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The "Binding Phenomenon" - only apparent?
Hans Ricke
Wednesday, 10 October 2007 06:37 UTC
I started discussing this topic with Alfredo on PSYCHE, so maybe it is a good idea to start a thread about this here too.
When I first came upon this matter through Jonathan Edwards, I felt that is a good starting point for cognition science, because here we face one of the basic phenomena of consciousness. We all experience consciousness as if bound.
This led especially in Germany as far as I know to the view that y-synchrony is a strong candidate for a correlate to consciousness because it shows different consciousness-related parts of the brain working at the same time – synchronized.
I took the view for real first, but lately developed some doubt that indeed the phenomenon may be just apparent. That would lead to the idea that the different parts of conscious content only appear to be bound, when in real reality the happen at almost the same time. The would not be bound spacially nor if we look more closely even timingwise.
So audition could become conscious elsewhere than vision or thought.
So consciousness could very well not be bound. One of the lines of thought why I doubt doubt consciousness can at all be bound is timing issues.
There are obviously ideas that incoming signals are transformed via chemical intracellular processes. This is probably right, but chemical processes require time. Time that adds up from cell to cell that is involved in the whole process that e.g. starts in a retina cell that is hit by a ray of light. I do not know how well these timing issues are already cleared up by neuroscience, but my hypothesis is that, given that many cells are involved having chemical processes going on, time is to short between an incoming signal and when we become conscious of what we see.
This leads to the idea that there must be at least two ways how the body deals with incoming signals: 1. slow, involving chemical processes, many cells, deconstructing of incoming information, analyzing information, reconstructing information.
2. fast, not involving chemical processes, less cells, leaving incoming information as is.
The first way is a model for learning how to perceive, the second way is a model for primary perception and also immediate perception.
What I would be most grateful about would be information about what has been already found regarding the timing of sensory processes.
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Jonathan and Hans,
Phenomenal binding obviously cannot depend on synchrony alone. Proper binding depends on both temporal synchrony and selective location in 3D space.
If we take Jonathan’s example, the red must be located within the contours of the rose petal at the same time as the yellow is located within the contours of the stamen, and the vase is located on the surface of the table, which is located some distance in front of you in the space of a room with many other salient features. In your normal experience, all of these features (as well as your present recollections, musings, and feelings) must be coactive within their natural contours and locations in your phenomenal volumetric egocentric space. An important feature of the retinoid model is that it has the neuronal structure and dynamics to perform this kind of multi-featured global binding within your egocentric world.
Best,
Arnold
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I think I have to support Hans’s comment, Chris. Your post appears to have nothing whatever to do with mine. You appear to have missed the arguments raised entirely. It’s a bit like saying to someone who has just told you that there is no road across the hill ’ yes but I still want to drive along the road over the hill’. Intelligent debate needs some sort of connection.
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From the header page on this thread we find:
“We all experience consciousness as if bound.”
The article I posted covered a sense of trust derived from hormone dynamics of dendrites and reflected the traits of ‘flocking behaviour’ as it did of Cymatics – both of which you guys seem to be ignorant of. The sense of WHOLENESS, be it of a generic form as TRUST or a more particular form of “I” share the SAME SPACE – we can call it BONDING when we share SPACE with another/others and BINDING when we share time. these categories stem from self-referencing and as such are scale-free and so present in various forms across all levels of reality – this reflecting the Chaos game where ANY containment of noise, as that includes sensory systems and brains that manage such, will elicit spontaneous order through self-referencing and so out will pop blending (wholeness), bonding (share space), bounding (partness), and binding (share time).
We can also identify MIXING these categories to elicit particular sensations of consciousness (and so of encapsulation) and so span classes of consciousness. The notion of consciousness being ‘unbound’ fails totally to comprehend the development of complex neurology and the emergence of a sense of SELF and so of WHOLENESS from exposure of nature to nurture in the first few years of life.
What I wrote and the article I pasted conform to what is being discussed re the ‘binding problem’ and brings out the ENCAPSULATION of experiences to give us a particular, objectified sense.
IMHO if you guys cannot comprehend all of that then I suggest some more reading re neurosciences from both the hardware perspective (wiring) and the firmware perspective (customisations through chemistry).
cordially,
Chris.
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To make the point re consciousness and encapsulation – the chaos game covers all scales and brings out the need for containment to elicit order; anything ‘unbounded’ is considered to be noise and that covers any assertions of consciousness being unbounded.
That said, there is also hierarchy present where what is considered noise at level X-1 is considered order at X.
The hierarchic development of the neurology, with movement from basic integrations in the form of instincts/habits to refined differentiations of self, bring out the emergence of our singular natures from our particular/general natures where such natures cover our specialist skills as members of the species (and so genetic dispositions to generic classes of species members similar to such in other social species (e.g. ‘drones’ or ‘warriors’ or ‘alpha males/females’ etc))
From psychotherapy we have the recognition of well-defined conscious beings having highly differentiating mental states and so bring out the need for high levels of differentiating, high skills in distinction making, to be considered more than a ‘smart ape’. The level of precision required improves with LEARN ING such that the more symmetry-minded social being becomes increasingly asymmetry-minded (and so more prone to mediation rather than ‘mindless’ stimulus-response styles of thinking; there is a focus on engagement/re-engagement with the context)
From my work on meaning derivation the above correlates with the identified need for high level differentiation of categories before language can emerge in its primitive form as analogy-making (aka pattern-matching) – in other words development of consciousness as an agent of mediation requires precision in thinking and so high levels of differentiating.
The development of language brings out consciousness as an agent of mediation and the requirement for complexity in neural connectivity (enabled through distinction making). This focus on differentiating and so distinction making brings out properties of complexity/chaos that cover EMERGENCE, as is permissible in local individuals (be they persons or neurons) making local distinctions and the sum of all eliciting a general behaviour not locatable in any single individual – this is covered in texts of flocking behaviour and associated with cymatics (see wikipedia entry on such).
Tie all of this in with what I posted before re hormone dynamics and basic sensations of trust/distrust and you have meaning, INCLUDING THE SENSE OF SELF, from wholeness through encapsulation. Education can then refine consciousness into different states and context sensitivities and such is brought out in studies of infant development in the first two years or so of life. This development of SELF comes with high level social interactions and that cover issues of trust, (a) in others and (b) in oneself. These trust issues manifest in different persona categories and so different mental states in dealing with reality (different strategies that can become fixed if the context remains constant) and the paper I posted previously brings out the trust dynamic and its flux with socialisation as an infant. (this moves us into the realm of networks and so the development of ‘small world’ networks across all scales of development)
Given all of the above, and more, the strong indication is you cannot have ‘unbounded consciousness’; you are allowed to IMAGINE such but the reality of development of humans indicate more the reality of consciousness being bounded and such develops from relational dynamics applied to genetically-determined form. If we are NOT educated then the focus is on ‘smart apes’ and a bias to symmetric thinking. With education comes will differentiated consciousness and our SINGULAR and so UNIQUE natures as conscious beings.
Chris
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Dear Chris,
I cannot go much further in trying to explain to you how discussions are supposed to be held in a forum like this, which has a scientific background. That also means, we are using technical terms and “binding” is such a technical term. It is used in some variation, but basically we are referential to it and know what we are trying to address.
You do not seem to be interested in reading what may be needed to read to get what we are after and moreover you seem to think asking is not a good idea. You rather seem to think lecturing is what everybody wants from your side…
I do not want to discuss your ideas in this topic, only if they refer to what I see as the topic ( and it is my topic … )
So please try to get the point and refer to it. Stop promoting your ideas in inappropriate contexts.
Yours friendly
Hans -
Dear Arnold,
you wrote:“Phenomenal binding obviously cannot depend on synchrony alone.”
That is what some ( many? ) believe though. And why not? The question for me seems to be what is represented in synchrony. What kind and content of information is related to a specific synchrony. The information you are mentioning maybe represented, I see no reason why it cannot be.
I do not see much of a problem, contrary to Jo maybe, that visual binding may be represented in some way by synchrony.
I suspect though that the synchrony maybe related to other events than the conscious visual experience that happens simultaneously. That could be thoughts, emotional content. Our problem is, that we cannot decode the informational content of any synchrony, can we?I see a big problem for the binding in what maybe William James binding, because that would require a synchrony that lasts as long as we are awake at least, as long as we see consciously etc.
Yours friendly
Hans -
Hans, I know EXACTLY what you are trying to deal with and the fact you igore flocking behaviour across neurons and the associated synchronisaations (and hierarchy of such) shows the limitiations of your thinking – your current path will take you nowhere.
It is not me who needs to read more, it is you (and Jonathan for that matter since he obviously has no idea of the relationships of serial and parallel information processing in the brain)
The thinking I have seen seems to be stuck in the 19th/20th centuries.
Try these to get you moving into the 21st century:
Buzsaki, G., (2006)“Rhythms of the Brain” OUP
Scott-Kelso, J.A., & Engstrom, D.A.(2006)“The Complementary Nature” MITP
If you dont want to consider my ideas thats fine, go and consider their ideas because you guys are really struggling at the moment.
See ya.
Chris
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Hans,
Since synchrony refers exclusively to the co-occurrence of N events, and if phenomenal content has the essential property of N separate objects/features with a particular spatial relation among them, how can the temporal constraint of synchrony alone account for any particular phenomenal experience?
Best,
Arnold
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Dear Hans, dear Jo,
Jo asked:
“Many neuroscientist have suggested that synchrony of neuronal excitation might explain binding. But which sort of binding?”
To my knowledge Anne Treisman first has stamped the term „binding problem“ She distinguished seven types of binding:
1. Property binding (shape, color, and motion)
2. Part binding (segregetion of parts from a background and bound them together)
3. Range binding (signalling particular values on a dimension by ratio of activity in a few populations of neurons)
4. Hierarchical binding,( binding features of shape-defining to surface-defining properties that carry them)
5. Conditional binding, (interpretaion of one property depends on another)
6. Temporal binding (successive states of the same object must be integrated across temporal intervals, e.g. in real and apperent motion)
7. Location binding (objects are bound to their current locations)(Treisman, Anne. 1996. In: Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 6: 171-178)
I disagree to the necessity of different types of binding. In my opinion it´s a false question.
I assume that these problems probably can be solved by the proposed rule.
But this is better to discuss in my „rule“-forum.
Many regards,
Elisabeth -
[Forwarded message from Arnold Trehub]
Jonathan and Alfredo, Natural sensory binding requires both proper temporal synchrony and proper spatial registration of all sensory properties/patterns within an egocentric volumetric space during any phenomenal episode. So the red is within the contour of the rose petals, and the yellow is within the contour of the stamens, and the vase is on the table, and all are experienced in space some distance in front of you. This is one of the important functions of the retinoid system. Best, Arnold
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