translating physical data (from the brain) to phenomological awareness...

[ebola?]

>>Douglas Hodstatder calls is "the monitoring of brain activity by a subsystem of the brain itself.">>

I really do think Hofstader was onto something with his self-reference thesis...but I still wonder WHY qualia would arise.

>>restless-nemesis>>

Ummm...from my understanding, you give the wrong functions for all the neuro-anatomical areas you note.

>>
look towards the temporal lobes as they contain long term memories..>>

Actually, from my understanding, we don't yet know where long-term memories are stored. Hell, it could be that there is no single area where long term memories "are". Rather, long-term memories could simply be enduring patterns of neural activity that are widely distributed.

ebola

 

[specialspack]

true. conjectures are all we have. anyone have any?

lmnop and ebola, the brain modelling/mapping reality (inner and outer), while relevent to what is experienced by consciousness, is more relevant to the calculations and programming of the brain rather than my question (how does the 'what' become translated into conscious experience)

i found this book:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_Explained

which suggests that consciousness arises from any exchange of information. it uses the mocking term "cartesian theatre" to describe a point where information is converted to conscious experience, claiming that consciousness arises due to the calculation system as a whole. thus (my conjecture, not Dennett's), carrying this line of thought further makes it seem like a computer could easily be conscious like we are, though its experience would be worlds apart, and philisophical zombies are impossible ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie )

i'm hardly convinced, we've no proof, but there's a direct antithesis to what i suggested, which may turn out to be right

This is commonly known as the problem of homuncularity within the philosophy of cognitive science. It's considered a problem because once you posit the existence of some "inner" part of the mind - ego, cartesian theatre, etc, which is doing the experiencing/seeing, then there's no reason not to posit a further inner homunculus, and so on, into infinite regression. Very much like the painter who paints himself into the painting.

 

[elemenohpee]

but I still wonder WHY qualia would arise.

I dunno, maybe its just a convenient "user friendly" system that allows us to make distinctions at a glance?

 

[restless-nemesis]

ebola?...

yeah you're right, the hippocampus is implicated in memory, not a bridge of mind and body...

the thalamus, however, is used for relaying sensory input etc though, so thats not so wrong, and translating it for the cortex (Wickipedia).


there is no evidence of any specific area for LTM as brain surgery techniques on epileptics have found random allocation of memory when electrical stimulation of the outer cortex is applied... when this is done, there is no declarative memory (like the name of a US president) but more toward episodic memories like long forgotten childhood memory.


>>Douglas Hodstatder calls is "the monitoring of brain activity by a subsystem of the brain itself.">>

but this implies a total duality between the 'ego' or our conscious selves and our sensory experience (bodies). I think there is more unity and that Western thought tends toward dichotomising experience. Eastern psychology is more inclined toward a human drive to rectify the duality and thus bring unity, however this is less 'scientific'. It has hard to argue that we are seperate from sensory experience as this is the present you... althogh it is possible to monitor ones thoughts, and experience, you cannot sort of look down upon you're experience from on high as if they are not completely integrated.

this sepereation of LTM and STM (the 3 store model - Atkinson and Shifrin) has long been rejected by mainstream cog in favour of Baddeley's which incorporates the LTM and STM into a working-memory model. This purports to a 'central executive' that controls the flow of information from sensory memory to the STM and then LTM in a unitive style, where there is a blurred distinction between these sub-systems. As the brain is, after all, an organic thing and not a computer this whole view seems more appropriate. The LTM is activated with current trends in conscious thought, so the portion of LTM in use is determined by what concerns us at the moment or over a more recent period, it is not random although saying that, it can be. The connectionist model goes further by indicating that priming effects account for associatist memory where all memories are connected through different modes of information, physical, auditory/visual and semantic.

theres a clear difference in how the brain deals with different stimulus... visual stimuli and short-term memory are dealt with in a spatial way, incorporating the right frontal lobe and occipital lobes. verbal stimulus is dealt with in a linear fashion bi-laterally.

Goldber et al. (2001) has noted that the right hemisphere deals with novel stimuli whereas the left is dedicated to more learned or routine behaviour.

planning behaviour is associated with the left hemisphere and imaginative with the right.

Damsio has said that there are two levels of consciousness, one base level which is the consciousness of survival and sensory input (which we share with animals) and one secondary tier which allows for language and a retrospective look upon our own experience - this is still dichotomising experience though but I guess its easier to look at it like that.

I don't actually like the cognitive view as this mechinises human existence too much. Despite this it does provide useful metaphors for understanding memory, knowledge, attention and problem solving. It does not incorporate ANY emotional aspects, like how the emotions actually guide the LTM and STM to some extent... u can't argue that this doesn't happen. This something a computer cannot comprehend.

I like to think that when quantum computing gets going properly, which it slowly is, then intelligence may be replicated, however the emotive aspects will still be lacking unless you can program for emotions... if not the machine will be lacking in feeling and be somehwhat psychopathic, which most movies about such things highlight as probable --- (Space Odesey - HAL is a psycho, Matrix - machines are psycho [pretty much], Terminator - machines are psycho, Alien 1 - android becomes demented, although Short Circuit - Jonny no 5 is friendly dude, but not his millitary counterparts not struck by lighning, the 'God' touch!)

 

[Mehm]

restless-nemesis: While traditional cog psych has provided us a number of valuable insights in the past, the rise of fMRI and cheep EEG has preatty much thrown the "black box" out the window. Would you agree?

Actually, from my understanding, we don't yet know where long-term memories are stored. Hell, it could be that there is no single area where long term memories "are". Rather, long-term memories could simply be enduring patterns of neural activity that are widely distributed.

I point towards a temporal lobe-LTM linkage because of the dorsal/ventral split pathway for visual information.

Stimulus recieved by the eye travels down the optic nerve to the thalamus and is then rerouted to the visual cortex. Here, each layer of the visual cortex "processes" the information in increasingly complex fashions (V1 - solid/open, V2 - edges, V3 - corners, V4 - polygons, V5 - color, V6 - 3d shape). It should be noted that each layer of cortex has individual links, both bottom-up and top-down, with other areas of the cortex.

Once the primary signal passes through the visual cortext, it splits.

The dorsal route runs near the top of one's head. White matter under the parietal lobes links the visual cortext to the frontal lobe with constant linkage into the temporal lobe along the way. Imaging studies show that this pathway is primarily concerned with spacial location and movement.

The ventral route runs near the base of ones' head. Again, white matter links the visual cortex with both the temporal lobes and the frontal lobes, with a complex interaction going along the whole chain. Imaging studies show that this route is associated with information about the stimulus itself. Basically WHAT the object is, instead of WHERE it is.

Now, if one assumes that much of experienced reality occures because we have a of mental set of what everything is (IE a form of long term memory), neuro cog would point a person towards the dorsal/temporal visual path as a possible brain location where this might occure.
peace

 

[restless-nemesis]

Mehm: am flattered you'd ask my opinion as you seem very knowledgeable in the neuro-psych area, something that I know very little about when compared with the amount of information thats available...

to answer you're question: yes neuro-physiology has made brain mapping a reality... there is a branch of psychology called cogntive neuro-psychology that still takes a modular 'black-box' approach but with considerations made to actual neural pathways...

the great benefit of cog psych generally is that it allows for visual and verbal metaphors for things that would otherwise be difficult to comprehend and partuicularly difficult to test emprically. There is an assumption that these neural pathways represent underlying systems. What I think is not known is how neural networking creates these systems and how the synaptic chemicals affect the pathways.

Psychology attempts to bridge the gap between actual lived experience and neural networks.

Scientists can find the pathways used but its still incomprehensible, to me at least, how a string of cells makes vision or sound and then integrates this interpretaion of vision and sound with current knowledge in order to explain what is being seen and heard. It all happens so quickly as well, certainly indicating that the brain can work in parallel as well as in serial.

I guess firing patterns imitate reality someohow, in a coded format and that this repeated pattern is monitored by the memory system, so firing pathways are recognised by memory as familiar. I wrote an essay on this a while back and it included how chaos theory interacts with this idea.

If there are an infinite number of possible firing patterns, then how does the environment become represented internally... the answer is that given whichever distinct parameters of firing are given, as detrermined by sesnory input, then a fixed firing pattern is ineveitable...

this works exactly in accordance with the Mandelbrot set, which as you may know, is the governing algorithm to make fractal patterns, which can be of infinitely diverse shape and colour. But the shape and colour is dependent on the inital parameters placed into the set... so given certain parameters, a particular 'map' or pattern is inevitable. No two instances of brain activity are EXACTLY the same as exacting parameters change all the time, given variables like light levels, sound, head position, motion, mood and environment etc.

This corresponds with chaos theory as an infinite (and therefore chaotic = unpredictable) number of possible pathways exist, however this is limited by the critera set out by sensory stimulus and the overall activity or stimulation level of the brain.

This does not mean to say that neurons do not follow fixed paths... but this is generalised over thousands of millions of cells, so withing the millions of cells, pathways are determined basically by the first few cells activated, thus determining the following lengthy network taken.

It has to be admitted that its all very, very complicated and I think our understanding of the mind is relative to our understanding of the universe which, although extensive, is still not really able to provide concrete answers as to why matter exists in the first place, where it all came from and why stars and galaxies exist as they do. We know the rules but we don't know why the rules are as they are...

to return to the original question, neural pathways reflect external reality, but our relationship to this representation differes according to who we are...

If neurons 'emulate' reality, then our experience of reality is not EXACTLY the same as actual reality... we cannot know what actual reality is like becuase we must always use our senses to interpet the environment... which is exatly that, an interpretaion and not reality itself... we can be sure, though, that this representation is pretty damn close to reality as this is most useful to us evolutionarily.

 

[restless-nemesis]

PS neuropsych has found evidence using PET scans of the STM and LTM along with the elements of working memory

frontal and parietal lobes = phonological loop (for auditory/verbal rehearsal - the inner 'ear')

occipital and right-frontal = short duration visual-spatial (novel stimulus)

parietal and left-frontal = long duration visual-spatial (routine or permanent/semi-permanant)

the above is in reference to the modular system of working memory put forward by Baddeley in cog psych

 

[qwedsa]

your brain is also part of reality. Perhaps your brain also includes a map of itself?

sure. but a computer could have an understanding of itself and not be conscious, right?

 

[qwedsa]

i guess it may be hard to accept that you ARE you're brain and you cannot argue otherwise, unless you wish to get spiritual...

it seems that much of the brain is devoted to unconscious activities (calculation, body regulation) that dont directly influence what enters your consciousness. so you can't really say 'i am my brain,' you are only specific part(s) of your brain

those maps are YOU not some external bit that you experience as a person within a person

the maps are tools that you are able to use. they are intellectual paradigms. but you can exist without them, and htey can exist in a conscious-less computer. so no, you aren't your maps

you are the sum of you're parts, the total of all parts put together, although the i believe strongly that humans are more than the sume of their parts... e.g i am more than a heap of skin, organs, bones and brain, i am the sum of these things and then something more, some kind of magic i guess, becuase there is no other way of really knowing why you are expereicning this right now...

well thats what i was asking in the original post, hehe. how are you experiencing phenomologically

Science really cannot provide the answers to the deeper human need

i don't think we can know how differently we may be thinking in the future, and how difference science will be (if indeed knowledge is progressing)

 

[qwedsa]

as mentioned above, its all atoms, and atoms are DEAD not alive, so how does a whole lot of dead things make something alive?

another interesting question... is a cell alive? (in the sense of having a phenological existence, even if it's just a 'point' existence, like when we sleep)

the biological definition of life may not include some organizations of materials that have a phenomological existence like us, and some organisms that are 'alive' might not have a phenomological existence

 

[elemenohpee]

sure. but a computer could have an understanding of itself and not be conscious, right?

Apples and oranges

 

[qwedsa]

^well, the question being 'how does phenomological awareness arise out of dead matter,' my point was valid. just because my software can map itself, that doesnt make it 'conscious,' or many computers would easily be conscious (then again, maybe they are, and if they are, we'd never know, until we begin to learn about the nature of consciousness)

 

[elemenohpee]

brains and computers do not do the same thing. a computer is hardwired to chrunch numbers. A brain on the other hand interacts with its environment, creates maps of it, etc. There's obviously more to consciousness than just a modelling of itself. First you need a sufficiently strong system to work with.

 

[Mehm]

brains and computers do however have the striking similarity of working digitaly. Brains just do it in a much more complex and powerful way.

 

[Manifespo]

translating physical data to phenomenal awareness...

Consider your neocortex, with 6 layers- it has bottom up data and top down regulation. The top down regulation, basically the self control behavior patterns you have developed during your technomonkey social life. The bottom up takes inputs and remembers them electromagneticchemospatialgenetic potentials in every from microtubules to glial cells to axons to dendrites. the whole system of the brain is so complex because our technosociety has brought it to this level. we are feral children, merely animals when we are born, yet we imbibe the beautiful order and control from our society, and use language to express our attempt at manipulating the neural projections we cannot escape.

we have a heart brain and a gut brain and an enteric nervous system- neurons and information processing everywhere in our bionanosystems, the entire metasystem/entelechy/autopoesis produces human reality...

okay i am high and rambling, i will leave you with this final thought...
You are a large island in the middle of a river flowing fast against your shore. You catch a few fish, feel the river current splash onto your sand, but the river moves on and your conscious mirage sometimes leaves your certainty.

The island is your conscious display, and the river is your quantum unconscious.

It's all

Prediction-Output

and

Memory-Input

or vice verse Uh?
http://free.hit.bg/timentimev/

 

[elemenohpee]

brains and computers do however have the striking similarity of working digitaly. Brains just do it in a much more complex and powerful way.

this similarity is trivial at best. its like saying they found a dna double helix in space

 

[Mehm]

I fail to see how brains and computers both being digital is trivial. Or maybe you're the "judge of all worth" and I missed the memo

 

[ebola?]

>>I fail to see how brains and computers both being digital is trivial. Or maybe you're the "judge of all worth" and I missed the memo>>

Neurons appear to behave VERY differently from transistors.

ebola

 

[elemenohpee]

mehm: you said it yourself, brains do it in a much more complex and powerful way. The amazing qualities of our brain arise from its structure, not how it functions on a very low level. They've recently placed a single neuron on a silicon chip and gotten it to function like a transistor. Now this is kinda cool, but it really does nothing to unravel the mysteries of the brain. See what I'm saying?

 

[qwedsa]

brains and computers do not do the same thing. a computer is hardwired to chrunch numbers. A brain on the other hand interacts with its environment, creates maps of it, etc. There's obviously more to consciousness than just a modelling of itself. First you need a sufficiently strong system to work with.

a computer can interact with the environment
a computer can create maps of it
a computer can etc.

while neurons dont perform like transistors, most of the brain functions as a computer -- it takes in, processes, and outputs data. what seems to be the difference between a brain and a computer, is that the brain houses some sort of observer that can observe the data