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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Nov 13, 2016 - 08:56pm PT
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For Heinrich Himmler's wife, see Margarete Himmler.
Good that Margaret Boden has a sense of humor.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Nov 13, 2016 - 09:21pm PT
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Don't think I'll find a demonstration of the equivalence of mind and neurons nor much evidence of how one might explain the other in there.
There is an enormous amount to look through though.
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Nov 13, 2016 - 09:24pm PT
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Don't think I'll find a demonstration of the equivalence of mind and neurons
Neurons are always found where a mind is. Give us a demonstration of mind in the absence of neurons.
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Nov 13, 2016 - 09:27pm PT
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How can that be done? Give us a demonstration of a mind in the presence of neurons.
I can give you instances where there are neurons and very little evidence of mind, so that would obviate the equivalence if true, but until there is an acceptable method of demonstration it 's taking us nowhere fast.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Nov 13, 2016 - 10:00pm PT
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Wrap your mind around this . . .
Dodomeki in Disneyland
Sweet dreams, mortals . . .
Mind ⇒ Neurons
Neurons ⁄⇒ Mind
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 14, 2016 - 07:24am PT
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The gross materialists always make the fatal mistake of speculating they ARE the hardware
because they themselves are ultimately clueless to who they really are .....
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Nov 14, 2016 - 07:50am PT
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I’d be a bit more skeptical of what you think the advances made in cognitive science are. There continue to be the most basic issues unresolved in the field. There are theories, and there are empirical research studies that do not quite tidy things up.
We weren’t able to say how knowledge gets represented, what the operators are to manipulate information or how they really work (mental models, network theories), what constitutes similarity, how metaphors and analogies work, how categories are generated and work, how physical sensations get translated (transduced, really) into symbolic language and then into dynamic mental models, autonomic systems, and so on. For a while folks thought that a computer was a reasonable model for cognition. But that model has been undercut and seems generally considered a failure. It’s used as much as it is among regular people because computers are ubiquitous, and we think we generally understand those. A fair amount of research studies have been showing that cognition is embodied, that its bases extends beyond the brain or neurons (viz., a body is a necessary element in the most basic cognitive processes).
Like everything else, we have theories—and plenty of journals to publish our research. But at the end of the day, we still don’t know anything finally, accurately, or completely about cognition. And that’s fine. We’re making our paychecks, generating interest, and having fun talking among ourselves, just like we do here. (Isn’t this fun?)
Then, there are, as Go-B points out above, many other issues about mind and experience that don’t fall into a box called, “cognition.” Nothing stands alone, independently, separately. The links between so-called objects in the world, sensations, physical processes, symbolic language and concepts, understanding, meaning, mind, and finally experience are all missing. Each one of these fields of investigation are speculative and incomplete, and how they all come together to say what experience is and how it happens so far appears to be beyond our abilities to get our heads and hands around it.
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 14, 2016 - 08:08am PT
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When the living entity vibrates the transcendental sound vibrations it can then scientifically understand and prove God exists.
The transcendental sound vibrations will change the DNA of the living entity.
The modern gross materialists also understand this science except they NEVER vibrate the transcendent sound vibrations.
They vibrate all the material energies that control the living entities to keep them in bondage unknowingly.
This is their defect unknowingly due to their incomplete consciousness of gross materialism is all in all.
The military uses this knowledge exclusively (vibrating the material energies) to manipulate and subdue their so called enemies ......
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Nov 14, 2016 - 10:42am PT
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How can that be done? Give us a demonstration of a mind in the presence of neurons.
I can give you instances where there are neurons and very little evidence of mind, so that would obviate the equivalence if true, but until there is an acceptable method of demonstration it 's taking us nowhere fast.
You are right. I should not turn your rhetorical device back against you.
I don't know what you mean by mind or evidence of mind. Do the neurons need to produce a sonnet, or is the bar for mind lower than that?
My feeling is that the question, "What is mind?" is an overly simple one and deserves a simple answer.
What do you mean by an equivalence of mind with neurons?
I would say that neurons are the biological components of a mind. They are a way that nature has found to deal with the sorts of problems animals face trying to move around in the world, find food, avoid being eaten, and reproduce. In a similar way, transistors are components of a computer. I would not say they are equivalent to the computer but maybe you would?
Other components than transistors can do computations and probably other components than neurons could implement whatever you mean by mind.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Nov 14, 2016 - 02:51pm PT
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When the living entity vibrates the transcendental sound vibrations it can then scientifically understand and prove God exists (Duck)
OK. Now I see why you asked if I was dead 40+ years ago. Makes perfect sense.
Go-B, I resent that the philosophy symbol in your figure is at the top. It should be at the bottom, being the least productive.
viz., a body is a necessary element in the most basic cognitive processes
So cognition would not be available to someone lying in bed paralyzed from the neck down? Insightful.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Nov 14, 2016 - 04:18pm PT
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Jgill: So cognition would not be available to someone lying in bed paralyzed from the neck down?
It’s not quite that simple.
From . . . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition
By using the term embodied we mean to highlight two points: first that cognition depends upon the kinds of experience that come from having a body with various sensorimotor capacities, and second, that these individual sensorimotor capacities are themselves embedded in a more encompassing biological, psychological and cultural context.
— Eleanor Rosch, Evan Thompson, Francisco J. Varela: The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience pages 172–173
In viewing cognition as embedded or situated, embodied cognitive science emphasizes feedback between an agent and the world. We have seen that this feedback is structured by the nature of an agent's body...This in turn suggests that agents with different kinds of bodies can be differentiated in terms of degrees of embodiment...Embodiment can be defined as the extent to which an agent can alter its environment.
— Michael Dawson: Degrees of embodiment; The Routledge Handbook of Embodied Cognition, page 62
It would be a mistake, however, to suppose that cognition consists simply of building maximally accurate representations of input information...the gaining of knowledge is a stepping stone to achieving the more immediate goal of guiding behavior in response to the system's changing surroundings.
— Marcin Miłkowski: Explaining the Computational Mind, p. 4
Many features of cognition are embodied in that they are deeply dependent upon characteristics of the physical body of an agent, such that the agent's beyond-the-brain body plays a significant causal role, or a physically constitutive role, in that agent's cognitive processing.
—RA Wilson and L Foglia, "Embodied Cognition" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Cognitive science calls this entire philosophical worldview into serious question on empirical grounds... [the mind] arises from the nature of our brains, bodies, and bodily experiences. This is not just the innocuous and obvious claim that we need a body to reason; rather, it is the striking claim that the very structure of reason itself comes from the details of our embodiment... Thus, to understand reason we must understand the details of our visual system, our motor system, and the general mechanism of neural binding.
— George Lakoff and Rafeal Núñez from https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/a-brief-guide-to-embodied-cognition-why-you-are-not-your-brain/
(A few years later Lakoff and Nunez published “Where Mathematics Comes From” to argue at great length that higher mathematics is also grounded in the body and embodied metaphorical thought).
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Nov 14, 2016 - 05:46pm PT
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It’s not quite that simple
Of course not. But your comment seemed to exclude the situation I described.
viz., a body is a necessary element in the most basic cognitive processes
I.e.,
The most basic cognitive processes ⇒ the existence of a (functional) body.
But I'm being picky.
Thanx for the math reference. I'm reading it now.
;>)
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Nov 14, 2016 - 07:10pm PT
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MH2: Sure enough, the brain is in a body, the body may be in a house, the house may be on a street, on the street there may be a gas station, and over there somewhere is Morocco. But neuroscience doesn't require final and complete knowledge of everything in order to ask and answer questions about how the nervous system functions.
Again, it's not quite that simple.
The nervous system does not exist de novo, independently, alone, without conditions and circumstances that fall outside of what you think it is. It is simply a part of an infinite set of systems that can only be properly understood as a single unit. Even the word "unit" is misleading since it implies that there are boundaries and edges. From what I see, there is none of that. It is not a thing.
If neuroscience doesn't ask the question, then it is misguided. It cannot stand alone. Nothing can.
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jgill
Boulder climber
The high prairie of southern Colorado
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Nov 14, 2016 - 08:09pm PT
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I've just finished a review of Where Mathematics Comes From. It appeared in the AMS Notices and was written by James Madden. And it was not very flattering. The notion of a metaphor as inspiration for mathematical discovery is intriguing, but apparently in this work the authors too frequently offer something like the following:
"In abstract algebra the relation-ship of an abstract structure
(e.g., a group) to a model of that structure (a group of rotations) is an example of a metaphor."
In other words, the very common practice in mathematics of looking at examples and models of mathematical objects in order to further investigations into the natures of those objects is called "using metaphors."
Infinite sequences are approached from the standpoint of finite sequences, even though there can be dramatic differences. Once again, the "metaphor" is nothing more than a watered down version of the subject, if not necessarily an example. I'm surprised that the notable mathematicians who advised on the book (at Berkeley) didn't discourage this rather pathetic interpretation of "metaphor."
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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Nov 14, 2016 - 09:16pm PT
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It is not a thing.
What is a thing?
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WBraun
climber
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Nov 14, 2016 - 09:26pm PT
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an inanimate material object as distinct from a living sentient being
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Nov 15, 2016 - 05:54am PT
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Jgill: I'm surprised that the notable mathematicians who advised on the book (at Berkeley) didn't discourage this rather pathetic interpretation of "metaphor."
And your assessment is not surprising, either.
Yeah, they must be stupid mathematicians. Berkeley. Pffftttttt!
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