Brain Physiology, Cognition and Consciousness group: topic
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Reflection & Resonance
Philip Benjamin
Wednesday, 24 June 2009 15:00 UTC
Suppose the mirror image of ‘me’ recognizes me, or is conscious!
Suppose? It does everything I do! Why reckon that it doesn’t think?
In a pan-psychic universe mirror images do think! If not, why not?
This reflection resonates ‘me’ warts, moles and all; incredulous?
More real is a bio dark-matter axion-like ‘Invisible Homo sapiens’
Of three different spin-axions akin to the ordinary fermions
With differential taxonomic distributions in plants, animals, humans
Dark Chemistries and differential taxonomic emission of bio-photons
Philip Benjamin
medinuclear@hotmail.com
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Graeme Smith Wrote:
“Humans are not however the only creative animals, in fact there have been many studies with different types of Omnivorus animals that have shown that they are creative solution finders.
… humans are creative in a wider number of media, if only because they are motivated to operate in a wider range of media".
Reply from Philip Benjamin
You have tried to minimize the significance of human/animal creativity differences with Igor Aleksanders Crow’s ability to use tools. Others cite the same capabilities of monkeys or dogs or even chicken. Of course parrots can talk. Honeybees and other worms (even termites)“know” architecture.
However, quantitative and qualitative differences between the sentient capabilities of different taxa are too vast to be condensed into a primitive tool-using proclivity. So much so, Harvard Philosophy Dept is puting out publications on “humaniqueness”. This is something which one cannot just put aside under the carpet. It has got be explained. Panpsychism will not do that. It simply reduces sentience to the lowest common denominator, accomplishing nothing.
As I have pointed out many times, there are other measurable physical factors which are significantly different by several orders of magnitude. Biophoton emission rate for example is TEN times more in humans than in plants. This cannot be explaned by any ‘known’ physical structures including DNA. Every one engaged in these studies, as far as I know, seems to look for some unknown, non-EM sources.
The twig of Late Prof Gould does not know that it is a twig, nor does the crow or the monkeys “know” they are “creative”. As for the parrots, are they indulging in their religious “glossolalia”! Definitely, not.
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Well religious whatever asside.
I have never claimed to be a proponent of panpsychism if you label me with that label do so at your own peril, (This last was not a threat)
We are back to the bio-photons which I have never seen demonstrated. Ok, I haven’t seen Aleksanders Crow demonstrated, but I have seen experiments with Gray Parrots, and squirrels on T.V.
I don’t know how we get from creativity to religion, it would seem to me that the two are separate issues, and While I have my own religion, it is not panpsychism as you suggest.
The trick I am trying to suggest, is not to assume, but to question. Your approach is to assume the need for a dark matter approach, my approach is to question what makes you think that humans are so different that you need dark photons to explain them. I have no doubt that there are photons being produced by the human body, especially in the Infra-red range, and all it takes is for us to have less body hair to act as insulation, and/or a greater body heat, and we will produce more photons than a plant if only because we are more active, and give off more heat. But obviously these aren’t what Bio-photons are?
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[Graeme Smith]
“Well religious whatever asside. I have never claimed to be a proponent of panpsychism if you label me with that label do so at your own peril, (This last was not a threat)”
[Philip Benjamin]
I have not seen anything ‘panpsychic’ from you either. But panpsychism is an inevitability, as long as the current ‘ordinary’ materialistic views prevail, especially if there are no taxonomic distinctions. In an ‘extrordinary’ materialistic perspective, that is not ‘inevitable’.
[Graeme Smith]
“We are back to the bio-photons which I have never seen demonstrated. Ok, I haven’t seen Aleksanders Crow demonstrated, but I have seen experiments with Gray Parrots, and squirrels on T.V… I have no doubt that there are photons being produced by the human body, especially in the Infra-red range, and all it takes is for us to have less body hair to act as insulation, and/or a greater body heat, and we will produce more photons than a plant if only because we are more active, and give off more heat. But obviously these aren’t what Bio-photons are?”
[Philip Benjamin]
There are truly thousands of publications including perhaps hundreds of books
and international conferences, seminars etc on biophotons. These are extremely low frequency (ELF)photons, too low to be easily visible by the naked eyes. Even the photomutiplier tubes and the entire experimental system has to be kept at subzero temperatures.Unfortunately as in the case of ‘consciousness’/psyche studies, a number of physicists involved in this were carried away by mystic attributions and speculations and there is a whole industry developed around such speculations in the form healing devices!! A better approach could have been to look for non-EM physical interractions as the source.
[Graeme Smith]
I don’t know how we get from creativity to religion, it would seem to me that the two are separate issues, and While I have my own religion, it is not panpsychism as you suggest.
[Philip Benjamin]
There are no religious parrots, or sqirrels, or crows or monkeys!
[Graeme Smith]
The trick I am trying to suggest, is not to assume, but to question. Your approach is to assume the need for a dark matter approach, my approach is to question what makes you think that humans are so different that you need dark photons to explain them.
[Philip Benjamin]
Creativity begins with procreation itself. A twig cannot produce or reproduce another twig. Even if it does, it will not ‘know’ that it does. It is built into sentience itself. I do not prefer the term consciousness, but that being in vogue now, there is a taxonomic ‘granularity’ of consciousness. And ’Granularity’is nothing unusual in Nature. It does not make a great deal of sense to assume that the development of consciousness did not follow “the graduality” of taxonomy. Gould’s idea of "punctuated equilibrium’ seems more
relevant in both cases. -
Philip says “I have not seen anything panpsychic from you either, but panpsychism is inevitable” speaking about standard physicalist doctrine.
I think that the inevitability of panpsychism is defrayed slightly by my model, which offers a slightly different slant on consciousness. The problem being that phenomenal demands have pulled physicalism away from the more pragmatic approaches to consciousness, and thus distorted them towards panpsychism and other similar errors.
If we don’t understand that consciousness is pragmatic and necessary we end up making a whole bunch of assumptions about it, which might be why panpsychism seems so reasonable.
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[Graeme Smith]
I think that the inevitability of panpsychism is defrayed slightly by my model, which offers a slightly different slant on consciousness.
[Philip Benjamin]
Your model consists of:
“The combination of the feedback from the buffer, and the experience of the meta-cognitive data, defines the experience of awareness. If automation fails a further mechanism is engaged that readjusts the parameters, or picks a different process in order to achieve the same goal. This is also reflected via a buffer in order to allow rewinding of second order control, and it includes a reflection of the Meta-cognitive signals from awareness and the experience of the meta-cognitive signals about awareness such as the feeling of self”.
How will this defray panpsychism? Are these mechanisms missing in plants and animals?
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Benjamin asks, “How will (my Model) defray panpsychism, are these characteristics missing in plants and animals?”
Well, while you are quoting directly from my work, that excerpt does not qualify as the whole model. The whole model requires the Memory Model from the previous thread. In essence it is a cognitive architecture based on the memory model, which is architecturally limited to higher vertebrates. I am still trying to discover the boundary point at which animals are considered not to have the machinery to achieve consciousness, but so far it looks to be somewhere around the time of the conversion from cold to warm blood.
In other words Mammals and birds might have an architecture capable of Consciousness, but Lizards, insects, plants, and quarks probably don’t.
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[Graeme Smith]
“Well, while you are quoting directly from my work, that excerpt does not qualify as the whole model. The whole model requires the Memory Model from the previous thread. In essence it is a cognitive architecture based on the memory model, which is architecturally limited to higher vertebrates. I am still trying to discover the boundary point at which animals are considered not to have the machinery to achieve consciousness, but so far it looks to be somewhere around the time of the conversion from cold to warm blood.
In other words Mammals and birds might have an architecture capable of Consciousness, but Lizards, insects, plants, and quarks probably don’t."
[Philip Benjamin]
What I note here in reply is applicable to every “consciousness” scheme based on “ordinary materialism” or rather “ordinary physicalism”, howsoever brilliantly, rightfully and even ACCURATELY cloaked in genuine neurological findings or standard quantum mechanical terms or whatever. This is one reason why I question the validity of the term “consciousness” for anything other than as an antonym for unconsciousness. As I have mentioned afore, William James the oft quoted Harvard Swedenborgian-physicician-psychologist-philosopher did not use this term. Historically he could not have used it,as all his major works appeared before Swami Vivekananda appeared on the American scene (in Chicago).[By the way, that was a sort of forced entry to the podium].
The archetecture you are referring to has no “physical” standing! Where in the brain or any part of the vertibrate anatomy you will locate it. How do you establish that this ‘archetecture’ is missing in the lower animals when you do not even know its whereabouts anywhere in the biosphere? Furthermore you have to come up with a “scheme” for the development of information in the biosphere apart from taxonomy. To conclude that “language” did it is not only begging the question, but jumping the gun. Protomental properties become a ncessaity for all fundamental particles in any ordinary physicalist (materialistic)scheme.
Noetics
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Well, you don’t pull your punches.
Lets get back to what my Model IS and away from what you think all models ARE.
My Model is an interpretation of how memory might work, that limits where consciousness can be achieved. In essence you have to have certain underlying architectural elements in order to achieve consciousness. The reason I believe that we can determine where consciousness is blocked, is because I believe we can model different animal brain structures and see where critical components are missing. For instance the limbic evaluation system, is pretty well limited to mammals, but this is not enough in and of itself to limit consciousness.
On the other hand, the Prefrontal Cortex of the rat, is mostly allocortical tissue, leaving little room for advanced types of top-down attention.
Since the complexity of the Top-down attention is critical in my model, we might want to consider whether the rats brain is sophisticated enough in this area to achieve consciousness. This is the type of things that we can do without actually labelling a particular area of the brain as the NCC of consciousness.
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[Graeme Smith]
My Model is an interpretation of how memory might work, that limits where consciousness can be achieved. In essence you have to have certain underlying architectural elements in order to achieve consciousness. … we can model different animal brain structures and see where critical components are missing. For instance the limbic evaluation system, is pretty well limited to mammals, but this is not enough in and of itself to limit consciousness.
On the other hand, the Prefrontal Cortex of the rat, is mostly allocortical tissue, leaving little room for advanced types of top-down attention.
Since the complexity of the Top-down attention is critical in my model, we might want to consider whether the rats brain is sophisticated enough in this area to achieve consciousness. This is the type of things that we can do without actually labelling a particular area of the brain as the NCC of consciousness.
[Philip Benjamin]
This is essentially the Australian (1950s), Identity Theory. Various mental phenomena are identical with certain cerebral or neuro-physiological states and/or processes-‘brain process theory’ and ‘central state materialism’etc. This is “ordinary” materialism/pysicalism. These folks considered identity as contingent on the given situation, but you seem to claim that they are necessarily built in ‘architecture’. So either you have an infinite types of architecture to correlate all types of pain, pleasure, thought, emotion, etc. Or you have an everchanging architecture to correspond/identify with any given quale at any given time. Which one is it?
Since I have the foggiest idea of what actually is meant by “Consciousness” (for me it is only the opposite of unconsciousness, nothing more), it is difficult to relate it with memory faculties. If ’consciousness’is something else- as the Atman/Brahman of Sanskrit or the spirit/soul (breath/wind) of Greek and Hebrew it must be defined in English terms or some other language that all are proficient in. ‘Consciousness’ definitely is not that term.
If the origins of physical phenomena such as ELF biophotons, especially taxonomic dependence of their rates of emission, can be understood or explained, that will offer a far better way of understanding the various aspects of ‘sentience’ than the ‘memory’ route. Because, even computers have “memory”- seems much better than human- but they do not have the ‘atman/brahman-spirit/soul’ equivalent of consciousness.
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So at heart you really ARE a dualist, believing the atman/brahmin spirit/soul and just trying to present it using biophotons and dark matter. AHA!
No this is not the Australian Identity Theory per se.
I don’t need an infinite set of options for individuality, what I need is the ability to switch between parallel modules or processes and progress data through a tree of possible processing steps, to arrive at the best processing solution for a specific situation, and in my case the model is self-correcting because it is expected that it will make mistakes, and it is actually the self-correction mechanisms that most require the presence of consciousness.
The problem with an Identity Theory, is that it forces you to find systems that equal conscious states. In this theory, Conscious states are often illusions perpetrated to simplify control, and as a result there is no simple equivalent brain state that is simple enough to match the illusion.
I defy you to find the NCC of the mechanism that pastes information over the retinal fovea blindspot. It isn’t filled in, so much as ignored when dealing with the information from the retina. Yet there is no doubt that we do not “See” the blind spot when we are aware of our vision.
In many other ways the illusion of simplicity in the brain, does not match the reality of the processes needed to achieve the effects. If we step away from a strict representational regimen, we can see that it is counterproductive to attempt to base our analysis on the illusion instead of the reality.
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