Re: The Meaning of [your] Life
Le 05-janv.-07, à 20:52, Brent Meeker wrote (a long time ago!): Mark Peaty wrote: I mean at 55 yo I know I have already attained 'old fart' status for most people I meet. But one thing I know for sure is that, just like me, YOU are not going to live for ever. Bruno thinks he will :-) Noo . I just think that IF comp is true, then I cannot be sure I am not living for ever and since ever But I show also that comp, like Lobian Machine self-consistency, is not and cannot be a scientic *fact*, only a correct (with comp!) bet or hope or fear ... Bruno --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The Meaning of [your] Life
Hi Mark, Le 16-janv.-07, à 13:41, Mark Peaty a écrit : Bruno: 'To be honest I always fear a bit those who want to help me or others, but thanks anyway for the good intentions (which pave the way to hell ... :) ' MP: yes, I can relate to that. Be reassured then that as I understand it [AIUI], helping you and others is very much in my own interest. Cool. I must feel that my life has meaning. Without this, getting up in the morning would become a terrible effort never mind going to work in the oxymoronic, Sisyphus-world of bureaucracy. Amongst other things this entails belief that the things I do contribute to the well being and survival prospects of those I love and also to the benefit of those upon whom my children and their children will depend in the future. As I like to say: the human universe is always potentially infinite, so long as it exists and we believe it to be so. OK. However I have not met anyone who can reassure me that the human species has anything much more than a 50% chance of surviving beyond the next 200 years. Ah but this is something else. To comment this I need to comment your last paragraph before, so ... see below. I can see how all the pieces necessary to create sustainable and enduring social and cultural networks and systems already exist; the technology has already been invented, the theory has all been written down. What is not clear to me however is how to ensure that everybody with the need [effectively everybody on the planet] can access the information they need to make fully informed decisions about the crucial issues which affect us. I am pretty much convinced that the answer/s involves person to person dialogue rather than propaganda and oratory, and the empowerment of individuals to undertake human sized projects rather than the regimenting of industrial clone armies in massive organisations. Well ... OK. AIUI the practice of sceptical inquiry is fundamental to getting things right. I agree. (But I think skeptical inquiry in the field of scientific (= modest, doubting) has been abandoned since 1500 years when the academy of Athena has been closed. The Enlightenment has been only half-Enlightenment: scientific theology remained stuck in the authoritative mode of thinking). In this vein, we all need to help each other to see on the one hand the formidable danger which affects absolutely ALL of us, and on the other hand to see the utterly amazing potential for creatively solving all the practical problems that confront us. Such is the nature of the modern world as it is transformed again and again by the fruits of the application of scientific method. I would say it is like that since the very beginning. Bruno: 'Then I can explain you with all details why the proposition we will all 1-die is provably put in doubt once we assume either just comp or even just quantum mechanics. With QM this is not wishful thinking but terrorful thinking: a priori the QM immortality is not fun: each time we die clinically (in a relative third person way), from our personal point of view we survive in the closer normal comp. history. A case can been made that this entails a sort of eternal agony. Of course this can be nuanced too. With comp some weird gap seems to exist ... ' MP: I do not understand this. I am surprised to notice, however, a faint resemblance to something I read once concerning the teachings of George Gurdjieff, an ethnic Armenian who became a teacher of 'esoteric religion' and some very deep insights into how humans function, in the early 20 Century. He died in 1952 in France. Gurdjieff was asked what was the truth about reincarnation, and the reply was along the lines of: talk of souls transmigrating from body to body over millennia was misleading, it is more like that if a person could not see what they were really doing, and what they are, then they [we] are condemned to live and relive that same life - until we realise what is happening [I suppose, or some such ... ]. Well once upon a time I was very enthusiastic about George Gurdjieff's teachings but now I think just that his psychological insights and practical methods were good but too much of his metaphysics, for want of a better word, is pre-scientific in origin. To make things simple, let me say that I think somehow the contrary. I believe that his metaphysics insights are basically correct or at least coherent with facts, theories, and philosophical principles which I think are almost beyond reasonable doubts, but I am less far convinced in the practical use of such insights. Now if that can help some people, why not, but, like sometimes with mystics, I'm afraid his disciples didn't got him right. I don't think Gurdjieff metaphysics is pre-scientific, it is pre-aristotelian perhaps, and in that sense, it could be visionary. I know that I have much more to explain to you for making such things more
Re: The Meaning of [your] Life
Bruno: 'To be honest I always fear a bit those who want to help me or others, but thanks anyway for the good intentions (which pave the way to hell ... :) ' MP: yes, I can relate to that. Be reassured then that as I understand it [AIUI], helping you and others is very much in my own interest. I must feel that my life has meaning. Without this, getting up in the morning would become a terrible effort never mind going to work in the oxymoronic, Sisyphus-world of bureaucracy. Amongst other things this entails belief that the things I do contribute to the well being and survival prospects of those I love and also to the benefit of those upon whom my children and their children will depend in the future. As I like to say: the human universe is always potentially infinite, so long as it exists and we believe it to be so. However I have not met anyone who can reassure me that the human species has anything much more than a 50% chance of surviving beyond the next 200 years. I can see how all the pieces necessary to create sustainable and enduring social and cultural networks and systems already exist; the technology has already been invented, the theory has all been written down. What is not clear to me however is how to ensure that everybody with the need [effectively everybody on the planet] can access the information they need to make fully informed decisions about the crucial issues which affect us. I am pretty much convinced that the answer/s involves person to person dialogue rather than propaganda and oratory, and the empowerment of individuals to undertake human sized projects rather than the regimenting of industrial clone armies in massive organisations. AIUI the practice of sceptical inquiry is fundamental to getting things right. In this vein, we all need to help each other to see on the one hand the formidable danger which affects absolutely ALL of us, and on the other hand to see the utterly amazing potential for creatively solving all the practical problems that confront us. Such is the nature of the modern world as it is transformed again and again by the fruits of the application of scientific method. Bruno: 'Then I can explain you with all details why the proposition we will all 1-die is provably put in doubt once we assume either just comp or even just quantum mechanics. With QM this is not wishful thinking but terrorful thinking: a priori the QM immortality is not fun: each time we die clinically (in a relative third person way), from our personal point of view we survive in the closer normal comp. history. A case can been made that this entails a sort of eternal agony. Of course this can be nuanced too. With comp some weird gap seems to exist ... ' MP: I do not understand this. I am surprised to notice, however, a faint resemblance to something I read once concerning the teachings of George Gurdjieff, an ethnic Armenian who became a teacher of 'esoteric religion' and some very deep insights into how humans function, in the early 20 Century. He died in 1952 in France. Gurdjieff was asked what was the truth about reincarnation, and the reply was along the lines of: talk of souls transmigrating from body to body over millennia was misleading, it is more like that if a person could not see what they were really doing, and what they are, then they [we] are condemned to live and relive that same life - until we realise what is happening [I suppose, or some such ... ]. Well once upon a time I was very enthusiastic about George Gurdjieff's teachings but now I think just that his psychological insights and practical methods were good but too much of his metaphysics, for want of a better word, is pre-scientific in origin. Bruno: 'Have you an opinion on QM interpretation?' MP: Well, from my particular style of ignorance, I take it that QM is a descriptive system that allows predictions and explanations to be made about how things do or will occur at the smallest scales of measurement that scientists can currently observe. I take with a grain of salt all statements that the noumenal world, or even parts of it, cannot exist without an observer. That world - 'The Great It' - I like to call it, exists whether we know about it or not. We participate and make things happen, but usually without being very aware of it. Our awareness is what it is like to be the updating of the brain's model of self in the world, and this model is a cryptic, or encrypted, analogue system. It is complex and subtle but classical as opposed to Quantum in nature, in that the dynamic logical entities which mental objects and so forth are aggregate effects of literally millions of neuron interactions. I take it that harmonic resonance and all manner of standing wave effects are essential to the spatia-temporal structure of perceptions and other mental objects. So, AIUI, clearly the world described by QM is very weird from our classical and naive experience
Re: The Meaning of [your] Life
Hi Mark, (To the other: I will read and comment the remaining posts after next wednesday; I am very busy). Le 08-janv.-07, à 18:31, Mark Peaty a écrit : Bruno, 1 Thank you for responding. Of course I have no right to expect a response from anybody, but I was starting to just wonder if I HAD been a bit rude! :-) And of course now it serves me right if I can't understand some of what you have written ... To be sure I have not find your post particularly rude, compare to some others sometimes. No problem with rudeness as far as there is a conversation along with the insults :) 2 'Assuming the digital mechanist thesis, ... least there could be an ultimate *partial* sort of meta-answer.' Hm, and is there a plain English version accessible to anyone with far less than a degree in mathematics? I have explained a lot on the list, but my links have changed. I don't insist because I am willing to explain all details again. Few people realize how quick it is possible to grasp the main math in theoretical computer science. In few steps you can access to very amazing truth about machines. It is the contrary in mathematical logic where the beginning are harder. [ En Francaise tres simple, c'est aussi possible pour mois avec l'assistance des services Google de traduction. Mais il faut que mes responses fut en Anglaise par ce que detruir la lange Francaise a cause de mois fut tellment triste a tois et n'aurais pas d'utilite. ] So you can perhaps peruse in my french theses One half of my work does not need anything very technical except some passive understanding of Church thesis, and well, some imagination for the thought experiments. Some people in the list seems to arrive to similar conclusion, although I take full responsibility for the complete reversal physics/theology-biology-psychology-comp.science-number theory. 3 Me here, you there. You are an other to me. Here and now, OK. I would not take this as an absolute statement. And I assume, in light of the 'Tit for Tat' strategy and its intrinsic simplicity and empirically tested/modelled effectiveness, that acting ethically towards you and [other] others is the approach most likely to facilitate the creation of value accessible to us both. Nice. In plain English I like to put that now as: My vocation is that I help others. My preferred method is to Enquire, Inform, Empower and Entertain. To be honest I always fear a bit those who want to help me or others, but thanks anyway for the good intentions (which pave the way to hell ... :) 4 We will all die. There is no good evidence to support any other assertion about how we ultimately end up. I think you are confusing the first and third person point of view, like *many* since Aristotle made us believe in a physical primitive reality. This reifies a good animal's instinctive local strategy, but that's all. Honestly an expression like we will all (1-personaly) die is an open problem. We have not yet solved the mind/body problem, so we cannot conclude. Then I can explain you with all details why the proposition we will all 1-die is provably put in doubt once we assume either just comp or even just quantum mechanics. With QM this is not wishful thinking but terrorful thinking: a priori the QM immortality is not fun: each time we die clinically (in a relative third person way), from our personal point of view we survive in the closer normal comp. history. A case can been made that this entails a sort of eternal agony. Of course this can be nuanced too. With comp some weird gap seems to exist ... Have you an opinion on QM interpretation? 5 ' ... say also that there was nothing before birth. In that case I (the first person I) would have emerge from nothing. ...' Yep! In plain English, rough and ready terms that's it! But actually we can of course quibble about what is 'nothing', because 'nothing' isn't anything. So a more sophisticated assertion is that each of us is an emergent property of, well, the universe. I can be romantic and say: this experience of being here now is what it is like to be the universe looking at itself from a particular point of view. It works or me, probably because I now know how to not take myself too seriously. [Sh*t a brick! One look in the mirror makes that one clear -] But I have been disappointed at the number of people who have quibbled at the idea. You seem to take a basic physical universe for granted. I don't take a physical universe as an explanation. Worst, I do believe this assumption is contrary to both logic+arithmetic (and comp) and with the empirical data. I'm ready to argue. 6 That 'I' might 'come back again' ... DOESN'T RING TRUE! To put it succinctly, all these ideas of human awareness being related to some non-physical entity and possibly being able to
Re: The Meaning of [your] Life
Le 05-janv.-07, à 19:48, Mark Peaty a écrit : Bruno, Stathis, Brent, Peter,Brent, Tom, Hal and others, I have to be very impertinent here and try to draw your attention to something you are just not getting. There is NO ultimate answer to the meaning of life, ... Assuming the digital mechanist thesis, a case can be made that at least there could be an ultimate *partial* sort of meta-answer. I am not sure about that. Recall that after Godel/Turing Co., we can no more pretend to really know what are numbers and machines or what they are capable of, including their relations with fundamental question. ... the universe and everything except that IT IS, and you are here to take part in it and observe yourself and others doing so. Existence is the source of value, indeed it is the essence of value. OK. I am not in the habit of putting myself forward, but here I believe the ideas are what count and I believe the issue is very important. I mean at 55 yo I know I have already attained 'old fart' status for most people I meet. But one thing I know for sure is that, just like me, YOU are not going to live for ever. This already depends a lot of what you mean by me and you. In any case I am not sure you can *know* things like that. It could be a form of wishful thinking. And in order to add something obvious: the prediction you will not live forever is neither confirmable (with or without comp) nor refutable (with comp). As most of you seem a fair bit smarter than me I assume that you can/will mostly choose how you spend your limited lifetime. Choose wisely 'cause it's a once-off. You may be right and sometimes I hope so, but I have no certainty here. After all most among those who say that there is nothing after death say also that there was nothing before birth. In that case I (the first person I) would have emerge from nothing. Going back to nothing when dead, how could I be sure I will not come back again? Perhaps by being some new born baby? Perhaps with my memories reconstituted by some far away future technologies? I really do think that before any of you get much older you should take a VERY careful look at what I have been writing here. Have a look also at the common meanings for the word physics [samples included below]. If you don't then I think you are going to spend the rest of your lives chasing shadows, and end up a bunch of old men sitting on the cyberspace equivalent of a park bench, STILL chewing over the same old problem! Of course, if that is what you want then that's fine. But don't say you weren't warned! :-) the fact is, being conscious is inherently paradoxical, and there is no escape from the paradox, just like there is no escape from the universe - until you die that is. Let us hope! To be sure even G* provides a hope we can die eventually, but evidences are there that it could be less easy than we are used to think. There could be a rather long Tibetan like Bardo-Thodol to go through before ... I really don't know, for sure. I *can * ask the lobian machine, but it is today intractable, the machine will answer after the sun blows up. Your impressions, perceptions, feelings, intuitions, etc. of being here now [where you are of course] is what it is like to be the updating of the model of self in the world which you brain is constantly constructing all the time you are awake. When you sleep there are times when enough of the model gets evoked that you have a dream that you can remember. The paradox is that for most of the time we assume that this awareness - consciousness, call it what you like - IS the world, i.e. what it is like to be 'me' here now, whereas in fact it is only what it is like to be the model of 'me' here now. OK. This does not mean that you don't exist; you do exist, and you must pay taxes in partial payment for the privilege, until you die that is. [I work for the Australian Taxation Office so I know about these things :-] There is however a lot more stuff going on in your brain than is actually explicitly involved in your consciousness of the moment, as far as I can see there are usually a couple or triple of very sophisticated tasks going on in parallel but swapping in and out of focussed attention as needs and priorities of the moment require. There are often also several other tasks simmering away like pots on the back burners of your stove. I believe it is the hippocampus which maintains the tasks in process through re-entrant signalling to the relevant cortical and other areas which embody the salient features of the constructs involved. Binding is achieved through re-entrant signalling of resonant wave forms such that each construct EXISTS as a dynamic logical entity able to maintain its own structure sufficiently to prevent certain other things happening and to invoke through association [or perhaps through reaction to patterns of inhibition,
Re: The Meaning of [your] Life
Bruno, 1. Thank you for responding. Of course I have no right to expect a response from anybody, but I was starting to just wonder if I HAD been a bit rude! :-) And of course now it serves me right if I can't understand some of what you have written ... 2. 'Assuming the digital mechanist thesis, ... least there could be an ultimate *partial* sort of meta-answer.' Hm, and is there a plain English version accessible to anyone with far less than a degree in mathematics? [ En Francaise tres simple, c'est aussi possible pour mois avec l'assistance des services Google de traduction. Mais il faut que mes responses fut en Anglaise par ce que detruir la lange Francaise a cause de mois fut tellment triste a tois et n'aurais pas d'utilite. ] 3. Me here, you there. You are an other to me. And I assume, in light of the 'Tit for Tat' strategy and its intrinsic simplicity and empirically tested/modelled effectiveness, that acting ethically towards you and [other] others is the approach most likely to facilitate the creation of value accessible to us both. In plain English I like to put that now as: My vocation is that I help others. My preferred method is to Enquire, Inform, Empower and Entertain. 4. We will all die. There is no good evidence to support any other assertion about how we ultimately end up. 5. ' ... say also that there was nothing before birth. In that case I (the first person I) would have emerge from nothing. ...' Yep! In plain English, rough and ready terms that's it! But actually we can of course quibble about what is 'nothing', because 'nothing' isn't anything. So a more sophisticated assertion is that each of us is an emergent property of, well, the universe. I can be romantic and say: this experience of being here now is what it is like to be the universe looking at itself from a particular point of view. It works or me, probably because I now know how to not take myself too seriously. [Sh*t a brick! One look in the mirror makes that one clear -] But I have been disappointed at the number of people who have quibbled at the idea. 6. That 'I' might 'come back again' ... DOESN'T RING TRUE! To put it succinctly, all these ideas of human awareness being related to some non-physical entity and possibly being able to endure beyond the death of the body are all from the pre-scientific universe: the time before this. There is nothing amongst all of the new knowledge discovered about the world through the application of scientific method that lends support to any of these soul or disembodiable spirit based ideas concerning our awareness. The only reason these kinds of ideas still have some kind of general currency is ignorance concerning the mind blowing efficacy of scientific method and the fruits of its application. . I will now dismount from that soap box, but not before reminding readers that the effect that scientific method has had on the human species is of the same order of importance as the acquisition of versatile grammar. Before true grammar people had the ability to refer to things not present but only in the very simplest of terms, and to use a limited vocabulary and simple two-item juxtapositions to associate a subject with a simple predicate with no recursions. That state of affairs may have lasted several hundred thousand years. The advent of versatile grammar allowed the creation of complex predicates with multiple recursions ie phrases, clauses and sub-clauses. This allowed the telling of stories and thus discussion, in principle at least, of absolutely anything. 7. Ask the question: Why would anybody want to reconstitute and let loose a person from the distant past? 8. It does not seem particularly coherent to say: 'There is no universe' because this is equivalent to saying that nothing exists 9. People who are completely paralysed depend on others whose muscles ARE in working order and properly connected to their brains/CNS. Maybe this dependency may be mitigated in the future by the creation of implants and prosthetic attachments which allow the direct reading of brain states to control other prosthetic machinery. 10. '...except when you are witnessing what I would call a reductionist view of numbers and machine...' I am not clear about what you mean here. I see numbers as human constructs; mathematical objects embodied in the logico-mathematical language system. As I see it, mathematical objects derive their existence and power from the way they are defined. Because of their clarity and fixed meanings numbers and other math. objects have allowed people to express summarised and succinct descriptions of
Re: The Meaning of [your] Life
So! I'm an old fart AND a young whipper snapper! Isn't nature wonderful! :-) Brent: 'Except it is obvious that it doesn't take that specific structure to make the muscles move - anything that sets off the appropriate efferent nerve will work. Do you agree that your brain could be replaced, say neuron by neuron, with electronic neurons and still move your muscles...and still maintain your consciousness? ' MP: This is a trick question of course, because in order to make any sense of it at all, at very least somebody has to say 'ceteris paribus' which ought to make us very suspicious at the outset. After that we need virtually to assume the very thing at question in order to proceed with the answering. That is to say, the question falls into a hole straight away if we do not allow the 'Turing emulation hypothesis' am I right? I for one have at very least grave doubts about the validity of numeric emulation of the Real world. On the other hand, numeric emulation of an already digitised model probably presents no problems to an entity with unlimited time and resources, MP: So Brent's question is actually composed of several parts and I don't have the time, or the theoretical language, to do the full kind of analysis that it deserves. Thus rough and ready but plain English is all I can give you here. 1/ Yes, ever since Galvani or somebody tried dissecting frogs on a pewter plate with a steel knife [yes?] it has been known that electric stimulation of muscles will cause them to twitch, even if the animal is already dead. At the most superficial level therefore it is true that 'all we need' is to provide sufficiently discriminated sequential stimulation of all the muscles involved, either directly on the muscles or indirectly on the efferent neurons, and we could make a fresh corpse get up and walk. 2/ Getting it to talk would be much harder, although making it produce the APPEARANCE of talking would be just a sophisticated extension of making it 'take up its bed and walk'. So yes, in principle, we could make a real good zombie suitable for a bit part in Hollywood, but not only would it not be conscious, it would have no autonomy whatsoever. It would just be dead meat on the move. And very much on the nose before long also! :-) 3/ We then reach the first deep limit: even if we emulate vast numbers of movement patterns, our wandering corpse will not be engaged in problem solving if all we have is an on board computer pushing out stimulation patterns for the muscles in response to remote control and inertial control routines in the on-board computer. If we try to emulate the activities of ALL the neurons in the recently deceased brain we will encounter complexity pretty much beyond all imagining. Yes a team of crafty Igors might imagine interactions amongst groups of neurons and model in silicon what they imagine the organic neurons to have been doing. But they have a snag to overcome: They don't know what synergistic effects emerge out of the interactions of vast numbers of neurons. They are confronted with a fundamental choice: a/ to work out what small bits of the brain do then construct a silicon based brain emulator comprised of many replicated copies of functional units and force it to LEARN, how to act properly, or b/ take out a mortgage on all real estate in the galaxy and buy or make all the equipment needed to do the philosophers' facsimile! The reason for this is because the Igors [sounds much better than 'Nerds'] do not know beforehand everything there is to know about neurons working together. I mean the processes involved in the transmission of depolarisation waves or impulses along the dendrites and axons are reasonably well understood, but how much are neurons in close proximity to each other affected by local area electromagnetic fields generated by the actions of large numbers of their neighbours? As I have asserted before, the human brain is a dynamic system, and if the Igors want to emulate everything significant about the functioning of neurons then it is not sufficient to make what someone thinks is an electric model of a neuron, they have got to know already just what it is that is significant. 4/ For the reasons given so far [and hopefully they are sufficiently clear] it may be possible to create a generalised rendition of a 'typical' human being, but it won't be you or me or any other particular person. Now I know that logicians, engineers and economists want to deal with an abstract and ideal case and therefore demand that we say 'if all the practical problems could be overcome, how about then?' so I can go along with the game and say that: By definition, if you really could emulate within a silicon based computer system EVERYTHING SIGNIFICANT about the structure and functioning of a human brain, then if follows that so long as the body, or body emulation including the brain emulation in
Re: The Meaning of [your] Life
Bruno, Stathis, Brent, Peter,Brent, Tom, Hal and others, I have to be very impertinent here and try to draw your attention to something you are just not getting. There is NO ultimate answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything except that IT IS, and you are here to take part in it and observe yourself and others doing so. Existence is the source of value, indeed it is the essence of value. I am not in the habit of putting myself forward, but here I believe the ideas are what count and I believe the issue is very important. I mean at 55 yo I know I have already attained 'old fart' status for most people I meet. But one thing I know for sure is that, just like me, YOU are not going to live for ever. As most of you seem a fair bit smarter than me I assume that you can/will mostly choose how you spend your limited lifetime. Choose wisely 'cause it's a once-off. I really do think that before any of you get much older you should take a VERY careful look at what I have been writing here. Have a look also at the common meanings for the word physics [samples included below]. If you don't then I think you are going to spend the rest of your lives chasing shadows, and end up a bunch of old men sitting on the cyberspace equivalent of a park bench, STILL chewing over the same old problem! Of course, if that is what you want then that's fine. But don't say you weren't warned! :-) the fact is, being conscious is inherently paradoxical, and there is no escape from the paradox, just like there is no escape from the universe - until you die that is. Your impressions, perceptions, feelings, intuitions, etc. of being here now [where you are of course] is what it is like to be the updating of the model of self in the world which you brain is constantly constructing all the time you are awake. When you sleep there are times when enough of the model gets evoked that you have a dream that you can remember. The paradox is that for most of the time we assume that this awareness - consciousness, call it what you like - IS the world, i.e. what it is like to be 'me' here now, whereas in fact it is only what it is like to be the model of 'me' here now. This does not mean that you don't exist; you do exist, and you must pay taxes in partial payment for the privilege, until you die that is. [I work for the Australian Taxation Office so I know about these things :-] There is however a lot more stuff going on in your brain than is actually explicitly involved in your consciousness of the moment, as far as I can see there are usually a couple or triple of very sophisticated tasks going on in parallel but swapping in and out of focussed attention as needs and priorities of the moment require. There are often also several other tasks simmering away like pots on the back burners of your stove. I believe it is the hippocampus which maintains the tasks in process through re-entrant signalling to the relevant cortical and other areas which embody the salient features of the constructs involved. Binding is achieved through re-entrant signalling of resonant wave forms such that each construct EXISTS as a dynamic logical entity able to maintain its own structure sufficiently to prevent certain other things happening and to invoke through association [or perhaps through reaction to patterns of inhibition, whatever] other constructs as necessary. Note the key word 'exists'. The energy is supplied through the work done as the neurons re-establish the resting potential of their cell membranes. And here I should point out that most of the posts on this list do not seem to talk much about structure, and yet it is the spatia-temporal structures of interacting cell assemblies which embody the patterns of information which make muscles move. Think about it! This is what you should be really concentrating on, because you and I are NOTHING if our muscles can't be made to move in exactly the right way and the right time. I know I have written 'I believe' up there a few times, but if you wish I can go hunting for you and find a bunch of references that back up what I am saying. I do not have access to pay-as-you-go academic journals, so I have been gleaning ideas and items of interest about this for the last couple of decades. I put it to you that if you seriously think I am wrong, then you have a moral duty to show me on the basis of clear and unambiguous empirical evidence where it is that I am wrong about this. Because otherwise it is just a matter of opinion and speculation, in which case mine is as good as anybody else's that I have seen on consciousness related lists and what I am proposing is not in contradiction to any good evidence that I have heard about. I think William of Occam would be more than happy with what I am putting forward. I hope no one is offended by this. Is they are, sorry! But time returns for no one and you do not have for ever, just all the time there is - for you. That is what entropy is about.
Re: The Meaning of [your] Life
Mark Peaty wrote: Bruno, Stathis, Brent, Peter,Brent, Tom, Hal and others, I have to be very impertinent here and try to draw your attention to something you are just not getting. There is NO ultimate answer to the meaning of life, the universe and everything except that IT IS, and you are here to take part in it and observe yourself and others doing so. Existence is the source of value, indeed it is the essence of value. I am not in the habit of putting myself forward, but here I believe the ideas are what count and I believe the issue is very important. No, problem - we're all human beings here. I mean at 55 yo I know I have already attained 'old fart' status for most people I meet. But one thing I know for sure is that, just like me, YOU are not going to live for ever. Bruno thinks he will :-) As most of you seem a fair bit smarter than me I assume that you can/will mostly choose how you spend your limited lifetime. Choose wisely 'cause it's a once-off. I really do think that before any of you get much older you should take a VERY careful look at what I have been writing here. Have a look also at the common meanings for the word physics [samples included below]. I don't need to read definitions of physics - I are one. :-) If you don't then I think you are going to spend the rest of your lives chasing shadows, and end up a bunch of old men sitting on the cyberspace equivalent of a park bench, STILL chewing over the same old problem! Of course, if that is what you want then that's fine. But don't say you weren't warned! :-) There's something to be said for chewing the metaphysical fat. But worry about yourself - I race motorcycles on the weekend. the fact is, being conscious is inherently paradoxical, and there is no escape from the paradox, just like there is no escape from the universe - until you die that is. Your impressions, perceptions, feelings, intuitions, etc. of being here now [where you are of course] is what it is like to be the updating of the model of self in the world which you brain is constantly constructing all the time you are awake. When you sleep there are times when enough of the model gets evoked that you have a dream that you can remember. The paradox is that for most of the time we assume that this awareness - consciousness, call it what you like - IS the world, i.e. what it is like to be 'me' here now, whereas in fact it is only what it is like to be the model of 'me' here now. This does not mean that you don't exist; you do exist, and you must pay taxes in partial payment for the privilege, until you die that is. [I work for the Australian Taxation Office so I know about these things :-] There is however a lot more stuff going on in your brain than is actually explicitly involved in your consciousness of the moment, as far as I can see there are usually a couple or triple of very sophisticated tasks going on in parallel but swapping in and out of focussed attention as needs and priorities of the moment require. There are often also several other tasks simmering away like pots on the back burners of your stove. I agree. Consciousness is a very small part of thinking - even of logical and mathematical thinking (c.f. Poincare' effect). I believe it is the hippocampus which maintains the tasks in process through re-entrant signalling to the relevant cortical and other areas which embody the salient features of the constructs involved. Binding is achieved through re-entrant signalling of resonant wave forms such that each construct EXISTS as a dynamic logical entity able to maintain its own structure sufficiently to prevent certain other things happening and to invoke through association [or perhaps through reaction to patterns of inhibition, whatever] other constructs as necessary. Note the key word 'exists'. The energy is supplied through the work done as the neurons re-establish the resting potential of their cell membranes. And here I should point out that most of the posts on this list do not seem to talk much about structure, and yet it is the spatia-temporal structures of interacting cell assemblies which embody the patterns of information which make muscles move. Think about it! This is what you should be really concentrating on, because you and I are NOTHING if our muscles can't be made to move in exactly the right way and the right time. Except it is obvious that it doesn't take that specific structure to make the muscles move - anything that sets off the appropriate efferent nerve will work. Do you agree that your brain could be replaced, say neuron by neuron, with electronic neurons and still move your muscles...and still maintain your consciousness? I know I have written 'I believe' up there a few times, but if you wish I can go hunting for you and find a bunch of references that back up what I am saying. I do not have access to pay-as-you-go academic journals, so I have been gleaning ideas and items of interest
