On further reflection, the primitive of “temporal sequences” (more specifically high-order Markov chains) isn’t that different from cause-effect. High-order Markov chains are like “if A happens and then B and then C, probably D will happen next”. So if A and B and C are a person moving to kick a ball, and D is the ball flying up in the air...well I guess that’s at least partway to representing cause-effect...
(High-order Markov chains are more general than cause-effect because they can also represent non-causal things like the lyrics of a song. But in the opposite direction, I’m having trouble thinking of a cause-effect relation that can not be represented as a high-order Markov chain, at least at some appropriate level of abstraction, and perhaps with some context-dependence of the transitions.)
I have pretty high confidence that high-order Markov chains are one of the low-level primitives of the brain, based on both plausible neural mechanisms and common sense (e.g. it’s hard to say the letters of the alphabet in reverse order). I’m less confident about what exactly are the elements of those Markov chains, and what are the other low-level primitives, and what’s everything else that’s going on. :-)
On further reflection, the primitive of “temporal sequences” (more specifically high-order Markov chains) isn’t that different from cause-effect. High-order Markov chains are like “if A happens and then B and then C, probably D will happen next”. So if A and B and C are a person moving to kick a ball, and D is the ball flying up in the air...well I guess that’s at least partway to representing cause-effect...
(High-order Markov chains are more general than cause-effect because they can also represent non-causal things like the lyrics of a song. But in the opposite direction, I’m having trouble thinking of a cause-effect relation that can not be represented as a high-order Markov chain, at least at some appropriate level of abstraction, and perhaps with some context-dependence of the transitions.)
I have pretty high confidence that high-order Markov chains are one of the low-level primitives of the brain, based on both plausible neural mechanisms and common sense (e.g. it’s hard to say the letters of the alphabet in reverse order). I’m less confident about what exactly are the elements of those Markov chains, and what are the other low-level primitives, and what’s everything else that’s going on. :-)
Just thinking out loud :-)