John Page

Generally agreed but I deliberately chose the word "Mind" and give a definition that includes all abstract phenomena of the individual including consciousness, emotions, thoughts etc.

You remind me of a thread earlier this year (may have been about dogs being conscious or not) where somebody asserted that thoughts don't exist. This first struck me as hilarious - there I was thinking that thoughts existed where in fact I needn't have bothered because they're imaginary. Also, I can write down what I'm thinking and I can think repeatably. So, we don't know what exactly a thought is, it might be a delusory concept and the same applies to mind (which maybe falls into the same category as god/s).

Hence my question, if we are to peel the onion of mental activity then as a first step what is the "outermost" transition from physical to mental phenomena? Is it a sense layer? How is that sense "border" differ from the transmission (light, sound etc.) of information from the observed object to the sense layer?

Cheers, John

philechat

There's one intermediate between sensation and ideas...and it is the idea of memory and imagination.

Both memory and imagination recall the "sensation" of the experience, though without the direct stimulation of experience.

The neurons are stimulated in certain ways before it returns back to its initial state, and a phenomenon named "short term memory" appeared.

Without memory no sensations could be abstracted into ideas, and therefore no thoughts and emotions. The prolonged stimulation of the nerves from the sources "outside" the body and the nerves' retention of its excited state after the stimulation ceased causes the formation of "mental picture" or memory.

When sensations are stored in the brain it could re-combine with other sensations acquired from other experiences, which is the formation of imagination. The process of imagination connects two or more seperate stored experiences and group it together into symbols, which later looses its "pictures" of experiences and becomes ideas.

My pet hypothesis here.

[ June 10, 2002: Message edited by: philechat ]</p>

joshack

Just to be clear, when you refer to "mind" (the blanket term) are you trying to distinguish humans from other animals, or are all mental processes fair game, regardless of their source? Obviously, there are many internal phenomena that do not require consciousness (ideas, thoughts) to proceed (for example: emotions and memory).

philechat

The route from sensation to thought seems to be Sensation--&gt;Memory--&gt;Imagination--&gt;Ideas, according the the evolution of the "mind". Sensation of light is found in flatworms and sensation of pressure in jellyfish.

Memory was a higher function of the brain, and could be found in squids and octopus and most veterbrates. Imagination could be measured using the REM cycles of dreams. Rudimentary forms of REM sleep were found in reptiles and seperate REM and non-REM sleep cycles were found in most mammals.

Ideas aka abstract thinking was found in tests of chimps and baboons. Chimps also display self-consciousness when tested with a mirror. Ideas were a "grouping" of experiences, recalled using the process of imagination. Linguistic symbols were not necessary for the formation of basic ideas like "similarity" and "differences".

[ June 10, 2002: Message edited by: philechat ]</p>

John Page

All are fair game, its the "edge of the mind" that I'm focusing on.

I find it curious that people, generally, in my experience, have little problem with an "abstract" thought directing the eventual firing of multiple nerves to stimulate the desired muscle action (for example). People also seem to have little difficulty agreeing that we have sensory organs that are stimulated by light, sound, smell etc. to provide information for the brain.

So to return to my theme of inquiry, how should we define the border between, dare I say, purely physical processes and physical processes that manipulate information?

Cheers, John

philechat

What do you mean for "information", I dare ask? When a light strike a leaf of the tree, and the tree in return opens its stomata, was it a purely physical process or a physical process that manipulates information?

All ideas seems to link back to the original experiences and sensations of the events related to the ideas. It was probably translated unconsciously (don't have a better word) from the idea to the memories of the events related to the idea. On the other hand, could it be possible that one idea be directly translated to another, without this intermediate process?

Maybe one could devise experiments to test these two hypotheses.

joshack

I don't know how to answer your main question, so I'll take this one:

I find it curious that people, generally, in my experience, have little problem with an "abstract" thought directing the eventual firing of multiple nerves to stimulate the desired muscle action (for example).

This is still a hotly contested topic. Dan Wegner and others (I'm forgetting the researcher who did the primary experiments) have shown that "abstract" thoughts actually occur after neural firing. So, in a sense, we begin to act before we think about acting. This produces the illusion of control over one's actions, when none is really there. Not sure how far they've taken this research, nor whether it would mean that all such thoughts are simply post hoc in nature.

John Page

Pilechat:

Thanks, this is the closest yet to what I was seeking. If I understand you correctly the border of the mind would be characterized by the existence of memories, a persistence of information for some period of time.

Also as you imply, the purposes to which the memory is put is essential. If this distinction were not made, a memory could be any form of persistence - and arguably physical reality is a form of persistence in itself.

I differ in my definition of imagination, I think. I consider the imagination a kind of modeling or what if? area, separate from the process of tracking reality itself.

Cheers, John

John Page

Fascinating. If the thoughts really do occur after neural firing then I wonder what their phenomenal basis is? What do they "ride on"?

As to your last sentence in the quote, I think there are multiple layers of "thought" going on. For example, it takes conscious effort to learn to drive but after a while it seems little or no mental effort is required (i.e. the process is delegated). Only when an unexpected condition occurs is it flagged for a conscious decision/action. So, in the example given the observer only has a localized view of how the brain is reacting - as yet we have no overall schema or modus operandi.

Cheers, John

John Page

By information I mean data that represents either other data or a physical entity. Information is about something and therefore has context. e.g. Data would be 01000100010, information would be a signal of strength 01000100010 was detected at x location time y.

I don't think ideas could be directly translated, especially since some ideas seem compound ideas/variants. Maybe this gives a definition of the border of the mind as the location where information has been correlated against experience. If we call this cognition (organization of information/data) as opposed to just perception (a sensory process) would this make sense to you?

Cheers, John