In a computer, you can assume that anything going on is a reaction to some input.  In this case, the input was varied and chaotic; the vibration of the toothbrush against my teeth, the glare of the light off the mirror and the smudge in my glasses from my dog licking my face a few minutes beforehand.  Which one of those inputs, though, triggered the question of whence random thought?

I really don’t get it.  Dennett makes very strong arguments in favor of losing the puppeteer of our mind and accept a consciousness that is really a type of survival versioning system – i.e. where many trains of random thoughts occur throughout the day and it is always the strongest one that takes hold at the forefront of our consciousness.  I agree with him because all of the neuroscience of today (2010) seems to point in that direction.  But, I still don’t get the logic of the randomness that is my mind and my consciousness.  If my brain were truly nothing more than a complex machine, then the logic of my thought would either be rarely consistent or always consistent.  And I know from introspection that neither is the case for me.  My consciousness is somewhere in the middle.  In the right environment, it is extremely singular and focused and in another, completely chaotic.  How does chaotic complexity that is the neural network of our brain make for semi-logical, semi-consistency?

I find this whole issue troubling.