language is the most bewitching and misleading devil in existence... it produces the illusion of knowledge.
there is a distinction between understanding and knowledge. On Jun 7, 8:05 am, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Jun 7, 2011 at 5:53 AM, Pete Hughes <pet...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Jason, > > > I found this compelling, are you saying that the difficulty of explaining > > qualia is due to the language centre of the brain being able to access only > > an abstract 'interface' (I'm a object oriented thinker) of the sensors? then > > what about emotions? I'm trying to pre-empt your response to 'why don't you > > put your hand in the fire and enjoy the information' and I just can't, I > > like the way you talk so I will pester you with the question. > > Peter, > > Thanks, I am happy to attempt an answer. The below is a conclusion from > taking seriouslyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modularity_of_mindwhich is > supported by several pieces of evidence: > > 1. Anesthesia > > The naive view is that anesthetics work by turning off the brain or causing > activity in it to cease. This is incorrect, there is still a great deal of > activity within an anestetized mind, yet consciousness is abolished. The > person is unable to move, remember, sense pain, etc. Yet other brain > functions, such as regulating blood pressure or heart rate continue. The > leading theory for why this is, is called cognitive unbinding. Anesthetics > operate by confusing or dampening communication between neurons. > Cognitive unbinding proposes that this causes disparate brain regions to > become cut off from each other as neural signals can only travel so far > given the interference of the chemicals. The result is different brain > regions are cut off from each other, the pain processing part of the brain > doesn't receive information from the touch processing part of the brain, the > hippocampus doesn't receive information to encode as memories, the muscles > don't receive signals to move which are under conscious control, yet > independent brain functions (which don't require interaction with other > brain regions) such as those that control breathing or heart rate continue > to function. It is not the sheer will to survive which keeps the lungs > breathing or heart pumping, as animals which are conscious breathers (such > as the dolhpins and whales) will suffocate under anesthesia. This also > forbids them from sleeping, they rest only one hemisphere of their brain at > a time. > > 2. Different forms of brain damage > > Visual information is a cast collection of processed information. Before > the image reaches your conscious awareness your brain has applied edge > detection, depth and color perception, object recognition, motion sensing, > and blind spot extrapolation, among other things. Each of these functions > independently and can be impaired or lost without affecting other parts of > the brain. There are cases where brain damage to the V5 section of the > brain causes motion blindness (sufferers see the world as a collection of > static frames, devoid of any concept of motion), likewise people can lose > the ability to recognize faces, or recognize objects (these functions occur > in different parts of the brain, so while someone might lose the ability to > recognize objects they can still recognize faces and vice versa), finally > there are people who have lost the ability to process colors. Not only can > they no longer see colors, but they lose the ability to recall colors > altogether. Since the processing is done in specific areas of the brain, > these modules share only the high-level results of their processing with > other brain regions. (This is the limited-access part of modularity). It > is not possible for all areas of the brain to do everything independently of > course, so if they interact with other brain regions, they must receive high > level results, not the raw input that a particular module processed. > > 3. Pain perception > > This is getting close to your question on emotions and why people don't > stick their hand in the fire. It's been found that the perception of pain > is handlered in one part of the brain, but what makes pain painful > (unpleasent) is handled by an entirely different part of the brain: the > anterior cingulate cortex. Damage to this part of the brain (or severing > nerves connected to it in an operation called a cingulatomy) brings about > the curious phenomenon of pain dissociation. Someone with pain dissociation > can provide specific information about the location and intensity of the > pain, but it no longer bothers them or causes any distress. An example: > > Paul Brand, a surgeon and author on the subject of pain recounted the case > of a woman who had suffered with a severe and chronic pain for more than a > decade: She agreed to a surgery that would separate the neural pathways > between her frontal lobes and the rest of her brain. The surgery was a > success. Brand visited the woman a year later, and inquired about her pain. > She said, “Oh, yes, its still there. I just don't worry about it anymore.” > With a smile she continued, “In fact, it's still agonizing. But I don't > mind.” > > To answer your question about emotion I think Marvin Minsky provides a good > answer. You might say that given the above description of pain perception, > we have only defined that feelings in terms of its effect on how we think, > you might object that I have only described how hurting affects the mind but > we still can't express how hurting feels. Marvin Minsky called this: > > “a huge mistake-that attempt to reify 'feeling' as an independent entity, > with an essence that's indescribable. As I see it, feelings are not strange > alien things. It is precisely those cognitive changes themselves that > constitute what 'hurting' is-and this also includes all those clumsy > attempts to represent and summarize those changes. The big mistake comes > from looking for some single, simple, 'essence' of hurting, rather than > recognizing that this is the word we use for complex rearrangement of our > disposition of resources.” > > According to Minsky, human consciousness involves the interplay between as > many as 400 separate sub-organs of the brain. If you try to imagine the > resulting symphony of activity that comes from these individual regions, > each acting on each others' signals and in turn reacting to how those other > regions are then affected, you can see it becomes a kind of perpetual and > intertwined feedback loop of enormous complexity. I think in short, > emotions represent changes to a large number of different brain regions > simultaneously. > > Jason > > > > > > > > > > > "Your brain contains information received by the senses, it is a system > > which can enter many different states based on that information (it > > interprets it). One of those states is your brain thinking about the fact > > that it knows it is touching the back of your hand with one of your fingers > > (that may represent only a few bits of information), now consider that your > > brain has 100,000,000,000 neurons and you can begin to see that more complex > > qualia such as vision involve vastly greater amounts of information (some > > 30% of your cortex is devoted to processing visual information). Together > > with the modularity of mind (different sections are specialized and compute > > different things, and share the results with other brain regions), you can > > begin to see why qualia such as Red or Green are so hard to explain. > > Consider Google's self-driving cars. They need to determine whether the > > stop light is Yellow, Red or Green. The cameras collect many MB worth of > > raw R,G,B data per second which is processed by a specialized function which > > determines the state of the stop light. The result Red, Green, or Yellow is > > transmitted to other parts of the driving software, for example the parts > > which control acceleration. This part of the software knows there is a > > difference between "Light is Red" vs. "Light is Green", but it cannot say > > how they are different or why it knows they are different (this was decided > > elsewhere). It is much like the verbal section of your brain trying to > > articulate the difference between red and green, it knows they are different > > but cannot say how. It does now have access to the raw data received from > > the millions of cones in your retina." -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
