What is "Mind?"

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jstan

climber
Jan 17, 2016 - 10:08am PT
Marlow:
TPFU

Wonderful stuff!
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Jan 18, 2016 - 08:10am PT
Our Father who art OP said in the religion v. science thread:


I should have said: No one can indirectly experience any person, place, thing or phenomenon, be it hari kari or a thought. We only KNOW through directly experiencing what appears in our field of awareness.


ALL experience is direct?



Not getting it, perhaps because I framed it wrong.


Even direct experience can be incomplete and provisional.

Maybe we should talk about communication, instead. Above we have a good communicator, a writer, asking whether the words and phrases he used were misunderstood by a reader.

Our choice of words has an influence on how others perceive what we are trying to say, whether we call it direct or indirect experience. If there is disagreement between writer and reader, how can it settled? Perhaps by better communication, or perhaps by the reader going out and seeking the experience the writer is talking about and then by comparing that (more direct?) experience with the writer's account. Take the example of reading about climbing El Cap versus climbing El Cap. Calling both experiences direct leaves something to be said.

Another question: how close can your experience come to the experience of another person? If you have climbed El Cap and you read a story about climbing El Cap you will be able to recall many small experiences which the writer may touch on briefly and but which will trigger feelings in you that a naive reader would need much more description to feel in a similar way if at all.

We can leave words out of it. Say you and another person are sitting side by side in the movie theatre and you watch the same movie. In one sense you have had the same experience, but you are different people with different life histories and likes and dislikes, so your experience of the same movie is going to be different even before you start talking about it.

But what if you are identical twins? In that case won't your two experiences of the same movie be closer than if you were not so closely related?

And the example of twins opens other doors. Twins do not always separate completely in utero. It is possible for their nervous systems to remain joined at birth, as in the Hogan twins. Imagine a range of connection from complete separation, with two separate brains, to complete union with one brain and presumably one person. In between those extremes there seems to be the possibility of two different people sharing experiences very closely, communicating wordlessly, as the Hogan twins appear to do.



Back to communication. We should try to communicate, here. If there is disagreement, there may be a need to reconsider what we are saying and how we are saying it. This applies not only to a given writer and another person reading, but also to the way our use of words shapes our own thinking.

In this sense you are your own writer and reader. When other people disagree with you, it could help to examine your use of words and whether they mean what you think they do.

Even within one brain there are two hemispheres with very similar anatomy on left and right. If you have a field of awareness, how does it share itself with your anatomy? If your corpus callosum is cut, do you now have two fields of awareness?
jgill

Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
Jan 18, 2016 - 05:09pm PT
I say concepts like Plato's Cave still hold up as does Camus' Myth of Sisyphus in depicting human dilemma

Of course they do, quaint as they are, but there are modern, scientific ways to depict these dilemmas. As a retired mathematician I can't recall a time I might have pondered Plato's ideal forms. It made no difference in what I was doing. Ditto for advanced set theory.

You might conclude, as Duck would, that I have poor fund of knowledge.
MikeL

Social climber
Seattle, WA
Jan 18, 2016 - 06:10pm PT
Yes, you do.
jgill

Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
Jan 18, 2016 - 08:38pm PT
You have never been Sisyphus shouldering that futile rock up an incline only to have it fall back again? Everyone has, but we plug along. Life is connotation, not just denotation

Of course - grinding away - but Sisyphus didn't come to mind. Am I somehow deprived because of that? Why is it necessary that I return to the ancients for an analogy? Am I then to settle into a kind of contentment?

The Classics are of great value, but not necessarily all the time.
Ditto for math.
MikeL

Social climber
Seattle, WA
Jan 19, 2016 - 08:33pm PT
^^^^^^
Like.
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Jan 20, 2016 - 07:24am PT
We move the rock up only to see it go back down, over and over.

We also move ourselves up the rock again and again, only to go back down.

We are Sisyphus and his inverse.
jogill

climber
Colorado
Jan 20, 2016 - 03:23pm PT
^^^^

Boy, some myth that would make . . .


;>)
cintune

climber
Bruce Berry's Econoline Van
Jan 20, 2016 - 03:32pm PT
Or like Camus, "we must imagine Sisyphus happy."



Sisyphus was being punished for having upset the divine order by temporarily cheating death. The intent of his punishment was to keep him eternally occupied so that he didn't get into any other cosmos-wrecking mischief.
jgill

Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
Jan 21, 2016 - 03:38pm PT
Not so different from a psychiatrist saying a patient has Narcissistic disorder. Story resonates over and over. Archetype. Allusion.



Or from my time as a math prof telling a student he has an Archimedes Method of Indivisibles disorder affecting his understanding of the Riemann integral.
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Jan 21, 2016 - 08:19pm PT
I would listen to Terry Sejnowski. A respected name.
WBraun

climber
Jan 21, 2016 - 08:22pm PT
The living entity can and does operate without a material brain .....
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Jan 21, 2016 - 08:23pm PT
he has an Archimedes Method of Indivisibles disorder affecting his understanding of the Riemann integral.


Ha ha.

Whoops. Mixed up Riemann and Zeeman, the one with the catastrophe machine.

Maybe I can't help after all, Moose.
crankster

Trad climber
No. Tahoe
Jan 21, 2016 - 08:26pm PT

Jan 21, 2016 - 08:22pm PT
The living entity can and does operate without a material brain .....
Clearly.
jgill

Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
Jan 21, 2016 - 08:28pm PT
The living entity can and does operate without a material brain .....


Wisdom emanating from the recesses of Cattail Crossing, deep among the mossy stones and discarded beer cans. Ducks are not discriminating.
NutAgain!

Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
Jan 22, 2016 - 07:55am PT
[Click to View YouTube Video]
NutAgain!

Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
Jan 22, 2016 - 08:02am PT
The growth of 10x in memory estimate seems to be from these points:
1. Memory is thought to be stored in synapses
2. Amount of information at each synapse was previously thought to be 1 to 2 bits, meaning 2^1=2 or 2^2=4 different states per synapse.
3. The current research estimates/observes 26 discrete states for a synapse. That means 2^x=26 where x is the number of bits of info per synapse.

Going from ~2 (previous estimates) to ~20 (current estimates) different states per synapse is the 10 increase in information per synapse, which translates into 10x overall estimate for total storage capacity. They could have said 6.5 to 13 times more than previous estimates, but that is less concise and catchy.
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Jan 22, 2016 - 08:48am PT
I looked at the link Moosedrool provided. I also checked on Sejnowski and discovered that his name familiarity comes from being associated with Geoffrey Hinton and doing work on artificial neural-like networks. His views on actual wet brain function may not be the most reliable.

On reading the link, the main impression I get is how it fits what I heard on the radio the other day about science writing migrating over the years from understatement and objectivity to hyperbole. Everything is now amazing and astounding.

The basic findings about the size of synapses, the double connections, and the changes with time and activity are interesting and may extend the scale and scope of previous work. The comments about energy saving I don't understand. The writing is glossy and aims low. The use of the word nanomolecular bothers me.

researchers used advanced microscopy and computational algorithms they had developed to image rat brains and reconstruct the connectivity, shapes, volumes and surface area of the brain tissue down to a nanomolecular level.

Why advanced microscopy instead of just microscopy?
Why computational algorithms instead of just algorithms?
Did they image down to a molecular level?

The science may be good but the description of it isn't.


Enough curmudgeon.


The link also led to this absolutely marvelous truly great advance in pedagogy:



cintune

climber
Bruce Berry's Econoline Van
Jan 22, 2016 - 09:29am PT
Then again, it's been dunned into all of us here that redundancy is a good thing. If that description fails, the visual analysis might still keep you from decking. Unless it's a purple alien.
jogill

climber
Colorado
Jan 22, 2016 - 04:08pm PT
Then there's the Oedipus Complex. Allusion primer below:

Which shows evidence of Pythagorian Disorder (over-attachment to right triangles and counting numbers). Getting involved with the ancient Greeks always leads to unintended and tragic consequences. Stay in the 21st century to keep your sanity.
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