Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On 29 Oct 2013, at 23:26, meekerdb wrote: On 10/29/2013 7:30 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Also with comp, consciousness is NOT a product of the mind. that's still too much an aristotelian way to express the identity thesis. Consciousness is not physical, it is the mental state of person associated to machines, when those person develop *some* true belief. Why do you specify *true* belief. Because we want the first axiom of knowledge to be satisfied: know(p) - p. That seems very restrictive and even untestable, since we're never sure whether a belief is true. That's what makes this definition of knowledge compatible with the dream argument. We know very few things as such indeed. Then it works. Bp p gives a logic of subjective time, coherent with associating a person to a computation. Physical time is something different, and it is still an open problem if anything like that can exist. Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On 30 Oct 2013, at 00:17, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 5:27 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: To be sure, I don't like the idea of Übermensch. At least we know there is no Übermachine. There is just a universal baby god (the universal person/machine) But this is how I see the concept of Übermensch. The idea got horribly distorted by subsequent political events. The ideal of Übermensch is a human that transcends the illusion and becomes aware of it's true (1p) nature. I also see it as close to Buddhist ideas. The Übermensch feels superior, it seems to me (and is indicated by Über). The Buddhist feels like an ultimate beginner. I would say. Bruno -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On 30 Oct 2013, at 12:05, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 2:51 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/29/2013 4:17 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: But this is how I see the concept of Übermensch. The idea got horribly distorted by subsequent political events. The ideal of Übermensch is a human that transcends the illusion and becomes aware of it's true (1p) nature. I also see it as close to Buddhist ideas. I certainly agree that Nietzsche's Ubermensch has been horribly distorted. Although anybody who is claimed as a philosophical ancestor by the Nazis and Ayn Rand must have been doing something wrong. :-) Just to defend Ayn Rand a bit :) : The Nazis and Ayn Rand are ideological opposites. The former were for total state, while the latter was against state. Also there's the small matter of genocide vs. writing some books. Recent events have been showing that Rand was on to something with many of her ideas: We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force. -- Ayn Rand My main problem with Rand is that I find objectivism childish. She was a hardcore Aristotelian and didn't understand the problem with her no contradictions dogma. But I'm a lover of individual freedom, so I have a soft spot for her. That's sums well my own perception of Ayn Rand :) But the Buddhist idea is to withdraw from the world. Nietzsche's idea is to engage it, amor fati. The will to power is the creative drive. To create art. To create oneself. Well put. OK, but that's the problem with the übermensch. He feels it can think for the others. He seems like feeling superior, where the taoist and buddhist will withdraw from helping the other (in metaphysics). Some truth can only be understood by oneself. Bruno Telmo. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything- l...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 11:05 PM, Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com wrote: Ok, by me, although for an off-topic subject, it is interesting how frequently it comes up. Politics is the blue cheese of debate, it overwhelms all other flavours :) On Wednesday, October 30, 2013 5:50:46 PM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote: Brent and Craig, Politics are typically a trigger for endless off-topic discussions. I respect your opinions, but maybe we should avoid this stuff. Telmo. On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 9:31 PM, meekerdb meek...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/30/2013 4:05 AM, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 2:51 AM, meekerdb meek...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/29/2013 4:17 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: But this is how I see the concept of Übermensch. The idea got horribly distorted by subsequent political events. The ideal of Übermensch is a human that transcends the illusion and becomes aware of it's true (1p) nature. I also see it as close to Buddhist ideas. I certainly agree that Nietzsche's Ubermensch has been horribly distorted. Although anybody who is claimed as a philosophical ancestor by the Nazis and Ayn Rand must have been doing something wrong. :-) Just to defend Ayn Rand a bit :) : The Nazis and Ayn Rand are ideological opposites. The former were for total state, while the latter was against state. Also there's the small matter of genocide vs. writing some books. Recent events have been showing that Rand was on to something with many of her ideas: We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force. -- Ayn Rand My main problem with Rand is that I find objectivism childish. She was a hardcore Aristotelian and didn't understand the problem with her no contradictions dogma. But I'm a lover of individual freedom, so I have a soft spot for her. But like the Nazis she conceived freedom as freedom from social constraint and to dominate or destroy others without remorse as the Untermensch. Are you familiar with William Hickman? Rand was: At the time, she was planning a novel that was to be titled The Little Street, the projected hero of which was named Danny Renahan.According to Rand scholar Chris Matthew Sciabarra, she deliberately modeled Renahan - intended to be her first sketch of her ideal man - after this same William Edward Hickman. Renahan, she enthuses in another journal entry, is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness -- [resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people ... Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should. (Journals, pp. 27, 21-22; emphasis hers.) http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/romancing-the-stone-cold.html Brent But the Buddhist idea is to withdraw from the world. Nietzsche's idea is to engage it, amor fati. The will to power is the creative drive. To create art. To create oneself. Well put. Telmo. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
So what *was* Neitzsche on about? Did he think everyone is a potential superman (or woman, I hope) ? Was he the first self-help guru? That seems an almost a religious idea, although it may become technologically feasible soon, to some degree ... I don't believe he had any leanings towards a master race, at least... or did he? On 1 November 2013 05:49, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/31/2013 1:03 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: OK, but that's the problem with the übermensch. He feels it can think for the others. What? You would multiply yourself by ten, by a hundred? You seek followers? I seek zeros! --- Frederick Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On 10/31/2013 1:52 PM, LizR wrote: So what /was/ Neitzsche on about? It's hard to say. He reject systems and believed is seeing things from different perspectives. So he writes a lot things which are inconsistent, at least on the surface. That's why his ideas can be taken up by the Nazis, Ayn Rand, Sartre, and Camus. He considered his antecedents to be Emerson and Hume. Did he think everyone is a potential superman (or woman, I hope) ? Certainly not woman! :-) Was he the first self-help guru? Yep, a lot of people take him that way: Take charge of your own life. Don't be a slave. That seems an almost a religious idea, although it may become technologically feasible soon, to some degree ... I don't believe he had any leanings towards a master race, at least... or did he? I don't think so. If there was any 'race' he admired, it was the Jews - because they had kept a stern, demanding God and they had held their culture together against many vicissitudes. But he was an ultra-individualist, not one concerned with 'race'. Brent I know my lot. Someday my name will be linked to the memory of something monstrous,... I am not a man, I am dynamite. --- Frederick Nietzsche, Ecce Homo -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 2:51 AM, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/29/2013 4:17 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: But this is how I see the concept of Übermensch. The idea got horribly distorted by subsequent political events. The ideal of Übermensch is a human that transcends the illusion and becomes aware of it's true (1p) nature. I also see it as close to Buddhist ideas. I certainly agree that Nietzsche's Ubermensch has been horribly distorted. Although anybody who is claimed as a philosophical ancestor by the Nazis and Ayn Rand must have been doing something wrong. :-) Just to defend Ayn Rand a bit :) : The Nazis and Ayn Rand are ideological opposites. The former were for total state, while the latter was against state. Also there's the small matter of genocide vs. writing some books. Recent events have been showing that Rand was on to something with many of her ideas: We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force. -- Ayn Rand My main problem with Rand is that I find objectivism childish. She was a hardcore Aristotelian and didn't understand the problem with her no contradictions dogma. But I'm a lover of individual freedom, so I have a soft spot for her. But the Buddhist idea is to withdraw from the world. Nietzsche's idea is to engage it, amor fati. The will to power is the creative drive. To create art. To create oneself. Well put. Telmo. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On 29 Oct 2013, at 19:53, meekerdb wrote: On 10/29/2013 9:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Depressingly, until the middle of the XX century there was no general consensus that all human beings are people with equal rights. That's a very recent idea, indeed. It's so recent that it's well into the future. There are large parts of the Earth where equal rights for women do not exist and are considered wrong and even wicked. Sure. Women have not yet the right salary, in most developed countries. And of course children do not have full rights anywhere and I don't expect that to change. The case of children is complex. They are person/people, but they are not responsible (at least in early times), and it is hard to conceive of right beyond the duties we might have toward them (given water and food, and heat, and education, and respect). It is very complex, because children are in between two possible hells: The parents, and the state. It is hard how to protect them from both, together. Surely a good education system can help, but that can be easily perverted by a state, or by private institutions. Bruno Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On Wednesday, October 30, 2013 7:05:47 AM UTC-4, telmo_menezes wrote: On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 2:51 AM, meekerdb meek...@verizon.netjavascript: wrote: On 10/29/2013 4:17 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: But this is how I see the concept of Übermensch. The idea got horribly distorted by subsequent political events. The ideal of Übermensch is a human that transcends the illusion and becomes aware of it's true (1p) nature. I also see it as close to Buddhist ideas. I certainly agree that Nietzsche's Ubermensch has been horribly distorted. Although anybody who is claimed as a philosophical ancestor by the Nazis and Ayn Rand must have been doing something wrong. :-) Just to defend Ayn Rand a bit :) : The Nazis and Ayn Rand are ideological opposites. The former were for total state, while the latter was against state. I think that the appearance of opposition is trivial. Hitler supported private corporations, and abolished labor unions to empower them. Should Rand's ideology ever rise to the level of popularity that Nazism enjoyed, the result would be almost indistinguishable I think. I'm not sure why people fail to see that the only thing separating a wealthy person from a government is the pretense of serving the public. Without a populist voice, any individual who can monopolize some resource would become a de facto government (tryanny) in a web of allied tyrants (feudalism). Also there's the small matter of genocide vs. writing some books. Well, Hitler wrote a book first. Hard to pull off genocide one putsch at a time. Recent events have been showing that Rand was on to something with many of her ideas: We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force. -- Ayn Rand If governments seem free in comparison to ordinary people, it is only because it is in the interests of the top 0.01% of the world's wealthiest for the rest to believe. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM My main problem with Rand is that I find objectivism childish. She was a hardcore Aristotelian and didn't understand the problem with her no contradictions dogma. But I'm a lover of individual freedom, so I have a soft spot for her. I identified with her irreverence toward the status quo. That changed gradually as I was exposed more to her beliefs and their implications. Craig But the Buddhist idea is to withdraw from the world. Nietzsche's idea is to engage it, amor fati. The will to power is the creative drive. To create art. To create oneself. Well put. Telmo. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript:. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On 28 Oct 2013, at 19:20, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: I read, somewhere, Professor Marchal, that it was the spindle cells in the brain that pushed the smarter creatures on this planet into high gear, so to speak, not so much glial, unless we are describing the same thing, primates, whales, dolphins, have spindle cells, and why this makes a difference I don't know. For no rational reason, my limbic system is urging me (?) to include in this email, the first stanza from Hyperactive, by Thomas Dolby. It adds nothing to this discussion, yet here it is, because it seems somehow, fitting. Spindle neurons seems to be special highways to me. Glial cells seems to play some role in chronic pain. Anyway, this bears on the substitution level, which we cannot know. The pioneer of immortality will bet on artificial mechanism which they can afford, and will not survive without some defects. At the tender age of three I was hooked to a machine Just to keep my mouth from spouting junk Must have took me for a fool When they chucked me out of school 'Cause the teacher knew I had the funk :) Bruno -Original Message- From: Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Mon, Oct 28, 2013 1:53 pm Subject: Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain On 28 Oct 2013, at 16:52, Craig Weinberg wrote: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-10-neuroscientists-mini-neural-brain.html Dendrites, the branch-like projections of neurons, were once thought to be passive wiring in the brain. But now researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have shown that these dendrites do more than relay information from one neuron to the next. They actively process information, multiplying the brain's computing power. Suddenly, it's as if the processing power of the brain is much greater than we had originally thought, said Spencer Smith, PhD, an assistant professor in the UNC School of Medicine. His team's findings, published October 27 in the journal Nature, could change the way scientists think about long-standing scientific models of how neural circuitry functions in the brain, while also helping researchers better understand neurological disorders. Imagine you're reverse engineering a piece of alien technology, and what you thought was simple wiring turns out to be transistors that compute information, Smith said. That's what this finding is like. The implications are exciting to think about. Axons are where neurons conventionally generate electrical spikes, but many of the same molecules that support axonal spikes are also present in the dendrites. Previous research using dissected brain tissue had demonstrated that dendrites can use those molecules to generate electrical spikes themselves, but it was unclear whether normal brain activity involved those dendritic spikes. For example, could dendritic spikes be involved in how we see? The answer, Smith's team found, is yes. Dendrites effectively act as mini-neural computers, actively processing neuronal input signals themselves. Directly demonstrating this required a series of intricate experiments that took years and spanned two continents, beginning in senior author Michael Hausser's lab at University College London, and being completed after Smith and Ikuko Smith, PhD, DVM, set up their own lab at the University of North Carolina. They used patch-clamp electrophysiology to attach a microscopic glass pipette electrode, filled with a physiological solution, to a neuronal dendrite in the brain of a mouse. The idea was to directly listen in on the electrical signaling process. Attaching the pipette to a dendrite is tremendously technically challenging, Smith said. You can't approach the dendrite from any direction. And you can't see the dendrite. So you have to do this blind. It's like fishing if all you can see is the electrical trace of a fish. And you can't use bait. You just go for it and see if you can hit a dendrite, he said. Most of the time you can't. Once the pipette was attached to a dendrite, Smith's team took electrical recordings from individual dendrites within the brains of anesthetized and awake mice. As the mice viewed visual stimuli on a computer screen, the researchers saw an unusual pattern of electrical signals – bursts of spikes – in the dendrite. Smith's team then found that the dendritic spikes occurred selectively, depending on the visual stimulus, indicating that the dendrites processed information about what the animal was seeing. To provide visual evidence of their finding, Smith's team filled neurons with calcium dye, which provided an optical readout of spiking. This revealed that dendrites fired spikes while other parts of the neuron did not, meaning that the spikes were the result of local processing within the dendrites
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On 28 Oct 2013, at 19:55, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, October 28, 2013 1:53:02 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: I refer you to my rare posts where I suggest that the level is the molecular level, and should include the glial cells, which in my opinion (from diverse reading) handle to information. I also defend the idea that an amoeba, by being unicellular, can be seen as a cell being simultaneously a digestive cell, a muscular cells, a liver cell, a kidney cell, a bone cell, and a brain cell. Amoebas are not completely stupid and deserve respects, and so are any each of our own cells, despite those cells in multicellular organism have lost a bit of their freedom and universality to cooperate in what is ourself. Again, the bold quote illustrates comp, and the fact that the level is lower than some thought. Also with comp, consciousness is NOT a product of the mind. that's still too much an aristotelian way to express the identity thesis. Consciousness is not physical, it is the mental state of person associated to machines, when those person develop *some* true belief. So if dendrites and molecules are people, why not quarks and numbers? Cells are people, perhaps. Dendrites and molecules lack self- referential means, like quarks. relative numbers does not lack them, but as 3p pure notion, are not people, but people can emerge from them and their cognitive abilities. Bruno Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
*Cells are people, perhaps. Dendrites and molecules lack self-referential means, like quarks. * Then cows are Nietzchian superpeople. That disqualifies half of mi fridge's food. 2013/10/29 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 28 Oct 2013, at 19:55, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, October 28, 2013 1:53:02 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: I refer you to my rare posts where I suggest that the level is the molecular level, and should include the glial cells, which in my opinion (from diverse reading) handle to information. I also defend the idea that an amoeba, by being unicellular, can be seen as a cell being simultaneously a digestive cell, a muscular cells, a liver cell, a kidney cell, a bone cell, and a brain cell. Amoebas are not completely stupid and deserve respects, and so are any each of our own cells, despite those cells in multicellular organism have lost a bit of their freedom and universality to cooperate in what is ourself. Again, the bold quote illustrates comp, and the fact that the level is lower than some thought. Also with comp, consciousness is NOT a product of the mind. that's still too much an aristotelian way to express the identity thesis. Consciousness is not physical, it is the mental state of person associated to machines, when those person develop *some* true belief. So if dendrites and molecules are people, why not quarks and numbers? Cells are people, perhaps. Dendrites and molecules lack self-referential means, like quarks. relative numbers does not lack them, but as 3p pure notion, are not people, but people can emerge from them and their cognitive abilities. Bruno Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~**marchal/ http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 9:25 AM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: Cells are people, perhaps. Dendrites and molecules lack self-referential means, like quarks. Then cows are Nietzchian superpeople. That disqualifies half of mi fridge's food. You can't just mix two unrelated philosophical concepts that happen to share the same string of characters and call it an argument. 2013/10/29 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 28 Oct 2013, at 19:55, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, October 28, 2013 1:53:02 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: I refer you to my rare posts where I suggest that the level is the molecular level, and should include the glial cells, which in my opinion (from diverse reading) handle to information. I also defend the idea that an amoeba, by being unicellular, can be seen as a cell being simultaneously a digestive cell, a muscular cells, a liver cell, a kidney cell, a bone cell, and a brain cell. Amoebas are not completely stupid and deserve respects, and so are any each of our own cells, despite those cells in multicellular organism have lost a bit of their freedom and universality to cooperate in what is ourself. Again, the bold quote illustrates comp, and the fact that the level is lower than some thought. Also with comp, consciousness is NOT a product of the mind. that's still too much an aristotelian way to express the identity thesis. Consciousness is not physical, it is the mental state of person associated to machines, when those person develop *some* true belief. So if dendrites and molecules are people, why not quarks and numbers? Cells are people, perhaps. Dendrites and molecules lack self-referential means, like quarks. relative numbers does not lack them, but as 3p pure notion, are not people, but people can emerge from them and their cognitive abilities. Bruno Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
I know a single concept of people I wonder what´s the new concept of people, different from the one I manage (either philosophical or not) Have they rights? 2013/10/29 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 9:25 AM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: Cells are people, perhaps. Dendrites and molecules lack self-referential means, like quarks. Then cows are Nietzchian superpeople. That disqualifies half of mi fridge's food. You can't just mix two unrelated philosophical concepts that happen to share the same string of characters and call it an argument. 2013/10/29 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 28 Oct 2013, at 19:55, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, October 28, 2013 1:53:02 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: I refer you to my rare posts where I suggest that the level is the molecular level, and should include the glial cells, which in my opinion (from diverse reading) handle to information. I also defend the idea that an amoeba, by being unicellular, can be seen as a cell being simultaneously a digestive cell, a muscular cells, a liver cell, a kidney cell, a bone cell, and a brain cell. Amoebas are not completely stupid and deserve respects, and so are any each of our own cells, despite those cells in multicellular organism have lost a bit of their freedom and universality to cooperate in what is ourself. Again, the bold quote illustrates comp, and the fact that the level is lower than some thought. Also with comp, consciousness is NOT a product of the mind. that's still too much an aristotelian way to express the identity thesis. Consciousness is not physical, it is the mental state of person associated to machines, when those person develop *some* true belief. So if dendrites and molecules are people, why not quarks and numbers? Cells are people, perhaps. Dendrites and molecules lack self-referential means, like quarks. relative numbers does not lack them, but as 3p pure notion, are not people, but people can emerge from them and their cognitive abilities. Bruno Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On Tuesday, October 29, 2013 3:08:16 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 28 Oct 2013, at 19:55, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, October 28, 2013 1:53:02 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: I refer you to my rare posts where I suggest that the level is the molecular level, and should include the glial cells, which in my opinion (from diverse reading) handle to information. I also defend the idea that an amoeba, by being unicellular, can be seen as a cell being simultaneously a digestive cell, a muscular cells, a liver cell, a kidney cell, a bone cell, and a brain cell. Amoebas are not completely stupid and deserve respects, and so are any each of our own cells, despite those cells in multicellular organism have lost a bit of their freedom and universality to cooperate in what is ourself. Again, the bold quote illustrates comp, and the fact that the level is lower than some thought. Also with comp, consciousness is NOT a product of the mind. that's still too much an aristotelian way to express the identity thesis. Consciousness is not physical, it is the mental state of person associated to machines, when those person develop *some* true belief. So if dendrites and molecules are people, why not quarks and numbers? Cells are people, perhaps. Dendrites and molecules lack self-referential means, like quarks. How do you know? From the article, dendrites seem to be doing what (we think that) a neuron does. relative numbers does not lack them, but as 3p pure notion, are not people, but people can emerge from them and their cognitive abilities. What do they emerge into, given they lack sensory abilities? Craig Bruno Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-li...@googlegroups.com javascript:. To post to this group, send email to everyth...@googlegroups.comjavascript: . Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 1:53 PM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: I know a single concept of people I wonder what´s the new concept of people, different from the one I manage (either philosophical or not) Have they rights? This is a very good question which, in fact, serves well to illustrate how the concept of people is difficult and fluid. Past issues: - Are other races people, do they have right? Depressingly, until the middle of the XX century there was no general consensus that all human beings are people with equal rights. Current issues: - Are animals people to some degree? Do they have rights? Many modern societies say yes, and consider some mistreatments of animals to be a crime; - Are corporations people? American law says yes, and that they have rights like free speech; Future issues: - Are aliens people? Should they have equal rights? Does that depend on their level of civilisational development? If yes, where to draw the line? - Are robots people? - Are computer emulations of the minds of dead people people? Crazy issues: - Are spirits and demons people? Islamic law says yes. Of course Nietzsche himself had this to say: Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman -- a rope over an abyss... What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under... So it doesn't sound that he was convinced that personhood was so clear cut either. Note that in the original German the mensch Übermensch has a meaning closer to person then man. So I actually made a mistake, Nietzsche's concept seems compatible with Bruno's and maybe they wouldn't disagree to much on this. Also wikipedia, for what it's worth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person Telmo. 2013/10/29 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 9:25 AM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: Cells are people, perhaps. Dendrites and molecules lack self-referential means, like quarks. Then cows are Nietzchian superpeople. That disqualifies half of mi fridge's food. You can't just mix two unrelated philosophical concepts that happen to share the same string of characters and call it an argument. 2013/10/29 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 28 Oct 2013, at 19:55, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, October 28, 2013 1:53:02 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: I refer you to my rare posts where I suggest that the level is the molecular level, and should include the glial cells, which in my opinion (from diverse reading) handle to information. I also defend the idea that an amoeba, by being unicellular, can be seen as a cell being simultaneously a digestive cell, a muscular cells, a liver cell, a kidney cell, a bone cell, and a brain cell. Amoebas are not completely stupid and deserve respects, and so are any each of our own cells, despite those cells in multicellular organism have lost a bit of their freedom and universality to cooperate in what is ourself. Again, the bold quote illustrates comp, and the fact that the level is lower than some thought. Also with comp, consciousness is NOT a product of the mind. that's still too much an aristotelian way to express the identity thesis. Consciousness is not physical, it is the mental state of person associated to machines, when those person develop *some* true belief. So if dendrites and molecules are people, why not quarks and numbers? Cells are people, perhaps. Dendrites and molecules lack self-referential means, like quarks. relative numbers does not lack them, but as 3p pure notion, are not people, but people can emerge from them and their cognitive abilities. Bruno Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. -- Alberto. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it,
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
The problem with modernity is precisely the confusion and madness (and I may say lack of intellectual strenght) of this fluidity, ever depending on audiences and personal interest that makes today amoebas to have rights ... and tomorrow morning we can massacrate people because at last, they are like amoebas. 2013/10/29 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 1:53 PM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: I know a single concept of people I wonder what´s the new concept of people, different from the one I manage (either philosophical or not) Have they rights? This is a very good question which, in fact, serves well to illustrate how the concept of people is difficult and fluid. Past issues: - Are other races people, do they have right? Depressingly, until the middle of the XX century there was no general consensus that all human beings are people with equal rights. Current issues: - Are animals people to some degree? Do they have rights? Many modern societies say yes, and consider some mistreatments of animals to be a crime; - Are corporations people? American law says yes, and that they have rights like free speech; Future issues: - Are aliens people? Should they have equal rights? Does that depend on their level of civilisational development? If yes, where to draw the line? - Are robots people? - Are computer emulations of the minds of dead people people? Crazy issues: - Are spirits and demons people? Islamic law says yes. Of course Nietzsche himself had this to say: Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman -- a rope over an abyss... What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under... So it doesn't sound that he was convinced that personhood was so clear cut either. Note that in the original German the mensch Übermensch has a meaning closer to person then man. So I actually made a mistake, Nietzsche's concept seems compatible with Bruno's and maybe they wouldn't disagree to much on this. Also wikipedia, for what it's worth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person Telmo. 2013/10/29 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 9:25 AM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: Cells are people, perhaps. Dendrites and molecules lack self-referential means, like quarks. Then cows are Nietzchian superpeople. That disqualifies half of mi fridge's food. You can't just mix two unrelated philosophical concepts that happen to share the same string of characters and call it an argument. 2013/10/29 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 28 Oct 2013, at 19:55, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, October 28, 2013 1:53:02 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: I refer you to my rare posts where I suggest that the level is the molecular level, and should include the glial cells, which in my opinion (from diverse reading) handle to information. I also defend the idea that an amoeba, by being unicellular, can be seen as a cell being simultaneously a digestive cell, a muscular cells, a liver cell, a kidney cell, a bone cell, and a brain cell. Amoebas are not completely stupid and deserve respects, and so are any each of our own cells, despite those cells in multicellular organism have lost a bit of their freedom and universality to cooperate in what is ourself. Again, the bold quote illustrates comp, and the fact that the level is lower than some thought. Also with comp, consciousness is NOT a product of the mind. that's still too much an aristotelian way to express the identity thesis. Consciousness is not physical, it is the mental state of person associated to machines, when those person develop *some* true belief. So if dendrites and molecules are people, why not quarks and numbers? Cells are people, perhaps. Dendrites and molecules lack self-referential means, like quarks. relative numbers does not lack them, but as 3p pure notion, are not people, but people can emerge from them and their cognitive abilities. Bruno Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
I´m not atacking you. I simply I like to talk with people, and for this purpose is necessary to share a clear definition of concepts. However, Telmo, If you don´t think so, then of course I´m attacking your position. But not for much time because even attacking with words becomes impossible with people that defend that lousy point of view. 2013/10/29 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 2:35 PM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: The problem with modernity is precisely the confusion and madness (and I may say lack of intellectual strenght) of this fluidity, ever depending on audiences and personal interest that makes today amoebas to have rights ... and tomorrow morning we can massacrate people because at last, they are like amoebas. Talk about a slippery slope... You seem to believe that things would be better given some past state of clear-headed rationality -- I would like you to identify the pre-modernity time period you allude to. A few practical questions then: - Should I be allowed to torture dogs for fun? That a question that has nothing to do with the question of either if a dog or an amoeba is a person. The fallacy of changing the conversation in a way that you climb a hill of moral superiority and then shoth down wth an unrelated moral question is not good, to say the least, and I´m not interested in to continue in this way. I say so from the beginning. By the way, I´m not being moral in my previous response. I was just consequentialist: Relativism , lack of clear concepts ends up in imposibility of civilized discussion and the only remaining language is violence. So let´s try to keep concepts clear. That is the whole point of my thesis. What do you think about that? - Should we try to prevent the extinctions of amoebas if the situation arose? - A Harvard scientist has been proposing the idea of finding a surrogate mother for a Neanderthal baby. If he succeeds, what's you clear-cut answer for the personhood status and rights of this creature? People that complain about the intellectual mushiness of modernity seem to forget that progress comes with new questions. Telmo. 2013/10/29 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 1:53 PM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: I know a single concept of people I wonder what´s the new concept of people, different from the one I manage (either philosophical or not) Have they rights? This is a very good question which, in fact, serves well to illustrate how the concept of people is difficult and fluid. Past issues: - Are other races people, do they have right? Depressingly, until the middle of the XX century there was no general consensus that all human beings are people with equal rights. Current issues: - Are animals people to some degree? Do they have rights? Many modern societies say yes, and consider some mistreatments of animals to be a crime; - Are corporations people? American law says yes, and that they have rights like free speech; Future issues: - Are aliens people? Should they have equal rights? Does that depend on their level of civilisational development? If yes, where to draw the line? - Are robots people? - Are computer emulations of the minds of dead people people? Crazy issues: - Are spirits and demons people? Islamic law says yes. Of course Nietzsche himself had this to say: Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman -- a rope over an abyss... What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under... So it doesn't sound that he was convinced that personhood was so clear cut either. Note that in the original German the mensch Übermensch has a meaning closer to person then man. So I actually made a mistake, Nietzsche's concept seems compatible with Bruno's and maybe they wouldn't disagree to much on this. Also wikipedia, for what it's worth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person Telmo. 2013/10/29 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 9:25 AM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: Cells are people, perhaps. Dendrites and molecules lack self-referential means, like quarks. Then cows are Nietzchian superpeople. That disqualifies half of mi fridge's food. You can't just mix two unrelated philosophical concepts that happen to share the same string of characters and call it an argument. 2013/10/29 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 28 Oct 2013, at 19:55, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, October 28, 2013 1:53:02 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: I refer you to my rare posts where I suggest that the level is the molecular level, and should include the glial cells, which in my opinion (from
RE: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
Glial cells may also play a critical role in memory formation: http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/27913/title/Glial-cell s-aid-memory-formation/ From: everything-list@googlegroups.com [mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Bruno Marchal Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2013 12:01 AM To: everything-list@googlegroups.com Subject: Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain On 28 Oct 2013, at 19:20, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: I read, somewhere, Professor Marchal, that it was the spindle cells in the brain that pushed the smarter creatures on this planet into high gear, so to speak, not so much glial, unless we are describing the same thing, primates, whales, dolphins, have spindle cells, and why this makes a difference I don't know. For no rational reason, my limbic system is urging me (?) to include in this email, the first stanza from Hyperactive, by Thomas Dolby. It adds nothing to this discussion, yet here it is, because it seems somehow, fitting. Spindle neurons seems to be special highways to me. Glial cells seems to play some role in chronic pain. Anyway, this bears on the substitution level, which we cannot know. The pioneer of immortality will bet on artificial mechanism which they can afford, and will not survive without some defects. At the tender age of three I was hooked to a machine Just to keep my mouth from spouting junk Must have took me for a fool When they chucked me out of school 'Cause the teacher knew I had the funk :) Bruno -Original Message- From: Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Mon, Oct 28, 2013 1:53 pm Subject: Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain On 28 Oct 2013, at 16:52, Craig Weinberg wrote: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-10-neuroscientists-mini-neural-brain.html Dendrites, the branch-like projections of neurons, were once thought to be passive wiring in the brain. But now researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have shown that these dendrites do more than relay information from one neuron to the next. They actively process information, multiplying the brain's computing power. Suddenly, it's as if the processing power of the brain is much greater than we had originally thought, said Spencer Smith, PhD, an assistant professor in the UNC School of Medicine. His team's findings, published October 27 in the journal Nature, could change the way scientists think about long-standing scientific models of how neural circuitry functions in the brain, while also helping researchers better understand neurological disorders. Imagine you're reverse engineering a piece of alien technology, and what you thought was simple wiring turns out to be transistors that compute information, Smith said. That's what this finding is like. The implications are exciting to think about. Axons are where neurons conventionally generate electrical spikes, but many of the same molecules that support axonal spikes are also present in the dendrites. Previous research using dissected brain tissue had demonstrated that dendrites can use those molecules to generate electrical spikes themselves, but it was unclear whether normal brain activity involved those dendritic spikes. For example, could dendritic spikes be involved in how we see? The answer, Smith's team found, is yes. Dendrites effectively act as mini-neural computers, actively processing neuronal input signals themselves. Directly demonstrating this required a series of intricate experiments that took years and spanned two continents, beginning in senior author Michael Hausser's lab at University College London, and being completed after Smith and Ikuko Smith, PhD, DVM, set up their own lab at the University of North Carolina. They used patch-clamp electrophysiology to attach a microscopic glass pipette electrode, filled with a physiological solution, to a neuronal dendrite in the brain of a mouse. The idea was to directly listen in on the electrical signaling process. Attaching the pipette to a dendrite is tremendously technically challenging, Smith said. You can't approach the dendrite from any direction. And you can't see the dendrite. So you have to do this blind. It's like fishing if all you can see is the electrical trace of a fish. And you can't use bait. You just go for it and see if you can hit a dendrite, he said. Most of the time you can't. Once the pipette was attached to a dendrite, Smith's team took electrical recordings from individual dendrites within the brains of anesthetized and awake mice. As the mice viewed visual stimuli on a computer screen, the researchers saw an unusual pattern of electrical signals - bursts of spikes - in the dendrite. Smith's team then found that the dendritic spikes occurred selectively, depending on the visual stimulus, indicating that the dendrites processed
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 4:30 PM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: I´m not atacking you. I simply I like to talk with people, and for this purpose is necessary to share a clear definition of concepts. However, Telmo, If you don´t think so, then of course I´m attacking your position. But not for much time because even attacking with words becomes impossible with people that defend that lousy point of view. Hey Alberto, I never assumed you were attacking me personally nor did I meant to attack you personally. I agree, we're just discussing ideas. These discussion get heated but it's like a marital arts dojo -- we fight in a spirit of friendship (I hope). I've had many lousy ideas in my life and I'm sure I'll have much more. I would prefer if you gave me something more concrete than lousy, though. 2013/10/29 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 2:35 PM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: The problem with modernity is precisely the confusion and madness (and I may say lack of intellectual strenght) of this fluidity, ever depending on audiences and personal interest that makes today amoebas to have rights ... and tomorrow morning we can massacrate people because at last, they are like amoebas. Talk about a slippery slope... You seem to believe that things would be better given some past state of clear-headed rationality -- I would like you to identify the pre-modernity time period you allude to. A few practical questions then: - Should I be allowed to torture dogs for fun? That a question that has nothing to do with the question of either if a dog or an amoeba is a person. The fallacy of changing the conversation in a way that you climb a hill of moral superiority and then shoth down wth an unrelated moral question is not good, to say the least, and I´m not interested in to continue in this way. I say so from the beginning. Hum, but you were the one bringing moral conundrums to the table with the if we agree that amoeba are people, then genocide. I mentioned rights before as an illustration on how the definition of personhood in society is fluid, because such discussion usually show up in the context of rights. I don't assume that you agree with torturing dogs nor that you are indifferent to the extinction of entire biological species. I am merely trying to confront you with extreme cases, not demonstrate moral superiority. I do think that we only tend to assign rights to entities to which we assign some degree of personhood. I assign some degree of personhood to my cat. He his quite vindictive, for example. Also notice that when people have pets they tend to refer to them with personal pronouns and not it. By the way, I´m not being moral in my previous response. I was just consequentialist: Relativism , lack of clear concepts ends up in imposibility of civilized discussion and the only remaining language is violence. I understand your point, but I don't think it's this simple. For example, the previous Pope argued against moral relativism for the purpose of defending positions that I consider violent. So let´s try to keep concepts clear. That is the whole point of my thesis. What do you think about that? I agree, but I think that more clarity can only be achieved by examination. - Should we try to prevent the extinctions of amoebas if the situation arose? - A Harvard scientist has been proposing the idea of finding a surrogate mother for a Neanderthal baby. If he succeeds, what's you clear-cut answer for the personhood status and rights of this creature? People that complain about the intellectual mushiness of modernity seem to forget that progress comes with new questions. Telmo. 2013/10/29 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 1:53 PM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: I know a single concept of people I wonder what´s the new concept of people, different from the one I manage (either philosophical or not) Have they rights? This is a very good question which, in fact, serves well to illustrate how the concept of people is difficult and fluid. Past issues: - Are other races people, do they have right? Depressingly, until the middle of the XX century there was no general consensus that all human beings are people with equal rights. Current issues: - Are animals people to some degree? Do they have rights? Many modern societies say yes, and consider some mistreatments of animals to be a crime; - Are corporations people? American law says yes, and that they have rights like free speech; Future issues: - Are aliens people? Should they have equal rights? Does that depend on their level of civilisational development? If yes, where to draw the line? - Are robots people? - Are computer emulations of the minds of dead people people? Crazy issues: - Are spirits and demons
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
What are the 8 hypostases? I've seen this referred to a few other times on this list and have never really known what it refers to. thanks dan On Tuesday, October 29, 2013 10:30:26 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 29 Oct 2013, at 14:14, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, October 29, 2013 3:08:16 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 28 Oct 2013, at 19:55, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, October 28, 2013 1:53:02 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: I refer you to my rare posts where I suggest that the level is the molecular level, and should include the glial cells, which in my opinion (from diverse reading) handle to information. I also defend the idea that an amoeba, by being unicellular, can be seen as a cell being simultaneously a digestive cell, a muscular cells, a liver cell, a kidney cell, a bone cell, and a brain cell. Amoebas are not completely stupid and deserve respects, and so are any each of our own cells, despite those cells in multicellular organism have lost a bit of their freedom and universality to cooperate in what is ourself. Again, the bold quote illustrates comp, and the fact that the level is lower than some thought. Also with comp, consciousness is NOT a product of the mind. that's still too much an aristotelian way to express the identity thesis. Consciousness is not physical, it is the mental state of person associated to machines, when those person develop *some* true belief. So if dendrites and molecules are people, why not quarks and numbers? Cells are people, perhaps. Dendrites and molecules lack self- referential means, like quarks. How do you know? From the article, dendrites seem to be doing what (we think that) a neuron does. We can' know. An why would not a dendrite be a puppet manipulated by neurons. My hand might have a more complex behavior than a dendrite, yet I do not consider my hand as a person. relative numbers does not lack them, but as 3p pure notion, are not people, but people can emerge from them and their cognitive abilities. What do they emerge into, Into person, or people. given they lack sensory abilities? Like molecules or elementary particles and waves. The person, including the sensory abilities, is what emerge. To be more correct, the person is just the universal person, already in Platonia, described by the 8 hypostases, and which quickly believes itself to be a particular person when forgetting where she comes from. The sensory abilities are well described by the universal person canonically associated to the universal machine, in his Bp Dt p discourse, notably. The waves, the molecules, eventually the number relations particularize, or incarnate, the person in different context, but they don't create the person, nor produce consciousness. (I assume comp, of course). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On 29 Oct 2013, at 14:22, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 1:53 PM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: I know a single concept of people I wonder what´s the new concept of people, different from the one I manage (either philosophical or not) Have they rights? This is a very good question which, in fact, serves well to illustrate how the concept of people is difficult and fluid. I would define a person any entity which behaves in a way which makes me think there is some first person view. Protozoa and perhaps even bacteria, gives me already that felling. I would say that a person is any entity which makes love and reproduce, like most bacteria. Past issues: - Are other races people, do they have right? I guess bacteria benefits from some natural bacteria right, but nature is known to be cruel in that respect. probably a good thing, because the universe would be quickly full of amoeba is they all manage to survive all their duplications ... Of course bacteria does not need human right in the usual sense of the expression. Depressingly, until the middle of the XX century there was no general consensus that all human beings are people with equal rights. That's a very recent idea, indeed. Current issues: - Are animals people to some degree? With my definition above, they are people. We just don't notice, except children. Of course you can call that a pathetic fallacy. It is still better to attribute too much personhood than to few, ethically. Do they have rights? Many modern societies say yes, and consider some mistreatments of animals to be a crime; All persons deserve respect, even when we eat them. - Are corporations people? American law says yes, and that they have rights like free speech; In my opinion, this is not in the interest of the human individual and it is a threat to the human right. But it is in the interest of some possible multi-humans higher level being. Future issues: - Are aliens people? I would say by definition, unless you call a meteor an alien. Should they have equal rights? Does Alien have the right to eat us? (in case they find us tasty) Does that depend on their level of civilisational development? If yes, where to draw the line? - Are robots people? If they run the right self-referentially correct loop. This is something the humans will do with caution, as you get quickly machines fighting for social security and rights. - Are computer emulations of the minds of dead people people? That's the comp assumption. Crazy issues: - Are spirits and demons people? Islamic law says yes. Is it so crazy? After all some non Turing emulable arithmetical relations are Löbian too. Second order arithmetic is not Turing emulable, and is Löbian, with a divine provability predicate (to use Boolos terming!). Normally, they have even the same fundamental physics. Arithmetic is full of lives, dreams, but there is still place for spirit and daemon. Now, if mathematicians can be said to communicate with them, it is not in any sense compatible with giving them right. They might have possible role in making those right even possible, like arithmetical truth (which is itself such entities, despite not being Löbian at all) makes person and relative realties possible. Of course Nietzsche himself had this to say: Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman -- a rope over an abyss... What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under... So it doesn't sound that he was convinced that personhood was so clear cut either. Note that in the original German the mensch Übermensch has a meaning closer to person then man. So I actually made a mistake, Nietzsche's concept seems compatible with Bruno's and maybe they wouldn't disagree to much on this. Yes. To be sure, I don't like the idea of Übermensch. At least we know there is no Übermachine. There is just a universal baby god (the universal person/machine) which lost himself in the infinite and infinitely tricky garden provided by his Mom Goddess (Arithmetical truth). Bruno Also wikipedia, for what it's worth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person Telmo. 2013/10/29 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 9:25 AM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: Cells are people, perhaps. Dendrites and molecules lack self- referential means, like quarks. Then cows are Nietzchian superpeople. That disqualifies half of mi fridge's food. You can't just mix two unrelated philosophical concepts that happen to share the same string of characters and call it an argument. 2013/10/29 Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be On 28 Oct 2013, at 19:55, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, October 28, 2013 1:53:02 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: I refer you to my rare posts where I suggest that the
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
To add to this point, the main property of spindle cells (being very long and thereby able to connect disjoint regions) might simply be necessary in larger brains (not necessarily more intelligent brains), but since there is a correlation between large brains and more intelligent brains, and so we find a correlation between intelligent brains and spindle cells. Jason On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 1:00 AM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 28 Oct 2013, at 19:20, spudboy...@aol.com wrote: I read, somewhere, Professor Marchal, that it was the spindle cells in the brain that pushed the smarter creatures on this planet into high gear, so to speak, not so much glial, unless we are describing the same thing, primates, whales, dolphins, have spindle cells, and why this makes a difference I don't know. For no rational reason, my limbic system is urging me (?) to include in this email, the first stanza from Hyperactive, by Thomas Dolby. It adds nothing to this discussion, yet here it is, because it seems somehow, fitting. Spindle neurons seems to be special highways to me. Glial cells seems to play some role in chronic pain. Anyway, this bears on the substitution level, which we cannot know. The pioneer of immortality will bet on artificial mechanism which they can afford, and will not survive without some defects. At the tender age of three I was hooked to a machine Just to keep my mouth from spouting junk Must have took me for a fool When they chucked me out of school 'Cause the teacher knew I had the funk :) Bruno -Original Message- From: Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Mon, Oct 28, 2013 1:53 pm Subject: Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain On 28 Oct 2013, at 16:52, Craig Weinberg wrote: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-10-neuroscientists-mini-neural-brain.html Dendrites, the branch-like projections of neurons, were once thought to be passive wiring in the brain. But now researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have shown that these dendrites do more than relay information from one neuron to the next. They actively process information, multiplying the brain's computing power. Suddenly, it's as if the processing power of the brain is much greater than we had originally thought, said Spencer Smith, PhD, an assistant professor in the UNC School of Medicine. His team's findings, published October 27 in the journal Nature, could change the way scientists think about long-standing scientific models of how neural circuitry functions in the brain, while also helping researchers better understand neurological disorders. Imagine you're reverse engineering a piece of alien technology, and what you thought was simple wiring turns out to be transistors that compute information, Smith said. That's what this finding is like. The implications are exciting to think about. Axons are where neurons conventionally generate electrical spikes, but many of the same molecules that support axonal spikes are also present in the dendrites. Previous research using dissected brain tissue had demonstrated that dendrites can use those molecules to generate electrical spikes themselves, but it was unclear whether normal brain activity involved those dendritic spikes. For example, could dendritic spikes be involved in how we see? The answer, Smith's team found, is yes. Dendrites effectively act as mini-neural computers, actively processing neuronal input signals themselves. Directly demonstrating this required a series of intricate experiments that took years and spanned two continents, beginning in senior author Michael Hausser's lab at University College London, and being completed after Smith and Ikuko Smith, PhD, DVM, set up their own lab at the University of North Carolina. They used patch-clamp electrophysiology to attach a microscopic glass pipette electrode, filled with a physiological solution, to a neuronal dendrite in the brain of a mouse. The idea was to directly listen in on the electrical signaling process. Attaching the pipette to a dendrite is tremendously technically challenging, Smith said. You can't approach the dendrite from any direction. And you can't see the dendrite. So you have to do this blind. It's like fishing if all you can see is the electrical trace of a fish. And you can't use bait. You just go for it and see if you can hit a dendrite, he said. Most of the time you can't. Once the pipette was attached to a dendrite, Smith's team took electrical recordings from individual dendrites within the brains of anesthetized and awake mice. As the mice viewed visual stimuli on a computer screen, the researchers saw an unusual pattern of electrical signals – bursts of spikes – in the dendrite. Smith's team then found that the dendritic spikes occurred selectively, depending on the visual
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On 29 Oct 2013, at 17:07, freqflyer07281972 wrote: What are the 8 hypostases? I've seen this referred to a few other times on this list and have never really known what it refers to. It is eight intensional variants of Gödel's arithmetical predicate, that all self-referentially correct machines (rich enough, believing or using the induction axioms, Löbian, ...) inherits from incompleteness. They are all equivalent, in the sense that they access to exactly the same part of arithmetical truth, but they obeys quite different logic, and those logics provides meta-definition of the points of view. I have used them also to offer a toy arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus' theology, so here there are, B is the modal box representing beweisbar, and D is ~B~(and can be read consistent). The three primary hypostases: p (the ONE, arithmetical truth) Bp (the Intellect, or Intelligible) Gödel's beweisbart('p'), the 3p self) Bp p (the knower, the Soul, the 1p self) The two matters Bp Dt (the Intelligible Matter) Bp Dt p (the Sensible Matter) Three of them split, by the Solovay G/G* splitting, so that for them the true logic differs from the justfifiable logic (useful for qualia, and other qualitative aspects available to the machine). This gives the 8 (main) hypostases. They are explained in the second part of the sane04 paper, perhaps with other terms, http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/SANE2004MARCHALAbstract.html and also in my Plotinus paper (here is the PDF): http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/publications/CiE2007/SIENA.pdf Ask any question. You need some familiarity with incompleteness, but those modal logics really sum up a large part of the incompleteness consequences, for machines and many other entities. UDA, and the comp hypothesis is translated in arithmetic by restricting p to the sigma_1 sentence. This replace truth with sigma_1 truth. That makes The soul, the intelligible and the sensible matter obeying a quantum-like logic. The soul by itself obeys an intuitionist logic, and a quantum intuitionist logic for the sensible matter. Bruno On Tuesday, October 29, 2013 10:30:26 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 29 Oct 2013, at 14:14, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Tuesday, October 29, 2013 3:08:16 AM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 28 Oct 2013, at 19:55, Craig Weinberg wrote: On Monday, October 28, 2013 1:53:02 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: I refer you to my rare posts where I suggest that the level is the molecular level, and should include the glial cells, which in my opinion (from diverse reading) handle to information. I also defend the idea that an amoeba, by being unicellular, can be seen as a cell being simultaneously a digestive cell, a muscular cells, a liver cell, a kidney cell, a bone cell, and a brain cell. Amoebas are not completely stupid and deserve respects, and so are any each of our own cells, despite those cells in multicellular organism have lost a bit of their freedom and universality to cooperate in what is ourself. Again, the bold quote illustrates comp, and the fact that the level is lower than some thought. Also with comp, consciousness is NOT a product of the mind. that's still too much an aristotelian way to express the identity thesis. Consciousness is not physical, it is the mental state of person associated to machines, when those person develop *some* true belief. So if dendrites and molecules are people, why not quarks and numbers? Cells are people, perhaps. Dendrites and molecules lack self- referential means, like quarks. How do you know? From the article, dendrites seem to be doing what (we think that) a neuron does. We can' know. An why would not a dendrite be a puppet manipulated by neurons. My hand might have a more complex behavior than a dendrite, yet I do not consider my hand as a person. relative numbers does not lack them, but as 3p pure notion, are not people, but people can emerge from them and their cognitive abilities. What do they emerge into, Into person, or people. given they lack sensory abilities? Like molecules or elementary particles and waves. The person, including the sensory abilities, is what emerge. To be more correct, the person is just the universal person, already in Platonia, described by the 8 hypostases, and which quickly believes itself to be a particular person when forgetting where she comes from. The sensory abilities are well described by the universal person canonically associated to the universal machine, in his Bp Dt p discourse, notably. The waves, the molecules, eventually the number relations particularize, or incarnate, the person in different context, but they don't create the person, nor produce consciousness. (I assume comp, of course). Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On Tuesday, October 29, 2013 2:11:56 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: On 29 Oct 2013, at 17:07, freqflyer07281972 wrote: What are the 8 hypostases? I've seen this referred to a few other times on this list and have never really known what it refers to. It is eight intensional variants of Gödel's arithmetical predicate, that all self-referentially correct machines (rich enough, believing or using the induction axioms, Löbian, ...) inherits from incompleteness. They are all equivalent, in the sense that they access to exactly the same part of arithmetical truth, but they obeys quite different logic, and those logics provides meta-definition of the points of view. I have used them also to offer a toy arithmetical interpretation of Plotinus' theology, so here there are, B is the modal box representing beweisbar, and D is ~B~(and can be read consistent). The three primary hypostases: p (the ONE, arithmetical truth) Bp (the Intellect, or Intelligible) Gödel's beweisbart('p'), the 3p self) Bp p (the knower, the Soul, the 1p self) My view inverts this, where S = primordial pansensitivity or Sense (the primordial trans-cardinal pre-tendency) M = Motive or projection of Tensed Sense H = Entropy or alienation of Sense (S/*M) Q = Qualia (unique aesthetic presence, 1p, local experience, alienated Sense) q = quanta (measurement, rules, laws, arithmetic truth, 3p, generic non-perspective, sense of alienation) From the interaction of these, I get: m = Matter (alienated Qualia) E = Energy (alienated Motive) K = Significance (recapitulation of Sense, collapse of Entropy) t = time (quantized Significance) d = space (quantized Entropy) g = gravity (anti-Motive of Entropy) This is a lattice view that is slightly different to emphasize the separation of the Absolute from sense as well. This separation is more for linguistic clarity, since sense and the Absolute are the same ultimately. http://31.media.tumblr.com/fb43e825fda19a996095b7d355983fe7/tumblr_msm9l6YMyI1qeenqko1_500.jpg Craig -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On 30 October 2013 07:53, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/29/2013 9:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Depressingly, until the middle of the XX century there was no general consensus that all human beings are people with equal rights. That's a very recent idea, indeed. It's so recent that it's well into the future. There are large parts of the Earth where equal rights for women do not exist and are considered wrong and even wicked. True. And of course children do not have full rights anywhere and I don't expect that to change. I'm not sure if you consider this a bad thing, but if so, it's fair to argue that at least in some cases this is for their own good. For example, my children are provided for by their parents, and therefore don't have the rights that would come if they were equal providers in the household. They are birds in a gilded cage. E.g. they don't have the right to carry out actions (like trombone practice) when these would interfere with work that brings in money for their upkeep. Toddlers don't have the right to run into a busy road, or to play with electrical equipment; my children don't have the right to take time off school whenever they like, this is in order to ensure they are properly educated, which is a right they should have but don't always want. Nor do they have the right to only eat unhealthy food, which would cause them problems later in life. They don't have the right to stay out all night, except at a friend's house, because that would be unsafe. And so on. They do have a right to be provided for by their parents, and not to be exploited. They are 12 and 15, and will gradually acquire all the above-mentioned rights as they get older. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 5:27 PM, Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be wrote: On 29 Oct 2013, at 14:22, Telmo Menezes wrote: On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 1:53 PM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: I know a single concept of people I wonder what´s the new concept of people, different from the one I manage (either philosophical or not) Have they rights? This is a very good question which, in fact, serves well to illustrate how the concept of people is difficult and fluid. I would define a person any entity which behaves in a way which makes me think there is some first person view. Protozoa and perhaps even bacteria, gives me already that felling. I would say that a person is any entity which makes love and reproduce, like most bacteria. Past issues: - Are other races people, do they have right? I guess bacteria benefits from some natural bacteria right, but nature is known to be cruel in that respect. probably a good thing, because the universe would be quickly full of amoeba is they all manage to survive all their duplications ... Of course bacteria does not need human right in the usual sense of the expression. Depressingly, until the middle of the XX century there was no general consensus that all human beings are people with equal rights. That's a very recent idea, indeed. Current issues: - Are animals people to some degree? With my definition above, they are people. We just don't notice, except children. Of course you can call that a pathetic fallacy. It is still better to attribute too much personhood than to few, ethically. Do they have rights? Many modern societies say yes, and consider some mistreatments of animals to be a crime; All persons deserve respect, even when we eat them. - Are corporations people? American law says yes, and that they have rights like free speech; In my opinion, this is not in the interest of the human individual and it is a threat to the human right. But it is in the interest of some possible multi-humans higher level being. Future issues: - Are aliens people? I would say by definition, unless you call a meteor an alien. Should they have equal rights? Does Alien have the right to eat us? (in case they find us tasty) Does that depend on their level of civilisational development? If yes, where to draw the line? - Are robots people? If they run the right self-referentially correct loop. This is something the humans will do with caution, as you get quickly machines fighting for social security and rights. - Are computer emulations of the minds of dead people people? That's the comp assumption. Crazy issues: - Are spirits and demons people? Islamic law says yes. Is it so crazy? After all some non Turing emulable arithmetical relations are Löbian too. Second order arithmetic is not Turing emulable, and is Löbian, with a divine provability predicate (to use Boolos terming!). Normally, they have even the same fundamental physics. Arithmetic is full of lives, dreams, but there is still place for spirit and daemon. Now, if mathematicians can be said to communicate with them, it is not in any sense compatible with giving them right. They might have possible role in making those right even possible, like arithmetical truth (which is itself such entities, despite not being Löbian at all) makes person and relative realties possible. Of course Nietzsche himself had this to say: Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman -- a rope over an abyss... What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under... So it doesn't sound that he was convinced that personhood was so clear cut either. Note that in the original German the mensch Übermensch has a meaning closer to person then man. So I actually made a mistake, Nietzsche's concept seems compatible with Bruno's and maybe they wouldn't disagree to much on this. Yes. To be sure, I don't like the idea of Übermensch. At least we know there is no Übermachine. There is just a universal baby god (the universal person/machine) But this is how I see the concept of Übermensch. The idea got horribly distorted by subsequent political events. The ideal of Übermensch is a human that transcends the illusion and becomes aware of it's true (1p) nature. I also see it as close to Buddhist ideas. Telmo. which lost himself in the infinite and infinitely tricky garden provided by his Mom Goddess (Arithmetical truth). Bruno Also wikipedia, for what it's worth: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person Telmo. 2013/10/29 Telmo Menezes te...@telmomenezes.com On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 9:25 AM, Alberto G. Corona agocor...@gmail.com wrote: Cells are people, perhaps. Dendrites and molecules lack self-referential means, like quarks. Then cows are Nietzchian superpeople. That disqualifies half of mi
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
That article is very interesting and show how little we know and worst of all, how little we realize how little we know, by the way. 2013/10/28 Craig Weinberg whatsons...@gmail.com http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-10-neuroscientists-mini-neural-brain.html Dendrites, the branch-like projections of neurons, were once thought to be passive wiring in the brain. But now researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have shown that these dendrites do more than relay information from one neuron to the next. They actively process information, multiplying the brain's computing power. Suddenly, it's as if the processing power of the brain is much greater than we had originally thought, said Spencer Smith, PhD, an assistant professor in the UNC School of Medicine. His team's findings, published October 27 in the journal Nature, could change the way scientists think about long-standing scientific models of how neural circuitry functions in the brain, while also helping researchers better understand neurological disorders. Imagine you're reverse engineering a piece of alien technology, and what you thought was simple wiring turns out to be transistors that compute information, Smith said. That's what this finding is like. The implications are exciting to think about. Axons are where neurons conventionally generate electrical spikes, but many of the same molecules that support axonal spikes are also present in the dendrites. Previous research using dissected brain tissue had demonstrated that dendrites can use those molecules to generate electrical spikes themselves, but it was unclear whether normal brain activity involved those dendritic spikes. For example, could dendritic spikes be involved in how we see? The answer, Smith's team found, is yes. Dendrites effectively act as mini-neural computers, actively processing neuronal input signals themselves. Directly demonstrating this required a series of intricate experiments that took years and spanned two continents, beginning in senior author Michael Hausser's lab at University College London, and being completed after Smith and Ikuko Smith, PhD, DVM, set up their own lab at the University of North Carolina. They used patch-clamp electrophysiology to attach a microscopic glass pipette electrode, filled with a physiological solution, to a neuronal dendrite in the brain of a mouse. The idea was to directly listen in on the electrical signaling process. Attaching the pipette to a dendrite is tremendously technically challenging, Smith said. You can't approach the dendrite from any direction. And you can't see the dendrite. So you have to do this blind. It's like fishing if all you can see is the electrical trace of a fish. And you can't use bait. You just go for it and see if you can hit a dendrite, he said. Most of the time you can't. Once the pipette was attached to a dendrite, Smith's team took electrical recordings from individual dendrites within the brains of anesthetized and awake mice. As the mice viewed visual stimuli on a computer screen, the researchers saw an unusual pattern of electrical signals – bursts of spikes – in the dendrite. Smith's team then found that the dendritic spikes occurred selectively, depending on the visual stimulus, indicating that the dendrites processed information about what the animal was seeing. To provide visual evidence of their finding, Smith's team filled neurons with calcium dye, which provided an optical readout of spiking. This revealed that dendrites fired spikes while other parts of the neuron did not, meaning that the spikes were the result of local processing within the dendrites. Study co-author Tiago Branco, PhD, created a biophysical, mathematical model of neurons and found that known mechanisms could support the dendritic spiking recorded electrically, further validating the interpretation of the data. All the data pointed to the same conclusion, Smith said. The dendrites are not passive integrators of sensory-driven input; they seem to be a computational unit as well. His team plans to explore what this newly discovered dendritic role may play in brain circuitry and particularly in conditions like Timothy syndrome, in which the integration of dendritic signals may go awry. *This revealed that dendrites fired spikes while other parts of the neuron did not, meaning that the spikes were the result of local processing within the dendrites.* Yep, looks like neurons have a nervous system of their own now. Still think that consciousness is a product of the brain? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On 10/29/2013 4:02 PM, LizR wrote: On 30 October 2013 07:53, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net mailto:meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/29/2013 9:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Depressingly, until the middle of the XX century there was no general consensus that all human beings are people with equal rights. That's a very recent idea, indeed. It's so recent that it's well into the future. There are large parts of the Earth where equal rights for women do not exist and are considered wrong and even wicked. True. And of course children do not have full rights anywhere and I don't expect that to change. I'm not sure if you consider this a bad thing, but if so, it's fair to argue that at least in some cases this is for their own good. For example, my children are provided for by their parents, and therefore don't have the rights that would come if they were equal providers in the household. They are birds in a gilded cage. E.g. they don't have the right to carry out actions (like trombone practice) when these would interfere with work that brings in money for their upkeep. Toddlers don't have the right to run into a busy road, or to play with electrical equipment; my children don't have the right to take time off school whenever they like, this is in order to ensure they are properly educated, which is a right they should have but don't always want. Nor do they have the right to only eat unhealthy food, which would cause them problems later in life. They don't have the right to stay out all night, except at a friend's house, because that would be unsafe. And so on. They do have a right to be provided for by their parents, and not to be exploited. They are 12 and 15, and will gradually acquire all the above-mentioned rights as they get older. That was my point. Children are definitely persons if anyone is - but that's not a reason to bestow all kinds of rights on them. Rights are social constructs. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On 30 October 2013 14:22, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/29/2013 4:02 PM, LizR wrote: On 30 October 2013 07:53, meekerdb meeke...@verizon.net wrote: On 10/29/2013 9:27 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote: Depressingly, until the middle of the XX century there was no general consensus that all human beings are people with equal rights. That's a very recent idea, indeed. It's so recent that it's well into the future. There are large parts of the Earth where equal rights for women do not exist and are considered wrong and even wicked. True. And of course children do not have full rights anywhere and I don't expect that to change. I'm not sure if you consider this a bad thing, but if so, it's fair to argue that at least in some cases this is for their own good. For example, my children are provided for by their parents, and therefore don't have the rights that would come if they were equal providers in the household. They are birds in a gilded cage. E.g. they don't have the right to carry out actions (like trombone practice) when these would interfere with work that brings in money for their upkeep. Toddlers don't have the right to run into a busy road, or to play with electrical equipment; my children don't have the right to take time off school whenever they like, this is in order to ensure they are properly educated, which is a right they should have but don't always want. Nor do they have the right to only eat unhealthy food, which would cause them problems later in life. They don't have the right to stay out all night, except at a friend's house, because that would be unsafe. And so on. They do have a right to be provided for by their parents, and not to be exploited. They are 12 and 15, and will gradually acquire all the above-mentioned rights as they get older. That was my point. Children are definitely persons if anyone is - but that's not a reason to bestow all kinds of rights on them. Rights are social constructs. Agreed on both points. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On 10/29/2013 4:17 PM, Telmo Menezes wrote: But this is how I see the concept of Übermensch. The idea got horribly distorted by subsequent political events. The ideal of Übermensch is a human that transcends the illusion and becomes aware of it's true (1p) nature. I also see it as close to Buddhist ideas. I certainly agree that Nietzsche's Ubermensch has been horribly distorted. Although anybody who is claimed as a philosophical ancestor by the Nazis and Ayn Rand must have been doing something wrong. :-) But the Buddhist idea is to withdraw from the world. Nietzsche's idea is to engage it, amor fati. The will to power is the creative drive. To create art. To create oneself. Brent -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On 28 Oct 2013, at 16:52, Craig Weinberg wrote: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-10-neuroscientists-mini-neural-brain.html Dendrites, the branch-like projections of neurons, were once thought to be passive wiring in the brain. But now researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have shown that these dendrites do more than relay information from one neuron to the next. They actively process information, multiplying the brain's computing power. Suddenly, it's as if the processing power of the brain is much greater than we had originally thought, said Spencer Smith, PhD, an assistant professor in the UNC School of Medicine. His team's findings, published October 27 in the journal Nature, could change the way scientists think about long-standing scientific models of how neural circuitry functions in the brain, while also helping researchers better understand neurological disorders. Imagine you're reverse engineering a piece of alien technology, and what you thought was simple wiring turns out to be transistors that compute information, Smith said. That's what this finding is like. The implications are exciting to think about. Axons are where neurons conventionally generate electrical spikes, but many of the same molecules that support axonal spikes are also present in the dendrites. Previous research using dissected brain tissue had demonstrated that dendrites can use those molecules to generate electrical spikes themselves, but it was unclear whether normal brain activity involved those dendritic spikes. For example, could dendritic spikes be involved in how we see? The answer, Smith's team found, is yes. Dendrites effectively act as mini-neural computers, actively processing neuronal input signals themselves. Directly demonstrating this required a series of intricate experiments that took years and spanned two continents, beginning in senior author Michael Hausser's lab at University College London, and being completed after Smith and Ikuko Smith, PhD, DVM, set up their own lab at the University of North Carolina. They used patch- clamp electrophysiology to attach a microscopic glass pipette electrode, filled with a physiological solution, to a neuronal dendrite in the brain of a mouse. The idea was to directly listen in on the electrical signaling process. Attaching the pipette to a dendrite is tremendously technically challenging, Smith said. You can't approach the dendrite from any direction. And you can't see the dendrite. So you have to do this blind. It's like fishing if all you can see is the electrical trace of a fish. And you can't use bait. You just go for it and see if you can hit a dendrite, he said. Most of the time you can't. Once the pipette was attached to a dendrite, Smith's team took electrical recordings from individual dendrites within the brains of anesthetized and awake mice. As the mice viewed visual stimuli on a computer screen, the researchers saw an unusual pattern of electrical signals – bursts of spikes – in the dendrite. Smith's team then found that the dendritic spikes occurred selectively, depending on the visual stimulus, indicating that the dendrites processed information about what the animal was seeing. To provide visual evidence of their finding, Smith's team filled neurons with calcium dye, which provided an optical readout of spiking. This revealed that dendrites fired spikes while other parts of the neuron did not, meaning that the spikes were the result of local processing within the dendrites. Study co-author Tiago Branco, PhD, created a biophysical, mathematical model of neurons and found that known mechanisms could support the dendritic spiking recorded electrically, further validating the interpretation of the data. All the data pointed to the same conclusion, Smith said. The dendrites are not passive integrators of sensory-driven input; they seem to be a computational unit as well. His team plans to explore what this newly discovered dendritic role may play in brain circuitry and particularly in conditions like Timothy syndrome, in which the integration of dendritic signals may go awry. This revealed that dendrites fired spikes while other parts of the neuron did not, meaning that the spikes were the result of local processing within the dendrites. Yep, looks like neurons have a nervous system of their own now. Still think that consciousness is a product of the brain? I refer you to my rare posts where I suggest that the level is the molecular level, and should include the glial cells, which in my opinion (from diverse reading) handle to information. I also defend the idea that an amoeba, by being unicellular, can be seen as a cell being simultaneously a digestive cell, a muscular cells, a liver cell, a kidney cell, a bone cell, and a brain cell. Amoebas are not completely stupid and
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
I read, somewhere, Professor Marchal, that it was the spindle cells in the brain that pushed the smarter creatures on this planet into high gear, so to speak, not so much glial, unless we are describing the same thing, primates, whales, dolphins, have spindle cells, and why this makes a difference I don't know. For no rational reason, my limbic system is urging me (?) to include in this email, the first stanza from Hyperactive, by Thomas Dolby. It adds nothing to this discussion, yet here it is, because it seems somehow, fitting. At the tender age of three I was hooked to a machine Just to keep my mouth from spouting junk Must have took me for a fool When they chucked me out of school 'Cause the teacher knew I had the funk -Original Message- From: Bruno Marchal marc...@ulb.ac.be To: everything-list everything-list@googlegroups.com Sent: Mon, Oct 28, 2013 1:53 pm Subject: Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain On 28 Oct 2013, at 16:52, Craig Weinberg wrote: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-10-neuroscientists-mini-neural-brain.html Dendrites, the branch-like projections of neurons, were once thought to be passive wiring in the brain. But now researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have shown that these dendrites do more than relay information from one neuron to the next. They actively process information, multiplying the brain's computing power. Suddenly, it's as if the processing power of the brain is much greater than we had originally thought, said Spencer Smith, PhD, an assistant professor in the UNC School of Medicine. His team's findings, published October 27 in the journal Nature, could change the way scientists think about long-standing scientific models of how neural circuitry functions in the brain, while also helping researchers better understand neurological disorders. Imagine you're reverse engineering a piece of alien technology, and what you thought was simple wiring turns out to be transistors that compute information, Smith said. That's what this finding is like. The implications are exciting to think about. Axons are where neurons conventionally generate electrical spikes, but many of the same molecules that support axonal spikes are also present in the dendrites. Previous research using dissected brain tissue had demonstrated that dendrites can use those molecules to generate electrical spikes themselves, but it was unclear whether normal brain activity involved those dendritic spikes. For example, could dendritic spikes be involved in how we see? The answer, Smith's team found, is yes. Dendrites effectively act as mini-neural computers, actively processing neuronal input signals themselves. Directly demonstrating this required a series of intricate experiments that took years and spanned two continents, beginning in senior author Michael Hausser's lab at University College London, and being completed after Smith and Ikuko Smith, PhD, DVM, set up their own lab at the University of North Carolina. They used patch-clamp electrophysiology to attach a microscopic glass pipette electrode, filled with a physiological solution, to a neuronal dendrite in the brain of a mouse. The idea was to directly listen in on the electrical signaling process. Attaching the pipette to a dendrite is tremendously technically challenging, Smith said. You can't approach the dendrite from any direction. And you can't see the dendrite. So you have to do this blind. It's like fishing if all you can see is the electrical trace of a fish. And you can't use bait. You just go for it and see if you can hit a dendrite, he said. Most of the time you can't. Once the pipette was attached to a dendrite, Smith's team took electrical recordings from individual dendrites within the brains of anesthetized and awake mice. As the mice viewed visual stimuli on a computer screen, the researchers saw an unusual pattern of electrical signals – bursts of spikes – in the dendrite. Smith's team then found that the dendritic spikes occurred selectively, depending on the visual stimulus, indicating that the dendrites processed information about what the animal was seeing. To provide visual evidence of their finding, Smith's team filled neurons with calcium dye, which provided an optical readout of spiking. This revealed that dendrites fired spikes while other parts of the neuron did not, meaning that the spikes were the result of local processing within the dendrites. Study co-author Tiago Branco, PhD, created a biophysical, mathematical model of neurons and found that known mechanisms could support the dendritic spiking recorded electrically, further validating the interpretation of the data. All the data pointed to the same conclusion, Smith said. The dendrites are not passive integrators of sensory-driven input; they seem to be a computational unit as well. His team plans to explore what
Re: Neuroscientists discover new 'mini-neural computer' in the brain
On Monday, October 28, 2013 1:53:02 PM UTC-4, Bruno Marchal wrote: I refer you to my rare posts where I suggest that the level is the molecular level, and should include the glial cells, which in my opinion (from diverse reading) handle to information. I also defend the idea that an amoeba, by being unicellular, can be seen as a cell being simultaneously a digestive cell, a muscular cells, a liver cell, a kidney cell, a bone cell, and a brain cell. Amoebas are not completely stupid and deserve respects, and so are any each of our own cells, despite those cells in multicellular organism have lost a bit of their freedom and universality to cooperate in what is ourself. Again, the bold quote illustrates comp, and the fact that the level is lower than some thought. Also with comp, consciousness is NOT a product of the mind. that's still too much an aristotelian way to express the identity thesis. Consciousness is not physical, it is the mental state of person associated to machines, when those person develop *some* true belief. So if dendrites and molecules are people, why not quarks and numbers? Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.