One area of “decision” that the thalamus is involved in is attentional filtering of external sensory information. I mention that here:
I would speculate that an evolutionary story is that the thalamus moved from a role of filtering incoming sensory information for attentional purposes to filtering internal thoughts for similar attentional and reinforcement purposes. The thalamus extended from the task of deciding to which sensory patterns the mind attends to more general decision making. This evolutionary story is a strong argument to conceive of decision making as happening in the thalamus despite being influenced by the cortex and the decision-making process being inherently looped; the thalamus or thalamus-like structures have been making decisions since before there was a neocortex.
This sort of happens before conscious thought in adult human systems, although embryonically and evolutionarily it happens before the neocortex and consciousness exist.
Conscious decision making is a subset of overall decision making, perhaps, but it is the highest function of consciousness. Elements of consciousness like sensory and emotive qualia are there to push information into this particular function of consciousness: decision making.
Unconscious decision making is a thing.
One area of “decision” that the thalamus is involved in is attentional filtering of external sensory information. I mention that here:
This sort of happens before conscious thought in adult human systems, although embryonically and evolutionarily it happens before the neocortex and consciousness exist.
Conscious decision making is a subset of overall decision making, perhaps, but it is the highest function of consciousness. Elements of consciousness like sensory and emotive qualia are there to push information into this particular function of consciousness: decision making.
If what the thalamus is doing is decision making (conscious or unconscious), it could be expressed as such.