Brain, Mind & Neuroscience

[CopticChristian]

Perception is **not **the power to choose nor can it produce it.

Tonyrey,

Aphorism number 1 according to you. I am not making any claims about free will. I am pointing out that the BBC has a segment that may cause you to pause.

 

[tonyrey]

Perception is **not **

I’m more interested in facts than segments! If a segment cannot be summarised it is probably unintelligible…

 

[CopticChristian]

I’m more interested in facts than segments! If a segment cannot be summarised it is probably unintelligible…

Tony,

I like facts. I believe in free will. I am of the mindset that you can exercise your mind.

Fact. Your brain is an organ of your body, Grants Atlas of Anatomy

Fact. You must fuel your brain for it to work properly, ie eat proper foods, Owners Manual of the Brain…found here and any Physiology book

amazon.com/The-Owners-Manual-Brain-Applications/dp/1885167644/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1339684033&sr=8-3&keywords=manual+of+the+brain

Fact. Free will can be strenghtened, ie Baumiester, Rediscovering Our Greatest Human Strength

amazon.com/Willpower-Rediscovering-Greatest-Human-Strength/dp/1594203075/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339684098&sr=1-1-fkmr1&keywords=Baumiester%2C+free+will

L. Michael Hall points out in games Slim and Fit people play how to strengthen the will

Your eyes record no vision…this is a tool that that body has with rods and cones registered in a part of your brain called the visual cortex. When you go blind you can still visualize and recall all the images transmitted through the rods and cones.

The same is true for all the senses that provide our information. The brain stores this information somewhere.

The BBC points out the rapidity that all this information comes at you coupled with the stored information and as you decide it is based on imagination, memory and the facts at hand…the decision is perceived to be free will in the moment however there may be some element of predetermination based on stored information and past decisions so that the decision is ordered in advance of your decision and you percieve it as free will. This is not fact just a thought and interesting.

 

[inocente]

Invincible atoms!

Up and atom!

That is hardly surprising. A collection of events within the skull doesn’t constitute a rational entity. The atomistic view of reality - including the mind inevitably reduces it to absurdity - as Camus and Sartre were not slow to realise.

I agree, trying to explain the mind using atoms would be very silly. Although obviously nowhere near as silly as saying it’s magical supernatural energy, which definitely takes the biscuit.

Materialists who console themselves with the thought that eventually subnatural events will produce an explanation of themselves - which liberates them from all objective moral principles and all obligations to any higher authority. In their scheme of things* neurotransmitter imbalances within the brain*** must be the main causes of all psychiatric conditions.

Subnatural – who ordered that ? Don’t tell me there’s a whole menagerie of these things - supernatural, superdupernatural, baconflavoredsubmetasupernatural, and so on? Why not just natural?

Given that the mind is merely is a product of electrical impulses how could it possibly be anything other than disruptions of the required currents and voltages? Unless some scientific genius succeeds in explaining* the precise physical mechanism ***by which such a feat is accomplished it is inevitable that materialists will continue to be afflicted by severe headaches…

Given we don’t know the precise physical mechanism by which electrons exist either, your logic will now cause your computer to disappear in a puff, and after a brief period of mourning, your good self too of course.

How could it be that the internet is electrical impulses yet it brings me your pearls of wisdom? It must be supernatural says the caveman. The 21st C supernaturalist laughs and says no, it’s natural. How could it be that your mind thinks up your pearls of wisdom? It must be supernatural says the caveman. The 21st C supernaturalist nods sagely at the caveman’s wisdom, after all, those pesky scientists didn’t totally disprove it yet so it might just be true.

 

[CopticChristian]

Perception is **not **the power to choose nor can it produce it.

Tony,

General Semantics tenet is “The Map is not the Territory”… This is relevant. We do not register all that can be seen, heard, touched or tasted in our minds. We cannot hear or register some sounds. We do not visualize all that can be seen. Something may be tasteless however all this means is that we cannot register it on our tastebuds. It may have taste/flavor/odor…we cannot register it. This information still comes at us from the world and what we do register is not all that is part of what we use to make decisions.

So what we percieve in our mind about the world out there is not the world nor is the information we are able to discern all the information we recieve. What we don’t register is still coming at us and where it is stored I do not know yet it exists and is part of the information we get and store. This may influence our decsions as well.

 

[tonyrey]

Invincible atoms!

Down and out! (Bell rings.)

That is hardly surprising. A collection of events within the skull doesn’t constitute a rational entity. The atomistic view of reality - including the mind inevitably reduces it to absurdity - as Camus and Sartre were not slow to realise.

I agree, trying to explain the mind using atoms would be very silly. Although obviously nowhere near as silly as saying it’s magical supernatural energy, which definitely takes the biscuit.

Since atoms are invincible they are the only possible subnatural explanation!

Materialists who console themselves with the thought that eventually subnatural events will produce an explanation of themselves - which liberates them from all objective moral principles and all obligations to any higher authority. In their scheme of things neurotransmitter imbalances within the brain must be the main causes of all psychiatric conditions.

Subnatural – who ordered that ? Don’t tell me there’s a whole menagerie of these things - supernatural, superdupernatural, baconflavoredsubmetasupernatural, and so on? Why not just natural?

Nature without life is definitely subnatural, subnormal and substandard…

Given that the mind is merely is a product of electrical impulses how could it possibly be anything other than disruptions of the required currents and voltages? Unless some scientific genius succeeds in explaining the precise physical mechanism by which such a feat is accomplished it is inevitable that materialists will continue to be afflicted by severe headaches…

Given we don’t know the precise physical mechanism by which electrons exist either, your logic will now cause your computer to disappear in a puff, and after a brief period of mourning, your good self too of course.

Faith in precise physical mechanisms implies that logic disappears in a puff of smoke - until the great day arrives when mighty atoms become not only invincible but almighty substitutes for the creative power of God - and ensures that neither I nor any other person have ever existed in the impersonal (but mysteriously innocent) scheme of things.

How could it be that the internet is electrical impulses yet it brings me your pearls of wisdom? It must be supernatural says the caveman. The 21st C supernaturalist laughs and says no, it’s natural. How could it be that your mind thinks up your pearls of wisdom? It must be supernatural says the caveman. The 21st C supernaturalist nods sagely at the caveman’s wisdom, after all, those pesky scientists didn’t totally disprove it yet so it might just be true.

On that reckoning it would be far more accurate to replace " those pesky scientists" with “those pesky particles which persist in pretending to be peculiarly privileged persons who proudly proclaim their unparallelled power to produce positively all perceived phenomena.” :hey_bud:

 

[Viviphilia]

Incredible complexity is compelling evidence for Design rather than Chance…

I call that the Creationist’s Contradiction fallacy.

If complexity requires design, then the designer is either complex or simple. If the designer is complex, then it required a designer itself, and it’s turtles all the way down. If the designer is simple, then complexity can emerge from simplicity and you’ve have a contradiction. The only way out is a special pleading fallacy.

There are countless examples in nature of complexity emerging from simplicity, ergo, it is reasonable to conclude that nature itself emerged from simplicity.

 

[Viviphilia]

That makes a lot of sense, and in a way undermines the idea that neuroscience (or, indeed, the entire philosophical position of physicalism itself) is inherently reductionist (regardless of how it may be interpreted by some adherents and critics alike). It may well be fair to say that minds would not exist without neurons - but clearly it takes more than just a single neuron, or a random cluster of neurons, to give rise to a mind.

It may be - just to throw an idea out there - that the “emergentists” are right, and that minds are physically manifested by complex arrangements and interactions of atoms, molecules, cells, electical and chemical impulses; in much the same way as the entire intricate and beautiful (and, yes, even sometimes discordant and wholly unappealing) edifice of music is built upon the necessary foundation of sound waves, manifested by vibrations travelling through matter - without the matter, there would be no sound waves, and without the sound waves, there would be no music; but music, as such, is not reducible to the matter through which the sound waves travel, even if it may be described and explained entirely in terms of these phenomena.

20th century reductionism produced a great deal of data. But data isn’t worth much unless you can turn it into something. The scientific theories which are inferred from the data are the useful part of science. Recognizing patterns gives one the ability to predict outcomes of events.

Because it was so important to 20th century science, many people seem to mistakenly assume that reductionism is synonymous with science. Supernaturalists often use the reductionist view of science as a criticism, and it would be justified if reductionism were all that science did. But it’s theory building which is the real value of science.

The Human brain has been broken down in many ways, as has been mentioned. Building the brain back up has proven to be more of a challenge. Before super computers, modeling neurons was an intractable problem. With computer super-networks, the 21st century will see the creation of a whole virtual brain.

A Countdown to a Digital Simulation of Every Last Neuron in the Human Brain
By Henry Markram | June 11, 2012

Reductionist biology—examining individual brain parts, neural circuits and molecules—has brought us a long way, but it alone cannot explain the workings of the human brain, an information processor within our skull that is perhaps unparalleled anywhere in the universe. We must construct as well as reduce and build as well as dissect. To do that, we need a new paradigm that combines both analysis and synthesis. The father of reductionism, French philosopher René Descartes, wrote about the need to investigate the parts and then reassemble them to re-create the whole.

The mind is an emergent property of the complex systems of the brain.

Computer minds will be the emergent property of super-complex computer brains.

 

[Viviphilia]

Of course emergence is right, we’re invincible.

I like the link with music, but don’t think we should think of it in terms of atoms or cells. A really rough analogy (so rough it may mislead) is with the cellular automata below - really it’s only pixels switching black or white according to a set of rules, but this forms moving patterns which are, as it were, entities in their own right. So in modelling thought, perhaps patterns of firing neurons form such “entities” which represent “thought atoms” and they in turn form patterns which are “thought phrases”. I made my head hurt now.
[en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton)

There currently exists software devoted to large scale simulations of Conway’s Game of Life and the emergent patterns are spectacular.

Droste effect in Conway’s Life

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashlife

 

[Viviphilia]

Materialists who console themselves with the thought that eventually subnatural events will produce an explanation of themselves - which liberates them from all objective moral principles and all obligations to any higher authority. In their scheme of things** neurotransmitter imbalances within the brain** must be the main causes of all psychiatric conditions.

Humanism can fulfill the task of providing objective moral ethics. If you prefer Catholicism or any religion as your basis for moral ethics, I will support your freedom to do so.

Given that the mind is merely is a product of electrical impulses how could it possibly be anything other than disruptions of the required currents and voltages? Unless some scientific genius succeeds in explaining** the precise physical mechanism **by which such a feat is accomplished it is inevitable that materialists will continue to be afflicted by severe headaches…

The Human mind is currently the most complex thing known in the universe. In some ways, it can be useful to model a Human brain in terms of electrical impulses. However, to truly model the Human mind, we will need a bigger heuristics tool box than we currently possess. Not to be teleological, but automated evolutionary algorithms should be able to sufficiently increase the size of our toolbox. Human minds lack sufficient processing power to make the problem tractable.

 

[CopticChristian]

20th century reductionism produced a great deal of data. But data isn’t worth much unless you can turn it into something. The scientific theories which are inferred from the data are the useful part of science. Recognizing patterns gives one the ability to predict outcomes of events.

Because it was so important to 20th century science, many people seem to mistakenly assume that reductionism is synonymous with science. Supernaturalists often use the reductionist view of science as a criticism, and it would be justified if reductionism were all that science did. But it’s theory building which is the real value of science.

The Human brain has been broken down in many ways, as has been mentioned. Building the brain back up has proven to be more of a challenge. Before super computers, modeling neurons was an intractable problem. With computer super-networks, the 21st century will see the creation of a whole virtual brain.

The mind is an emergent property of the complex systems of the brain.

Computer minds will be the emergent property of super-complex computer brains.

Viv,

This is all fascinating. Meltzerboy pointed out something relevant in posting about self reflective thinking. While computers may rival the mind in some respects what will differentiate the mind of the computer is the same that differentiates the mind of animals. Animals have been shown to have the ability to be self-reflective to a point however when you realize that the human mind is perpetually self-reflective you realize that no computer is self-reflective.

When you think your thoughts are always associated with emotion. Emotions are always associated with a thought.

You then have the ability to think about what you think about that emotion and then
You can ask how you feel about what you thought about what you thought about that and
then you can see how you feel about that and then how you think that is and how you feel about it ad infinitum…until you can step outside of that process and realize that all those thought and all those emotions are not you…

and then as you step out and observe the feeling and thinking and reflecting you may want to observe that the real you that just did all this…is not thought…not emotion…the observer of that process…and then you arrive at that observer and actor that did this and who you are…now what machine can do that?

 

[Sair]

Of course emergence is right, we’re invincible.

I like the link with music, but don’t think we should think of it in terms of atoms or cells. A really rough analogy (so rough it may mislead) is with the cellular automata below - really it’s only pixels switching black or white according to a set of rules, but this forms moving patterns which are, as it were, entities in their own right. So in modelling thought, perhaps patterns of firing neurons form such “entities” which represent “thought atoms” and they in turn form patterns which are “thought phrases”. I made my head hurt now.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Gospers_glider_gun.gif
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton

I think the whole process of looking in at our own minds and trying to obtain a third-person perspective on our first-person experience, is potentially headache-inducing…but worth the effort, nonetheless, if only because it’s rather fascinating.

To respond to this and also the previous couple of replies to my post, regarding metacognition and pattern recognition, I seem to recall reading somewhere (although the recollection doesn’t extend to exactly where I read this) that the mind simply is a meaning-maker. Now, whether it’s the case that the mind is an entity that constructs meaning, or the mind actually is the collection of meanings built from the information we absorb, I am extremely ill-qualified to say.

What I would say, though - and I’ll try to put this in a way that makes some kind of sense, since I’m pretty much formulating my thoughts as I go - is that to look at things in a naturalistic manner is to let go of the notion that there is some kind of pre-existing form or structure into which component parts fit, or were somehow designed to fit, and to appreciate that the form in question just is the components and the way they interact. To head off the (inevitable?) accusations of reductionism, this is not a denial of form but a reconception of it. I’ve often been told outright on these forums that if mental states and emotions and values and ethics and all the things that we experience are “just” electrochemical signals travelling between neurons made of matter, then the “things” - or the forms - that we experience as, for example, love, don’t really exist.

But that’s kind of the point - they don’t exist as forms apart from the forms given by the interaction of our neural components. The dissenting contention is that if this is the case, then our experiences and thoughts and emotions don’t matter, but I would say nothing could be further from the truth - not only do they matter, they actually are us, as persons. Can we conceive of a person who does not manifest such experiences?

Apologies if this doesn’t really make sense - as I said, it’s very much a work in progress.

I am guessing, by the way, from the animation, that you are familiar with the Life world? I only recently learned of it by means of reading a book by Daniel Dennett in which it was discussed at some length. I found it quite fascinating and also rather a useful philosophical tool for thinking about emergentism.

 

[inocente]

Down and out! (Bell rings.)

It’s OK, I can wait until you regain consciousness.

Since atoms are invincible they are the only possible subnatural explanation!
Nature without life is definitely subnatural, subnormal and substandard…

Test for concussion - does patient use made-up words like subnatural?

Faith in precise physical mechanisms implies that logic disappears in a puff of smoke - until the great day arrives when mighty atoms become not only invincible but almighty substitutes for the creative power of God - and ensures that neither I nor any other person have ever existed in the impersonal (but mysteriously innocent) scheme of things.

Now you’ve come round you appear to realize your battle is lost – that knowledge cannot but increase and wipe away old worn out false philosophies.

But all the same, no reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

On that reckoning it would be far more accurate to replace " those pesky scientists" with “those pesky particles which persist in pretending to be peculiarly privileged persons who proudly proclaim their unparallelled power to produce positively all perceived phenomena.” :hey_bud:

In the real world outside CAF, those pesky privileged particles have done far more to combat mental illness in the last 60 years or so than all the supernaturalists since the beginning of time.

 

[inocente]

There currently exists software devoted to large scale simulations of Conway’s Game of Life and the emergent patterns are spectacular.

Droste effect in Conway’s Life

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashlife

Wow that’s one cool video.

Anyone who doesn’t know what we’re talking about, Life was developed by the mathematician John Conway, and shows how unexpected complexity emerges from simple rules, effectively closing the lid on all design arguments.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life
youtube.com/watch?v=C2vgICfQawE

 

[JDaniel]

Wow that’s one cool video.

Anyone who doesn’t know what we’re talking about, Life was developed by the mathematician John Conway, and shows how unexpected complexity emerges from simple rules, effectively closing the lid on all design arguments.

Inocente:

I guess my question would be: Did John incorporate those “simple rules” into the design of his little computer game?

God bless,
jd

 

[Viviphilia]

Inocente:

I guess my question would be: Did John incorporate those “simple rules” into the design of his little computer game?

God bless,
jd

If you systematically go through all the possible cellular automata rule sets for two dimensional grids, as Wolfram did in “A New Kind of Science,” most of them do not show self-organizing emergent properties. Only a few of the rule sets lead to great complexity. So there is no need to design complexity producing rule sets as the complexity emerges naturally from the existence of the 2 dimensional grid and the existence of discrete rule sets. Of course there is still room for metaphysical inquiry over the existence of the two dimensional grid, and the appearance and consistency of the rule sets. Where did the grid come from? How did the rule sets appear? Why do the rule sets remain consistent? However with this approach, you have a way out of the Creationist’s Contradiction. It’s easier to assume simplicity* ad infinitum.*

 

[inocente]

What I would say, though - and I’ll try to put this in a way that makes some kind of sense, since I’m pretty much formulating my thoughts as I go - is that to look at things in a naturalistic manner is to let go of the notion that there is some kind of pre-existing form or structure into which component parts fit, or were somehow designed to fit, and to appreciate that the form in question just is the components and the way they interact. To head off the (inevitable?) accusations of reductionism, this is not a denial of form but a reconception of it. I’ve often been told outright on these forums that if mental states and emotions and values and ethics and all the things that we experience are “just” electrochemical signals travelling between neurons made of matter, then the “things” - or the forms - that we experience as, for example, love, don’t really exist.

That’s a nice insight – could it be summarized as saying form is not the starting point as was sometimes thought but instead emerges as the end point, or is that reaching too far?

But that’s kind of the point - they don’t exist as forms apart from the forms given by the interaction of our neural components. The dissenting contention is that if this is the case, then our experiences and thoughts and emotions don’t matter, but I would say nothing could be further from the truth - not only do they matter, they actually are us, as persons. Can we conceive of a person who does not manifest such experiences?

Agreed, the explanation for how we think doesn’t alter the meaning of what we think (unless there’s an illogical prejudice against us being part of Creation of course ).

Apologies if this doesn’t really make sense - as I said, it’s very much a work in progress.

Made good sense to me.

I am guessing, by the way, from the animation, that you are familiar with the Life world?

Yes, programmed a version myself like all good geeks. For me there’s a spiritual wonderment in how simple recursion leads to the fluid world of Life but also to the infinite patterns of fractals (youtube.com/watch?v=WAJE35wX1nQ is a nice zoom on the Mandelbrot set).

Getting misty eyed, must be time to walk the dogs.

 

[inocente]

I guess my question would be: Did John incorporate those “simple rules” into the design of his little computer game?

He was interested in solving a problem posed by von Neumann and a great deal of of thought went into designing the rules. They basically reduce life and death to their simplest meaning.

It wasn’t a computer game originally, it predated desktop computers and I read somewhere that students would laboriously use graph paper, pencil and eraser.

 

[tonyrey]

For me there’s a spiritual wonderment in how simple recursion leads to the fluid world of Life but also to the infinite patterns of fractals

“spiritual”? You are obviously in the wrong department if you think that word will make any impact on your interlocutor and it could well rebound on you for having the audacity to use it…:blackeye:

 

[tonyrey]

Incredible complexity is compelling evidence for Design rather than Chance…

You can call it what you like! It doesn’t alter the facts…

If complexity requires design, then the designer is either complex or simple. If the designer is complex, then it required a designer itself, and it’s turtles all the way down. If the designer is simple, then complexity can emerge from simplicity and you’ve have a contradiction. The only way out is a special pleading fallacy.

The only way out for you is to feign simplicity!

You’re pleading that a designer is so complex he cannot be responsible for his behaviour. Try telling that to the judge next time you’re in court!

There are countless examples in nature of complexity emerging from simplicity, ergo, it is reasonable to conclude that nature itself emerged from simplicity. I call that the Creationist’s Contradiction fallacy.

You can call it what you like! Occam’s Razor disposes of that mistake.