Image: Courtesy of Arthur W. Toga UCLA-Harvard Human Connectome Project Consortium (www.humanconnectomeproject.org)
With 100 billion neurons and trillions of synapses, your brain spins neural webs of staggering complexity. It propels you to breathe, twitch, and butter toast, and yet we remain largely ignorant of how the brain does even these simple tasks—let alone how it stirs up consciousness.
To peer inside this three-pound lump of flesh, scientists manipulate a subtle trait of the body—its susceptibility to magnetic fields. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has exposed the brain in stunning anatomical detail, and a sibling method, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), has offered insight into the mind at work. Here we explore how neuroscientists are using these methods to reveal new dimensions of the human brain.
See what we're tweeting about
115 Comments
Add CommentThis article appears to be about the brain not the mind and the two phenomena are completely different kinds of events.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is still up for debate. There is no clear evidence that we actually have a mind. It could very well be a subset of the brain or an autonomous system from the brain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTo clarify my point a bit.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe think we see when in reality we don't. We have eyes that scan light and send that info to the brain. The brain in turn pulls together stored information that matches that data and tells us we are seeing something. It has no meaning until the brain gives it meaning. Those meanings come from stored data that our culture says is this object with these characteristics. We don't see with our eyes but have been taught that we do.
The mind could be something the brain created and controls hence the free will debate.
We still haven't the proof that we actually have a mind but, we are taught that we do.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAre you saying that we might be absent minded?
I'm aware that serious debate has raged on since humans started recording their debates. While it continues I make my living dealing with the human mind. I make extensive use of both Factor Analysis & Principal Components Analyses. I mostly use both tools to reduce dimensionality in data sets of multidimensional reference axes (n-dimensional coordinate systems)--which are bipolar in nature. I deal with negative factor (or component) loadings by "reflecting" them so that all loadings are positive. In my work I deal with the mind, and I take an unapologetic approach that accepts the multidimensional nature of the mind phenomenon or mind event. If pushed, I will cite C. Lloyd Morgan's (following Alfred North Whitehead) notion of the "emergent” to explain how the mind is completely different from and separate from the brain. I'm not certain how far down the evolutionary taxonomy I would go with this notion, but I'm certain the mind event is not limited to humans. I completely ignore Rene Descartes except for his most important contribution--his construction of, or notion of, the Cartesian Coordinate System. I leave the brain to the Biologists and their brethren, the Physiologists and their very distant relatives, the Biochemists. And I have been singularly unimpressed with what the Physicist, all of them of whatever flavor, have suggested. And don't get me started on the "Cognitive-Neuro-Scientists" or whatever they call themselves today that is thought to be fashionable and thus have social status in today’s' technological climate. Who knows what tomorrow may bring? I think I can see just over the horizon a group calling themselves Political-Economic-Financial-Behavioral-Cognitive-Neuro-Scientists with geopolitical ambitions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen I hear or see today’s Cognitive-Neuro-Scientists.. excitedly, and pretentiously report that they have imaged metabolic activities in various parts of the brain using MRI, CAT scans, CT scans, PET or, the latest wrinkle, 64-slice PET-CT that are associated with various “thoughts” or “cognitive activities”, I am prompted to ask, “So what”. These small research groups behave like roving bands of Aborigines from tribes located in the Outback of Australia or the remote jungles of Brazil who happen upon a working battery powered portable color TV. They can change the picture and sound by pushing buttons, twisting knobs, and poking a stick into the innards until they poke too hard or in the wrong place and it stops working. But they have no possible understanding of any of the principles involved that produce the pictures and sound. So too the Cognitive-Neuro-Scientists..., they have no possible understanding of what principles are involved in producing the “thought” or “cognitive activities”. And sometimes they too poke too hard or in the wrong place, and the helpless creature stops “working”.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe "so what" is the same sort of "so what" that occurred as a result of Paul Broca discovering that damage to a particular area of motor cortex impaired the ability to generate speech, the same sort of "so what" derived by neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield in determining the sensory and motor maps of the brain, the same sort of "so what" in studying patient H.M. Basically, mapping the "where" of a complex function places that region in the larger context of brain function, so that the networks associated with that region can be mapped, and so that the simpler steps leading to the generation of that complex function may be inferred and investigated with higher resolution techniques.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe blanket statement that they "have no possible understanding of any of the principles" is demonstrably false, since for decades we have known the electrochemical basis of brain function, the major ways that neurons connect and communicate, how complex patterns of activity arise from the columnar organization of the cerebral cortex, and how connectivity and network patterns progress from simple to complex representations in the realm of sensory physiology. I wonder why someone bothering to comment would not know these things, but you seem to have an axe to grind so perhaps you point is metaphysical rather than physical.
So, let's see - your argument, I must infer, because I confess I can't discern it very well from what you have written - is that "mind" is a completely separate phenomenon from "brain", and that what you are deriving through various multivariate analyses is a truer vision of mind than that provided by cognitive neuroscientists, or physiologists. I don't believe there is evidence for this view, but perhaps I have misunderstood your thesis.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"the mind is completely different from and separate from the brain"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou have actually observed a mind without a brain? Is this the mind of God? Cosmic consciousness? Where is this mind without a brain?
"We don't see with our eyes but have been taught that we do."
Can you see anything if you close your eyes? I just thought the eyes and brain work together.
"The mind could be something the brain created and controls hence the free will debate."
If it is not the brain, what is it? What other parts of the body could possibly create the mind?
"We still haven't the proof that we actually have a mind but, we are taught that we do."
So you don't know what you're doing? You're a mindless automaton. What proof do you need to know you have a mind?
How do you study the mind using Factor Analysis & Principal Components Analyses? Are you a mathematician? Computer scientist? Do you conduct experiments with humans and animals? How is your method superior to brain scanning?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"the two phenomena are completely different kinds of events"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course they are when you look at them the way you do. It's like saying your car engine and the power it produces are two "different kinds of events" which is technically true in one sense but rather misses the point that your car's engine PRODUCES a power output. And that no car produces any power output without an engine in it. The same is true for brains enabling consciousness in humans and animals. Want to see one schema for the physiologic mechanisms the brain uses to enable consciousness? Go to http://light.simanonok.com
It appears to me that you are talking about the brain not the mind when you say "The blanket statement that they "have no possible understanding of any of the principles" is demonstrably false, since for decades we have known the electrochemical basis of brain function, the major ways that neurons connect and communicate, how complex patterns of activity arise from the columnar organization of the cerebral cortex, and how connectivity and network patterns progress from simple to complex representations in the realm of sensory physiology."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat does any of this have to do with mind or consciousness? I just don't see the connection.
People who think they understand the way the mind works by looking at brain imagery remind of a caveman standing on the corner watching cars drive past & thinking he understands the internal combustion engine. On so many levels. And people who think they can heal emotional distress by medicating the magnificent, complex, intricate, magical brain would be like if the caveman opened up the hood and threw a wrench in the engine to make it stop. IMO.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt appears to me that you are talking about the brain not the mind when you say "The blanket statement that they "have no possible understanding of any of the principles" is demonstrably false, since for decades we have known the electrochemical basis of brain function, the major ways that neurons connect and communicate, how complex patterns of activity arise from the columnar organization of the cerebral cortex, and how connectivity and network patterns progress from simple to complex representations in the realm of sensory physiology."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat does any of this have to do with mind or consciousness? I just don't see the connection.
joewhitehurst
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou must be real fun at parties :)
At the end of comment #12 you said:
"I just don't SEE the connection"
Curious that you would use the word, "SEE" there, instead of something else. "Seeing" is something the brain does and yet you use that term metaphorically to mean "perceive" or "understand", which of course, is something your mind does.
Also, the word "connection", in this usage, carries gobs of spatial overtones. Once again, one could argue (I think successfully) that spatial awareness is something that occurs within the brain.
And so I ask you, is it your brain we're talking to, or is it your mind?
Interesting topic.
"The Mind IS what the Brain DOES" epitomizes the problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe mythical, mystical duality of Descartes arises from confusing software with hardware, from mistaking the function of the mechanism for the mechanism itself.
Year by year, substantial progress is made in understanding both brain and the mind, the first from the "bottom-up" advances in neuroscience elucidating the biochemical mechanisms of the brain, the second from legitimate (i.e., experimental, repeatable and scientifically fallible/"falsifiable") findings in cognitive science.
Their convergence has yet to occur, but while we have yet to drive that "golden spike" (perhaps aptly named for Phineas Gage,) true progress is only hindered by detours into mysticism or psuedoscience -- whether it be a third-party billing schedule labeled DSM-IV and treated as Scripture, or desperate hand-waving dressed up in the language of the legitimate sciences, borrowed without understanding to describe "psychic energy fields," "sympathetic vibrations," or "extensive use of both Factor Analysis & Principal Components Analyses... to reduce dimensionality in data sets of multidimensional reference axes (n-dimensional coordinate systems)--which are bipolar in nature."
Yes, we all know how to use SPSS, GPSS and SAS to produce pretty graphics, just as Ptolemaic astrologers created lovely charts of planetary cycles, retrograde epicycles and stellar influences -- pretty but empty.
The real question is where did the underlying data come from and is it no more than the circular, self-defining labels of most clinical psychology?
Just as modern scientific tools definitively prove or disprove earlier attempts to understand nature (e.g., what radiocarbon dating has done to archeology, and cladistic categorization based on gene-sequencing has done to the Linnean taxonomy,) so do legitimate scientific methods replace the mumbo-jumbo of the psychobabble priesthood. Just as most ulcers are now known to be the infection by helicobater pylorum, just as autism is now known to be an organic disorder (in contrast to the decades of witch-burning blame on "refrigerator moms,") so we increasingly see that "problems with the mind arise from problems in the brain."
To perpetuate the false mind|brain duality is to endorse the ignorance of outmoded nonsense in the treatment of mental illness, be it exorcism for demonic possession, bloodletting, prefrontal lobotomies, electroconvulsive "therapy" or our "modern" practices of shotgun antidepressants and enless neoFreudian "therapy."
You apparently have overlooked the recent rigorous scientific demonstration that shows very convincingly that the gut is very involved in influencing mind events. The simple truth of the matter is that no human knows anything at all about how the mind event is produced from a mass of messy protoplasm whether in the skull or the abdomen. Demonstrating that ion exchanges are involved in the propagation of nervous impulses is trivial and actually tells us 0 about mind and consciousness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo, you are still using the Mechanistic Root Metaphor to guide your thinking. Take a look at World Hypotheses: A Study in Evidence by Stephen Pepper for alternative Root Metaphors which are arguably better Root Metaphors than Mechanism for studying, explaining and understanding mind events, e.g., Contextualism and Organicism. The Mechanistic Root Metaphor is relatively adequate for studying and understanding brain events but you will need a more powerful Root Metaphor to tackle the completely differ nature of mind events.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou're talking only with my mind. As far as I can tell, my brain is stone silent, and I don't know very much about it, but I do know a lot about my mind. While we're on the subject of metaphor, let's take a look at some issues that arise for the Political-Economic-Financial-Behavioral-Cognitive-Neuro-Scientists with geopolitical ambitions folks among us. Let's start with this:https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0ByF1VUt_tPodYzIzYTFiM2ItYjRjMS00ZmRiLTliNTAtY2IxZWFiYzYwNTA3&hl=en_US
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm not sure what you mean by, "It's like saying your car engine and the power it produces are two "different kinds of events" which is technically true in one sense but rather misses the point that your car's engine PRODUCES a power output." The difficulty I have is that both the car engine and the power it produces have many completely measurable attributes. This is true for brain events and is, I think, the intended point of this paper we are discussing. Mind events, on the other hand, have not shown themselves so easily measured with thinking constrained by the Mechanistic Root Metaphor. Only a few lost Quantum Physicists have even dared to speculate about mind "particles". So, I'm left wondering how observing brain metabolic processes, that can be measured precisely, can be related to mind processes that cannot be measured at all. Indeed, no one even knows how to directly observe mind events or even which direction to look.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd be interested in what you believe happens when someone has a stroke and loses either the ability to comprehend or generate speech, if "ion exchanges" have nothing to do with mental functions. Or, what happens to the mind in cases of generalized epilepsy when mental functions are disrupted during a seizure, or what happens to your mind when you sleep? When Wilder Penfield electrically probed the cortex of surgical patients and affected some of the phenomena we associate with "mind", what was happening?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe hardware/software is an interesting analogy for the mind/body duality in philosophy. But it may be a false analogy for the brain. We have differentiate the output of the software (what you see in your computer monitor) and the software itself (the set of intructions that produce the output).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems in the brain, unlike the computer, the hardware is also the software. The neural networks in the brain correspond to the hardware of the computer. But they are also the software. The instructions are determined by how the neurons are connected to each other. This is equivalent to the integrated circuits in the computer chip. Of course the brain's circuitry is much more complex than any existing computer.
I think this is the fundamental difference between brain and computer. The computer's hardware is separate from its software. Because of this, it cannot create its own programs thus it cannot learn. The brain can learn because it creates its own circuitry, which we do consciously and subconsciously. The brain can do this because the neurons are cells. They are alive. They grow just like other living cells. The computer chip cannot grow and improve itself. You have to replace it with a new chip.
There is a physical object, the brain, composed of billions of neurons and trillions of connections. Its activity is what can be called "mind", which we experience subjectively. There is no "mind" with a separate existence either physical or metaphysical. The only thing that actually exists is the physical object, the brain. Thoughts, feelings, emotions, intuitions, etc., i.e., all the products of the brain, which are often thought of as being the "mind", are nothing but physical objects, spatiotemporal arrangements of neurons and their activation and inhibition.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPenfield with a patient-
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52bYneF6JEk&feature=related
None of the techniques you describe even attempt to directly observe mind events, at best, the techniques attempt to query the mind and get a report from it. That is a far cry from direct observation of mind events. What if it turns out that only a mind can directly observe itself?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'll bet the recent "virtual particle" experimental results
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismust really vex you (http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/11/17/3368920.htm).
Just because we remain totally ignorant of the nature of mind
events certainly does not mean mind has no existence. Perhaps
some of those whose work involves observing quantum effects
in living material will find some clues. Already, they have shown
a biological process as central to life on Earth as photosynthesis
depends on quantum effects.
So you really don not seem to have an explanation. Epilepsy, strokes and sleep are not attempts to query, they are observable phenomena. To supplant the current view that the mind is generated by the brain, the burden of proof is really with the supplanter. A theory of mind should provide a plausible explanation for these sorts of phenomena, in my opinion. Otherwise, it's opinion unsupported by evidence. At best, a vague notion - at worst, pseudoscience.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGranted, the phenomena you mention may well be observable,but it's an open question whether the phenomena have anything to do with directly observing mind events. I think the phenomena you mentioned are all behavioral events which are as different from mind events as brain events are.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWriting a thing does not make it true. The idea that the mind is derived from the function of the brain is testable and is being tested. If it fails the test, or cannot account for observable phenomena, it will be rejected in favor of a model that can. If you have a hypothesis that is testable and can account for observable mental phenomena then I would encourage you to state it, and explain how it accounts for the range of mental states, differences between species, and dysfunctional states. If you can't do this, then with respect I would suggest that you are pitching poo at cognitive scientists. A little more poo probably won't hurt, though.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems to me that the caveat at the beginning of the article we are discussing, "...let alone how it stirs up consciousness",would suggest that there might still be some questions about your assertion,"The idea that the mind is derived from the function of the brain is testable and is being tested". I still have no idea how you plan to directly measure mind events. Poking someone with an electrode and having them say "I just saw Grandma when you did that" is in no way, shape or form a direct measurement of a mind event.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd there are serious alternative ways of transcending the primitive efforts made so far in unraveling the mystery of consciousness. For example: Consciousness in the Universe:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNeuroscience, Quantum Space-Time Geometry and Orch OR Theory
Roger Penrose, PhD, OM, FRS1, and Stuart Hameroff, MD2
1Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor, Mathematical Institute, Emeritus Fellow, Wadham College,
University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
2Professor, Anesthesiology and Psychology, Director, Center for Consciousness Studies, The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA
Abstract
The nature of consciousness, its occurrence in the brain, and its ultimate place in the universe are unknown. We proposed in the mid 1990's that consciousness depends on biologically 'orchestrated' quantum computations in collections of microtubules within brain neurons, that these quantum computations correlate with and regulate neuronal activity, and that the continuous Schrödinger evolution of each quantum computation terminates in accordance with the specific Diósi–Penrose (DP) scheme of 'objective reduction' of the quantum state (OR). This orchestrated OR activity (Orch OR) is taken to result in a moment of conscious awareness and/or choice. This particular (DP) form of OR is taken to be a quantum-gravity process related to the fundamentals of spacetime geometry, so Orch OR suggests a connection between brain biomolecular processes and fine-scale structure of the universe. Here we review and update Orch OR in light of criticisms and developments in quantum biology, neuroscience, physics and cosmology. We conclude that consciousness plays an intrinsic role in the universe.
Show me the experiment that tests this idea, explain how it accounts for observable phenomena, and I would be open to it. But I believe this is a subset of "Quantum mind" theories, which make extraordinary claims about the role of water dipoles and the generation of "quantum fields". The implication of this as far as I can tell is that every time I drive under a power line or my brain is otherwise exposed to a strong EM field, my brain should be disrupted, but (as far as I can tell) it isn't. And, MRI itself works in part through aligning dipoles. So does one's mind cease to be generated in an MRI machine? Clearly not. However, current models of brain/mind function would predict that our mind would survive a MRI, and sure enough it does.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI seriously doubt that Roger Penrose would be dabbling with bullshit or "poo" as you prefer: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Penrose
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps we could invite Professor Penrose to comment on this article?
I don't understand those ideas even remotely well enough to fantasize a hypothesis that would test any aspect of them. But I do have a way of measuring aspects of mind that is content independent. It's based on the way minds make distinctions. Still not observing mind events directly, but I'm getting closer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat would be fine by me. I'm sure he's a brilliant fellow. I would challenge him to provide the same evidence and explanation of commonly experienced brain phenomena that I have asked of you, but you have been unwilling or unable to supply. I would only note, since this has gone the route of argumentum pro hominem, that the very wikipedia article you reference states that "most of the thinkers who have appraised his work disagree with his thesis that consciousness could not be explained by existing scientific principles."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnyway, my lights flickered and my mind winked out for a bit. I will leave you with 2 quotes from Carl Sagan:
The first is, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" and the second is "The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses."
I'll send Professor Penrose an invitation and feature your challenge. Sleep well(:-)).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm not arguing that "mind" doesn't exist, just that it is not independent of or separate from the physical object "brain". Everything that we think of as being part of "mind" is in fact a physical state or a temporal sequence of physical states of the brain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot sure what the relevance of the link you cite is to this argument, unless you're trying to claim that this shows that something called "mind" can arise out of nothing. The link is misleading in that it implies that the light was created out of "nothing", using the term "nothing" as synonymous with "empty space", when in fact according to quantum physics "empty space" is NOT synonymous with "nothing". "Empty space" is in fact full of poorly understood "not-nothings" such as dark energy.
You said: "There is a physical object, the brain, composed of billions of neurons and trillions of connections. Its activity is what can be called "mind", which we experience subjectively". The first sentence says what is generally accepted as fact. The second sentence reveals the problem I'm having such a hard time explaining to you. That "subjectivity" you mention is precisely what humans are so ignorant about. No one understands the principles involved in producing that "subjectivity" (mind) from brain activity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, your first sentence would be more accurate if you had added Glia cells which have been shown to deeply influence the behavior of neurons, and, suggests that our understanding of the brain's activity, based on a century old idea: the neuron doctrine, is deeply flawed. Unlike neurons,which communicate across chains of synapses, glia broadcast their signal widely, like cell phones. Which also suggests that the beautiful pictures of neuronal pathways may not be very meaningful or useful as regards understanding mind activity especially if it were to turn out that the mind arises out of glia activity not neuronal activity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBigbopper,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is just for you: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-root-of-thought-what
Its easier to define the brain by physical systems descriptors than to define the MIND. So, there you go.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisTHIS is their job. YOU are assigned the task of defining "MIND". I hope you feel privileged because its a daunting task to say the least. Gluck.
As a stab in the dark, I think we can take a tiny mini-step toward beginning to define mind by acknowledging that the most obvious indirectly observable characteristic of minds is that all minds are continuously discriminating events broadly construed like Whitehead might. This beginning definition would seem to broaden the class of mind carrying members to include anything alive and that is exactly what I mean.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven the ones without brains.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe second most obvious characteristic of all minds is that they are simultaneously integrating while they are discriminating. So, now you have two characteristics of all minds that can start to form a content free definition of mind because what events the minds are discriminating or integrating is totally irrelevant to this nascent definition of mind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI greet you with just one quote from George Kelly:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"A person who spends a great deal of his time hoarding facts is not likely to be happy at the prospect of seeing them converted into rubbish. He is more likely to want them bound and preserved, a memorial to his personal achievement. A scientist,for example, who thinks this way, and especially a psychologist who does so,depends upon his facts to furnish the ultimate proof of his propositions.With these shining nuggets of truth in his grasp it seems unnecessary for him to take responsibility for the conclusions he claims they thrust upon him. To suggest to him at this point that further human reconstruction can completely alter the appearance of the precious fragments he has accumulated, as well as the direction of their arguments,is to threaten his scientific conclusions, his philosophical position, and even his moral
security. No wonder, then, that in the eyes of such a conservatively minded person our assumption that all facts are subject—are wholly subject—to alternative
constructions looms up as culpably subjective and dangerously subversive to the scientific establishment".
I believe that there is no "mind" distinct from the brain, and that when we understand the brain, we will also understand "mind". Trying to understand "mind" independent of studying the brain is impossible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDoctrinal beliefs are dangerously blinding like that and there can be no doubt a neuronal doctrine has blinded generations of "cognitive" scientists which accounts for their complete failure to learn anything worthwhile about how mind is generated, especially, what principles are at work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor those interested, the following excerpt is a reasonable assessment of the status of the Neuron Doctrine:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA Neuron Doctrine in the Philosophy of Neuroscience
Ian Gold* and Daniel Stoljar†
Short abstract
It is widely held that a successful theory of the mind will be neuroscientific. In this paper we ask, first, what this claim means, and, secondly, whether it is true. In answer to the first question, we argue that the claim is ambiguous between two views–one plausible but unsubstantive, and one substantive but highly controversial. In answer to the second question, we argue that neither the evidence from neuroscience itself nor from other scientific and philosophical considerations supports the controversial view.
Long abstract
Many neuroscientists and philosophers endorse a view about the explanatory reach of neuroscience that we call the neuron doctrine. This doctrine holds that the framework for understanding the mind will be developed by neuroscience; or, as we will put it, that a successful theory of the mind will be solely neuroscientific. It is a consequence of this view that the sciences of the mind that cannot be expressed by means of neuroscientific concepts alone count as indirect sciences that will be discarded as neuroscience matures. This consequence is what makes the doctrine substantive, indeed, radical. We ask, first, what the neuron doctrine means and, secondly, whether it is true. In answer to the first question, we distinguish two versions of the doctrine. One version, the trivial neuron doctrine, turns out to be uncontroversial but unsubstantive because it fails to have the consequence that the non-neuroscientific sciences of the mind will eventually be discarded. A second version, the radical neuron doctrine, does have this consequence, but, unlike the first doctrine, is highly controversial. We argue that the neuron doctrine appears to be both substantive and uncontroversial only as a result of a conflation of these two versions. We then consider whether the radical doctrine is true. We present and evaluate three arguments for it, based either on general scientific and philosophical considerations or on the details of neuroscience itself, and argue that all three fail. We conclude, therefore, that the evidence fails to support the radical neuron doctrine.
The paper by Roger Penrose. Was that published in a medical journal? Penrose is a great mathematician but I'm skeptical of his quantum theory of the mind. The Goldman equation that governs neurotransmission by neurons and glia are derived from classical electrodynamics and fluid mechanics. The little that we know about the brain can be understood without invoking quantum mechanics. What phenomena of the brain can be explained by quantum mechanics but not classical mechanics?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe paper by Ian Gold sounds like a philosophical thesis. What journal was it published?
A Neuron Doctrine in the Philosophy of Neuroscience
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIan Gold* and Daniel Stoljar†
* Institute of Advanced Studies, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia iangold@coombs.anu.edu.au
† Department of Philosophy and Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Colorado, Boulder 80309 stoljar@colorado.edu
and
Institute of Advanced Studies, Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia dstoljar@coombs.anu.edu.au
Acknowledgements
Versions of this paper were read at the Australasian Association of Philosophy Conference, 1996; in the Philosophy Program at the Australian National University; in the Cognitive Science Group at the Australian National University; in the PNP program at Washington University, St. Louis; and in the Department of Philosophy at the California Institute of Technology. We are indebted to members of the audiences on those occasions for very helpful discussions. We would also like to express our gratitude to Bill Bechtel, David Braddon-Mitchell, Noam Chomsky, Hugh Clapin, Michael Cook, Marilyn Friedman, Steve Gardiner, Jay Garfield, Brian Garrett, David Hilbert, Frank Jackson, Christian Perring, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Michael Smith, Natalie Stoljar, and Louis Taillefer for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. We are especially grateful to five Behavioral and Brain Sciences referees–Max Coltheart, Gilbert Harman, James Higginbotham, John Kihlstrom, and one anonymous reviewer–for their many constructive criticisms and suggestions that helped us to improve the paper considerably.
The entire paper is available online here: http://philrsss.anu.edu.au/profile/daniel-stoljar/online-papers/neuron_doctrine
The Penrose article was published in Journal of Cosmology, 2011, Vol. 14.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe entire article is available online here:http://journalofcosmology.com/Consciousness160.html
“Consciousness and the Universe: Current Status of the Penrose-Hameroff Orch OR Theory”
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDate and Time : 30 Nov 2011, 09:30
Venue : JRD Tata Auditorium, NIAS
Speaker : Prof. Stuart Hameroff MD
Description : Abstract:
What is consciousness? Did consciousness emerge as an epiphenomenal byproduct of evolution, as modern science suggests? Or has consciousness been here all along, intrinsic to the universe, as Vedic and Eastern philosophies maintain?
The Penrose-Hameroff theory of orchestrated objective reduction (Orch OR) accommodates both views, suggesting that 1) consciousness depends on synaptically ‘orchestrated’ quantum computations in intra-neuronal microtubules, regulating neuronal brain activity. 2) The quantum computations in microtubules evolve by the continuous Schrödinger equation and terminate in accordance with Penrose ‘objective reduction’ (OR) by E=h/t, where E is the magnitude of the quantum superposition, h is Planck’s constant (over 2pi), and t is the time at which OR occurs (due to separation and instability in fundamental spacetime geometry). 3) Each Orch OR event results in a moment of conscious awareness, selecting proto-conscious qualities intrinsic to the most basic level of the universe. Consciousness is thus seen as a sequence of discrete moments (e.g. at 40 Hz, with t=25 msec, and E= nanograms of microtubule protein), each conscious moment a reconfiguration of underlying spacetime geometry, or quantum gravity. Orch OR thus suggests a connection between biomolecular processes in the brain and fine-grained structure and dynamics of the universe. First proposed in 1995, Orch OR has been repeatedly criticized on various grounds, for example whether quantum coherent states can occur in warm biological systems.
In this presentation, Orch OR will be reviewed and updated in light of such criticisms, and new evidence supporting warm quantum biology. Finally, the nature of the Orch OR connection between neuronal processes and the universe will be explored through 1/f, scale-free, fractal-like aspects of brain structure and dynamics. Recent experiments have shown that brain network structure and temporal dynamics are, occasionally, self-similar, i.e. fractal, the same patterns repeating at different scales (content of consciousness and memory have long been considered fractal-like, or holographic). Using E=h/t, Orch OR (and thus consciousness) can occur at different neuronal network levels (EEG frequencies), and additional discrete levels extending downward in size, and upward in frequency and intensity, into specific levels of microtubule resonance (e.g. megahertz), and further still into quantum non-local fractal-like levels of spacetime geometry, possibly extending to Planck-scale spin networks and twistors. New evidence suggests fractal spiral pathways in microtubules supporting topological quantum computing. Consciousness (by E=h/t) can exist and transition among these various levels, consistent with Lokas or astral planes as described in Vedic writings. Meditation and altered states may involve consciousness transitioning to higher frequencies and intensities in spacetime geometry in a fractal-like universe.
I've invited Professor Penrose to comment on the article we are discussing and the commentary too since the commentary has wondered in so many directions.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSince our neurological understanding of the brain is still woefully incomplete, it is way too soon to start talking about the "failure" of the "Neuron Doctrine". I would be more willing to accept your assertion 50 to 100 years from now if we have a very thorough understanding of the brain on the strictly physical level and there are still many aspects of brain function which we don't understand. But I doubt that will be the case.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course, 50 to 100 years from now I'll be dead.
:)
About the Speaker:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisStuart Hameroff MD is Professor of Anesthesiology and Psychology, and Director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. A clinical anesthesiologist at University of Arizona Medical Center, Hameroff’s academic research has focused on how the brain produces consciousness, suggesting an essential role for computation in protein polymers called microtubules inside brain neurons. In the mid 1990s Hameroff teamed with British physicist Sir Roger Penrose to develop the Orch OR theory, attributing consciousness to microtubule quantum computations connected to processes in fundamental spacetime geometry, or quantum gravity. Hameroff also organizes the interdisciplinary conferences ‘Toward a Science of Consciousness”, promoting diverse approaches to the study of conscious awareness.
His research website is www.quantumconsciousness.org
The subjectivity of mind you mentioned is tantamout to intuition. Intuition is a well-known phenomenon of consciousness as follows:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHerbert Simon (Explaining the Ineffable: AI on the Topics of Intuition, Insight and Inspiration, 1995): What I shall show is, first, that the presence or absence of phenomena like these, sometimes claimed to be ineffable, can be determined objectively, and second, that certain computer programs are mechanisms that exhibit these phenomena and thereby provide explanations for them.
The marks that are usually used to attribute an intelligent act (say, a problem solution) to intuition are that: (1) the solution was reached rather rapidly after the problem was posed, and (2) the problem solver could not give a veridical account of the steps that were taken in order to reach it. Typically, the problem solver will assert that the solution came “suddenly” or “instantly”. In the few instances where these events have been timed, “suddenly” and “instantly” turn out to mean “in a second or two,” or even “in a minute or two.”
That's the way my dictionary defines intuition, too: “the power or facility of knowing things without conscious reasoning.” Let us take the criteria of rapid solution and inability to report a sequence of steps leading up to the solution as the indications people are using intuition.
Intuitive thinking is frequently contrasted with “logical” thinking. Logical thinking is recognized as being planful and proceeding by steps, each of which (even if it fails to reach its goal) has its reasons.
Intuitive thinking, as we have seen, proceeds by a jump to its conclusions, with no conscious deliberateness in the process, but intuitive and logical thinking can be intermingled. The expert, faced with a difficult problem, may have to search planfully and deliberately, but is aided at each stage of the search by intermediate leaps of int6uition of which the novice is incapable. Using what appear to be macros, the intermediate steps of which are these intuitions, the expert takes long strides in search, the novice, tiny steps.
Wikipedia (EPAM): (Elementary Perceiver and Memorizer) was a psychological theory of learning and memory implemented as a computer program. Originally designed by Herbert Simon and Edward Feigenbaum to simulate phenomena in verbal learning, it has been later adapted to account for data on the psychology of expertise and concept formation. It was influential in formalizing the concept of a chunk. In EPAM, learning consists in the growth of a discrimination net.
One characteristic of Simon's discrimination net was its imitation of human intuition.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSimon (Explaining the Ineffable: AI on the Topics of Intuition, Insight and Inspiration, 1995): If the (EPAM) net has a branching factor of 4, then recognition of a net discriminating among a million stimuli could be achieved by performing about ten tests (410 = 1,048,576). The EPAM model, with its parameters calibrated from data in verbal learning experiments, can accomplish such a recognition in a tenth to a fifth of a second. If we add additional time for utterance of a response, the act of recognition takes a second or less.
Now, suppose we confront EPAM with a situation that is recognizable from its previous experience (a collection of medical symptoms, say). It can now access, in less than a second, information about a disease that is presumably responsible for these symptoms. As EPAM is able to report symbols that reach its short-term memory (where the result of an act of recognition is stored), it can report the name of the disease. As it cannot report the results of the individual tests performed on the symptoms along the path, it cannot describe how it reached its conclusions. Even if it can report the symptoms that were given it, (because it stored some of them in memory during the presentation), it cannot give a veridical account of which of these were actually used to make the diagnosis or how they were considered and weighed during the recognition process.
This does not mean that EPAM cannot be programmed to trace its steps, but that the simulation of its verbal processes will report only symbols that are stored, at the time of reporting, in short-term memory. The trace of non-reportable processes must be distinguished from the simulation of processes the theory claims to be reportable.
We might add “even as you and I”, for these are also the characteristics of human diagnosis: the physician can report what disease he or she has recognized, but cannot give a veridical report of which symptoms were taken into account, or what weights were assigned to them.
I don't think so. The question I'm highlighting is the most import question that humans remain completely ignorant about: what are the principles involved in generating mind events of any kind from a mass of protoplasm wherever it is found? The question has absolutely nothing to do with computers even metaphorically speaking.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"...what are the principles involved in generating mind events of any kind from a mass of protoplasm wherever it is found?"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWho cares? It is sufficient for the most part to know that mind events are generated. It is interesting and occasionally useful to know how they are composed. for example, a couple of days ago, R.D. Fields noticed (here)...
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=amping-up-brain-function&WT.mc_id=SA_CAT_MB_20111130#comments
...that an effect of transcranial direct current stimulation (TDCS) is to increase learning rates by rapidly developing the myelin insulation of axons to regulate impulse arrival times.
"Clearly, the speed of impulse transmission is a vital aspect of brain function. We know that memory and learning occur when certain neuronal circuits connect more strongly. It seems likely that myelin affects this strength, by adjusting conduction velocity so that volleys of electrical impulses arrive at the same neuron simultaneously from multiple axons."
Would TDCS be in the wheelhouse of your "most important question" or not? Otherwise, I struggle to understand the practicality of "quantum coherent (mind) states" (if they exist).
I read an interview with the Dalai Lama years ago in which he discussed Tibetan Buddhists' conceptions of consciousness and I found it fascinating. I seem to recall his assertion that Tibetan Buddhists believe there are different kinds of consciousness and that they reside in different parts of the body (not just the brain) and that upon dying one experiences them receding in a specific order. How would a Tibetan Buddhist know this? Well, if they have reincarnated (as they believe that they do) then they might actually remember.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs a survivor of a traumatic brain injury that included being in a three- week-long coma I can say that though I may not have appeared conscious to the surgeons and nurses in ICU my husband tells me that he knew I was aware of his presence and that since I had shared a New Yorker article with him (prior to the stroke) about how people in vegetative states showed brain activity when someone talked them thru a favorite sports activity as their brain activity was measured he did this to prove to the experts that I was still "in there," still worth saving.
Though the technician told him the scan had to be done in "a controlled environment" and that he could not be there my husband says he insisted on staying and talking to me throughout the test and that afterwards the doctors admitted that the results were "surprisingly active" and upped their expectations for a good recovery. For that "New Yorker" article and for my husband's devotion and care I am deeply grateful. So I would say a rethinking of consciousness and mind is worth doing and that more education needs to be done and that it will have real impact on peoples' lives. I lament patients who do not have their families' advocacy or the excellent health care and union provided medical benefits that I enjoyed. Without our health benefits (dual union provided) we would be bankrupt and I probably would not have gotten the care I needed to make a recovery.
You're missing my point entirely. Brain function and it's measures is completely beside the point. The question that humans remain completely ignorant about is:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswhat are the principles involved in generating mind events of any kind from a mass of protoplasm wherever it is found be it head, abdomen, foot or earthworm gut? The question I'm highlighting has nothing to do with electrical or ion exchange mediated communication among some class of tissues. Could you provide a Bridgman or Carnap type of definition for the word "strength" as it is used in this quote from your post:
"Clearly, the speed of impulse transmission is a vital aspect of brain function. We know that memory and learning occur when certain neuronal circuits connect more strongly. It seems likely that myelin affects this strength, by adjusting conduction velocity so that volleys of electrical impulses arrive at the same neuron simultaneously from multiple axons."
Wow, I just read through this entire thread and am exhausted! I will be very brief and to the point. I am Bipolar. I have THOUGHTS in my MIND of depression so severe that I have come very close to the BEHAVIOR/ACTION of committing suicide. During that phase I am completely aware/conscious that I am depressed and that committing suicide would be considered irrational by others. When in the manic phase, however, I engage in reckless conduct, such as hypersexuality and excess spending, but am not at all aware that I am manic and I truly believe at the time that my BEHAVIOR is rational. I am a professional and earn a 6-figure income yet filed for bankruptcy as a direct result of imprudent spending when manic. My phases are not reactive to events in my life, such as becoming depressed upon the death of a loved one. I believe that something is wrong with my BRAIN, and whatever that is causes/results in my MIND/THOUGHTS changing in certain ways, which then cause the BEHAVIORS/ACTIONS. There are a ton of people who are Bipolar and the THOUGHTS and BEHAVIORS follow a distinctive pattern (such as the overspending and promiscuity; attempting or committing suicide). So I actually experience these BRAIN, MIND and BEHAVIORS on a daily basis. Medication is an attempt to alter BRAIN chemistry, which sometimes works. ECT has been utilized as a last resort to alter the chemicals in my BRAIN when the medication does not work. The resultant changes in the chemistry of the BRAIN directly alter my THOUGHTS/MIND and, hence, my BEHAVIORS/ACTIONS. So all of you commenters, is the only way to eliminate the MIND/THOUGHTS and BEHAVIORS to eliminate my BRAIN?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou are confusing your reason mind with your emotion mind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"It seems likely that myelin affects this strength, by adjusting conduction velocity so that volleys of electrical impulses arrive at the same neuron simultaneously from multiple axons."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat is Fields' quote, and I must admit, self-evident to me. Perhaps you will explain (as Carnap might do) why it not self-evident to you.
The question you put (that humans remain completely ignorant about is: what are the principles involved in generating mind events?) is not (yet) meaningful to me. Does the question have a meaningful answer? To be clear, I infer the question and its possible answer has something to do with physical science, in somewhat the same sense as a recent experiment that seemed to find evidence that neutrinos move slightly faster than light. I mention that relation because it is of no practical importance to me if neutrinos move faster than light, slower, or obey the cosmic speed limit. I suppose the reality or non-existence of quantum coherent mind states and their practical importance if they exist is something like the possibility of a slightly super-luminal neutrino...momentarily interesting, but not consequential. It follows that something of no consequence / practical importance cannot be "most important".
Why should I think otherwise? What am I missing that I should know? You have some missionary work to do.
It would be great if Prof. Penrose will give his comment. He is at odds with neurologists. His paper will not pass peer review in medical journals. IMO his theory is speculation without firm empirical basis. BTW Journal of Cosmology has doubtful reputation. It allegedly publishes unscientific papers. (James Randi gave it the Pigasus Award)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI find it strange he is invoking Schrodinger equation when the particles involved are ions and animo acids. These interactions are at the molecular level and governed by classical electrodynamics. Quantum mechanics describes phenomena at the subatomic level.
This discussion needs a definition of "mind" to ensure everyone is referring to the same thing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMind is just a word or name given for the function of brain.I am so disapointed to realize that the scientific world have not yet aCknolage this fact.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMind is just a word that describe the brain function.Actually there is no mind.You can name the function of the brain with onother word. What is important is the fact that our brains have a complicated functions, one of them called"mind".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet's try going at this from another direction. I invite anyone to describe the principles that generate mind events. I'm not buying that mind events necessarily have anything to do with electrical/ionic exchange mediated communication among some classes of tissue. I don't doubt the well established facts that some classes of tissues have been shown conclusively to communicate via electrical/ionic exchange. But so far, no human has any idea how such communication could generate mind events, or, if they do, they have been keeping it to themselves. The fact that "neuro-cognitive" scientist keep looking almost exclusively in that direction reminds me of the drunk who kept searching for his lost keys under the street light. When asked why, he just replied, "because that's where the light is."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI've already offered a nascent definition of mind involving just two easily observed characteristics of all minds: they are continuously discriminating among events broadly construed like Alfred North Whitehead might and all minds are simultaneously integrating. This definition of mind is content free because it matters not a whit what events are being discriminated or integrated. I'm aware that this definition equates mind with life--all life--and that is exactly what I mean. Yes, I'm saying that microbes have minds. I'm not the first to flirt with such an idea. Consider this quote from Dr. Stuart Hammeroff, Director of The Center for Consciousness Studies at The University of Arizona:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"My interests in the nature of mind began during my undergraduate days at the University of Pittsburgh in the late 60's, where I studied mostly chemistry, physics and mathematics. Later, during medical school at Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia I spent a summer research elective in the laboratory of hematologist/oncologist Dr Ben Kahn. While studying mitosis (cell division) in white blood cells under the microscope I became fascinated by the mechanical movements of tiny organelles (centrioles) and delicate threads (mitotic spindles) which teased apart chromosomes, pulling them to establish shape and architecture of the daughter cells. Both centrioles and mitotic spindles were called microtubules, cylindrical protein assemblies. I began to wonder how these microtubules were guided and organized - could there be some kind of intelligence, computation or even consciousness at that level? The microtubules were actually lattices of individual proteins called tubulin, and the crystal-like arrangement of tubulins to make up microtubules reminded me of a computer switching circuit. Could microtubules be processing information like a computer?"
In case you didn't notice, he is talking about a single cell. You can read more about Dr. Hameroff's work here: http://www.quantumconsciousness.org
RE: Excellent Discussions on the Human Mind and the Brain!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHowever, more specifically, I would like to address the comments #60 and #62, as respectively presented by the SA readers lkw787a and Searcher1 above.
Tibetan Buddhism aside, I thought you both have had ably described your cases clearly; and comprehended the particulars of your respective case succinctly -- exemplifying a self and clear understanding of your own mental conditions and functions within yourself, that is very essential to your own healing and maintaining of a now recovered and functioning brain, mind, behaviors, etc daily or episodically!?
As for Search1, I thought the recent theory of the ARH (adaptive rumination hypothesis) could help you understand your own conditions and management of your episodes better: the ARH that I have had analyzed and defended critically in the recent Psychiatric Times online, whose specific topics are linked here: http://www.searchmedica.com/search.html?useraction=search&d=us&search.x=28&c=ps&search.y=6&parentreferrer=http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/blog&q=mong+h+tan&fr=true&ss=psychTimesLink&cid=smps-pt_search (SearchMedicaUSA).
As for more general discussions on the Human Mind, Brain, Consciousness, etc, my most recent comments are listed here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/user-comments/MongHTanPhD (GuardianUK); or please see my book Gods, Genes, Conscience especially Part II Unraveling Our Mind and Gods: The Psychodynamics of Drives, Cognition, Memory, Consciousness, Conscience, and Survival of the Humankind (linked below).
Best wishes, Mong 12/1/11usct12:28p; practical science-philosophy critic; author "Decoding Scientism" and "Consciousness & the Subconscious" (works in progress since July 2007), "Gods, Genes, Conscience" (iUniverse; 2006 -- http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000034974/GODS-GENES-CONSCIENCE.aspx ) and "Gods, Genes, Conscience: Global Dialogues Now" (blogging avidly since 2006 -- http://www2.blogger.com/profile/18303146609950569778 ).
I would add one more easily observed characteristic of all minds: not only are all minds continuously discriminating and integrating events broadly construed like Alfred North Whitehead might, all minds are also continuously anticipating the replication of events having been previously discriminated and integrated. These characteristics of mind are really easy to observe with respect to minds with a human embodiment , but not so easy to observe with respect to minds that have a microbial embodiment. We are still not talking about observing mind events directly. We are still just talking about inferring mind events from observations of the behavior of the mind's embodiment.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps Dr. Hammeroff and team will construct a way to more directly observe mind events like that depicted in the movie Natalie Wood was working on when she mysteriously drowned in 1982.
What makes you so sure that the two can actually be distinguished? Perhaps your language has tricked your mind again. Perhaps because your mind uses separate words, your mind actually believes the two are distinguishable mind events?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFirst of all, thank you for taking consideration of my comments and addressing them in such a thoughtful manner.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI went to your link and reviewed some of the articles regarding the Adaptive Rumination Hypothesis (ARH) and found them very interesting to say the least. I wonder if a distinction should be made as to ARH in Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and Bipolar Disorder (BD). While MDD may result in a reduction in offspring (my very rudimentary attempt at addressing the evolutionary issue from a Darwinian perspective) due to the high rate of suicide, social withdrawal and reduced libido in MDD, I would posit that BP differs in that the MANIC state (versus the depressive state) is exhibited largely in a reduction in inhibitions, such as the promiscuity/hypersexuality commonly associated with the manic phase (and in which birth control may not be considered). My point being that such common characterists of the MANIC phase may actually INCREASE the number of offspring, thereby possibly counteracting the negative impact of the DEPRESSIVE phase of BD. Hence, BD continues in our gene pool.
While my undergraduate degree is in Psychology (from a reputable University and I graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a 3.85 GPA), I was not familiar with ARH and appreciate your calling it to my attention. I will definitely follow further studies and would look forward to any that look into it with respect to BD as opposed to MDD.
Thank you again and I will certainly review the articles more closely, or as mentioned in your article, I will "chew the cud."
You said: "Does the question have a meaningful answer"? This suggests to me that your mind may think that a question should not be asked unless it has already been answered? How else would you ever know whether a question has a meaningful answer?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou said: "Does the question have a meaningful answer"? This suggests to me that your mind may think that a question should not be asked unless it has already been answered? How else would you ever know whether a question has a meaningful answer?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet me parse your suggestion.
It is entirely possible to pose a question that you have answered to a person who may not have the answer or even the question in mind. That was the possibility I put to you. Do you have a meaningful answer or not?
To refresh your memory (and mine), this was the question:
"...the most import question that humans remain completely ignorant about: what are the principles involved in generating mind events of any kind from a mass of protoplasm wherever it is found?"
What is the answer? If you have the answer, tell it (briefly). If not, kindly spare us the metaphysical assertion.
If you will have your mind make one assertion devoid of metaphysical considerations, my mind will kindly give you an answer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGood point. Not only that but a computer doesn't require any kind of presentation layer. It is human users who need GUIs to realize the results of computation as visual presentations, a computer would have no purpose for or capacity to evolve a superfluous abstraction layer to arrange machine code in a more aesthetic way. Our conscious experience is entirely superfluous to any evolutionary function. Unconscious reflex would be entirely satisfactory and infinitely more plausible as a mechanism for a bipedal primate to negotiate food and shelter. If our immune system can deal with countless orchestrated responses to survival-critical conditions with pathogens without conjuring up a spectacular holographic simulation and illusory participation narrative within it, I think that a hominid can manage to do what every cockroach and amoeba manages to do - survive long enough to reproduce.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot so fast. There is no spatiotemporal arrangement of neuron activation/inhibition that is the color blue, nor is there an electromagnetic frequency/wavelength range. Those patterns contribute to the subjective experience of the color blue, but they are not in fact the same thing as the experience of the color blue. The subjective experience and the objective event share a spatiotemporal coordinate set, but they diverge sharply from there.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that blue is a 'sensorimotive phenomenon'. It does not 'exist' but it does 'insist' with equal realism to any physical substance. I agree that there is 'nobody here but us neurons', but only with the understanding that what that means is that not only are we neurons, but neurons are us. They feel, see, smell, taste, and think. Electromagnetism has inherent subjective qualities. It has to. We cannot say that our feelings are mere electromagnetism if electromagnetism is not also feeling.
There is really no way of saying this without being considered a crackpot but, if you or anyone else is interested, I have a hypothesis which I think may be the beginning of a real solution to the mind-brain problem (as well many other 'big' puzzles).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am calling it Multisense Realism and it deals with mind-brain by focusing on the symmetry of the two ontological presentations rather than attempting to explain one presentation in terms of the other. This is not dualism, it is an involuted monism based on 'sense'.
It's too long to really get into here but check it out if you have a chance:
http://s33light.org/post/13609811984
If I'm right, all matter participates in a public electromagnetic-thermodynamic exteriority which is discrete, literal and conceivable as objects across space and it participates in a private sensorimotive-semantic interiority which is cumulatively entangled, figurative, and conceivable as experiences through time (which is actually a subjective sense).
In simplest terms, consciousness is an awareness of awareness, which is in turn perception, feeling, sensation, and detection. This isn't panpsychism. I'm not saying that atoms are hungry or happy, but I'm saying that whatever atoms experience is as to our experience what a single pixel of a monitor is to a million feature films. We cannot conceive of a sensorimotive experience that has one trillionth the depth and richness of our own, particularly if that richness is compounded as scale increases, in fact the private nature of sensorimotive subjectivity makes it difficult to conceive of any subjectivity beyond our own frame of reference, but surely it is preferable to the metaphysical assumptions of materialism.
While I'm waiting for your mind's assertion that has no metaphysical considerations, let me amuse you by commenting more directly on your post. To facilitate creating humor, my mind insists on changing just one word of your post into two words that are in all caps:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Let me COMPLETELY DISTORT your suggestion.
It is entirely possible to pose a question that you have answered to a person who may not have the answer or even the question in mind. That was the possibility I put to you. Do you have a meaningful answer or not?
To refresh your memory (and mine), this was the question:
"...the most import question that humans remain completely ignorant about: what are the principles involved in generating mind events of any kind from a mass of protoplasm wherever it is found?"
What is the answer? If you have the answer, tell it (briefly). If not, kindly spare us the metaphysical assertion."
Your mind had said earlier:
"The question you put (that humans remain completely ignorant about is: what are the principles involved in generating mind events?) is not (yet) meaningful to me. Does the question have a meaningful answer?"
Why does your question matter in the slightest? Whether the question has a meaningful answer cannot be answered until someone has answered it. My assertion is that no one born on this planet has yet answered it.
multisense_realism,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYour post is a hell of lot more interesting than my speculation about microbe minds. Even if I could read minds, I'm not so sure microbe minds would be all that interesting to read. Of course, given what we can observe going on in microbial colonies, it might be pretty exciting.
"The mind" is simply our internal experience of the brain. Just like "pain" is our experience of certain neurons firing in response to injury. I cannot recall anyone claiming, seriously, that "pain" is an entity separate from its biological basis (other than metaphorically), but some people still believe "mind" exists separately from its biological basis. I see them as strictly equivalent. Accept one you have to accept them both. And vice versa. I've spent decades studying the neural mechanisms of vision, the special camera, so to speak, through which we see the world. It is marvelous in its complexity and elegance. We don't see reality, we see what the camera constructs for us, and its properties influence what we see. Knowing that I see it through a mechanism in no way diminishes the magic of a beautiful sunset, or the play of light on the forest floor. Likewise mind versus brain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou said: ""The mind" is simply our internal experience of the brain". My question is (even if I thought for a moment that mind requires a brain, which I don't), what are the principles that produce that experience? That is the question that no human can answer.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThanks. I didn't see what you wrote about microbe minds but are you familiar with quorum sensing in bacteria?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf pain were not separate in some ways from it's biological basis, then it would be completely redundant. We can only link the two because we know from our subjective experience what pain feels like. Without that knowledge to begin with, there is no instrument that could convert biological events into a subjective experience of pain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI disagree with you that we don't see reality. All the reality that has ever been seen has been seen through human neurology. Just because it doesn't correspond perfectly to other channels of sense and detection doesn't mean that our visual sense is a solipsistic simulation. Most of the time, we do see the reality that is relevant to us as human organisms in our native anthropological perceptual frame of reference. What we see is real in the Homo sapien sense. If you try to pin that down to another perceptual frame of reference you are going to expose flaws, illusions, etc but I think that the sunset you see is actually the sunset as human beings see it. It is not a representation manufactured in an invisible abstraction layer, it is a concrete presentation which is accessed through the entire visual system. I'm not talking about a Cartesian theater, I'm talking about experience being a phenomenon which works in a completely different way than objects work. As you read these words, you are not looking at the inside of your brain, you *are* the inside of your brain (self) looking through the outside of your eyes.
Exactly!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAll the mumbo-jumbo about consciousness being some extraordinary mystery is just based on thinking that there's something more to it than just a physical object, the brain. It's like saying that a heartbeat is a great mystery, or a deep breath.
The principles that produce the experience of "mind" are those that underly the development and function of the human brain, nothing more, nothing less.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisConsciousness is not merely an extraordinary mystery, it is *the* superlative mystery as all other mysteries can only be accessed through consciousness. Subjective phenomena such as perception, cognition, identity, feeling, emotion, meaning, significance, etc are as different as anything could possibly be from a heartbeat or a deep breath. Perceptions are not physical objects. I can easily model a heartbeat or a deep breath so that anyone could understand it, but there is no way to model the color blue so that a congenitally blind person can understand it. Unless you have a way to model color to a blind person through some kind of description, you cannot claim that color, or any other subjective experience, is a physical object. Physical in what way? They weigh nothing, they have no melting point, occupy no space, and can be conjured into existence with nothing more than the innately accessible intention to do so.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"The principles that produce the experience of "mind" are those that underly the development and function of the human brain, nothing more, nothing less. "
This is just circular reasoning, nothing more, nothing less. When you read these words, there is an experience produced in your mind. These words are not the principles that underlie the development or function of your brain. It's a false equivalence. The brain has to do with biochemistry, primate evolution, physics, etc. The mind has to do with meaning, communication, language, perception - none of those things can be found in the brain. They would be no more likely to be suspected in a brain than a piece of brain coral were it not for the fact that we already know about them first hand.
I don't attempt to sort out the mind/brain dispute; I teach others (including patients) that emotional control is a voluntary activity using the limbic system to which no other has a remote control, hence there are no "buttons to push" Getting folks to accept responsibility for their second by second emotional choices is an issue of maturity. The immature dislike accountability and responsibility and prefer to adopt the cultural perspective that "You MAKE me mad or happy, whatever emotional is chosen. Greg Camp MD psychiatrist (ret)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou said: "The principles that produce the experience of "mind" are those that underly (sic) the development and function of the human brain, nothing more, nothing less".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis assertion prompts my mind to ask which of the principles that underlie the development of the human brain "produce the experience of mind". I'll settle for just one if you can describe the experimental operations that identified the offered principle as one of the ones that "produce the experience of mind". And, of course, my mind wants to know what experimental operations determined that all other forms of life are mindless? Does your doctrinaire belief hold that mind just suddenly appeared in humans with no precursors in any other form of life?
I would also like to know what your experimental operations can tell us about exactly when mind begins in human development--there were two then there was one and development took off. I'm sure brain raced ahead but just when did mind join in? Was it immediately, a Picosecond later, a few months later or enough months later for the new human to begin to babble almost intelligibly? I've read about some humans in the state of Alabama who have spent large sums of money to publicize their answer to my question although, unlike you, they seem especially eager to talk endlessly about why they are so sure their answer is correct.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn reply to joewhitehurst
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou said" does mind just suddenly appeared in humans with no precursors in any other form of lif?" Why should you ignore the mind of dogs? or cats? or even the apes? I agree totaly with bigbopper for mind is the function of brain.It is not a separate intiety from the brain.Mind is just a word discribing the complicated activity at the miro-level of the brain which is the neurones' synapses and neurotransmitters.
How do you know any of what you said?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn reply to joewhitehurst
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you try to live with dog in your house, so close to you for 12 years you will absolutely find out how his "mind" in many aspects are like us.Darwin have observed this thing but we lost the correct thinking about the continuity of brain from animals to us. I have more evidences for that, if you want to know about,I am going to write about this in the comming conference in Ottawa 2012.
I am going to write about this in some day
joewhitehurst , you have been politely criticised by Dr. Strangelove and by BrainBites . Please respond to their criticism , and try not to so ... what would be the correct words .. synical ? , agressive ? authoritive ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease provide answers to the quetions asked . Thank you .Adie.
test too see if I am registered
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAdie,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't remember seeing a question that wasn't shrouded in a doctrinaire position that I don't accept--I don't just assume that brain events produce mind events in the absence of any evidence of even what a mind event is. Questions coming from an acknowledgement of profound human ignorance about some phenomena, I will gladly try to answer. Questions rooted in dogma, I tend to ignore. I'm not alone in my abhorrence of dogma. Consider this quote from a piece in the New York Times a couple of days ago about the total lack of progress in the so called field of “Neuroaesthetics” (a term that has been coined to refer to the project of studying art using the methods of neuroscience:
"What is striking about neuroaesthetics is not so much the fact that it has failed to produce interesting or surprising results about art, but rather the fact that no one — not the scientists, and not the artists and art historians — seem to have minded, or even noticed. What stands in the way of success in this new field is, first, the fact that neuroscience has yet to frame anything like an adequate biological or “naturalistic” account of human experience — of thought, perception, or consciousness.
The idea that a person is a functioning assembly of brain cells and associated molecules is not something neuroscience has discovered. It is, rather, something it takes for granted. You are your brain. Francis Crick once called this “the astonishing hypothesis,” because, as he claimed, it is so remote from the way most people alive today think about themselves. But what is really astonishing about this supposedly astonishing hypothesis is how astonishing it is not! The idea that there is a thing inside us that thinks and feels — and that we are that thing — is an old one. Descartes thought that the thinking thing inside had to be immaterial; he couldn’t conceive how flesh could perform the job. Scientists today suppose that it is the brain that is the thing inside us that thinks and feels. But the basic idea is the same. And this is not an idle point. However surprising it may seem, the fact is we don’t actually have a better understanding how the brain might produce consciousness than Descartes did of how the immaterial soul would accomplish this feat; after all, at the present time we lack even the rudimentary outlines of a neural theory of consciousness."
Naya8,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou must have missed my assertion that anything that can discriminate, integrate and anticipate events construed broadly as Alfred North Whitehead might is showing evidence of mind and this assertion equates mind (awareness, consciousness, etc) with life. Yes, I'm aware this is suggesting that even microbes have minds. There's a lot going on inside those little creatures. "Single cells are not just little bags of minestrone soup..." as one researcher put it.
Dr. Strangelove and BrainBites , well done . I doubt it that joewhitehurst will answer your questions or respond in a civilized manner to your comments .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAdie .
I discriminate, integrate and anticipate your comments which is all I can do to convince you that I belong to the class of creatures that have a mind. What can "neuroscience" tell us about a "civilized manner"?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you Adie.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome of the comments made in the responses to this article are very interesting. Others are in my view pseudoscience and misinformation, unsupported by experimental evidence. Perhaps there's a hope that if enough is written, something will gel. Perhaps a good scifi novel.
This is the toolkit of the denier and pseudoscientist. Those with whom you disagree are wrong, and because actual data do not support the denier's pet ideas, clearly those with whom you disagree are not even asking the correct questions. That enables the denier to continue, because this stance frees the denier from dealing with reality that they are untrained to address, instead allowing the denier to nestle into a protective cocoon of rhetoric.
If that sounds mean, I'm sorry.
Most scientists are open to novel theories. I'd even be open to some of the outlandish ones presented here, if they could encompass and explain what we know about the mind. As you have seen, they can't. The idea that the mind is generated by the activity of the brain, can.
BrainBites,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't think this will sound mean, but I'll take my chances. Based on my personal knowledge of over 100 self-proclaimed scientists, I'm inclined to agree with what Michael Mahoney reported in his excellent book, Scientist As Subject: The Psychological Imperative, where he reported the results of a massive survey of scientists. Unlike the story-book, fairy tale image of scientists which paints a picture of scientists as being willing to change opinions, having humility, loyalty to truth, an objective attitude and suspended judgement, scientists--especially so-called neuroscientists--are instead revealed by Mahoney's work to behave in ways that are in sharp contrast to the fairy tale image:
1. Superior intelligence is neither a prerequisite nor a correlate of scientific contribution;
2. The scientist is often saliently illogical in his work, particularly when he is defending a preferred view or attacking a rival one;
3. In his experimental research, he is often selective, expedient, and not immune to distorting the data;
4. The scientist is probably the most passionate of professionals; his theoretical and personal biases often color his alleged "openness" to the data;
5. He is often dogmatically tenacious in his opinions, even when the contrary evidence is overwhelming;
6. He is not the paragon of humility or disinterest but is, instead,often a selfish, ambitious, and petulant defender of personal, recognition and territoriality;
7. The scientist often behaves in ways which are diametrically opposite to communal sharing of knowledge-he is frequently secretive and occasionally suppresses data for personal reasons; and
8. Far from being a "suspender of judgment", the scientist is often an impetuous truth spinner who rushes to hypotheses and theories long before the data would warrant.
For example, just look at the folks contributing to this discussion. There must be 5 or 6 openly dogmatic
folks insisting that the mind is only a product of brain activity despite that fact no one has ever produced any evidence whatsoever to support such a conjecture.
And still, you obfuscate without addressing the major point of the discussion. You prefer to attempt to prove how dogmatic those who disagree with you are, but you still fail to address the questions and points put to you.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is idiotic to think that scientists (neuroscientists, physicists, geneticists, or whatever they may be) think of themselves as infallible. It is the process of science that is self correcting. "Self" as in the body of scientists, not necessarily a particular scientist. Sometimes, that process may take years or decades. So I grant your straw man point that scientists are fallible (you could as well substitute "the human" for "the scientist" in your 8 point list. But it does not follow that science is as meaningless as you would make it out to be, without replacing it with something better. There are plenty of meaningful activities carried on by flawed humans.
Your only point really seems to be that only you know about the mind (you and those grand personages with whom you agree), and no one else knows anything, but you really can't describe why. There is no point in arguing with you because you appear to have no true basis of argument, nor will you accept any proof from the deluded, conflicted, human scientists. In your pro hominem world, a stroke, or epilepsy does not exist, they do not interrupt the process of the mind, because for you they are separate - so that can't happen. Brain damage can't affect the mind, because, well, that just doesn't fit your model, whatever it is. The electrochemical activity of the brain is just, what, waiting for the right jack to power your iPod?
You really reveal yourself to be a magical thinker, devoid and dismissive of scientific evidence, and closed to rational discussion. Perhaps your mind is not generated by your brain (that's not an insult...right?).
I know you will not be able to stand not having the last word, so have at it. I bid you good day sir.
BrainBites,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo we disagree? So What? It seems clear to me that the point made in the opening paragraph of this article is more consistent with what I have said than what you have said:
"With 100 billion neurons and trillions of synapses, your brain spins neural webs of staggering complexity. It propels you to breathe, twitch, and butter toast, and yet we remain largely ignorant of how the brain does even these simple tasks—let alone how it stirs up consciousness."
For the lurking dogmatists among the contributors to this discussion,and even for those yearning to become more dogmatic, I, like a certain former president of the USA, "feel your pain". To help you understand that pain, I offer you a quote from one of my favorite dead mentors, Sigmund Koch, who directed the study that produced the 6 volume set,"Psychology: A Study of a Science" which he also edited. In this quote, Koch is laying out his position on Theory Appraisal:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Must the "rational" attitude be that of complete libertarianism? I do not think so. Nor do I think the answer an easy one. For it is not my position alone that raises such questions. Ever since the breakdown of what might be called “rational reconstructionism” in the philosophy of science, the entire issue of "rational grounds” for theory appraisal or selection has been conspicuously up in the air. The historico-sociologically oriented students of science have by no means given an ultimately "satisfying" answer. Kuhn's is, at least on the surface, question-begging. He says in effect that a theory will be selected because of its "puzzle-solving" power, and that scientific communities prize this property (it is perhaps their superordinate "value"), but he is vague in his specification of any independent criteria for the initial identification of the property. It may be that there is no ultimately satisfying answer: the lack of closure that we feel when confronted with such apparently circular answers may in fact be the gap that has been left by the disappearance of the delusion—fortified for several thousand years by the history of philosophy-- that human rationality can be rendered inviolable by a set of rules. My own delusional system is not such as to give me confidence that I can fill in this gap. But it suggests the following outline of an "answer”.
(continued in a response to this post)
My position poses fewer difficulties than most in respect to theory (or framework or concept) "appraisal." There is a sense in which both a theory of truth and a theory of error are built into the analysis of definition I have
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisput forward. As we have seen: "Though definition be within language, our 'perceptual' frame constantly reminds us that language is about something--however embedded, intricately contoured, or fluidly deployed that
something may be" . Though, as we have also seen, there are "good" concepts and "poor" concepts coded within the natural language--and indeed, concepts which stabilize not only "fuzzy" discriminal experiences, but trivial, vagrant, local, or even illusory ones - the natural language may be seen as "containing" a vast, sprawling, and variably adequate ontology of the human universe. And of course, language can be used at varying levels of nicety, precision, or penetration—not excluding a zero level. Given terms can be applied in rote fashion (via "symptom") or in richly meaningful ways (via "creative metaphor").
Further, since language emanates from human beings, it can play the whole assemblage of deceptive games typified by "lying,” it can be skewed in its bearing on reality by motive, wish, or autism; its application can be distorted or deflected by the conditions which produce perceptual illusion; or its relation to the world dimmed and realigned through psychopathological or neurological "disturbance." There are other grievous ontology distorting factors of which psychologists are aware, and to which they might well give more investigative attention. I am, for instance, very much impressed with the endemic human need for crawling into cozy conceptual boxes--any box, so long as it gives promise of relieving the pains of cognitive uncertainty or easing problematic tension. This poignant human need,
at any cost, for a frame, an abacus, a system, map, or set of rules which can seem to offer the wisp of a hope for resolving uncertainty makes all of us vulnerable--in one degree or another--to the claims of simplistic, reductive,
hypergeneral, or in other ways ontology-distorting frames, so long as they have the appearance of "systematicity." There are many epistemic consequences of this fear-driven human propensity to seek bondage within such frames which require deep study.
(continued in response to this post)
Further, since language emanates from human beings, it can play the whole assemblage of deceptive games typified by "lying,” it can be skewed in its bearing on reality by motive, wish, or autism; its application can be distorted or deflected by the conditions which produce perceptual illusion; or its relation to the world dimmed and realigned through psychopathological or neurological "disturbance." There are other grievous ontology distorting factors of which psychologists are aware, and to which they might well give more investigative attention. I am, for instance, very much impressed with the endemic human need for crawling into cozy conceptual boxes--any box, so long as it gives promise of relieving the pains of cognitive uncertainty or easing problematic tension. This poignant human need,at any cost, for a frame, an abacus, a system, map, or set of rules which can seem to offer the wisp of a hope for resolving uncertainty makes all of us vulnerable--in one degree or another--to the claims of simplistic, reductive, hypergeneral, or in other ways ontology-distorting frames, so long as they have the appearance of "systematicity." There are many epistemic consequences of this fear-driven human propensity to seek bondage within such frames which require deep study.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this(continued in response to this post)
There has been increasing acknowledgment in recent decades of a curious contrast between psychology and the established sciences. There is a strong sense in which psychology was already "established" before it commenced whether as science or any other kind of institutionalized technical enterprise. At my appearance at the Nebraska Symposium on Motivation I found myself saying:
It is often not sufficiently held in mind that psychology does
not start with neutral and unmanipulated data, but that the
conditions of human life are such as to force us to entertain
theories of ourselves. These "theories of ourselves"--the syntax
of which we seldom explore--are often, to the extent that they
are acknowledged, allocated to "common sense" or "practical
life" or some such limbo and then forgotten. What is not acknowledged
is that such theory itself constitutes a most abstract
and epistemologically complex ordering of the data of experience
and behavior. What is truly remarkable is the degree of
success that has attended such naive theoretical effort, despite
evident imperfections. Nevertheless, one aim of psychological
science must, by definition, be at least ultimately to supplant
such "theory" with better theory.
Philosophers of mind have done a superb job in recent decades in asserting and implementing considerations of the above order (and through no invitation from me!). They have indeed begun to explore the "syntax" and lexicon of the "theories of ourselves" which are embedded in the ordinary language. They have traced with sensitivity the ramified meaning contours of such mental (and intricately context-dependent) terms as intention, emotion (and its subspecifications), motive, wish) and the like. They have made progress at disembedding from the natural language the complex use structures governing the assignment of "reasons" versus "causes” and such fundamental distinctions as that between "action" and "movement.” Their work has indeed begun to suggest the subtlety, complexity, and differentiation of the psychological knowledge coded within natural language. But their admirable analytic purposes are special ones, and it should not be forgotten that the subtle knowledge embedded in the natural language has been explored, clarified, and extended by every competent humanist in the history of thought and, of course, by others. I mean no disrespect to my colleagues who pursue philosophy of mind when I say that I would rather go to Shakespeare or even Durrell for an analysis of "love" than to an analytic philosopher.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnce we appreciate the vast resources of psychological knowledge coded in the natural language, and internalized in the sensibilities of those who use it well, it should become a paramount matter of intellectual responsibility for those who explore the human condition to ensure that this knowledge is not degraded, distorted, or obliterated in their technical conceptualizations. I am at one with philosophers of mind in seeing this maxim as a central rational decision basis for the appraisal of theories, frameworks, or concepts in the human "sciences."
So here is a fundamental question: how many thousands of years will it take for humans to find out how the brain or any other tissue can distinguish between the subtle meaning differences between "reasons" and "causes"?
Now, I bid you good day sir too. And, I leave you with just two thoughts to ponder:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1. How could someone like me, who has taken (and passed) a half dozen graduate level courses in Physiological Psychology (where I learned my way around the rat stereotaxic coordinates while creating hyperphagic rats by zapping the ventromedial hypothalamus and rats that would press a bar 100's of times an hour to get a little jolt in the sepal area of its brain), some using textbooks by Sebastian Peter Grossman, fail to embrace your view that the mind is a product of brain activity: nothing more, nothing less?
2. Why do you think there cannot be a science of mind completely and totally independent of brain (or any other tissue)? Why can't we can take the observable characteristics of all minds in action that I mentioned earlier:
All minds are continuously discriminating, integrating, anticipating and, I would like to add choosing, events construed broadly as Alfred North Whitehead might?
Perhaps you should rush out and stop this madness (by tweaking their brains?) because such a science of mind that I describe is about to celebrate its 56 year. George Kelly published the seminal work in 1955. This completely scientific approach to the study of minds is called Personal Construct Psychology and you can learn about it here: http://www.constructivistpsych.org/.
The question we should ask is why has this debate been around so long and defended so intensely from all sides? Surely if consciousness were no different than generating any other physiological process, there should be nobody who could object to it being understood as such. There are no alternate theories of plumbing or cheese making. So too if consciousness were completely separate from all physiological process, we should have no trouble identifying it as such. We should be completely unaffected by physiological changes in the brain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNeither of those are the case. We find instead the origins of perception and experience to be as mysterious as ever, yet the correlation between physical structures and subjectivity to be stronger than ever. To me, the clear solution is that subjective phenomenology is real in some sense, unreal in another, while objective realism is real in a literal, public sense but meaningless unless correlated with private subjective realism. What is most real it seems is the correlation between the two. The symmetry of private semantic narrative against public a-signifying topology.
This I think is where we have to start. We know that we see colors and hear sounds but that there is no homunculus or Cartesian theater literally projecting these phenomena in miniature in the brain. There is no translator which links our world to the world of neurotransmitters and action potentials, they can only be different presentations of the same underlying phenomenon - the gap between one kind of sense and it's opposite.
If we are our brain then our brain is also us. There is no getting around it. If our feelings and perceptions are electromagnetic, then electromagnetism feels and perceives. If we are not our brain then we certainly share a spatiotemporal-physiological synchronization with it which would have to be explained.
I first became less than enthusiastic about the neuron doctrine, that, in paraphrase, postulates that "the mind is nothing nothing more and nothing less than a product of brain functioning, specifically the transmission of electro-chemical messages in certain classes of tissue..." when I became acquainted with some experimental research involving memory retrieval. I thought one particular experiment that demonstrated conclusively that a human can respond to some questions so quickly that there was no time for any tissue to be searched given the speed of human neural transmission (1 to 120 meters/second). The experiment was a little complex but can be described quite simply. In one trial, study participants were presented with a question and asked to press a button if they were sure they didn't know the answer to the question. In another trial, they were just asked to press the button as soon as they saw the question. There was no significant difference between the mean response times for the two trials. This suggests that the study participants knew whether they knew the answer to the question before they consulted memory. I don't think the neuron doctrine can explain this observation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that comes under the same category of the recent study which showed that decisions could be predicted by brain activity up to five seconds before the subject reported making up their minds. Which could imply the opposite effect - that our awareness of decision making is an illusion and the real decisions are made unconsciously and automatically.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't think that's the case. I think that whatever decisions are being made are being made by 'us' even if our awareness of those decisions and ability to report it is a slower process than we might expect. The same with the test you describe. It implies that our ability to report our experience may be the conscious bottleneck to subconscious processes which are much faster.
Just as we see these words as words and not scrambled characters which need to be decoded into English, our access to what we have learned does not seem to necessarily require an active seeking process, rather it is perceived passively, rolled up as it were, into each moment. Instead of the brain being like a DVD player, with a read head detecting a laser beam's reflection, it is more like a living DVD itself. The pits and lands are 'felt' by the disc as total gestalt, or can be focused in on and magnified. Significance can be attached which weights certain areas. The electrochemical events associated with neurons are not what thought is made of, it may just be the sculpting process which changes how the thing feels in general.
The brain is it's own user. It seems to have a lot of latitude in how it organizes it's capacities but it's proper function isn't unrelated to neuron health. We have a hard time coming to terms with how high level and low level processes relate but I think that's because we mistake low level processes for physical functions, when in fact it is the semantic, sensorimotive content of the experiences of neurons which scale up to be a person - not neurotransmitter mechanics, but the feelings associated with them. The logic comes from both the feeling and the chemistry - they influence and shape each other as interior and exterior.
Now I get your point of view: you think that every cell(protoplasm)in the organism has mind.You wender how this mind first originated, also you said that there is noboday in the world has an idea about that. I can tell you that I have an IDEA: if you look at viruses you realyze that they are no more than a few DNA packed in a protien, but when they enter the cell or more precisely the cytoplasm, they get a boost ant start living.The pirion is the same,just when it enters the cytoplasme it gains its living chatecter.The same with the sperm when it enters the cytoplasm of the female egg it start "living' and dividing. The conclusion is:there is a molicule in the cytoplasme that stimulate "life" .
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot bad. Yes, my working assumption is that life and mind might be indistinguishable although the qualitative aspects of minds differs wildly among different classes of life. I don't expect any music to be coming out of a bacterium or even whole colonies of bacteria, but I don't think humans know just what all those polypeptides, and proteins are doing inside the cell walls. Some have noted that single cells have molecular structures capable of complex computations. What I would expect is that the minds of all creatures big and small evolved such that they are appropriately useful in their environment for discriminating, integrating, anticipating and choosing events broadly construed like Alfred North Whitehead might.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this