Reinforcement Mechanisms

How does the mind utilize reinforcement mechanisms?

By “reinforcement mechanism”, I mean the trigger that the brain uses to reinforce habits of an animal. There seems to be 2 basic categories of reinforcement; positive or negative. Positive would cause the animal or person to pursue something, where negative would cause them to avoid it. I explored how reinforcement triggers (I’ll call them retriggers for short) affect the different functions of mental processes, such as instinct, subconscious and conscious reactions, in a post from about 10 months ago; The Notion of Emotion. Typically the word “emotion” refers, more so, to the mental effects resulting from retriggers, which arguably mostly regards humans, since it insinuates a state of mind relative to the retriggers. Besides how retriggers play out (for a good portrayal of these effects, see another post, from just before that 1; Subconscious Subjection) and affect mental reaction and decision processes, there seems to be more to question about the step by step mechanism itself.

Overall, retriggers seem to be a default mechanism for most basic functions of the brain. Default in a way, that all 3 mind functions; instinct, subconscious and conscious reactions seem to utilize it, including anything on Earth which has a brain. Its a default trigger to cause the animal (etc) to basically either avoid or pursue factors which it encounters. Instinct is basically a pre-established set of programming of retriggers (through DNA and genetics), to cause the animal to avoid or pursue necessities. 

Instinctual reactions, such as reflexes keep the animal alive long enough to then be able to use subconscious reaction, which then utilizes retriggers, combined with memory, allowing more accurate and effective avoidance or pursuance, depending on the animals environment. Instinct of each species does not necessarily use retriggers for its function, but is more of a developed, unique set of factors combined with retriggers. This set of factors will be perceived by the animals’ senses, to then use the retriggers to make the animal avoid or pursue whatever is most beneficial for that particular species. This unique set of factors, then drives the direction of subconsciousness, and guides the use of memory, to trigger each individual animal to avoid or pursue more accurate factors in the future, which become unique to that individual, based on its environment. 

The 1st step of the function of retriggers, is (as I mentioned) when that species’ unique set of factors connected to retriggers (based on their instinct), are perceived by the animals senses. The 2nd step is when the brain records in memory, which factors the animal perceived at the time of sensual perception, based on whether positive or negative reinforcement was triggered. Whichever factors were perceived by the senses, are saved in memory, creating a new subset of factors to be avoided or pursued, depending on whether the default retrigger was positive or negative. This is saved as subconscious memory. 

The 3rd step of retriggers being used, is reacting based on retriggers, saved in subconscious memory. This causes the animal to physically react by avoiding or pursuing the circumstances, relative to whether the retrigger was negative or positive.

This 3rd step only occurs in circumstances when the factors within pre-saved subconscious subsets, are perceived again (given, this is by far the majority of interactions any animal encounters, once its been alive for a short period). This overrides the instinctual sets of factor-retrigger sets, when an animal sensually perceives factors within a subconscious subset. In this case, differing factors can activate the retrigger connected in memory, to cause the animal to avoid or pursue the factors, accordingly. Throughout the lifespan of an animal, these 3 steps recur regularly with virtually any significant interaction of the animal. Each time the 3 steps recur, it fine tunes the subconscious subset of factors connected with retriggers, to cause the animal to more likely react for its own benefit, based on more accurate factors to be perceived. 

When consciousness comes into play, perhaps this is another question of how retriggers cause reaction, and which factor subsets are prioritized. Retriggers seem to be a basic default mechanism to cause an animal to redo, or not redo, actions which result in circumstances involving factors which are beneficial or harmful. Instinct is basically a preprogrammed set of retriggers combined with factors which are sensually perceived. Subconscious memory then uses these retriggers to fine tune which factors to pursue or avoid. Overall, an efficient method of function for a processing system (such as a brain), which in all, seems like a simple mechanism used in a complex system, seem to have developed, by utilizing these; Reinforcement Mechanisms.