Dear FIS colleagues,
This is the month of deadlines in my Institute, so I can only draft a
few comments on the past messages.
To Maxine: the action theme is very rich, and very well acquainted and
discussed in last decades neuroscience. Gallistel C.R: with his
magisterial "The Organization of Action: A New Synthesis" (1980)
heralded the new views. More recently Alain Berthoz "The Brain's Sense
of Movement" was boldly claiming "In the beginning was the deed", "In
principio erat actum" so replacing "verbum" (the concept) for actum the
act. Joaquin Fuster (Cortex and Mind, 2002) also was debunking the
traditional views on concepts, claiming instead for "cognits", with both
perceptual sides and motor sides... One can argue a lot about that, but
most of these visions are well grounded and fertile. Berthoz's book is
very elegant and makes for a rewarding reading.
As for Soeren, another explicit vision of meaning comes from Gerald
Edelman (his neural darwinism, later on "evolved" to more integrative
views). I copy from Oliver Sacks notes (sorry if it is a little bit long):
/"With his Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (also called Neural
Darwinism in analogy of the Darwinism in the immune system) Gerald
Edelman presents a neurobiological theory of the mind. He and his
colleagues at the Neurosciences Institute have been developing it over
the past 15 years. He imagines a comprehensive theory of a dozen
disciplines of neuroscience. The outline of the theory is as follows: /
/After birth a set of inborn values (feelings) //allows us to begin
building the structure of the brain. The smallest entity of this
structure is a group of neurons (map) //in which internal links
represent our experience. Maps are then used as new building blocks and
interconnected with links into scenes //representing what we experience
as the present. Ever richer maps are constructed//, ultimately //maps of
meaning//. In our search for meaning our mind develops up the
evolutionary //ladder to consciousness//until we form the new categories
of "past" and "future". /
/On this way, the building blocks acquire step by step more internal
structure that can be accessed. A continuous stream of //establishing
and testing of hypotheses//on the basis of the existing interconnections
weakens or strengthens existing connections or builds new ones//. The
fittest maps and connections survive (thus the name neural Darwinism).
These maps are //dynamic //in that they are continually redrawn
//according to our perceptions//..."//
/
To Loet: building upon the above, a disciple of Edelman, Giulio Tononi,
has coined the term "integrated information" phi as a sort of
informational metrics, which is based in an information theory approach
to the structure of mapping exchanges between neural areas. Seemingly
the values of phi beyond some threshold indicate the emergence of
consciousness as a brain epiphenomenon ("PHI: A Voyage from the Brain to
the Soul", 2012). The view, well built upon info theory (almost Loet's
style), has attracted a lot of discussion, but ultimately the approach
continues to be more structurally focused than dynamic... critics have
argued that the phi value of a smart cell phone is nowadays quite close
to self-consciousness.
The suggestion (to all) is to explore whether phi, rather than relating
it to the emergence of consciousness, would relate to the emergence of
meaning. All the fast circulating activations and inhibitions between
neural mappings, usually involving opposing flows of neuronal "energy"
and informational "entropy", when they finally "click" and achieve
convergence on an optimized state, it represents the collective
achievement of meaning. Thus, phi would be a highly dynamic, fluctuating
indicator showing the evolution of the cascades of meaning. Let us
imagine the thresholds pointed by Bob in ecological networks, but
circulating at a fiendish speed (could values of phi and resilience
indexes have similar nature?): The ecosystem of the mind...
To emphasize finally that multiple disciplines may approach meaning, but
explaining it I think does correspond in our times to explorations like
the above, neurodynamic. Like the biological phenomenon of heredity...
after centuries speculating in all realms of inquiry, finally it was
explained molecularly by Watson and Crick in 1953.
Anyhow, all of the above is very hurried, and it just points to the
necessity of discussing in depth these exciting matters.
Best regards
--Pedro
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Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
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