Mr. Sammi

Syn, I would be the first one to say out loud that I do believe in the cooperation of all objects in the brain. The focus of the brain or the actor in charge, is really the central decision maker (for that instant). This may change from good-actor to bad-actor, do i need to prove such a statement?

I have to use an example here to show there is some value in seperating hard from soft, in the brain. The reasom being I need a docter to examine my smoke-filled lung, or my fantastic heart. No information in my brain where i can look and see the equivalent of an X-ray so I can say, "OH, i need caletin, and calcium`.

Does this not lead us to say the heart is hard-connected to the brain, since I cannot easily control my heart rate, WHEREAS breathing is softly controlled by the brain, simply because I can control my own breathing rate, by thinking.

I know I cannot rest my case, but let us debate some more to some point where we can agree.

Sammi Na Boodie ()

John Page

This isn't quite what I said and I don't think you heeded my suggestion to look at Information Theory and how information is encoded in signals.

Again, what do you consider to be the physical representatiion of the number nine? What makes this representation nine as opposed to eight or a seemingly random event?

Cheers, John

John Page

I find it incredible that you think that's what my position is!
What is doing the counting is absolutely the point. If you took a photograph of the planets and counted the images, are you counting the planets? No, you're counting impressions of the planets. Now consider the physiology of perception...

Please provide a coherent version of how you think things are counted if other than brain processes analyzing sense data.
Challenge. Show me an actual instance of an infinite quantity of things and prove it is infinite. In my wordly experience to date I've never come across anything actually infinite except in the imagination.
Learning a label/token (i.e. name) that has yet to be associated with anything in reality would seem totally independent of counting. It is you that holds the a priori association in this example.
Please describe said mind - do we all share the same one, is it infinite, is it associated with the brian etc.
Proven in the example I provided. If you don't think so please give me an objective observation of color.
Results from experiments.
What's your point? I never said we couldn't count chairs and note your tacit agreement that the same term (chair) can vary between individuals and we learn to make judgements and arbitrate the outcome.
Nonsense, what's the difference between our interpretations and what we consider to be the truth about them - surely truth is an interpretation of our interpretations (a second level abstraction)?
I'm an atheist and neither do I subscribe to the concept of the homonculus. Anyway, since you have no difficulty differentiating between the inner and outer experiences, please answer my question.
Please answer the question, you offer no concrete definition.
This is an untrue statement. You don't appear to have understood my description of an imaginary object. Here's my chart <a href="http://www.reconciliationism.org/reality.htm" target="_blank">Reality Chart & Description</a> again. A "thing that doesn't exist" is imaginary by definition, the concept exists but with no physical correlate. Like god IMO.
You seem to be suffering from a problem that you think I have! Bad answer. If it does not reside anywhere, please describe it.
Submit this opinion to another court ad nauseum. Maybe less subjective but still subjective.
Your information may be true but does not address Kant's acknowledgement that logic and reason are to do with reality and do not exist independently of reality.
Cheers, John

John Page

I've tried this approach before but it didn;t seem to help. All the sense organs seem to be passive, maybe its a "feedback loop" that makes them seem active. But then a "simple reflex" process is active but does not reason.

Now, if you're talking about, say and "active thought process" as opposed to simple reflex...? Perhaps you could elaborate.

Cheers, Johnh

John Page

So, you believe the planets are in the brain, right?

Seriously, what conception of our mental organization would you recommend?

Cheers, John

[ June 21, 2002: Message edited by: John Page ]</p>

owleye

John...

"This isn't quite what I said and I don't think you heeded my suggestion to look at Information Theory and how information is encoded in signals."

I am well aware of information theory, at least that of Shannon's. Shannon's theory addressed the problem of conveying information across distances without degradation by encoding it. The problem I had with your referring to signals (though I would have preferred signs) is that it is uninformative with respect to how nine would be represented. It was a more general answer than the question called for. Computers store information using bits and bytes. Nine is stored standardly in accord with its ascii representation. The physical representation of the particular pattern of ones and zeros is the representation that allows a physical distinction of a one from a zero. In the old days it was a difference in voltage at a particular site where a bit was stored. The interpretation that a particular physical configuration is a one and another is a zero requires a mind (and probably a social convention) that is able to make that interpretation.

For humans, nine can be physically represented in a huge number of ways, giving here but a few of them: by the arrangement of nine dots, equally spaced, on a sheet of paper; by the figure shaped like a '9' on a piece of paper or other material oriented so that it conforms with the conventional way of seeing it. Other representations could be understood in other languages or in braille. There are aural representations as well. In addition, 9 can be physically represented as a particular conjunction of physical representations of letters that represents the standard spelling of nine in whatever language the conjunction of such letters denotes the word nine. Different languages have different physical representations of its written or oral versions.

owleye

owleye

John...

"I find it incredible that you think that's what my position is!"

I can only go by what you've been saying. You have consistently claimed that counting counts impressions, not what they are impressions of. Thus, you objected to my portraying 'nine' as the count of the number of planets, but instead had to call attention to it being a count of the impressions of planets.

"What is doing the counting is absolutely the point. If you took a photograph of the planets and counted the images, are you counting the planets? No, you're counting impressions of the planets."

First: how does the question beginning with "If you took a photograph....." and the statement that follows it give me a reason to think that "what is doing the counting is absolutely the point?" I don't see the connection.

Second: From statements like the above, I derived the incredible conclusion that your theory cannot establish the count of the number of planets. Why do you find it incredible that I derived this incredible conclusion?

Third: Since I can only think you in fact do believe there are nine planets in the solar system, and that indeed, this is common knowledge since the discovery of Pluto, the ninth planet, something we learn in grade school, I would suggest that the above has to be a complete distortion of the way the planets are counted. The most likely way the planets are counted is by arranging their names in a list or table and counting them one by one until all of them are counted, thereby arriving at the number nine.

Fourth. What do you mean by counting the "images" of the planets? Are these images on the photograph? If so, and the count was of the images (and not of the planets), the person so counting would probably not be regarding these images as images of planets, but of images qua being an image. That is, his language would be that there are nine images, which could be images of anything, and not nine planets.

"Please provide a coherent version of how you think things are counted if other than brain processes analyzing sense data."

The brain (as the repository of a neural network) is undoubtedly the information processor that serves to make cognition possible. Nothing I've said should make you think I believe otherwise. Minds depend on brains. However, I see little reason to investigate the brain in order to determine what a planet is or how many there are. Indeed, I'm pretty sure it is entirely a futile exercise to think of things in this way.

"Challenge. Show me an actual instance of an infinite quantity of things and prove it is infinite. In my wordly experience to date I've never come across anything actually infinite except in the imagination."

The example which comes to mind is the number of parts of space-time. Every part of space-time (except points or coordinates) can be further divided into smaller parts. The number of coordianates of space-time is therefore infinite. Another example is the number of frequencies in the electro-magnetic spectrum. For proof of this I call attention to the mathematical theory of continuous functions used in the theoretical account of space-time and spectral theory (or wave-theory).

"Learning a label/token (i.e. name) that has yet to be associated with anything in reality would seem totally independent of counting."

I think learning how to count is a skill just like learning how to make the sound of a word is. Such skills are useful to their application, the former for counting objects, the latter for learning what the word means.

"Please describe said mind - do we all share the same one, is it infinite, is it associated with the brian etc."

To answer the first part it seems I have to assume the mind is a thing, and for the second part that it has a size. I don't see why I should have to make these assumptions. With respect to the third, however, I would agree there is a relationship between the brain and mind. I'd put it as a relationship between something physical and something logical. However, I suspect there is a lot more to it than that. Note that I make no pretense that I understand the mind.

"Proven in the example I provided. If you don't think so please give me an objective observation of color."

"The color of my eyes is blue."

"Results from experiments."

How were the experiments conducted? Were they experiments conducted on the neural circutry of our brain?

"What's your point? I never said we couldn't count chairs and note your tacit agreement that the same term (chair) can vary between individuals and we learn to make judgements and arbitrate the outcome."

I inferred that you would have said that we count impressions of chairs and not chairs themselves.

It wasn't tacit. I explicitly allowed that what a chair is can be different for different persons. But since what a chair is is determined from how the word is used within a language community, its meaning will become fixed within that community. The concept of chair will rapidly become a shared concept within that community and allows that community to correct misuses of it. If, however, we need to explicitly define it, as we do in legal matters, we will probably find such definitions inadequate and over time try to improve on them if this is possible. (Some legal terms such as what a "right" is, will undoubtedly never be satisfactorily settled.)

"Nonsense, what's the difference between our interpretations and what we consider to be the truth about them - surely truth is an interpretation of our interpretations (a second level abstraction)?"

If I interpret a coiled rope as a snake, the interpretation I have of it would be false. I mis-perceived it. I thought it was a snake, but it wasn't. It was a coiled rope. The truth of the matter is that it was a coiled rope. The interpretation I had that it was a snake was not a true interpretation.

Note that this is not a question about how I know it to be a coiled rope. The truth of the matter is independent of whether I perceive it or not, or whether or not I know it is a coiled rope. It is an ontological claim, not an epistemological claim. Moreover, it is not a question of semantics. We share the concepts of what a snake is and what a coiled rope is. These are not in dispute. Truth refers to what is the case whether or not it has been determined to be the case. Otherwise it would make no sense to search for the truth.

"Anyway, since you have no difficulty differentiating between the inner and outer experiences, please answer my question."

Inner and outer experiences are two modes of consciousness. Inner experiences are those that involve the productive imagination or the reproductive imagination or involve reflective judgments either about ourselves and our feelings, desires, fears, behavior, knowledge, etc or about events and objects in outer experience. Outer experience is experience of the natural world of objects and events in space and time. Inner experience is experience of objects and events that arrive as a stream of consciousness, i.e., in time, but not in space.

How this relates to the question you asked, I can't say. I'll leave that for you to decide.

"Please answer the question, you offer no concrete definition."

Screw you. Look it up for yourself. That's what I would have done and in fact did for the definition of 'abstract'. I make no claim to having private definitions of the essential terms, as you apparently do. I gave you a way of understanding the relationship between concrete and abstract objects if you understood the relationship between general and particular objects.

"This is an untrue statement. You don't appear to have understood my description of an imaginary object."

And I probably never will. I suspect it is incoherent.


"Here's my chart Reality Chart & Description again. A "thing that doesn't exist" is imaginary by definition, the concept exists but with no physical correlate. Like god IMO."

I take it all back (maybe). You had earlier mentioned that everything is real and I interpreted that to imply that everything exists. However, now I see that not everything exists in your theory. For example, God does not exist, though its concept does. Ordinarily I would understand this to mean you would regard God as not being real (and possibly a mere product of the imagination). However, based on your earlier mention of the reality of everything, I'm not sure. Perhaps you could clarify this.

"You seem to be suffering from a problem that you think I have! Bad answer. If it does not reside anywhere, please describe it."

Ok, though this is not the same question. Before answering, however, I have to say that I don't really have much to say about what a mind is. It is a question that has surpassed my ability to interrogate it. One interpretation I've heard is that the mind consists of consciousness, subjectivity, intentionality, and mental activity (such as knowing, feeling, desiring, fearing, perceiving, evaluating, judging, ...). Assuming you know what these terms mean, I'd say that the mind itself does not really exist except to the extent that these ingredients are linked with each other. For example, I think intentionality is intimately aligned with consciousness. That is, consciousness is the essential ingredient of the mind's relationship to the world.

"Submit this opinion to another court ad nauseum. Maybe less subjective but still subjective."

Your characterization of a judgment that it is hardly more than an opinion tells me a great deal about how you view things. Since earlier you indicated that truth was subjective, I suspect interpretation, opinion, and judgment (and truth) have essentially the same meaning. One may wonder why you object to anything I write. it's all subjective anyway.

"Your information may be true but does not address Kant's acknowledgement that logic and reason are to do with reality and do not exist independently of reality."

Where in the world did you read this?

Here I quote Kant: [Logic, p. 15]

"As a science concerning all thinking in general, regardless of objects as the matter of thinking, logic is to be considered as:

1. the basis of all other sciences and the propaedeutic of all use of the understanding. For this very reason, however, because it abstracts entirely from all objects, it can be

2. no organon of the sciences.

By organon namely we understand an instruction for bringing about a certain cognition. This implies, however, that I already know the object of the cognition that is to be produced according to certain rules. An organon of the sciences is therefore not mere logic, because it presupposes the exact knowledge of the sciences, or their objects and sources."

owleye

excreationist

owleye/John Page:

<a href="http://members.ozemail.com.au/~wenke/neuralnets/ruleof78/" target="_blank">Here</a> is my little java neural net applet. I hope to make more complicated neural nets in the future - e.g. ones that learn maths or the sexes of photos (people could type in the url of images, etc)...
I haven't used proper jargon there though... like inhibit (-) and excite (+) and weights (each cell is a "weight" - and each row is a complete neuron)

Anyway, the main point of this is that it shows how neural networks can infer (or predict) the outputs for unseen inputs... so it can work out some of the patterns without being explicitly taught it. Also, even in this very, very simple neural network, the information is smeared across many neurons. In a multiple layer neural network this problem gets much worse. So it makes it hard for people to understand exactly what each neuron is doing since they have such an interconnected relationship. If you get it to learn all the patterns, you'd basically see six pluses going along the main diagonal. That's because for an input of 1, the output is 1, etc. But you can disable those six weights along the main diagonal (by clicking them and turning them yellow). It will basically forget all of the patterns. (But fluke it occassionally, due to the noise - if there is noise) But even with those six once-crucial weights disabled, you can still teach it all of the patterns...! Hopefully I'll read the theory behind this all sometime so I can improve my vocabulary and not be so sloppy...

excreationist

John Page:
About you <a href="http://www.reconciliationism.org/reality.htm" target="_blank">Reality Chart</a>...
You have a quadrant called "imaginary unknown". This "contains things that are indescribable, indeed the constraints upon our minds may render us incapable of imagining them."

If those things are unknown by all people, etc, then how are those unknown imaginary things part of "reality"??? Perhaps you believe in a kind of reality where all concepts, including incomprehensible ones "exist" eternally.

owleye:
Yes this is true but I think in the far future it may be possible to monitor all of the neurons in the brain quite regularly (e.g. 100+ Hz). The hard problem would be to decode the information inside our brain. It would be theoretically possible to decode visual-spatial thoughts and summarize them using 2D and 3D pictures, etc. So it would basically be about finding the function of neurons - and translating the information they contain into other information (like video images or sound) in real-time. If those images, etc, can be extracted from someone's brain and they are using it for some purpose, their brain is obviously processing it. I would say that their brain is "aware" of that information. Ordinary computers also process information but they usually don't formulate their own goals...
So anyway, first-hand research needs to be relied on at the moment... but theoretically it may be possible in the future to decode the information in the brain more directly and show how conscious experiences can all be precisely accounted for. (i.e. they would be able to read people's minds.... :eek

You can just count without counting anything in particular... but you would have learnt earlier that the pattern of number words are associated with quantities of objects. If you had never learnt that number words are used to count objects then number words would be meaningless words. It is like learning a pattern of endless word sequences - without knowing what the words mean.

e.g.
xo
o
oxo
xo
xoxo
oxo
oxoxo
xoxo
xoxoxo
oxoxo
oxoxoxo

That has a pattern that I can learn - but I don't know of any meaning for it. Meaningless symbols like that are ok... but I'm just saying that they are meaningless symbols.

If we have a hallucination, or get our reasoning muddled up or recall a memory incorrectly, etc.

Yes. The moon is made up of a huge number of sub-atomic particles. We are only sensing some of the photons that are reflected off of the Moon's surface which came from the Sun. And then we only detect those photons that hit our retinas to a limited degree - there is only a very narrow frequency of photons which is visible to us. And we only have 3 colour receptors which split that visible frequency range into 3 components (rather than be able to detect the exact frequency... we can't tell the difference between pure magenta light and red light mixed with blue light). And then the photon information is approximated by us extracting features such as the shape of the image. For more details about how much of approximation our experiences are of reality see this <a href="http://www2b.abc.net.au/aftershock/posts/topic12497.shtm" target="_blank">New Scientist Article - Blind to Change</a>

Ierrellus

John,

The problem of describing mental content comes from the fact that the brain has two resources of information: sensory data and genetic data. Genetic data prescibes not only the ranges in which sensory data are operative, it also includes antecedent coping mechanisms.

I can feel the reality of my father's face on my own. I can also feel my ancestral thoughts as they attempt to interact with present environmental conditions.

The complexity of "mind" is only a matter of comprehending it's resources in sources.

Ierrellus

PAX