Colin Hales wrote:
Mike Tintner wrote:
Colin:Qualia generation has been highly localised into specific
regions in *cranial *brain material already. Qualia are not in the
periphery. Qualia are not in the spinal CNS, Qualia are not in the
cranial periphery eg eyes or lips
Colin,
This is to a great extent nonsense. Which sensation/emotion - (qualia
is a word strictly for philosophers not scientists, I suggest) - is
not located in the body? When you are angry, you never frown or bite
or tense your lips? The brain helps to generate the emotion - (and
note "helps"). But emotions are bodily events - and *felt* bodily.
This whole discussion ignores the primary paradox about consciousness,
(which is first and foremost sentience) : *the brain doesn't feel a
thing* - sentience/feeling is located in the body outside the brain.
When a surgeon cuts your brain, you feel nothing. You feel and are
conscious of your emotions in and with your whole body.
I am talking about the known, real actual origins of *all* phenomenal
fields. This is anatomical/physiological fact for 150 years. You don't
see with your eyes. You don't feel with your skin. Vision is in the
occipital cortex. The eyes provide data. Skin provides the data, CNS
somatosensory field delivers the experience of touch and projects it to
the skin region. ALL perceptions, BAR NONE, including all emotions,
imagination, everything - ALL of it is actually generated in cranial
CNS. Perceptual fields are projected from the CNS to appear AS-IF they
originate in the periphery. The sensory measurements themselves convey
no sensations at all.
I could give you libraries of data. Ask all doctors. They specifically
call NOCICEPTION the peripheral sensor and PAIN the CNS
(basal...inferior colliculus or was it cingulate...can't remember
exactly) percept. Pain in your back? NOPE. Pain is in the CNS and
projected (Badly) to the location of your back, like a periscope-view.
Pain in your gut? NOPE. You have nociceptors in the myenetric/submucosal
plexuses that convey data to the CNS which generates PAIN and projects
it at the gut. Feel sad? Your laterally offset amygdala create an
omnidirectional percept centered on your medial cranium region. etc etc
etc etc....
YES....Brains don't have their own sensors or self-represent with a
perceptual field. So what? That's got nothing whatever to do with the
matter at hand. CUT cortex and you can kill off "what it is like"
percepts out there in the body (although in confusing ways). Touch
appropriate exposed cortex with a non-invasive probe and you can create
percepts apparently, but not actually, elsewhere in the body.
The entire neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) paradigm is
dedicated to exploring CNS neurons for correlates of qualia. NOT
peripheral neurons. Nobody anywhere else in the world thinks that
sensation is generated in the periphery.
The *CNS* paints your world with qualia-paint in a projected picture
constructed in the CNS using sensationless data from the periphery.
Please internalise this brute fact. I didn't invent it or simply choose
to believe it because it was convenient. I read the literature. It told
me. It's there to be learned. Lots of people have been doing conclusive,
real physiology for a very long time. Be empirically informed: Believe
them. Or, if you are still convinced it's nonsense then tell them, not
me. They'd love to hear your evidence and you'll get a nobel prize for
an amazing about-turn in medical knowledge. :-)
This has been known, apparently perhaps by everybody but computer
scientists, for 150 years.Can I consider this a general broadcast once
and for all? I don't ever want to have to pump this out again. Life is
too short.
Yes, although it might be more accurate to say that this is the last
known place where you can catch the sensory percepts as single,
identifiable things .... I don't think it would really be fair to say
that this place is the "origin" of them.
So, for example:
- If you cover a sheet of red paper you happen to be looking at, the
red qualia disappear.
- If instead you knock out the cones that pick up red light in the
eye, then the red qualia disappear.
- If you take out the ganglion cells attached to the red cones in the
retina, the red qualia disappear.
- If you keep doing this at any point between there and area 17 (the
visual cortex), you can get the red qualia to disappear.
But after that, there is no single place you can cut off the percept
with one single piece of intervention.
Richard Loosemore
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agi
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