Read about all the problems with reason in our special issue
THOUGH many may find it troubling, it is now clear that few of the active processes occurring in our brains ever impinge on our awareness. In other words, we do most of our “thinking” without ever being conscious of it. The simple act of seeing something depends upon what the German physicist, doctor and philosopher Hermann von Helmholtz called “unconscious inferences”. It is these that enable our brain to work out which object is causing the crude signals coming from our senses. The same principle applies to action. When…
