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• 11

  Philip Benjamin

  02 July 2009 | 14:11

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  Graeme Smith wrote: “Ok, Philip, first of all, is this on topic for this thread? I think that memory questions would be better on the Memory thread, and Reflection questions on the Reflection thread”.

  I hit the “REPLY” button when an empty page shows up. ‘Emptiness’ suggested reply to everybody or anybody. If there is any device which come close to a perfect INTEGRATION mechanism, it is the brain- human or animal. Differentiation is one thing, but compartmentalization of any one process is altogether different. You are not suggesting that there is one particular cell or groups of cells where memory occurs and in another cell or confifiguration of cells reflection occurs and never the two have anything to do with each other? Whether it be memory or reflection, how can there be any ‘constancy’ or ‘consistency’ in the chaotic flux of all matter at the fundamental level, the atomic level and the molecular level. The basic constituents of every molecule in every cell is constantly changing- some every second or less, some every minute, some every day or every month or every year or every seven years!! Furthermore, all that you are referring to apply equally to all brains- animals or humans- because all these neural parts your are alluding to are all of the same size, shape and substance- more or less. So you have no choice but to assume that your evolutionary mechanism for the ‘material’ (I mean ORDINARY MATERIAL) and the "informational’ pathways are altogether different. So, some ‘transitional species’ will be richer in ‘animal’ information and some of the SAME transitional species will be richer in ‘human’ information, unless you put the additional deterministic constraint that the two ‘pathways’ proceeded simultaneously and at the same rate.

  Why these issues are not taken into consideration? Be it the tweedledum of memory or or the tweedledee of reflection!!

  Philip Benjamin

• 12

  Graeme Smith

  03 July 2009 | 01:39

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  Well on second thought, it is your thread, so if you want to confuse it by posting off topic, then go ahead.

  You ask whether there are some neurons that are memory neurons and some neurons that are reflection neurons. Well, reflection is a sort of memory, in that it is a memory of what happened a millisecond or two ago, so actually what you are asking is, is there a type of memory that is specialized for reflection? I would have to say, yes, but we haven’t found it yet. Part of the problem is that we don’t know exactly how the memory works, so even if we knew every memory cell in the brain, we still might not be able to point to one and say that is a reflection memory cell.

  As to consistency in the quantum flux, I think that there is a type of flux, where energy balances entropy, and that this type of flux represents a state of Equilibrium similar to the equilibrium states in Newtonian Mechanics. Because this is a natural equilibrium at the Quantum Dynamics level, the local systems tend to move towards this state, like it was some sort of strange attractor. So while details change at the lower quantum level, things seem to stay the same at the attractor level.

  Actually no, neurons are not all the same size and shape. There are gigantic neurons and microscopic neurons, a good example is the Betz Neuron which is significantly larger than the norm. The illusion of same size and shape is created by the homogeneous nature of Neural Networks which is a PDP adaptation for uniform processing loads, not a natural model for Natural Neural networks.

  I wonder what you mean by informational pathways. Most information in the brain is distributed by fibers, and fiber bundles that are part of the neurons. Why do you assume that we need something more? Recently a group of international scientists used the DSI method to map significant connections in the brain, these connections are detectable because the nature of the way that water diffuses throughout the tissues, can be measured and is somehow less in the vicinity of nervous fibers.

• 13

  Philip Benjamin

  03 July 2009 | 15:26

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  I see only one “REPLY TO THIS POST” which I clicked and got this page. If it does not come as adirect reply to your post, let me know how. I am new to this forum.

  Graeme Smith wrote:

  “Well on second thought, it is your thread, so if you want to confuse it by posting off topic, then go ahead.

  … Well, reflection is a sort of memory, in that it is a memory of what happened a millisecond or two ago, so actually what you are asking is, is there a type of memory that is specialized for reflection? I would have to say, yes, but we haven’t found it yet. Part of the problem is that we don’t know exactly how the memory works, so even if we knew every memory cell in the brain, we still might not be able to point to one and say that is a reflection memory cell.

  As to consistency in the quantum flux, I think that there is a type of flux, where energy balances entropy, and that this type of flux represents a state of Equilibrium similar to the equilibrium states in Newtonian Mechanics. Because this is a natural equilibrium at the Quantum Dynamics level, the local systems tend to move towards this state, like it was some sort of strange attractor. So while details change at the lower quantum level, things seem to stay the same at the attractor level.

  Actually no, neurons are not all the same size and shape. There are gigantic neurons and microscopic neurons, a good example is the Betz Neuron which is significantly larger than the norm. The illusion of same size and shape is created by the homogeneous nature of Neural Networks which is a PDP adaptation for uniform processing loads, not a natural model for Natural Neural networks.

  I wonder what you mean by informational pathways. Most information in the brain is distributed by fibers, and fiber bundles that are part of the neurons. Why do you assume that we need something more? Recently a group of international scientists used the DSI method to map significant connections in the brain, these connections are detectable because the nature of the way that water diffuses throughout the tissues, can be measured and is somehow less in the vicinity of nervous fibers".

  Reply from Philip Benjamin:

  Perhaps I did not make my points clear.

  All these descriptions and explanations which you are citing are EQUALLY applicable to animal and human brains including the diversity of the size, shape and substance of the cells. But suddenly at some stage of development of life on planet earth, the paths of ‘mental’ or ‘consciousness’ development
  diverged while the ‘somatic’ developments converged or remain static with some kind of ‘equilibrium’ you are referring to. Is that what you are implying?

  The ‘quantum equilibrium’ you are alluding to is an equilbrium of constantly changing particles. Every time you cross the ‘same’ flowing river, it is a ‘new’ river with the same ‘equilibrium’! The specific qualities you attribute to specific particles of the river have flowed down stream far away by the time you returned to cross that river again? Unlike the river, the brain and body particles are gone into practical oblivion for ever!

  How can ‘mind’ maintain any equilbrium with constantly vanishing constituents of its ‘correlAtes’?

• 14

  Graeme Smith

  04 July 2009 | 03:02

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  Philip said “If it does not post next to your posting let me know…” or something like that, Actually it works fine there may be two buttons but only one function, each time you push the button it puts the new posting on the bottom of the list. So that is exactly how you do it.

  No actually we are talking on different levels. The neurons and such, are used to build an architecture, called a cognitive architecture, that is similar for humans and animals. It is made from chemicals that are fairly stable, and so the structures those chemicals build are fairly stable, even though at the QM level there is flux. So when I talk about the cognitive architecture, I don’t have to care about the flux, the effects of the flux have been damped out at the level of physics that I need to worry about.

  Think of it this way, your river analogy might suffice to explain this. Every split second every water molecule in the river is vibrating. At a lower level things are madly spinning around and there is only a statistical measurement for where things are. Now the water is flowing downhill and each molecule passes a place in the river over a period of time as it flows past.
  The contents of the river are constantly changing, but the river itself changes much more slowly. It sometimes takes centuries for the river to dig itself a deeper channel.

  When you claim that the signals disappear due to the flux of the QM level, you are saying that the river disappears just because the water is flowing, It is the same problem. Yes it is not the same water in the river, but that doesn’t make the river disappear. The real trick is to understand how dynamic stability happens. Once you understand that, then you will quit expecting QM to make the signals disappear.

  Now lets deal with the Vaunted Difference between Man and Beast. You seem to be sure that there is a difference between “Conscious” stuff and Somatic Stuff. And it is natural to assume that the difference might be Dark Matter.
  What I am saying is something more akin to Occams Razor, that Dark Matter is not required to explain this difference that mostly it is an illusion caused by what might be a very subtle change in the Cognitive Architecture between man and beast. Now I admit that we haven’t found this difference yet, but part of the reason why, is that we have been using the wrong tools, and asking the wrong questions. Until we know how man and beast are similar, and how the general cognitive architecture works, we cannot point to a location where they are different and say anything more than there is a difference here that we don’t understand. We can speculate all we want of course, and it’s kind of fun, but we should realize that speculation on its own doesn’t get us anywhere closer to understanding the big questions.

  So the brain doesn’t have to deal with constantly vanishing correlates, it has to deal with dynamic stabilities that have evolved into mechanisms that are stable and predictable and statistically consistent. The flux may be different, but the correlates stay the same.

• 15

  Philip Benjamin

  06 July 2009 | 14:26

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  Graeme Smith wrote:

  “No actually we are talking on different levels. The neurons and such, are used to build an architecture, called a cognitive architecture, that is similar for humans and animals. It is made from chemicals that are fairly stable, and so the structures those chemicals build are fairly stable, even though at the QM level there is flux. So when I talk about the cognitive architecture, I don’t have to care about the flux, the effects of the flux have been damped out at the level of physics that I need to worry about.

  Think of it this way, your river analogy might suffice to explain this…"

  Reply from Philip Benjamin:

  We indeed are talking not only on different levels, but on antithetical premises. When you “damp out” the physical level.You have something non-physical which none of the pundits of what they misspeak as “consciousness” can define. That is what is usually known as “metaphysics” or “mysticism”. That is too boring for any meanigful musings or discussions.

  The river analogy applies only to particles, not to what you consider as “consciousness”. [For me, consciousness in Queen’s English is simply the antonym of unconsciousness. Period". If you want to think of the nonphysical you have in your mind in terms of Eastern or Greek Mysticism, then you better call it waht they called it- atman,spirit, soul etc. I have no need for any of these terms. Mind, cognition, senses, thinking/feeling/acting, emotions, will, etc are an integrated whole of a non-EM, non-entropic, nonetheless PHYSICAL WHOLE]. The river has no ‘mind’, even for the panpsychist at least not anything even remotely close to human mind!! In the human body/brain there is besides everything else possible, ‘information’. Eencrypted? Encoded?
  Information is not floating around in a vacuum. If the electrons for example are the carriers of these informations, they are being constantly replaced by all kinds of processes including “deaths”, by ‘brand fresh’ electrons some within seconds, some in minutes or hours or days or weeks or years. Then your ‘mystical’ or quasi-physical system must some how transmit these information tothe ‘fresh’ electrons. It is not only electrons, but the whole gamut of fundamental particles are being constantly replaced in living cells.

  Moreover you are completely skipping the animal human differences as simply a problem of evolution, without any attention whatsoever to ‘separate’ pathways altogether for ‘information’ in animals and humans. ‘Information’ should not be misunderstood in terms of what you imagine as ‘consciousness’.

  By the way did William James one of the patron saints of the modern ‘consciousness studies’ ever use the term “consciousness”?

  Philip Benjamin

• 17

  Graeme Smith

  06 July 2009 | 20:32

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  Ok, first of all I am not “Damping out the Physical Level”, I am however explaining it in an antithetical (sp?) way, which might be because I disagree with the need for the gee whiz pseudo-science that such honest scientific questions as the existence of Dark Matter generate when they are misunderstood.

  One of the problems is that we have here two scientific disciplines that are both likely to be misunderstood, and a speculative hypothesis that links them.
  My approach is to say that we can explain things in terms of systems based on biochemicals and don’t need dark matter to solve the problems.

  Your approach is to suggest that somehow the signals in the brain disappear, which I have heard no evidence to support, and that therefore Dark matter must be the answer to where they go.

  So how are the signals in the body transferred? You say they must be transferred on electrons. I say that actually they are transferred with Ions which are more stable than electrons, but even if they were transferred with electrons as the memories in a computer are, there is no reason to assume that they would disappear, or that if they did, a mechanism would not have evolved to make them stabilize for longer periods.

  In a computer we store the electrons in a device called a capacitor, so that it doesn’t matter if one or two electrons are unstable, the capacitor remains charged for a specific period of time. Believe it or not, the Cell that we call a neuron, has a highly capacitative membrane, so it doesn’t matter if one or two ions go missing, the charge will remain within the cell until the cell membrane is depolarized, or the charge leaks away across the membrane eventually.

  In other words despite the dynamics of electrons, capacitors work fine, and so do neurons.

  Now don’t get me wrong, it is not that I am adverse to dark matter, as I have said I believe in dark energy, and part of dark energy is the need to deal with fields that react with matter. I don’t know how to get from there to actual dark matter, but I can agree that it is possible for a system of such fields to evolve, and therefore for there to be a possible companion “Body” in dark something or other that is part of the human body, but I tend to think that we observe the effect of that body despite its dark nature and gloss over it because it doesn’t fit our calculations. I don’t think that we need to posit a dark human.

  So I think that we agree that there is no need for a “Spirit”. I am just a bit of a spoil-sport in saying that I don’t think we need a dark-human either.

  I guess, what I am saying is that because the information is stored in the quantity of ions in the nerve (until it is changed to a quantity of ion channels, and then later into fibrils etc.) The loss of a few electrons is absorbed by the ions (in bulk), which then capture the new electrons as they come into being, and so, remain dynamically stable. In other words while at the quantum level electrons are going out of existence and coming into existence, when we have a pool of ions, the ions remain fairly stable because the loss of an electron in one location is balanced by the arrival of a new electron in another location. So yes the dynamics at the electron level are damped out, but that does not mean that everything stops, the constant jockeying for position at the quantum level is turned into heat, and that heat, drives physical processes because it is a form of energy.

  By the way that is a good question about William James, I think he did, but don’t quote me because I never read his book written in the 1800’s or even a modern copy of it, so I have to take others quotes as gospel. I have heard it quoted in one place that Consciousness was the process of being aware of awareness, a view I wholeheartedly endorse. In fact my Cognitive Architecture works on just that assumption.

• 18

  Philip Benjamin

  07 July 2009 | 15:19

  [ Permalink ]

  Graeme Smith Wrote:

  I guess, what I am saying is that because the information is stored in the quantity of ions in the nerve (until it is changed to a quantity of ion channels, and then later into fibrils etc.) The loss of a few electrons is absorbed by the ions (in bulk), which then capture the new electrons as they come into being, and so, remain dynamically stable…………..

  Reply from Philip Benjamin:

  It is not “some” electrons which are lost- the entire “CREW” is REPLACED and constantly being REPLACED with zero information on any one of them. The IQ of Mother Nature is practically zero. Ions also under go the same replacements. They are new ions, new electrons. These bio-ions cannot exist or function without the cellular electrons (and the other fermions). The particles you say are storing information are ALL- meaning ALL- in constant flux and constant ‘Replacement’ schedule!! It is impossible to have any ordered or coherent information anywhere in the perennial cellular chaos of replacements, regenerations, deaths and decays.

  Graeme Smith Wrote:

  “By the way that is a good question about William James, I think he did, but don’t quote me because I never read his book written in the 1800’s or even a modern copy of it, so I have to take others quotes as gospel. I have heard it quoted in one place that Consciousness was the process of being aware of awareness, a view I wholeheartedly endorse. In fact my Cognitive Architecture works on just that assumption”.

  Reply from Philip Benjamin

  From a historical point of view William James could not have used the term “Consciousness”. As far as being " aware of awareness" that is simply called “Self-awareness”, in uncorrupted Queen’s English, which is not the antonym of ‘unconsciousness’.

  “Defining Consciousness” is the deafening theme of this forum also! None has or can do it. You “see” (EM perception) energy and then you try to define what you “see”. You “see”, “hear” gravity and then stay away from a ‘falling apple’. You do not and cannot EM-tool “consciousness” ( a terrible misnomer to begin with).

  In any other context or field such works will be recognized as FRAUD and dealt with by a Magistrate not scientist!!! The “Derivative” pyramid FRAUD for example, because no Economist has and can define it or untangle it yet. The Bankers had to call the NASA folks to untangle it!! Perhaps it is time for the Jurisprudence to step into ‘consciousness’ field.

  Philip Benjamin

• 19

  Philip Benjamin

  07 July 2009 | 15:34

  [ Permalink ]

  Graeme Smith Wrote:
  “Your approach is to suggest that somehow the signals in the brain disappear, which I have heard no evidence to support, and that therefore Dark matter must be the answer to where they go.”

  Reply from Philip Benjamin:
  1. Signals diissapear?
  2. Dark Matter is the answer?

  I have double checked my “Replies to your Memory and Reflections”. None of these, I could find there. In my “Reflection and Resonance” I have kind of allegorized “mirror immage” prompted by this forum comments on ’mirror" consciousness.

  You have not clarified yet why, while all what you cliam are true for animals and humans alike, no animal has ever come any close to a ‘human mind’? To declare simplistically that it is evolutionary magic is not only begging the question but introducing two different pathways of evolution, one for taxonomy and the other for information, with no justification whatsoever.

  Philip Benjamin

• 20

  Alejandro Correa

  07 July 2009 | 21:29

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  In relation at the black holes and the dark matter, I really stopped to think, now that they have discovered new black holes, they could be the link to the response of the image of the mirror, due to the high luminosity in different energy from different emission spectra. It is likely that if one day reach the edge of the hole: it has reflected the fate of the universe even as it is could be determined the exact speed and expansion of the universe, thanks to the mirror image produced by the average mass of black hole .¡It is probable, or no!.

• 21

  Graeme Smith

  08 July 2009 | 04:50

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  Benjamin said “It’s not one electron that is replaced it is the whole crew of them that is replaced” To which, I have to say, SO WHAT? If the arrangement survives the replacement, if the river survives water flowing down hill, we don’t expect the river to dry up because one water molecule or two evaporates instead of flowing downstream, and in just such a way, we don’t need to worry if the electrons stay the same or are replaced, as long as the capacitor stays charged, or the cell has an Action Potential.

  It is YOU that insists that information is carried on the electons, not me. I don’t see anywhere in my work a reference to electron spin, except here where it is my intention to refute the idea that it has any basis on information storage in the brain. I am quite happy to have information carried in the form of chemical changes in the cell, in fact the communication between cells is not electrical, it is chemical, it just has the effect of adjusting the electrical charge and thus the electrical potential (read that voltage) of the cell. A single electron is insignificant to the operation of the brain.

  As for two different pathways for Evolution, I think I understand your misapprehension, some how you have bought the idea that evolution is linear.
  Sorry to burst your bubble, but Evolution is anything but linear, all those time-lines showing development do is confuse people. The fact is that evolution as any biologist can tell you is actually a tree, where branches crop up at any time, going in different directions. The fact is that humans are the only surviving member on the homo-branch. We don’t know if the other homo-species were high-level conscious or not, but we can see that the other branches that branched off earlier on our evolutionary branch, have not resulted in high-level consciousness at least in the surviving species in each branch. Our closest neighbor which might be either a chimpanzee or a macaque monkey depending on who describes them has only about 99% the same DNA as humans do. Quite a lot can happen in 1% DNA.

  You keep going on about the difference between humans and animals as if it is some quantizable entity. the fact is, except for the fact that we know we don’t have quite the same DNA, and there is a difference in the way that the brain is built, the way the neurons are built, and so on, we don’t know what the difference is. Part of what I am doing by attempting to define an animal model of consciousness, is to give us something to compare higher order consciousness against, so we can clearly see the gap. So far there is little except a small increase in complexity and one assumes sophistication to find.

  As for fraud, well I wouldn’t paint it quite so criminal, but I would say that much of the science I have seen done around consciousness is valid only up to a point and then seems to take liberties. As I have said there are over 40 definitions of consciousness and yours and mine are not going to get any more notice than the other 40. What we really need is to prioritize, and some of that is starting to happen.

  On the idea of reflective black holes, if you want your reflection to be in X-Rays then it is detectable as chernekov radiation, most people agree that the event horizons of the black hole are the limit to light returning from it, the only light that is visible is the energy of the mass surrounding it as it reaches the speed of light falling into the star. It’s a little hard to see a reflection without light waves but, you are talking Black-Light?

  Nice try?

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