From: Scott Roberts (jse885@earthlink.net)
Date: Sat Sep 18 2004 - 17:18:32 BST
Mel,
>
> mel:
> Other way around...intellect arises as a more reflexive
> or self-referetial degree of modeling to "physical" modeling.
> Mammals and birds can model the physical, but I would
> not put them at the level of intellect, just yet.
My guess is that the individual animal does not model the physical, rather
it is done for them by what we call instinct. So the bigger picture, for
example as conjectured by Rupert Sheldrake's morphogenetic forms, is
intellect: the animal perceives a physical picture, and instinct, using its
model, tells the animal what to do, but how the whole pattern plays out
will be fed back to instinct to improve its model, for the individual
animal (hence it can learn) and for the species (hence it can evolve).
>
> We also seem to vary on our assumtion of what language is,
> although it seems we both see many types of technology
> for information processing or the conveyence of meaning.
One has language when one has Peirce's thirdness: a semiotic event involves
three nodes: the manifested sign, that which the sign refers to, and an
interpretant, as he calls it: that which connects the sign to its referent.
You cannot make a thirdness out of seconds (two things colliding, for
example). Therefore, since there is thirdness, there must have always been
thirdness (unless one invokes God to create it out of nothing).
> mel:
> It's just that runaway intellection is a bit like
> runaway cellphone use or conversational
> chatter, it gets in the way of the movie.
> Philosophy is one brand of cellphone.
On the contrary, philosophy, like science and meditation, is attempting to
control intellect, so that it does not run away. As intellectuals, we are
all beginners. The intellectual level is new, only two and a half millenia
old. Occasionally we get glimpses of how it is supposed to be, and we call
those glimpses genius, but for most of us, there is a lot of disciplining
ahead.
> [Scott:]I think it is a
> > multi-dimensional metronome, to keep all our senses, feelings, and
> physical
> > actions in spatio-temporal synch. Modelling, symbolic manipulation,
> holding
> > memories, etc. are not things that neurons can do, no matter how many
> there
> > are, or how well-connected. But I'm just speculating.
> >
>
> mel: I'm not sure the two notions are any more at odds than
> two hairs on the same head. You've included also the house
> keeping portions of the CNS, where I was concentrating on
> the more consciuously mind oriented functions.
They are quite different, since I do not consider the "more consciously
mind-oriented functions", like modelling, I presume, to be CNS functions.
See below.
>
> As to what the neurons can do...well a length of copper
> and a piece of glass can't connect two people on either
> side of the Anglo-American pond either...oh, wait, that's
> what most of the internet is. Each enabling layer of learning,
> of modeling, of ASSOCIATIONAL mapping, as wave front
> variability and transforms (think Fourrier) with variable strength
> and pattern give immense data spaces for the manipulation
> of meaning. Billions of neurons multiplied in combined
> factorial and other "leveraged series" create huge numbers
> of differing and relatable patterns. All in the squishy bone
> bowl of noodles. Yum! ...some fava beans and Chianti
No. No matter how complex a set of interconnections, one cannot, from that
alone, get awareness. It also requires violating the rules of space and
time. Unless that happens, there is nothing that can be aware of anything
larger than itself, or one blip from something else (in fact, one cannot
even get that, since the single thing (e.g., an electron) needs a way to
combine the state of not receiving the blip with the state of receiving the
blip). So if the brain is considered to be all and only its neurons and
synapses, and if one limits oneself to their spatio-temporal activity, one
cannot get associations, or mappings, or anything. You can get all sorts of
patterns, but you cannot get awareness of those patterns. Now the brain is
biological, so there could well be some goings-on that allows the violation
of spacetime rules, but once admit that, then there is no reason to assume
any emergence doctrine.
Ooh. I haven't had fava beans in years, and now I want some.
- Scott
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