In terms of the distinction between the brain as a physical object

[theunify]

Originally posted in mathematics in response to AntonioLao

In terms of the distinction between the brain as a physical object and the mind as an integration of thoughts and experiences, then we could ask - which knows of the existence of which?

The mind witnesses physical experiences and learns of those properties. Those learned properties are conceptual, geometric and mathematical but the information arises from qualities of perceptions (colors, sounds, textures) that I believe corelate with what you're referring to as natural.

So I'd say the brain (as most any other form of knowledge of experiences) is an integration (mathematical/geometric/logical form) of perceptual information presented in the form of (what I believe are) fundamental qualia of experience (though even the concept of a mind could be considered the same).

I similarly think the mind itself arises from or exists within a space of a more fundamental form of logic (potentially very simple, though highly extensible) which maybe can't be represented precisely by thoughts constructed to represent it - whatever the limits of conception or comprehensible experience are would seem to be the same limits as that of the mind, but the "dimensions" that the mind works with are in terms of "natural" qualities of experience. Another consideration is that in many ways there should be no real conceptual limit to the mind because any conception that there is such a limit would still appear to be something present within the mind. That seems to be a recurring theme I've found - with a bit of creativity there seems to always be someway to "go around" some apparent obstacle, even if it's in a highly abstract manner. The limits seem to be more realistically in terms of efficiency (which imples some metric/value to measure it by) in time ... given enough time there may not be any (detectable) limit to the complexity of what the mind could conceive of (what would be the "overmind" that could conceive of what limits a mind possessed?)

To simplify it, I think the logical/mathematical framework is individually selected by every "fundamental thing" (including oneself) and that all these are shared perceptions/qualia that are seen as nature (every thing is potentially a property of experience to everything else) and the capability for that is the common property defining the universe (but again, there would appear to be no way to actually reference anything outside ones own universe so I'm simply abstracting to areas of existence that would just be based upon faith. For example, we could discuss the existence of the RS-232 protocol for communication but we're using the internet and so the information is formatted in TCP/IP instead and so in many ways it doesn't matter what format is believed to have been used "exteriorly", the information is always interpreted within whatever context the receiving end is using (and that might be that the reception was simply of incoherent chaotic "junk", even if it seemed perfectly clear on a transmitting side - the natural symbol conveyable by a "thing" would appear to be simply itself, whether or not its visible or in what context it exists would appear to be determined by the "receiving" end. Fundamentally time/change appears to be something that can't be imposed externally - whatever "clock" (which could be a highly chaotic and multidimensional or even infinitely diverse reference) something uses would be self selected, but for any form of communication to exist some common unit would still appear required and that's what I have to assume would be the equivalent of the "God particle" (or property) for a universe, even if it controls nothing directly but simply enables everything else to be integrated ... on the other hand, there could be multiple such "God particles" with qualities specific to whatever "things" happen to possess it as a common attribute ... once again it would appear that the determination of such would remain something self determined even if that was unknown/uncontrolled/fated (for example, someone could switch to using an RS-232 communication format instead, but then the more fundamental "protocol" would then be the physical ability to interact and determine which such protocol was used ... it doesn't appear to matter what's done - every controlled decision or action creates a lasting relationship that remains traceable back to the same drive and system of reference and I assume "trying" to do nothing doesn't alter that either. That's a one way street when it comes to entropy and has a dead end, though that can be extended (potentially very significantly) by constructing new contexts (multiple things become abstractly treated as a single object), but that's still likely finite ... in the end, it appears there remains the "next thing" and how that works is beyond my understanding, though it's interesting to consider that such would not appear to be localizable within any specific prior space - it would likely appear both pervasively present as well as detached and unrelated to properties of a previous space, though I assume that associations with a prior space could then place this within the context of being similar to new properties/dimensions/attributes over time and there's potentially a large extension to the controllable aspects of how the evolution of its relationships to previous spaces occurs. In a sense such events appear to occur quite often though as new concepts, emotions or other forms of experience occur, but then again these could be partly similar to constructing new abstractions or contexts from previously experienced qualities. If you filled up a space completely with all possible contexts, it would appear any addition would be entirely uncontrolled and not localizable ... it seems an intermediate form of growth with fewer jarring events could be better though - you trade off some exposure to additional unknowns in order to retain a space of self determined contexts for them so you never have precise control, but you also never lose control completely and there's always a large space of possibilities to work with and asymmetry to "navigate" by, but that takes some creativity and self control. It's also interesting to consider the possibility of some forms of growth that make some short term tradeoffs for potentially the best of most every aspect of this ... but it seems a rather complex concept that might require a lot of attention and "freestyling" and in that respect might be unstable with a finite attention span . In fact that could resemble some personal relationships? )

Hopefully all those run on thoughts didn't put anyone to sleep, and in some aspects it appears counterproductive to attempt to detail some of these ideas, but on the other hand there's a point where the picture's large enough and it's best to just work with what's at hand and leave other things for another day.

[theunify]

Originally posted in mathematics in response to AntonioLao

SteveA,

I commend you for making such a thread worthy post and hope to contribute much to this thread in hopes that whatever sacrafice is made it will not be for lack of discussion on this topic. I find the link between machine mind and human mind is important to talk about and more importantly we are not even sure what our minds are or what a machine thinks, so we are really going to have a hard time pinning down the start to this thread.

~theunify

[SteveA]

A comment I made before that shows the difficulty of assuming that the brain=mind would be to consider looking at something like an MRI http://videos.howstuffworks.com/tlc/...-mri-video.htm and assuming more than a surface representation of the mind is presented as the brain.

I'll point out some of the problems:

1) The brain, at least with conventional views of physics, should exist in a stationary/current form that represents the cumulative influences over time that formed it.

Memories of the past, by conventional theories, would be present as static formations in the brain when monitored.

But there should be no physical record of past states of the brain, within the brain and the brain should have no ability to determine whether or not it's been altered. For example, if someone sees a bird fly by and this is recorded as some alteration made to the brain, the brain as an encapsulated physical entity should have no matter to remember that it had been in a state before seeing the bird. It should simply be continually in a present state with no true record of the past and no true form of memory.

Now we could even assume that's true and that memories of events do not represent a true record of changes made to the brain or this learned, but instead similar to dreaming of a past.

But then lets apply that logic to someone attempting to determine the properties of some external brain or watching an MRI of their own. In that case, as changes in the external brain are witnessed, remember and analyzed these are once again not true memories or experiences of what the assumed external brain has undergone but instead static constructions in the present representative of sequences assumed memories of external physical changes over time (for which the external brain should only be able to remember the present state and not remember those changes).

2) According to convention theories, there is no way to integrate a single conscious experience that exists throughout the brain.

Relativity limits communication to light speed. The brain exists as an extended volume in space separated by delays in time between regions, molecules and atoms etc. In order to integrate multiple areas of experience into a single conscious experience some manner to have all the necessary information exist at a single point needs to be present. No such point has ever been found within the brain and it would appear that conventional theories don't provide for such a faster than light speed mechanism except potentially in terms of a quantum wavefunction, but a quantum wavefunction is not directly witnessable except in statistical terms of its influence on photon distributions over time.

Personally, I think that similar to the skin being a surface of tactile interaction with physical objects, the brain is similarly an interface with the mind but does not encapsulate the mind.

[SteveA]

SteveA,

I commend you for making such a thread worthy post and hope to contribute much to this thread in hopes that whatever sacrafice is made it will not be for lack of discussion on this topic. I find the link between machine mind and human mind is important to talk about and more importantly we are not even sure what our minds are or what a machine thinks, so we are really going to have a hard time pinning down the start to this thread.

~theunify

I remember thinking Artificial Intelligence was "right around the corner" for a couple decades but have since come to think that there are aspects of creative thought that seem impossible to describe in terms of some finite algorithm. We could likely automate many simpler processess but I believe I understand better now what people were referring to when they assumed something qualitatively different to the mind.

I'm honored that you considered my previous comment worthy of being copied here. Thanks

[greenbug]

That neurons build a value for an idea or perception and that value makes sense to us is interesting. The mechanism for building a relation between words, images and objects seems simple (neural network). Not confusing any of that information, between abstract and factual is just a matter of reinforcement. That we are capable of linking the information between abstract and factual with out mechanical error, says something. To me it states that any thing we can think of is capable of being real. At least to the perception in which we relate them, because those perceptions are just representations of true values measure before. Other wise we wouldn't beable to support a structure that isn't there to begain with. I always wonder about that...

[greenbug]

As far as past events, our mind makes 30k connections every min. Our mind works on exclusions, if the chemical alteration isn't there then it never existed. Hence if we watch a bird past and it is marked in our mind then the bird was there, however if that information isnt reinforced the mind loses that and so you will not be able to remember. The current state of the brain is popular reinforcement, that is past states reflect on the strenght of reinforcement. So if we remember always being happy then we say my past state has always been happy, even if there were times when we weren't happy. There is no real way of knowing absolutely that were were sad or happy unless there is a trace of chemical for a spacific time, our brain would other wise rely on the concensus(strenght of reinforcement)

[SteveA]

As far as past events, our mind makes 30k connections every min.

That seems debatable and only potentially true within a limited context (I assume you're referring to either a rate of neural growth or dendritic alterations) that isn't necessarily fundamental.

Let me point out some problems here. The first being, how could someone actually verify this? It appears it would be based upon statistical assumptions regarding the assumed volume and rate of growth/alteration of the brain, but these are again secondary observations and not direct experiences. It would appear difficult, but not impossible to perceive 30k events per minute (500/second), but only in a limited and verify repetative context, which can be somewhat misleading. For example, a moving light flashing at 500Hz could appear to exist as discrete points due to persistence of vision, but recognize that cognition of this would be in terms of a much longer period of time encompassing a large sequence of these events and not of all of them individually (the information context is different between these two contexts). If these we more complex, diverse and less "compressible" forms of mental associations then I'd have to at least rule myself out of being able to follow those.

On the other it would make sense that there would be no direct way to monitor ones own mental activities and at most it would be some indirect model/representation that would not be a 1 to 1 correlation, so it's feasible in that context that there could exist a representation in which the mind constructed associations at the rate you suggest, but recognize that this model is something that's mentally constructed and not directly verifiable by experience. That rate and the qualities of those associations are mental projections based upon assumptions regarding physics and the brain and if those mental assumptions are incorrect, then so are the results of them.

(In other words, the 30k connections per second is based upon a model that's been mentally constructed over time and is dependent upon the validity of that hypothetical physical model of the mind. Without the mind to derive it, it would not have existed. It's directly verifiable that there is thought and experience etc. and it would be easier to verify a slower rate of perception, though of a more complex character (and of individually higher information content) than repetitive events at 500Hz). Physically there's no way to measure that 30k estimate either and it's based upon macroscopic/statistical assumptions of physical mechanics of the brain.

Our mind works on exclusions, if the chemical alteration isn't there then it never existed.

There's a problem to that logic though as I pointed out above.

Let's say that you verified some alteration of the brain occured in response to some event. Now you're witnessing something that is an "external" physical alteration (which is assumed to be something that regards someone else perception/congnition that they could potentially remember or detect the change of).

Now back up and think of what your own brain should have done at that time - it should have changed to a new state to record the observed external transition (which was also secondarily recording some observed transition), but your own brain should be in some new (static) state that is only indirectly representing the belief of an external change and not actually showing you the actual fact that something externally changed.

Yes, it's subtle, but look at it this way, if the brain changes from state A to state B, the experience (according to conventional views) should be that the experience is of B and not of the transition from A to B.

There is no true measure of time in such a view nor any specific duration to events, nor does the past physically exist. That past and the changes over time that occured etc. would all be intangibles and never found in the brain.

As an example that might be easier to imagine, let's say that a ball rolls from position A to position B and stops and you witnessed it. Now if someone else came in and witnessed things from that point, there's no visibility of the prior state of the ball having been at A. To that person, the ball is stationary at B and didn't move, yet for you it moved from A to B. Any physical record of this we could assume would be retained dynamically as various kinetic/inertial forces that were dissipating in the environment (but once again it appears there's a problem in trying to verify that as it once again requires time to verify where these are flowing and a 3rd observer could once again find that the claims that such forces were propagated in various ways upon the ball stopping at B was not true).

The mind is the source and can't see itself. The brain is constructed by perceptions integrated in the mind and the brain does not create the mind but would appear to be more representative of qualities of mental influence.

Here's something else to consider. If physical laws were perfectly deterministic, then we should be able to describe the progression of physical events (and we could assume this was true of the brain as well) similar to the evolution over time of a single program and should be able to say that, given some time of physical evolution, the universe is in some precise state (including ones own thoughts, if we assume these are also determined by the state of the brain).

Any form of precisely determined evolution over time fits that same model as a linear sequence of events over time, but what determines what the time is? I could show various reasons why the appearance of dynamics/change implies time is infinitely extensible, but finite perceptions could only distinguish between a finite number of possible states in time and to me it appears impossible to describe how a precisely defined, finite structure is capable of change - it's a paradox (it seems the same as trying to describe how nothing can become something specific).

So to me, this implies instead that there could exist an infinite number of potential moments all superimposed into the same indistinguishable moment. The perceptions allow for some superpositions to be "broken"/collapsed, but I don't believe there's only a singular deterministic timeline that reaches the present (and it doesn't appear such could be proven (to me) either because someone could show me a whole bunch of diverse pictures of what might be assumed to be of the same physical space 100 years ago and I'd have no idea to determine which or even if any of them were the "true" version, though there would be the equivalent of a wavefunction/probability distribution as to what images I'd be more likely to believe or accept as true, compared to other ).

Anyway, it would seem such a selective selection/breaking of superpositions would allow for time to be possible as well as the experience of change and a specific "present" moment to exist. It also allows for multiple diverse references for spacetime to exist for multiple observers and it would also give a potential mechanism to jump start things from (close to) "nothing" to "something".

[greenbug]

Statistical or not our brain still has to make connections(neurally) for thoughts to function the way they do. Most of what our thoughts are 'chemical' but the neural connections help us retain some of that information that is being submitted by our senses. Our neural pathways are all in consecutive order in our mind and the connections that help to reinforce them support the 'timing' that we remember. Sure its not exact and its a ruff way for our brain to retain an amount of time but it works. To recall the past, it only seems distant because of all the other memories that are stacked on top of the memory your trying to recall. If you had no recollection of, lets say the past 10 years, then your mind would tend to feel as if that event happened 'nearly' yesterday. I don't know about you but that happens to me all the time.

Our brain inst all neural (electrical impulses) to process our memories and thoughts, there are chemical reactions as well. Trying to figure the speed of our brain on neural activity alone isn't going to tell you anything. Its just one part of a complicated system.

Also take in mind that neural pathways or how many connections a neuron can make complicates the issue of the speed of the brain, its not a linear equation. 1 to 1 connection isn't always true but for new connections perhaps.