Bottleneck
Matjaž Potrč

Sometimes a whole lot of information is destined to result in a simple outcome. These are cases that figure the effect of bottleneck. The question is whether the underlying abundant information has an impact upon the outcome, whether it is present in it, and in what manner if it happens to be. Some examples of bottleneck figure joke getting, dreaming, writing and falling of moral judgment. Falling of moral judgment is an act of valuation, which distinguishes itself by the thinness, i.e. the absence of content, and binary exclusive decision. Falling of judgment is needed as the support of a passage to act. The cause or the base underlying the judgment, on the contrary, contains content, a lot of it, and this content comes in a holistic situation. The problem is that holistic content has its impact upon the unique outcome. Given that the underlying content is so complex, one would expect that it would not come through the bottleneck as a content, but would just tip it in a certain direction, only exercise its secondary effects. The cases of bottleneck show that it is not like that, so that the background holistic content does enter the scene, thereby contributing to tip it in some direction. The rich content contributes to the valuation, to the form of the total cognitive state formed by the one that falls the judgment. It does not come through the bottleneck as fully represented content, forming itself total cognitive states at the moment of evaluative judgment falling. It rather acts as morphological content, the background content that chromatically illuminates the situation which is valued. Nevertheless that underlying morphological content is thick, it is not just binary valuing. But it contributes to the scene in an implicit manner, from the background. The effect of the morphological content upon the valuative decision is real. It is a reason why the valuation is falling in direction that it does. Bottleneck cases provide means to decipher the real effective content, which is thus not a case of confabulation. A problem is to find a cognitive model that would account for bottleneck happenings. Modular mechanisms push through bottleneck, although their cognitive structure is complex and even holistic. Some modular mechanisms account for holism. The background knowledge having an effect upon judgment falling may be modeled by multidimensional dynamical cognition. In the case of moral judgment, reasons are effective through the filter of the bottleneck.

Bottleneck
Sometimes a whole lot of information is destined to result in a simple outcome. These are cases that figure the effect of bottleneck.
As the traffic gets dense at rush hour a bottleneck is lurking. What is going on? Our roads are built for a certain density of traffic, and till that density is not too big, everything goes fine. But as at the rush hour too many vehicles hit the road, congestion builds, and the result is bottleneck. We would simply like to drive, but we are stuck. Traffic does not come through, it does not flow in the way that it should.
	There is similar situation for the information congestion. The wiring is destined for a certain amount of information. But as that amount is exceeded, the system may stop working. There is a news on the internet, and as too many people switch to it, the system crashes. No information is coming through anymore. We wait till the traffic diminishes so that we would continue surfing as usual.
	The just mentioned cases are the ones where the information flow stops. But sometimes the information leads to a simple outcome once as it reaches a certain threshold. In such cases the quality of information changes from the sequence before the bottleneck or threshold is reached, and after it is reached. We see a bee, then another one, and so on, and at some moment there is a whole beehive. The quantity of a light slowly increases and at some instant, the one of the threshold or bottleneck, as it gets tipped, we notice the increase: that was a case of the just noticeable difference. Such examples may be interpreted as the ones figuring emergence. A different quality emerges as the threshold or bottleneck is reached.

Does the information come through, and if yes in what manner?
The question is whether the underlying abundant information has an impact upon the outcome, whether it is present in it, and in what manner if it happens to be.
Our first examples figuring bottleneck figured a congestion or a very slow coming-through of traffic or information. The second kind of cases figured bottleneck as marking a threshold where a plentitude of some kind of information or stuff tips to another quality. The hypothesis may now be that the information which is there before the bottleneck is reached completely changes at that moment. But the information that was there before the bottleneck may also come through it and being there after the bottleneck. Yet the manner in which the earlier stuff or information is there after the bottleneck is reached may be such that there is somehow a change of quality in the same kind of information. So we can ask whether the information that is there before the bottleneck is reached comes through it at all, and if yes, in what manner.

Bottleneck cases: joking, dreaming, writing
Some examples of bottleneck figure joke getting, dreaming, writing and falling of moral judgment.
Here are some further examples of bottleneck. They figure a lot of background information, which somehow comes through.
	The first example is that of joke getting. In order to get a joke you need to grasp a lot of background information. That information is not consciously clearly present before one's mind, but if it is not grasped you do not get the joke. So, somehow that information comes to your total cognitive state as you grasp the joke. The abundance of that information encounters a bottleneck in its transition to the total cognitive state: the tension of getting through and not getting through of that background information explodes into laughter.
	Dreaming is another bottleneck case. Consider that someone knocked on your door, waking you up, and at that moment, a whole rich content dream of yours happens. The rich dream that you can narrate for some time afterwards had to be a-waiting in your dispositional cognitive background as a memory trace. That trace contains a lot of content, and that content encounters a bottleneck at the moment as you are dreaming. So all this rich information is present at the moment of dreaming, contributing to its quality.
	As you write, you dig into your memory, and the writing is an encounter of the memory. As
Proust describes his eating of a donut, a rich content of memory unfolds that fills a lot of volumes. Something was written from the memory. The bottleneck happened as the first idea of writing
things down contained a whole narrative story in Proust's mind, to be elaborated.

Moral judgment falling: thin valuing
Falling of moral judgment is an act of valuation, which distinguishes itself by the thinness, i.e. the absence of content, and binary exclusive decision. Falling of judgment is needed as the support of a passage to act.
As you fall a moral judgment, you value things. Her help displays moral goodness. He is a morally bad guy. You value acts or persons, in a binary manner. There is not much content involved into this, actually you just go positive or negative in your valuations. Valuative concepts, such as good or bad, are therefore thin, devoid of content. Why would such a thing be needed? Here is one explanation: we use evaluation, such as the judgment falling, in the direction of a passage to act. And there is not too much time available for us to make decision in various situations. So entertaining a lot of content would not be functional in these cases.

Cause of judgment: thick and holistic
The cause or the base underlying judgment, to the contrary, contains content, a lot of it, and this content comes in a holistic situation.
It is otherwise with whatever causes the valuing decision, underlying it in the background. The basis of my judgment that her help displays moral goodness is rooted in my observation during some time, as I witnessed this and that did of her and appreciated it. So I attributed the property of beneficence to her, and some similar properties relying on thick concepts. Similarly for my judgment about that guy being morally bad. On repeated occasions I noticed his lack of offering help as he would be able to do so. In fact, each of these valuations had a lot of intertwined contents in their background holistic situation, so that these resulted in a binary judgmental act. The basis for judgment falling is thus holistic and thick, despite that the judgment falling itself is binary and thin in its nature.

Causing of judgment encountering bottleneck?
The problem is that the holistic content has impact upon the unique outcome. Given that the underlying content is so complex, one would expect that it would not come through the bottleneck as a content, but would just tip it in a certain direction, just exercise its secondary effects.
	Here is a thought. Whatever causes a moral judgment, underlying it, tends to be full of content, and thus thick and holistic in its nature. Such a rich content then exercises its impact upon the unique outcome, as this one is forthcoming in a binary, thin nature of the valuating act. So one would expect that the rich background would not come at the surface at all in the act of valuing. It would just tip the scale, without being itself present in the act of valuation. If this is the case, then the bottleneck would not really leave anything that causes valuation through. It would just have an effect perhaps comparable to the traffic congestion: no stuff or information would really come through the bottleneck, but it would still exercise an effect and determine the outcome. The traffic stops, the information does not come through, and the act of valuation comes about without any background stuff being present in it. Just the weight of the background will be present, in tipping the scale.

Holistic content's effectivity somehow coming through
The cases of bottleneck show that the holistic content is not completely precluded, so that the background holistic content does enter the scene, thereby contributing to tip it in some direction.
	There is another possibility though. The background holistic content may come through the bottleneck, all in exercising its impact upon the situation after the bottleneck is reached. This seems to be what is happening in the cases of joke getting, dreaming and writing that we have mentioned earlier. As you get the joke a lot of information is appreciated by you, for otherwise you would not get the joke at all. That information is not just remotely causing you to get the joke; it is involved into the act of joke getting. Your act of dreaming involves a lot of content, and that is dreaming indeed, although the act of dreaming just bears testimony of encountering a background narration rich memory trace, of encountering some mentally precluded reality. The act of writing encounters memory trace as well, slowly elaborating it in the artistic process. All these cases show that content's effectivity is coming through the bottleneck, so that content is present after the bottleneck of unique acts figuring joke getting, dreaming and writing happens. Without the background information being present upon the scene, one would not get the joke, would not have dreams and would not be able to write.

Content's contribution to valuation by chromatic illumination
The rich content contributes to the valuation, to the form of the total cognitive state formed by the one that falls the judgment. It does not come through the bottleneck as fully represented content, forming itself total cognitive states at the moment of evaluative judgment falling. It rather acts as morphological content, the background content that chromatically illuminates the situation which is valued. Nevertheless that underlying morphological content is thick, it is not just binary valuing.
We have claimed that rich background content that causes the simple tipping acts, such as that of joke getting, dreaming and writing as passages to act, comes at the scene in these simple acts. But just in what manner does that information enter the post-bottleneck simple scene? The answer is that the mode of appearance upon the scene for the rich background content is indirect. The information is there after the bottlenecks is hit. But it is not there in fully explicit manner. It is just appreciated, so that it chromatically illuminates the scene. The laughter tied to the joke getting could not be there if much of information would not be appreciated, although not in an explicit direct manner. Rather, the scene is just illuminated, chromatically illuminated by that background information, full of content, but not explicitly forthcoming into the situation. In other words, the background information does enter the post-bottleneck scene indeed. But it does not do this in an implicit manner. This thick, content-full information is rather present as morphological content, we could say, which means as the content that is there in the background of the scene, where memory traces get stored in a rich multidimensional cognitive landscape. This is still a rich, content-full information, although it is not an explicitly forthcoming information. Its content is thick, it is not just a binary valuing. It chromatically illuminates the situation from the background, all in being somehow non-explicitly present in it at the moment of the passage to act.

Background's morphological content implicitly provides valuing reasons
Morphological content contributes to the scene in an implicit manner, from the background. The effect of the morphological content upon the valuative decision is real. It is a reason why the valuation is falling in the direction that it does.
We have first entertained the possibility that there is no coming through of the background information into the post-bottleneck act of decision. Then we have moved forward by allowing the background information to come through the bottleneck, thereby acting upon the simple action inviting scene, in an implicit manner. If this is the case, then the background provides reasons for valuation, as this happens in moral judgment falling. Background morphological content provides valuing reasons. The thick content-full reasons are in the background of the valuing acts.

Effective content is real, not confabulation
Bottleneck cases provide means to decipher the real effective content, which is thus not a case of confabulation.
Intuitionism in respect to moral judgment claims that the background and cause of moral judgment is emotional and socially fitted reaction to the encountered situation. The reasons do not come through the bottleneck though; they are simply invented and are cases of confabulation. Examples of bottleneck have shown the possibility though that the background information, the reasons that provide direction to the passage to act, does come upon the scene, and that these reasons are real, not confabulation invention. In joke getting, dreaming and writing passages to act related reasons enter the scene, although not in an explicit, and rather in an implicit manner, by the effect of chromatic illumination. The real effective content providing reasons for whatever is upon the scene may be deciphered.

Modular answers to the bottleneck
A problem is to find a cognitive model that would account for bottleneck happenings. Modular mechanisms push through bottleneck, although their cognitive structure is complex and even holistic. Some modular mechanisms account for holism.
What kind of model of cognition would fit the bottleneck cases? One kind of model is that of modularity. Modular processes are quick, reflex-like processes involving a possibly rich cognitive system. Examples of these would figure visual detection of borders, of surfaces, and auditory processing of phonemes. Each of these tasks may involve a complicated cognitive mechanism. But these mechanisms have to act in a moment, just like doctor's hitting you under the knee triggers your automatic reflex response. There is no time available to the system to process the information that this is a phoneme “c” and integrating it in the world “cat'. Modular mechanism, as we just said are quick. Given that they also have a complex cognitive structure, the idea may be that they would be appropriate to model bottleneck cases. Given again that an organism elaborates not just the information from one module, but from several, this may bring us to the idea that a plurality of simultaneously happening modular processes may even account for holistic system.

Dynamical cognition model
The background knowledge having an effect upon judgment falling may be modeled by multidimensional dynamical cognition. In the case of moral judgment, reasons are effective through the filter of the bottleneck.
What would be an appropriate cognitive model for the background content and reasons containing matters? One could go with the model of dynamical cognition that we have already briefly mentioned. The idea is that there is the background multi-dimensional landscape that does not fit into the classical processing of information involving rules, but rather to parallel distributed processing. In a multi-dimensional landscape there are memory traces proper to several accumulated reasons, to a rich dispositionally available content. This would then be the model for the background to judgment falling. As one falls the judgment, reasons that are tied to the rich content involving landscape are still forthcoming upon the scene, after they have encountered the decision providing bottleneck.

Moral dynamical cognition model
There are valuing forces at the multidimensional dynamical landscape, intertwined by various kinds of cognitive forces.
Notice that dynamical cognition model with its cognitive content is in value for cognition in the overall sense. The specific moral cognition dynamical model however also involves valuing, and therefore the emotional forces that are there in the overall situation. If this is the case, then the dynamics involves both cognitive and emotive, valuational forces. This may be there for every kind of cognition, for a lot of it is destined to enable the passage to action. But there is also a specificity for moral judgment.

Summary
We have started to throw some light upon the phenomenon of bottleneck, such as it figures in moral judgment's supporting background transition to the binary decision. Two things are to be distinguished: (1) judgment falling, and the (2) background to judgment, which causes it. For moral judgment, judgment falling contains valuing, which is directed towards the passage to act. There is no content involved into the act of valuing but rather just binary direction choice. The background of moral judgment is a whole content full holistic background with some pluralist basic reasons/principles. These reasons give direction to valuation. We have tackled the background to judgment falling transition. Just just how does the rich background content containing
reasons/principles pass into the judgment falling act? Because of its richness, it has to encounter a bottleneck. All the reasons are present in judgment falling, but not as explicitly consciously represented. They came through the bottleneck in instantaneous judgment falling. This is why
they are there just in chromatically illuminating the situation of judgment falling, showing its valuative direction. But they are still there.

References
Horgan, T. Forthcoming. Reasons-responsive moral judgment.
Horgan T, and Tienson, J. 1996. Connectionism and the philosophy of psychology. MIT Press.
Potrč, M. Forthcoming. Morphological pluralism.
Potrč, M. Forthcoming. The paradox of value?
Strahovnik, V. 2009. Moralne sodbe, intuicija in moralna načela. Velenje: IPAK.